The next day was a bit better. We walked with some aussies that were in our room to the surprise that was mentioned yesterday. It turned out to be a giant cannon being set off in the middle of a park. Really cool, don't really know the importance. But it was fun to watch. Then we parted ways, the recommended a Tapas bar in Madrid when we went back. We have yet to find it, but we will probably be able to get it. It was a bit odd, we didn't catch either of their names.
From there we wandered down the hill and tried to find the Vatican we were doing fairly well until we came across a parking lot. As it turns out the entrance to the Vatican was through the bottom floor of the parking lot. We literally walked up into the square in front of St. Peters Basilica. There we explored for a bit, climbed to the top, which was higher, but easier to climb than the Doumo and went to get lunch.
Lunch was mediocre, we all got set meals and they were alright at best. It was filling though so thats all that mattered. Our plan was to go to the Sistine Chapel, but we ran out of time, lunch ended at 4:00 and thats when the chapel stops accepting visitors as well. We decided to wander back and try to go through some of Rick Steves walks.
We came across a nice park which we wandered though and found some kids racing around on peddle powered go-karts. It looked really fun, then we tried to find a Cypt, but got lost. Instead we found out that there was going to be a free show in a place we had been the next night. We decided to check it out later. A band called Tokio (sic) Hotel was playing.
It was getting late at that point so we walked back through the Coliseum to get to our hostel. We got a bit lost, but our expert navigating skills got us through. We made it back just in time for dinner and a shower. I should mention that the Vatican requires pants to be worn at all times. I'm never wearing pants again in Rome and I see no reason why anyone should do either.
Anyhow dinner was interesting, we were entertained by two Italian guys who were very drunk and putting on a little show.
I'd like to take this second to remind everyone that even though I try and speak Japanese all the time, I can't actually speak the language. I tried talking with a Japanese girl in the hostel and failed.
I only mention this because at dinner it was very loud. She sat down 5 five min and then promptly left. It was funny.
After dinner we decided to do Mr. Steves night walk. Starting out at the Pantheon, and going to the Trevi fountains and ending on the Spanish steps. Its hard for me to talk about night ambiance. So just imagine your idealized impression of Italy at night. It was just like that. Maybe my favourite night of the entire trip.
I got the best gelatto of the entire trip near the Pantheon, for the record it was directly behind the Pantheon if your back is to the Pantheon its on the street to the right. Get the Pistachio.
We walked back and slept. Well I did, apparently Lars and Jeff had a nice talk with our roommates.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Rome Day 1
Ok for our first real day we did what Rick Steves refers to as the Cesser shuffle. The Colosseum, the Roman Form and the rest of the Roman ruins. Lars got pictures, I was so grumpy from not getting enough food during breakfast that I nearly killed Lars and Jeff as we were walking through both places. needless to say I didn't really like the tourist sites that much and wanted to get away from them asap. Once we got lunch (I had a really bad lunch actually but what ever it was food) I was much happier and I was able to put up with touristing for a bit longer. Thankfully we just wandered through a few nice squares and the pantheon until we came up upon the UW Rome center.
There we wandered in feeling really sketchy and a nice lady who was surprised to see us, but very friendly anyway gave us a quick tour. We were on our way out when Lars spotted one of his friends. We chatted with her for a bit, they gave us some places to see. The first being a peephole in a hill somewhere that they circled on a map and the second being a hill to goto at noon for a surprise.
After we left the Rome center we tried to fine the peephole. About an hour of wandering later we gave up and went back to the hostel for dinner.
We had the hostels ok dinner and then went out for a pub crawl. I didn't think it was that great, overpriced and there were a lot of 18 year old German and Danish kids. We went back fairly early, but not after I had a nice chat with the organizers. They were very interesting people from all walks of life that just happened upon the job for some reason or another. It was fun hearing their backgrounds.
I'm skipping a lot of this day because I didn't like if that much, acted like a dick and don't really want to talk about it.
Moving on...
There we wandered in feeling really sketchy and a nice lady who was surprised to see us, but very friendly anyway gave us a quick tour. We were on our way out when Lars spotted one of his friends. We chatted with her for a bit, they gave us some places to see. The first being a peephole in a hill somewhere that they circled on a map and the second being a hill to goto at noon for a surprise.
After we left the Rome center we tried to fine the peephole. About an hour of wandering later we gave up and went back to the hostel for dinner.
We had the hostels ok dinner and then went out for a pub crawl. I didn't think it was that great, overpriced and there were a lot of 18 year old German and Danish kids. We went back fairly early, but not after I had a nice chat with the organizers. They were very interesting people from all walks of life that just happened upon the job for some reason or another. It was fun hearing their backgrounds.
I'm skipping a lot of this day because I didn't like if that much, acted like a dick and don't really want to talk about it.
Moving on...
Day 2, Naples and reflections
Naples Day two, beware of tourist traps
I woke up a bit later that I would have liked our second day in Naples, it probably had something to do with the night before :)
Anyhow we got on the road slow anyway, thanks Lars. We backtracked to Pompeii where we could catch a bus for Mt. Vesuvius, seeing as its like 15km away from our hostel we decided to climb it. We wandered to the first bus we saw that said “Free trip to Mt. Vesuvius” of course someone came up to us telling we we couldn't go on the bus. Of course we were very confused.
The day was uneventful mainly because there was so much travel time involved. I forgot my shoes at the hostel in the rush out and had to climb the mountain in my sandals. It turned out fairly well, no rocks in my feet or anything.
But now let me talk about the “climb” that we did. I think its best presented in Iteninary form.
20min: wait for bus up mountain (we looked for water, but nothing eventful happened)
1 hr: bus ride up mountain (I slept)
20 min: get off bus and wait.
Here we had to listen to an 85 year old guy tell stories about the Mountain in an attempt to get money from us. Here keep in mind that we were talking public transportation up the Mountain and this felt like a very unplanned stop. I think the bus driver was bribed or something. Eh it was funny, what ever.
20 min: continue bus ride to top
15 min: walk up to crater, but not the summit.
30 min: stroll around the summit eat lunch and get some nice pictures.
10 min: walk back down
1 hr: wait for the bus to come again. (according to some people it was over a half hour late.
This puts us at around 3:00. We planned to be on the train to Rome by 6:30, plenty of time.
1 hr: bus ride down
1 hour 30 min time to wait for the train, accadently take the express, take it 1 stop to far, decide to take a “shortcut” back, and instead find out we took the wrong line, wait for the train back, and the next connecting train back and finally walk back to the hostel.
Those of you keeping track will notice that we have about an hour to catch out 6:30 train.
I don't remember the exact times anymore but it turns out we only had about 30 min to get to our train by the time we left the hostel, which was in a hurry I might add.
Its a 20 min train ride from our hostel to the train
We got to the train station about 3 min before our train left. We ran up the stairs and out to the station proper and arrived just in time to see our train leave the station.
Thankfully another one was leaving 10 min later.
A 3 hour nap later and we were in Rome. All I did that first night was check into the hostel and talk to some people in my dorm room. Hostel name: the Navigator. I was tired and grumpy so I went to sleep while Lars and Jeff took a night walk to the Roman ruins.
Before I forget, I need to write why I love to travel. I haven't had the best time traveling with Lars and Jeff, its been fun for sure, but sometimes one of them or another does something thats bothersome, or I don't get to do what I want to do. I realize that this in part stems from me being difficult to be around when traveling sometimes, but thats another entry entirely. Anyhow tonight I remembered why traveling is so amazing.
For the entire trip I've felt isolated, completely un-at-home, ignorant of whats going on around me and in generally confused as to whats going on around me. Tonight I was sitting alone at the Trevi Fountains and on the Spanish Steps and realized thats exactly what I liked about traveling before.
Being completely alone, no English in sight and being able to reflect on everything, what you've seen during the day, life in general, what to do next when traveling. Thats one of the things I really loved when traveling and I'm sad I missed it this trip. I should have wandered off more by myself, not seen the tourist things, but really wandered though the city, and in general been around my friends less. Being alone and seeing stuff alone when traveling brings a clarity of experience that can't be had when traveling with a group.
Granted group traveling has its advantages, but traveling alone is better. I think I might wander Rome by myself tomorrow.
Thats one more issue. Lars always talks about how much it sucks to do things with a tour group, waiting for everyone to be ready. Well what he didn't realize this entire trip, was we weren't doing things at our pace, we were going things at Lars pace, which is much slower and gockier than I would like.
Tourist sites must be seen and then must be moved away from quickly. Thats my travel philosophy and Lars and Jeff just don't agree.
I've been on the Lars tour of Europe for the last 3 weeks and should have taken charge more, navigated more and gotten lost more. I'm a shit navigator, but thats what makes things fun. I love back streets and running into things you've never heard of before. Thats what makes traveling worth it for me.
Ok back to my regularly scheduled travel writing.
I've got 15 min before my battery dies, I'm going to try and finish by then. (thats what she said)
I woke up a bit later that I would have liked our second day in Naples, it probably had something to do with the night before :)
Anyhow we got on the road slow anyway, thanks Lars. We backtracked to Pompeii where we could catch a bus for Mt. Vesuvius, seeing as its like 15km away from our hostel we decided to climb it. We wandered to the first bus we saw that said “Free trip to Mt. Vesuvius” of course someone came up to us telling we we couldn't go on the bus. Of course we were very confused.
The day was uneventful mainly because there was so much travel time involved. I forgot my shoes at the hostel in the rush out and had to climb the mountain in my sandals. It turned out fairly well, no rocks in my feet or anything.
But now let me talk about the “climb” that we did. I think its best presented in Iteninary form.
20min: wait for bus up mountain (we looked for water, but nothing eventful happened)
1 hr: bus ride up mountain (I slept)
20 min: get off bus and wait.
Here we had to listen to an 85 year old guy tell stories about the Mountain in an attempt to get money from us. Here keep in mind that we were talking public transportation up the Mountain and this felt like a very unplanned stop. I think the bus driver was bribed or something. Eh it was funny, what ever.
20 min: continue bus ride to top
15 min: walk up to crater, but not the summit.
30 min: stroll around the summit eat lunch and get some nice pictures.
10 min: walk back down
1 hr: wait for the bus to come again. (according to some people it was over a half hour late.
This puts us at around 3:00. We planned to be on the train to Rome by 6:30, plenty of time.
1 hr: bus ride down
1 hour 30 min time to wait for the train, accadently take the express, take it 1 stop to far, decide to take a “shortcut” back, and instead find out we took the wrong line, wait for the train back, and the next connecting train back and finally walk back to the hostel.
Those of you keeping track will notice that we have about an hour to catch out 6:30 train.
I don't remember the exact times anymore but it turns out we only had about 30 min to get to our train by the time we left the hostel, which was in a hurry I might add.
Its a 20 min train ride from our hostel to the train
We got to the train station about 3 min before our train left. We ran up the stairs and out to the station proper and arrived just in time to see our train leave the station.
Thankfully another one was leaving 10 min later.
A 3 hour nap later and we were in Rome. All I did that first night was check into the hostel and talk to some people in my dorm room. Hostel name: the Navigator. I was tired and grumpy so I went to sleep while Lars and Jeff took a night walk to the Roman ruins.
Before I forget, I need to write why I love to travel. I haven't had the best time traveling with Lars and Jeff, its been fun for sure, but sometimes one of them or another does something thats bothersome, or I don't get to do what I want to do. I realize that this in part stems from me being difficult to be around when traveling sometimes, but thats another entry entirely. Anyhow tonight I remembered why traveling is so amazing.
For the entire trip I've felt isolated, completely un-at-home, ignorant of whats going on around me and in generally confused as to whats going on around me. Tonight I was sitting alone at the Trevi Fountains and on the Spanish Steps and realized thats exactly what I liked about traveling before.
Being completely alone, no English in sight and being able to reflect on everything, what you've seen during the day, life in general, what to do next when traveling. Thats one of the things I really loved when traveling and I'm sad I missed it this trip. I should have wandered off more by myself, not seen the tourist things, but really wandered though the city, and in general been around my friends less. Being alone and seeing stuff alone when traveling brings a clarity of experience that can't be had when traveling with a group.
Granted group traveling has its advantages, but traveling alone is better. I think I might wander Rome by myself tomorrow.
Thats one more issue. Lars always talks about how much it sucks to do things with a tour group, waiting for everyone to be ready. Well what he didn't realize this entire trip, was we weren't doing things at our pace, we were going things at Lars pace, which is much slower and gockier than I would like.
Tourist sites must be seen and then must be moved away from quickly. Thats my travel philosophy and Lars and Jeff just don't agree.
I've been on the Lars tour of Europe for the last 3 weeks and should have taken charge more, navigated more and gotten lost more. I'm a shit navigator, but thats what makes things fun. I love back streets and running into things you've never heard of before. Thats what makes traveling worth it for me.
Ok back to my regularly scheduled travel writing.
I've got 15 min before my battery dies, I'm going to try and finish by then. (thats what she said)
Friday, September 25, 2009
Ghetto Day
Getto Day
Well if figures we would have one of these days, after passing by all the original Jewish Gettos. As it turns out the sketchballs hostel we were staying at wasn't so sketballs, nothing got taken, no problems. Until we tried to check out. Our plan for the day was to leave our hostel outside of Cinque Terre at 5:30 and catch a train that would get us in Napales at around noon. It kind of worked out.
Checkout went off without a hitch for the first 15 minutes. We packed up and everyone was ready to go by 5:15am, plenty of time before the train came. We went downstairs and tried to turn in our key. Thats when things went south. It turns out at 5:15 in the morning the hotel we were staying at didn't have a door man. We tried to place our key on the ground and then just walk out the door, but that didn't work as well. The door was locked. At this point we were all freaking out. Thankfully Lars noticed that there was a number that said exit near the door. We went back up to our room and tried to call it, no dice out room phone was out of service or something. At this point it was 5:25 and we were freaking out. Just then I remembered that I had Kates cell phone. We dug round my backpack and found it. We dialed the number once, no dice same the number is not in service message. Then we remembered the country code trick, Jeff quickly found Italy's country code while I got ready to dial again. We finally had everything worked out. We dialed the number and got a sleepy Italian man's voice at the other end. He told us to leave the key at the door and walk out, and with that he buzzed the door open.
First adventure of the day was done, and it was only 5:30. We made it to the train just fine.
It was a 6 hour train ride from Ciqnue Terre to Napales. We all went a bit stir crazy and still hadn't time for breakfast. All we had were Nancy's snacks that she packed for us at the start of the trip, and some crackers from two nights before. Breakfast and lunch of champions.
On the train the only strange thing that happened to us was an Italian man who passed by and passed out a business looking card. Then he came back 15 min later asking for money. He was very persistent, but we had no idea why we should give him money so we just looked confused for 3 minutes and he wandered off.
When we finally made it to Naples we realized the place was sketchballs, or dodgy as the aussies would say it. Anyhow the tourist info booth was out of order so we just kind of winged it. After a bit of a wander around the train station we found the subway to take us to our hostel. It was sketchy shit. Out of all the trains I've ever ridden this was the scariest one. Grafiti on the walls and a rundown train system that looked like it was put in during the 70's and cleaned maybe once sense then. Ghetto. Anyhow we finally made it to our stop after accadently taking an express train and having to back track a bit.
Out hostel is a good 15 min walking distance away from the train station down a street. We didn't realize that. Also the street was a bit sketchy. It felt like walking some place in South Seattle maybe.
We checked in and realized if we wanted to get to Pompeii that day we would have to leave asap.
Lars and Jeff were ready to leave 45 min later after checking facebook and sports scores. We wandered up back near the train station. First I should mention that we only had the rations that Nancy gave us before we left for the trip as food for the entire day. That is to say we had about 2 handfuls of trail mix until about 3:00pm that day. We decided to stop by a store to get more rations to eat before Pompeii.
I got a bread type roll, cream cheese and chocolate. Lars did a bit better and got some cheese and meet. We then ran to the train station and huried up and waited. As we were waiting we broke out our lunch on this getto train station terminal and had ourselves a lunch of kings.
The train came and we went to Pompeii. It was cool, we saw the standard sights, there isn't really much to report about it. Fairly standard Pompeii expereance. Saw everything we should have seen, didn't understand a lick of it because we weren't in a tour and then after 2 hours of wandering we wandered out and back to the hostel.
At the hostel we met these two guys named Brendon and Matt. Lars played ping pong against them and they started drinking (the two guys not Lars). I helped “fix” Matt's computer. In relaity I just assigned it a static ip and DNS that would work for that hostel. They had no idea what I was talking about when I showed them what I did. Those two are fucked for internet for the rest of the trip.
At some point in time two Aussie girls walked down and we all decided to go to dinner togeather. Dinner was the best we've had the entire trip, well kind of. Very cheep food 5 euro, but I got a pizza I didn't really like. To bad, I wish we had stayed another night just for that.
Anyhow after that we went back to the hostel. Matt was a really chill guy for most of the night, but once drinking and girls became involved he became a standard fratboy dick. Eh what are you going to do. I stayed up hanging out with all of them until about 1 and then turned in. Apparently according to a very hungover Aussie girl the next morning they stayed up until 3:30.
Well if figures we would have one of these days, after passing by all the original Jewish Gettos. As it turns out the sketchballs hostel we were staying at wasn't so sketballs, nothing got taken, no problems. Until we tried to check out. Our plan for the day was to leave our hostel outside of Cinque Terre at 5:30 and catch a train that would get us in Napales at around noon. It kind of worked out.
Checkout went off without a hitch for the first 15 minutes. We packed up and everyone was ready to go by 5:15am, plenty of time before the train came. We went downstairs and tried to turn in our key. Thats when things went south. It turns out at 5:15 in the morning the hotel we were staying at didn't have a door man. We tried to place our key on the ground and then just walk out the door, but that didn't work as well. The door was locked. At this point we were all freaking out. Thankfully Lars noticed that there was a number that said exit near the door. We went back up to our room and tried to call it, no dice out room phone was out of service or something. At this point it was 5:25 and we were freaking out. Just then I remembered that I had Kates cell phone. We dug round my backpack and found it. We dialed the number once, no dice same the number is not in service message. Then we remembered the country code trick, Jeff quickly found Italy's country code while I got ready to dial again. We finally had everything worked out. We dialed the number and got a sleepy Italian man's voice at the other end. He told us to leave the key at the door and walk out, and with that he buzzed the door open.
First adventure of the day was done, and it was only 5:30. We made it to the train just fine.
It was a 6 hour train ride from Ciqnue Terre to Napales. We all went a bit stir crazy and still hadn't time for breakfast. All we had were Nancy's snacks that she packed for us at the start of the trip, and some crackers from two nights before. Breakfast and lunch of champions.
On the train the only strange thing that happened to us was an Italian man who passed by and passed out a business looking card. Then he came back 15 min later asking for money. He was very persistent, but we had no idea why we should give him money so we just looked confused for 3 minutes and he wandered off.
When we finally made it to Naples we realized the place was sketchballs, or dodgy as the aussies would say it. Anyhow the tourist info booth was out of order so we just kind of winged it. After a bit of a wander around the train station we found the subway to take us to our hostel. It was sketchy shit. Out of all the trains I've ever ridden this was the scariest one. Grafiti on the walls and a rundown train system that looked like it was put in during the 70's and cleaned maybe once sense then. Ghetto. Anyhow we finally made it to our stop after accadently taking an express train and having to back track a bit.
Out hostel is a good 15 min walking distance away from the train station down a street. We didn't realize that. Also the street was a bit sketchy. It felt like walking some place in South Seattle maybe.
We checked in and realized if we wanted to get to Pompeii that day we would have to leave asap.
Lars and Jeff were ready to leave 45 min later after checking facebook and sports scores. We wandered up back near the train station. First I should mention that we only had the rations that Nancy gave us before we left for the trip as food for the entire day. That is to say we had about 2 handfuls of trail mix until about 3:00pm that day. We decided to stop by a store to get more rations to eat before Pompeii.
I got a bread type roll, cream cheese and chocolate. Lars did a bit better and got some cheese and meet. We then ran to the train station and huried up and waited. As we were waiting we broke out our lunch on this getto train station terminal and had ourselves a lunch of kings.
The train came and we went to Pompeii. It was cool, we saw the standard sights, there isn't really much to report about it. Fairly standard Pompeii expereance. Saw everything we should have seen, didn't understand a lick of it because we weren't in a tour and then after 2 hours of wandering we wandered out and back to the hostel.
At the hostel we met these two guys named Brendon and Matt. Lars played ping pong against them and they started drinking (the two guys not Lars). I helped “fix” Matt's computer. In relaity I just assigned it a static ip and DNS that would work for that hostel. They had no idea what I was talking about when I showed them what I did. Those two are fucked for internet for the rest of the trip.
At some point in time two Aussie girls walked down and we all decided to go to dinner togeather. Dinner was the best we've had the entire trip, well kind of. Very cheep food 5 euro, but I got a pizza I didn't really like. To bad, I wish we had stayed another night just for that.
Anyhow after that we went back to the hostel. Matt was a really chill guy for most of the night, but once drinking and girls became involved he became a standard fratboy dick. Eh what are you going to do. I stayed up hanging out with all of them until about 1 and then turned in. Apparently according to a very hungover Aussie girl the next morning they stayed up until 3:30.
Cinque Terre
Cinque Terre was great, we got started at about 11:00 after a slow start. Train came at 10 from right outside our hotel and we arrived around 10:30 then we dillydallied and got some breakfast and such.
The hike started out terrible, there were 50-100 people on the trail at the same time, but the crowds quickly died out once we got to the first slightly rough part. That was right after the second city.
A quick overview of Cinque Terre, there are 5 very small cities connected by a walking path about 9 km in total. The cities are only hold about 500-1000 homes each and are dominated by tourists, although in a less dense fashion than major cities like Florence. Almost everyone hiking the trail or in the towns spoke English. It was bearable, and the views and the hike made it worth it.
Anyhow at the second city we hit our first elevation gain. It was probably about 50m up via stairs. Not that bad, but after that there were a lot less hikers. The views were stunning, I only got a few shots before my camera died though. Eh, Lars got some great panoramas so it will be fine.
A few interesting things happened on the hike. Over the total course of the hike 3 people asked us if we had head about what happened on Saturday (the Husky win over 3rd ranked USC). Apparently news travels fast.
Also when we stopped for lunch at the 4th town we met a lady from Arizona that wanted her son to go to the UW, he went to ASU instead. I had a quick chat with her and then ate lunch. Later when we were trying to hike up to the highest point in the town (only to be stopped by a 1.50 euro entry fee) we met another man with the same accent. It turns out it was a husband and wife traveling as a group. We had some fun with him as we told him where his son went to college and about his wife's job :). Reminds me of the aussie girls we met yesterday.
That about concludes the interesting parts of the day. We hiked from the 4th to the 5th village, which was balls to the wall hard, probably 100m elevation gain in less than 750m of walking distance. Lots of stairs. It ranks fairly high up there in difficult hikes for me. Thankfully it was all over in like 15 min and we had a nice hike along the mountains before descending into the final town and passing out on the beach for about an hour.
Coming back was uneventful. We yet again did not have to show or check off our eurorail passes. For so many good people in Europe there are a few bad ones as well. We were the bad ones today and didn't mark the day as used. It saved us a grand total of 2 euro. We got back around 6 and went out for dinner after visiting an Internet cafe around 7. We just asked a local where a good reastraunt was and he pointed to one about 50m away. It was great Italian food. I had chicken and mushrooms and Lars and Jeff both had great Pasta. It cost us a grand total of 24 euro. God I love non-tourist areas.
Anyhow that concludes the day. Tomorrow were going to Naples for the night. Our train there is a direct train leaving at 5:45 am. Were getting up at 5:00 should be fun. Thankfully we get in at 12:00. It should give us plenty of time to explore Naples. I'm really excited about Naples and the outlying areas. I really want to summit Mt. Vesuvius. The hostel were staying at in Naples also looks kind of sketch, but you can't pass up $15 a night. I might try to convince Lars and Jeff to even stay one more night so we can go see a few more natural areas around Naples. I've been reading about a few of them and they look amazing. I'm also a bit touristed out. I kind of just want to do some hikes. I'm having trouble dealing with the big tourist groups in cities more and more and don't know if I can do 3 days in Rome without killing someone.
It really bothers me when we walk into an area and hear more English than the native language. I also can't differentiate between different types of Europeans so its very hard to tell if were dealing with locals or just another Australian tourist. I think I've mentioned it before, but I want to see how people live, not just what they built 1000 years ago. Thats kind of why I'm excited about Pompeii tomorrow or the next day.
I'll close with the observation that I'm really excited to get back to Seattle and to school. I'm even more excited to start working the the lab again and can't wait to apply to the Japanese study abroad program. Not understanding the culture or being able to speak the language is starting to get to me just a bit.
Anyhow home in 6 or 7 days I'm excited.
The hike started out terrible, there were 50-100 people on the trail at the same time, but the crowds quickly died out once we got to the first slightly rough part. That was right after the second city.
A quick overview of Cinque Terre, there are 5 very small cities connected by a walking path about 9 km in total. The cities are only hold about 500-1000 homes each and are dominated by tourists, although in a less dense fashion than major cities like Florence. Almost everyone hiking the trail or in the towns spoke English. It was bearable, and the views and the hike made it worth it.
Anyhow at the second city we hit our first elevation gain. It was probably about 50m up via stairs. Not that bad, but after that there were a lot less hikers. The views were stunning, I only got a few shots before my camera died though. Eh, Lars got some great panoramas so it will be fine.
A few interesting things happened on the hike. Over the total course of the hike 3 people asked us if we had head about what happened on Saturday (the Husky win over 3rd ranked USC). Apparently news travels fast.
Also when we stopped for lunch at the 4th town we met a lady from Arizona that wanted her son to go to the UW, he went to ASU instead. I had a quick chat with her and then ate lunch. Later when we were trying to hike up to the highest point in the town (only to be stopped by a 1.50 euro entry fee) we met another man with the same accent. It turns out it was a husband and wife traveling as a group. We had some fun with him as we told him where his son went to college and about his wife's job :). Reminds me of the aussie girls we met yesterday.
That about concludes the interesting parts of the day. We hiked from the 4th to the 5th village, which was balls to the wall hard, probably 100m elevation gain in less than 750m of walking distance. Lots of stairs. It ranks fairly high up there in difficult hikes for me. Thankfully it was all over in like 15 min and we had a nice hike along the mountains before descending into the final town and passing out on the beach for about an hour.
Coming back was uneventful. We yet again did not have to show or check off our eurorail passes. For so many good people in Europe there are a few bad ones as well. We were the bad ones today and didn't mark the day as used. It saved us a grand total of 2 euro. We got back around 6 and went out for dinner after visiting an Internet cafe around 7. We just asked a local where a good reastraunt was and he pointed to one about 50m away. It was great Italian food. I had chicken and mushrooms and Lars and Jeff both had great Pasta. It cost us a grand total of 24 euro. God I love non-tourist areas.
Anyhow that concludes the day. Tomorrow were going to Naples for the night. Our train there is a direct train leaving at 5:45 am. Were getting up at 5:00 should be fun. Thankfully we get in at 12:00. It should give us plenty of time to explore Naples. I'm really excited about Naples and the outlying areas. I really want to summit Mt. Vesuvius. The hostel were staying at in Naples also looks kind of sketch, but you can't pass up $15 a night. I might try to convince Lars and Jeff to even stay one more night so we can go see a few more natural areas around Naples. I've been reading about a few of them and they look amazing. I'm also a bit touristed out. I kind of just want to do some hikes. I'm having trouble dealing with the big tourist groups in cities more and more and don't know if I can do 3 days in Rome without killing someone.
It really bothers me when we walk into an area and hear more English than the native language. I also can't differentiate between different types of Europeans so its very hard to tell if were dealing with locals or just another Australian tourist. I think I've mentioned it before, but I want to see how people live, not just what they built 1000 years ago. Thats kind of why I'm excited about Pompeii tomorrow or the next day.
I'll close with the observation that I'm really excited to get back to Seattle and to school. I'm even more excited to start working the the lab again and can't wait to apply to the Japanese study abroad program. Not understanding the culture or being able to speak the language is starting to get to me just a bit.
Anyhow home in 6 or 7 days I'm excited.
Florence
On to Florence...
We took a 6 pm train from Venice to Florence and got in around 8 or 9. We were wandering around trying to find our hostel walking past amazing Florentine architecture when we hear this voice saying “Lars, Lars is that you Lars?” We turn around and suddenly there is this guy waiving at us. He is like “Lars, party of 3?” and we kind of nod, he goes “I'm Franco I run the hostel, its right down the road, number 1, I'll be there in a bit”. We immediately knew that we had chosen the right hostel. Franco is the man. Our choice was only justified more as time went on. He did a number of really cool crazy things. The night later we were getting ready to go out and offered him a drink, he refused it because he was already 4 beers deep for the night. The man!
Anyhow Florence was really cool, we got some good touristing in, seeing the top 5 things that our travel book recommended. They were all fairly nice. I really like Florentine Architecture it has a very open walkable feeling while still being awe inspiring. I think its a combination of the 4 story buildings that are just gigantic and the wide walking paths. The Doumo was fantastic. We didn't go inside, but we did climb to the top. It was 8 euro well spent. The view was even better than the view from the top of Michelangelo's Vista. Lars got some nice panoramas. We then went to see David, which all in all was a 10 euro rip off. All that was in the place was David, and while he is impressive I don't know if I want to pay 10 euro to see him. Anyhow that was our first day. We wandered back to the hostel after having Gelato about 10 times better than anything we had in Venice and met another guy from Seattle. He just happened to be a busniess major and going to the UW as well. Small world.
An aside before talking about the night. I really can't stand the tourist culture over here. You wander into the historical center of the city and you can speak English just like your back in the States. You look around and half of the population is old British people on vacation and the other half is a smattering of people from around the world. No locals at all from what I could see. Hell, when I was up at the Doumo I herd so much Japanese that I could have sworn I was back in Tokyo. There was Japanese all over the place. Still cool city.
Ok Chris was crazy, but awesome. He was doing the same thing we were doing except by him self and without a guide book. Basically his tour turned into a 3 week party in different countries. That didn't exactly change with us. We killed a bottle of wine togeather, wandered out to get more, and wandered to get more and got sidetracked by a street performer and then by a Church that was playing really great Organ music. We finally wandered back to the hostel and went out to a Wine bar where I ran into two Japanese O.L's I proceeded to talk with them for a while. I was a lot of fun to break out my Japanese again. We wandered off to another place after that, but I got bored and went back to the hostel after a few minutes.
Florence day one was over.
The next day we woke up and realized how much it sucks to stay in a hostel that doesn't serve breakfast. We wandered off to get kabob's and then went to the Uffizi gallery. We should have reserved tickets. We waited in line for 2 hours. I napped for a bit in line and then had a nice talk with two older girls from Alaska. They were fun to talk to, one of them even worked in a Biology lab. We also met a Aussie who literally studied rocket science and a Italian girl who was also in Biology. We had a nice long chat while waiting in that god forsaken line. The worst part of it all was that the Uffizi gallery was boring. There wasn't really anything interesting in there for us to see. Wasted day, check.
We went back to our hostel after that to grab our stuff and had more amazing gelato. After that we decided to head for Cinque Terre. I should mention at this point that we haven't booked any hostels in Cinque Terre. Lars wanted to have an adventure. I thought he was an idiot. My motto is prepare as much as possible and don't try to find adventures, if you do things right they will find you. Intentionally booking a hostel is not the right way to get things done. Sadly I was in no condition to plan these things out the night before.
We hopped on the train anyway. We made our transfer in Pizza to La Spezia. We were about to wander out an see the tower when we ran into two Aussie girls that we had met twice before on the trip. Once on the train from Madrid to Barcelona and once in the train station in Mont Pellier. Totally random. We never did see the tower either. Apparently its not worth it. I'm glad we passed it up.
We finally got into La Spezia, which is a town about 10 min away from Cinque Terre around 9:30. We were told this was the better place to find a hostel so we started wandering. Jeff and Lars were being stupid and talking about sleeping under bridges. Thankfully after about 10 minutes of wandering we came across a hotel. The guy at the front desk asked if we needed a room and told us it was 20 euro a night. Thats where I'm writing this entry from. My sketch meeter is going off even more so than it was at A Venice Fish, but there are locks on the door 3 beds and it smells fine. It remains to be seen how things go.
Anyhow thats the trip so far. Hiking in Cinque Terre tomorrow. I'm excited. Although it might rain which would really suck. Anyhow more on that tomorrow. Chao.
We took a 6 pm train from Venice to Florence and got in around 8 or 9. We were wandering around trying to find our hostel walking past amazing Florentine architecture when we hear this voice saying “Lars, Lars is that you Lars?” We turn around and suddenly there is this guy waiving at us. He is like “Lars, party of 3?” and we kind of nod, he goes “I'm Franco I run the hostel, its right down the road, number 1, I'll be there in a bit”. We immediately knew that we had chosen the right hostel. Franco is the man. Our choice was only justified more as time went on. He did a number of really cool crazy things. The night later we were getting ready to go out and offered him a drink, he refused it because he was already 4 beers deep for the night. The man!
Anyhow Florence was really cool, we got some good touristing in, seeing the top 5 things that our travel book recommended. They were all fairly nice. I really like Florentine Architecture it has a very open walkable feeling while still being awe inspiring. I think its a combination of the 4 story buildings that are just gigantic and the wide walking paths. The Doumo was fantastic. We didn't go inside, but we did climb to the top. It was 8 euro well spent. The view was even better than the view from the top of Michelangelo's Vista. Lars got some nice panoramas. We then went to see David, which all in all was a 10 euro rip off. All that was in the place was David, and while he is impressive I don't know if I want to pay 10 euro to see him. Anyhow that was our first day. We wandered back to the hostel after having Gelato about 10 times better than anything we had in Venice and met another guy from Seattle. He just happened to be a busniess major and going to the UW as well. Small world.
An aside before talking about the night. I really can't stand the tourist culture over here. You wander into the historical center of the city and you can speak English just like your back in the States. You look around and half of the population is old British people on vacation and the other half is a smattering of people from around the world. No locals at all from what I could see. Hell, when I was up at the Doumo I herd so much Japanese that I could have sworn I was back in Tokyo. There was Japanese all over the place. Still cool city.
Ok Chris was crazy, but awesome. He was doing the same thing we were doing except by him self and without a guide book. Basically his tour turned into a 3 week party in different countries. That didn't exactly change with us. We killed a bottle of wine togeather, wandered out to get more, and wandered to get more and got sidetracked by a street performer and then by a Church that was playing really great Organ music. We finally wandered back to the hostel and went out to a Wine bar where I ran into two Japanese O.L's I proceeded to talk with them for a while. I was a lot of fun to break out my Japanese again. We wandered off to another place after that, but I got bored and went back to the hostel after a few minutes.
Florence day one was over.
The next day we woke up and realized how much it sucks to stay in a hostel that doesn't serve breakfast. We wandered off to get kabob's and then went to the Uffizi gallery. We should have reserved tickets. We waited in line for 2 hours. I napped for a bit in line and then had a nice talk with two older girls from Alaska. They were fun to talk to, one of them even worked in a Biology lab. We also met a Aussie who literally studied rocket science and a Italian girl who was also in Biology. We had a nice long chat while waiting in that god forsaken line. The worst part of it all was that the Uffizi gallery was boring. There wasn't really anything interesting in there for us to see. Wasted day, check.
We went back to our hostel after that to grab our stuff and had more amazing gelato. After that we decided to head for Cinque Terre. I should mention at this point that we haven't booked any hostels in Cinque Terre. Lars wanted to have an adventure. I thought he was an idiot. My motto is prepare as much as possible and don't try to find adventures, if you do things right they will find you. Intentionally booking a hostel is not the right way to get things done. Sadly I was in no condition to plan these things out the night before.
We hopped on the train anyway. We made our transfer in Pizza to La Spezia. We were about to wander out an see the tower when we ran into two Aussie girls that we had met twice before on the trip. Once on the train from Madrid to Barcelona and once in the train station in Mont Pellier. Totally random. We never did see the tower either. Apparently its not worth it. I'm glad we passed it up.
We finally got into La Spezia, which is a town about 10 min away from Cinque Terre around 9:30. We were told this was the better place to find a hostel so we started wandering. Jeff and Lars were being stupid and talking about sleeping under bridges. Thankfully after about 10 minutes of wandering we came across a hotel. The guy at the front desk asked if we needed a room and told us it was 20 euro a night. Thats where I'm writing this entry from. My sketch meeter is going off even more so than it was at A Venice Fish, but there are locks on the door 3 beds and it smells fine. It remains to be seen how things go.
Anyhow thats the trip so far. Hiking in Cinque Terre tomorrow. I'm excited. Although it might rain which would really suck. Anyhow more on that tomorrow. Chao.
The hottest day of the trip
So another 3 days has passed apparently. Let me start out with CERN, because that has been the highlight of my trip so far. The previous events of the day don't really matter except we met up with Justin and Alyssia Harding and started wandering to CERN. Anyhow CERN was awosome, nuf said. Lots of nerdy stuff there, we got some pictures of Fortran code used in the 80's version of their particle accelratiors and noticed that it had the concept of tupples, go figure. We also learned a bit about the LHC and why it was there. Sadly we couldn't see it and I wasn't able to bring Jessy back a Hadron. I also ran into this really cool Canadian couple, the girl just finished up a BI major and was applying for a BI job. We had a nice little chat about BI. Our conversation was cut short by the fact that they had a 3 hour tour of the place (lucky bums, we tired to reserve a spot, but it they were booked the day we wanted to go). We then went back to Geneva (CERN is outside of Geneva by about a half hour) and realized we had burned the entire day. We only had time for one other major tourist thing so we went to the WTO. Its normally not even open to the public but Gretchen was amazing and gave us a private tour. It was really interesting seeing the place where the diplomats work. Its really just a bunch of meeting rooms. Its an interesting contrast to a tech companies work space where they have lots of semi-private spaces set up for us. Their IT infrastructure was also a bit dated. They were still running windows XP from the looks of it. One final observation was that computers in general were deemphasized, everyone that worked there had a large desk, and a small computer.
From there we went and had another college student dinner at a super market and went with Justin and Alyssa when they checked into their hostel. To our present surprise we ran into the Canadian couple again. We had a nice talk and decided to take them up on their offer of beer and fooseball in the hostels rec room. The rec room btw also happened to be a bomb shelter. Turns out that all private swiss houses need to have a fully stalked bomb shelter in them. Crazy country, lots of good people in it. Sadly we had to cut out fooseball game short as we decided to take a night train to Venice, we should have stayed and played fooseball for a little longer.
The train was dodgy to say the least. We got on, and couldn't figure out how to pull down the beds. It took like 10 minutes. Once we got that figured out the conductor came by and took our eurorail passes, tickets and passports. He had a whole handful of other passports as well so we weren't to scared, but it was still really sketch. Then came the sleeping. We were sharing a 6 bed car with a Canadian couple and a Frenchman who arrived much later. The beds were stacked 3 high to a max hight of about 10 feet. The beds themselves were only about 3 feet wide by 6 feet long, not good for me. Lars got the middle bunk and Jeff and I got the two high bunks. I just stayed up reading for a while because I was nearly done with my book. In the mean time the Canadian couple decided to connodle on the bottom bunks, which really wasn't a problem, but kind of funny nonetheless.
When it finally came time to sleep I realized just was we had gotten ourselves into. 6 people in a car with about 20 square feet of space gets really hot really fast. We also couldn't figure out the AC system. Jeff and I were sleeping in a toaster oven that was about 95 degrees. Lars snoozed happy below us. We got about 2 hours of sleep that night.
We arrived in Venice, at around 8 am tired and confused. A great condition to be in when you need to navigate a city with no street signs. I navigated us around for a bit trying to find the hostel, but couldn't do it in my sleep deprived state. I passed the job off to Lars, who while being much more awake than us also doesn't mind yelling stuff in English to people and getting points in return. I dislike taking that approach myself, but it gets the job done and we get where we need to go.
After about a half hour of wandering we finally got to the place where our hostel was at. However even though the door labels matched up it looked just like a person house, complete with someones name on the door. We were so confused we asked a guy getting in a boat right next to us if it was the right place, he pointed and said yep. With that we buzzed up. Nothing happened for about 30 seconds. Then a skinny 20 something year old half naked guy popped his head out of an upstairs window and bellowed “hello”. We said hi back and he asked us if we had reservations. We said yah and he told us we would be right down. 2 minutes later a fully dressed Argentinean man with long hair and a hungover look about him opened the door for us. We walked into what looked like a rubbish pit of things the hostel (which still looked just like a house) didn't want to keep, but didn't want to throw away. Upstairs things didn't get much better, there were a few big rooms where people could sleep, but no locks on anything and no Internet.
Lucas (the hostel owner) told us we could leave our stuff in his kitchen and check in at 1:00. Great...
Oh I forgot to mention we payed 35 euro a night for the privilege to stay in this place. Anyhow we wandered the streets of Venice, I was tired and cranky. Lars just gocked at everything and said the entire place was amazing and Jeff was quiet, like normal :)
We got to Plazza San Marco and thats when I first realized I hate Italian tourist areas. Lars and Jeff wandered around for a bit, but I couldn't get out of there fast enough. At that point I realized the entire city was a giant tourist trap, originally designed as an actual liveable city, but re-purposed as a tool to separate tourists from their money. I really didn't like Venice, the only cool part of our two days there was when we wandered through the actual residential district and found the University of Venice. I'm realizing more and more that the thing I love about traveling isn't seeing the tourist sites, which is only allright, but really seeing how other people live. I can't stand stopping for pictures every 30 seconds. I figure shoot one of two shots of a place and move on. I'd much rather have a chat with a local or another tourist rather than seeing a site.
There really isn't much to report about Venice, we were unprepared for going there and had no idea what to see.
I did go out that night but it uneventful other than fact that two of the girls I went out with were really boring British girls who went to Oxford. It was kind of funny though, they loved Twilight, but had no idea Forks was a real city. They were impressed when I told them I had been there. We were joined by an Aussie girl in her late 20's who was working in the British museum, she was really cool, lots of interesting stories, and a Brazilian girl who kept fairly quiet.
Anyhow, Venice in a nutshell. I wish I had been a bit more awake and less grumpy and enjoyed it more, but as it stands its my least favourite city on the trip.
From there we went and had another college student dinner at a super market and went with Justin and Alyssa when they checked into their hostel. To our present surprise we ran into the Canadian couple again. We had a nice talk and decided to take them up on their offer of beer and fooseball in the hostels rec room. The rec room btw also happened to be a bomb shelter. Turns out that all private swiss houses need to have a fully stalked bomb shelter in them. Crazy country, lots of good people in it. Sadly we had to cut out fooseball game short as we decided to take a night train to Venice, we should have stayed and played fooseball for a little longer.
The train was dodgy to say the least. We got on, and couldn't figure out how to pull down the beds. It took like 10 minutes. Once we got that figured out the conductor came by and took our eurorail passes, tickets and passports. He had a whole handful of other passports as well so we weren't to scared, but it was still really sketch. Then came the sleeping. We were sharing a 6 bed car with a Canadian couple and a Frenchman who arrived much later. The beds were stacked 3 high to a max hight of about 10 feet. The beds themselves were only about 3 feet wide by 6 feet long, not good for me. Lars got the middle bunk and Jeff and I got the two high bunks. I just stayed up reading for a while because I was nearly done with my book. In the mean time the Canadian couple decided to connodle on the bottom bunks, which really wasn't a problem, but kind of funny nonetheless.
When it finally came time to sleep I realized just was we had gotten ourselves into. 6 people in a car with about 20 square feet of space gets really hot really fast. We also couldn't figure out the AC system. Jeff and I were sleeping in a toaster oven that was about 95 degrees. Lars snoozed happy below us. We got about 2 hours of sleep that night.
We arrived in Venice, at around 8 am tired and confused. A great condition to be in when you need to navigate a city with no street signs. I navigated us around for a bit trying to find the hostel, but couldn't do it in my sleep deprived state. I passed the job off to Lars, who while being much more awake than us also doesn't mind yelling stuff in English to people and getting points in return. I dislike taking that approach myself, but it gets the job done and we get where we need to go.
After about a half hour of wandering we finally got to the place where our hostel was at. However even though the door labels matched up it looked just like a person house, complete with someones name on the door. We were so confused we asked a guy getting in a boat right next to us if it was the right place, he pointed and said yep. With that we buzzed up. Nothing happened for about 30 seconds. Then a skinny 20 something year old half naked guy popped his head out of an upstairs window and bellowed “hello”. We said hi back and he asked us if we had reservations. We said yah and he told us we would be right down. 2 minutes later a fully dressed Argentinean man with long hair and a hungover look about him opened the door for us. We walked into what looked like a rubbish pit of things the hostel (which still looked just like a house) didn't want to keep, but didn't want to throw away. Upstairs things didn't get much better, there were a few big rooms where people could sleep, but no locks on anything and no Internet.
Lucas (the hostel owner) told us we could leave our stuff in his kitchen and check in at 1:00. Great...
Oh I forgot to mention we payed 35 euro a night for the privilege to stay in this place. Anyhow we wandered the streets of Venice, I was tired and cranky. Lars just gocked at everything and said the entire place was amazing and Jeff was quiet, like normal :)
We got to Plazza San Marco and thats when I first realized I hate Italian tourist areas. Lars and Jeff wandered around for a bit, but I couldn't get out of there fast enough. At that point I realized the entire city was a giant tourist trap, originally designed as an actual liveable city, but re-purposed as a tool to separate tourists from their money. I really didn't like Venice, the only cool part of our two days there was when we wandered through the actual residential district and found the University of Venice. I'm realizing more and more that the thing I love about traveling isn't seeing the tourist sites, which is only allright, but really seeing how other people live. I can't stand stopping for pictures every 30 seconds. I figure shoot one of two shots of a place and move on. I'd much rather have a chat with a local or another tourist rather than seeing a site.
There really isn't much to report about Venice, we were unprepared for going there and had no idea what to see.
I did go out that night but it uneventful other than fact that two of the girls I went out with were really boring British girls who went to Oxford. It was kind of funny though, they loved Twilight, but had no idea Forks was a real city. They were impressed when I told them I had been there. We were joined by an Aussie girl in her late 20's who was working in the British museum, she was really cool, lots of interesting stories, and a Brazilian girl who kept fairly quiet.
Anyhow, Venice in a nutshell. I wish I had been a bit more awake and less grumpy and enjoyed it more, but as it stands its my least favourite city on the trip.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Post CERN Geneva and Venice
CERN was great, wandering around with Alyssa and Justin was fantastic. The night train sucked, I got 2 hours of sleep.
I'm to tired to properly enjoy Venice, right know I kind of dislike it. More later.
Oh and the cool Canadians that were doing BI, need to talk about that as well.
More tonight or tomorrow, our hostel is kind of sketch, I'm a bit worried about my laptop getting jacked, need to find a good place to hide it.
We'll probably be in Florence tomorrow, we'll see. More updates as I get time, I'm finding I'm getting a lot less downtime on this trip than in Japan, and I'm seeing a lot less (poor planning not going that again)
Eh lessons learned.
Oh btw over all I'm kind of in impressed with Europe. I thought it would be this cool amazing thing, but it isn't as breath taking or impressive as I thought it would be, I kind of just feels like the states with more history. Maybe thats just my tired bitterness talking. Maybe I'm just not in the places for me, I'll have to figure it out, but at the moment I'm not enjoying Italy. Geneva was great though. Did I mention Ray and Gretchen were fantastic? oh and Gretchin showed us around the WTO, that was a really cool experience. Not something that people get to do everyday.
More later tonight or tomorrow or when we get internet. Chao from Italy.
I'm to tired to properly enjoy Venice, right know I kind of dislike it. More later.
Oh and the cool Canadians that were doing BI, need to talk about that as well.
More tonight or tomorrow, our hostel is kind of sketch, I'm a bit worried about my laptop getting jacked, need to find a good place to hide it.
We'll probably be in Florence tomorrow, we'll see. More updates as I get time, I'm finding I'm getting a lot less downtime on this trip than in Japan, and I'm seeing a lot less (poor planning not going that again)
Eh lessons learned.
Oh btw over all I'm kind of in impressed with Europe. I thought it would be this cool amazing thing, but it isn't as breath taking or impressive as I thought it would be, I kind of just feels like the states with more history. Maybe thats just my tired bitterness talking. Maybe I'm just not in the places for me, I'll have to figure it out, but at the moment I'm not enjoying Italy. Geneva was great though. Did I mention Ray and Gretchen were fantastic? oh and Gretchin showed us around the WTO, that was a really cool experience. Not something that people get to do everyday.
More later tonight or tomorrow or when we get internet. Chao from Italy.
More Geneva
Today Ray drove us around Lake Geneva (have I mentioned how amazing he is?). Our first stop on our tour of amazing sights was Eviaon. Ray told us this was where rich old ladies went to relax during the winter. I could believe it. It was a charming, but very expencive town right off lake Geneva. It also was the home of Eviaon water. I couldn't find a water bottle, but I took a drink out of the original fountain. Leading to the yo dawg I heard you liked evion water so I put you in evion so you can be in evion while drinking evion water.
Moving on...
Our next stop was the Castle Chillon. On our way there we discovered some interesting things about swiss culture. Namely that they are all narcs. If a neighbor breaks the law they will immediately call the police instead of dealing with it in a nice neighborly way. Also we saw the fake rock that hid a defensive installation that protected Switzerland. Then we walked into the slightly older defensive installation of Chillion. It was cool seeing real medieval castle, at least until I realized that it had pretty much been a foundation and it was rebuilt in the 1900's by some archaeologist. Eh, it was still fun to wander around and see how it was designed. Although it was far to short for me.
We continued our drive down the Swiss side of lake Geneva for a while. Passed by the Olympic Museum and kept on going. We decided to get on the express way to make things go a bit faster. In the process of getting on the express way we got a bit lost and spent a good 45 min to half an hour driving around ruralish Switzerland. It was just beautiful. I think next time I travel through Europe it will be by car. You get amazing views just by going off road for 5 minutes and seeing how the farmers work. Also its really interesting to see that the villages around lake Geneva aren't that dence, but they just keep going and going. Small village followed by some farm land folled by village. There wasn't a truly untouched natural area. I though it was a bit odd, but very intresting at the same time. We finally made it back to the expressway and into Geneva, I passed out for a bit here.
I woke up just when we were getting into Geneva, I understand why Rick Steeves said to stay out of it. There really isn't much to do there. Eh, well we wandered for a bit saw a nice catherdal and headed back to Ray and Gretchen's house for a fantastic dinner. We had what was called Rockulet, which is a traditional swiss dinner consisting of melted cheese, patatoe, bread, and dried beef. It was the most filling thing I've ever had in my life. It also tasted amazing.
From there we figured out what we were going to do tomorrow (the UN and CERN, if were lucky a guided half day tour) and booked a hostel in Venice. Oh I forgot to mention tomorrow were meeting up with Alysssia and Justin Harding and seeing Geneva with them. Then taking the night train to Venice for a day or two. We'll figure it out as we go along. Oh we also botched the FC Madrid stuff. We can't figure out when the game is.
Anyhow, thats enough for today. More on the nerdgasim that tomorrow will be when we get there.
Moving on...
Our next stop was the Castle Chillon. On our way there we discovered some interesting things about swiss culture. Namely that they are all narcs. If a neighbor breaks the law they will immediately call the police instead of dealing with it in a nice neighborly way. Also we saw the fake rock that hid a defensive installation that protected Switzerland. Then we walked into the slightly older defensive installation of Chillion. It was cool seeing real medieval castle, at least until I realized that it had pretty much been a foundation and it was rebuilt in the 1900's by some archaeologist. Eh, it was still fun to wander around and see how it was designed. Although it was far to short for me.
We continued our drive down the Swiss side of lake Geneva for a while. Passed by the Olympic Museum and kept on going. We decided to get on the express way to make things go a bit faster. In the process of getting on the express way we got a bit lost and spent a good 45 min to half an hour driving around ruralish Switzerland. It was just beautiful. I think next time I travel through Europe it will be by car. You get amazing views just by going off road for 5 minutes and seeing how the farmers work. Also its really interesting to see that the villages around lake Geneva aren't that dence, but they just keep going and going. Small village followed by some farm land folled by village. There wasn't a truly untouched natural area. I though it was a bit odd, but very intresting at the same time. We finally made it back to the expressway and into Geneva, I passed out for a bit here.
I woke up just when we were getting into Geneva, I understand why Rick Steeves said to stay out of it. There really isn't much to do there. Eh, well we wandered for a bit saw a nice catherdal and headed back to Ray and Gretchen's house for a fantastic dinner. We had what was called Rockulet, which is a traditional swiss dinner consisting of melted cheese, patatoe, bread, and dried beef. It was the most filling thing I've ever had in my life. It also tasted amazing.
From there we figured out what we were going to do tomorrow (the UN and CERN, if were lucky a guided half day tour) and booked a hostel in Venice. Oh I forgot to mention tomorrow were meeting up with Alysssia and Justin Harding and seeing Geneva with them. Then taking the night train to Venice for a day or two. We'll figure it out as we go along. Oh we also botched the FC Madrid stuff. We can't figure out when the game is.
Anyhow, thats enough for today. More on the nerdgasim that tomorrow will be when we get there.
Massave Update
ok where to start sense last time...
Lets see, I left off after coming back from a club with the two Belgian girls. I forgot if I mentioned that I went to the Gaudi Cathedral. This is important. Anyhow the next day we didn't really have a plan. I got up early the next day and at breakfast I met a guy that lived 6 blocks away from me in the U district. He was one of the creepiest people I've ever met. Strange slur when he talked and a bright blonde mustache. Its a bit hard to describe his creepyness on words. I guess the closest thing you can do is say euro-trash. I'm a bit scared to go back to the U district :). We did meet a cool guy from LA named Kyle. He worked on an Oil Tanker 6 months out of the year and got the other 6 months off. He recommended that we go to the Picasso Museum which was half a block away from our hostel. I was unimpressed. After our second art museum we went we realized that none of us were really fans, but still had to go just because it was a once in a lifetime thing. From there we took a trip up to the Gaudi park, which was really cool. I'll append this post later with comparisons of his style in different places. In any event there we ran into the guy from LA again with a few Aussie friends that we also met at Breakfast. They invited me to go out on a Tapas tour + Flamenco thing with them that night (which I never ended up paying for, but thats another story). It was also at the park when Jeff and Lars decided to start photographing masterpieces. We also got our first Conway shot of the trip there. After that we wandered aimlessly for a few minutes looking for lunch and ended up in a Boacillo joint where we paid 2 euro for them. (Current cost of food on the trip ~50 euro). After lunch we went to the Gaudi Cathedral again and I got mad at Lars for taking to many pictures.
Then we went to the Olympic Park, which was apparently right below Barcelona's Castle (Did you know Barcelona has a Castle?!). Anyhow we wandered around the park for a bit, I looked for the pool, but couldn't find it, decided to come back the next day and find it. In any event it was very pretty and I've got pictures, just like the rest of the trip.
We were all tired at that point and went back to the hostel. I decided to go on the Tapas Tour with the Aussies and the guy from LA. It turned out to be more of a pub crawl. We had Tapas and drinks, then we went to a Flamaco performance that was designed for tourists and drinks. I met some girls from Vancouver on the tour. It was cool that they were so close to home. Also found out a bit about our host Martin, he was from Argentina and used to work for Craft. But came over here for some reason or another. Very nice guy. Then we went to an Irish pub that was designed for tourists and drinks. Finally we went to a club that was designed for tourists, this time no drinks. Mainly because it would cost 23$ for two drinks. I wasn't about to pay that much. It was a lot of fun though. At the club I found out a bit out the girl who took us out the night before. She also had an interesting past. A business major from Paris that couldn't find work in her country. So she was just hanging out down here until the economy picked up. I asked her if it ever got boring going out clubbing 7 days a week, she said it wasn't her favourite thing to do anymore. I felt kind of bad for her. Eventually you must become numb to meeting new people, and just start putting them in categories of tourists that you have to try and take out. I figured a job like that would be fun for about 2 weeks and then suck. She had been doing it for over a year. In any event at that point she wandered off with some coworkers. I ran into the two Germans (The older cousin who was really cool, and kept yelling about Clumbos and the cute younger cousin) I met the first night in Barcelona. I hung out with them until far to late and then went back to the hostel.
3 hours of sleep later...
I should take a few seconds to mention that I really disliked Barcelona at this point. I've only seen the touristy parts and really wanted to get a feel for the real city.
I woke up, compared notes of the night with Lars and Jeff (See Lars' Entry) and met some Irish girls. We then bought tickets for the next day to France, but we were unable to reserve connecting tickets from our stop in France. I was really tired, but decided that I would take a nap after I found and swam in the Olympic pool. Time of leaving: 11:00am, estimated time of return 2:00, sounds good. I was going to meet Jeff and Lars on the Beach when I got back (Just like the second day) I found the pool, swam, chipped a toe nail, and was thrown off by the topless sun bathers. All in all it was a 2000m lesson in how out of shape I am. Really need to get back in the water.
Anyhow after that I wandered around the public park that was part of the stadium. It was prefect, a true public park, not a tourist attraction. I loved seeing how people spent their leisure time. I then decided to wander back to the hostel. (Current time unknown, possibly 1:00, estimated arrival time: 2:00). I got side tracked a number of times.
The first was before I even got out of the park. I wandered my way down to the Plaza de Espania and found the fountains that Barcelona is famous for. They were nice, then I managed to wander into a Beach Volleyball tournament, with the US vs Brazil. This really changed my opinion about the city. Any city that would host that for its citizens and make it free made me happy. It was really fun to watch, but I was tired and wanted to keep moving. Also at this point I should mention that I won the masterpiece photo competition. I continued to wander back, hoping that I was heading in the right direction.
About 5 blocks away from the volleyball game I happened upon another public park. There was a flock of parrots, a nice open area, 2 great play structures and 3 open air ping-pong tables. Far be it from me to assume that this is a standard park, but it wasn't a tourist place. There were kids playing and adults sitting and drinking some beer on a Saturday afternoon. I loved it. I think its a great use of public space.
Moving on, I wandered through the residential district a bit, and to my surprise found a street like La Rumbla except where la Rumbla is a tourist trap of epic proportion this was an unassuming walking path that looked like it fostered community in the surrounding community. Spaniards were sitting relaxing eating late lunches and having a good time.
It was here that I decided to have lunch. (Estimated time: unknown probably 3:00, estimated time of arrival: 2:00)I walked into a bar, which over here is more like a fast food / cheep eat place during lunch and had some food. The waiter was Asian, and it was very hard for me not to speak Japanese to him when I was talking. I'm fairly sure I let out a few hai, hai anyway. (Count it)
I continued wandering, taking a diagonal route through the city. I had no idea where I was and long ago decided I would not use the metro if I found a stop. (Estimated time: unknown probably 3:30, estimated time of arrival: 2:00)
To get back to the hostel I knew there was about a 90% chance that I would cross la Rambla first, if I did I knew I was going in the right direction. Hitting la Rambla was an experience, I actually hit it about 4 blocks before I got to the street proper. Restraints sprang up from nowhere, Spaniards disappeared and throngs of tourists took their place. There was even a visual change between architecture of the non-tourist and tourist areas. The tourist areas were more classical and the non-tourist areas were more modern. Once I found la Rambla I just had to ignore the fact that I wasn't seeing real Barcelona anymore and it was easy to get back to my hostel. (Time of arrival 5:00)
I proceeded to take a 5 hour nap.
Upon waking up I was told two things
1)Start drinking
2)get ready for a long night out
The details of the night aren't very interesting. I went out with Jeff, Lars and the Irish girls + an American girl, ran into the Germans again and went to sleep at 7:00
We woke up at 7:30 to check out and to get on the train at 8:30
The transit day for being a transit day had quite a few things of note happen. First it should be noted that I've been focused on reading the Brothers K while in transit and letting Lars and Jeff take care of things. This worked well in Spain when they spoke the language and understood what was going on. I assumed it would work now, that was my first mistake.
The first train ride to Montpellier was uneventful. It was long and I alternated between napping and reading. Jeff and Lars mostly napped. They did mention Boacillos a few times though. We got off and had about 2 hours of down time. I needed internet to contact Gretchen and Ray so we went to a McDonalds (free internet w00t!) and had lunch and caught up on email there. Then we wandered around the city a bit, took some nice pictures look at some artwork about climate change and I made a bet with Lars that involved slides and the payoff being one Boacillo to the winner. By this time Jeff and Lars had become obsessed with the word, that obsession has continued to this day.
Anyhow traveling onward to some assbackword train station in the middle of France I continued to read my book. We arrived at Valance (the aforementioned ass backword train station) and proceeded to wait for our train. Jeff and Lars talked more about the Boacillo more while I put my head down tried not to laugh and or kill them for talking about sandwiches for the last 2 days straight. 20 min before our train came to the station we decided we should figure out what track it was on. We looked at our tickets and then at the big board and didn't see our train. We double checked and didn't see it. Then we looked closer at our tickets. We noticed that we were in Valance TGV and the train station we needed to be at was Valance Ville. We ran out to catch a cab to where ever Valance Ville was. The cab driver took one look at the ticket and said “no you can't make it on time”.
We were fucked.
We went back to the place where you book tickets in the train station and asked how to get to Geneva. After about 7 min of bored looking on the part of the person behind the counter she wandered off for a few minutes and came back saying we were in luck. Turns out there was a TGV train heading to our next stop Lyon Part Dieu. (Which btw was where the train that we got off was heading, go figure) After getting confusing instructions from the station master which boiled down to “get on the train and get off at Lyon Part Dieu” we were on our way.
One catch though. The train was full. We spent the entire hour train ride in a baggage compartment with about 7 other people. All through this I kept on reading my book, in the hot, stuffy baggage compartment. Turns out the book at the time was talking about taking 3rd class trains through India, in hot stuffy trains. I felt like it fit perfectly.
We made it to Lyon with out incident after than and quickly and carefully bored our next train. Jeff and Lars promptly fell asleep. I couldn't and kept reading, good thing to. Keep in mind we had all been running off about 30 min of sleep that day. When we finally made it to Geneva I had to shake Lars and Jeff for 30 sec each before they woke up. Ray way waiting for us on the platform. When we got off the platform the first thing we were greeted by was some kind of activist giving away swiss chocolate. Best. City. Ever. Ray drove us back to his house showed us around and fed us a hardy Mexican dinner. At around 11:30 pm we all just passed out in the best beds ever.
At 7:30 am we were woken up by Ray (as previously discussed) and drove to Mt. Blanc near the town of Chamonix. We took a Teleferic (cable car) up to a height of 3428 m. For those of you keeping track at home thats near the hight of Mt. Rainier. Amazing views great pictures immense size. Pictures speak better than words here and I'll leave it at that.
We were up there for a few hours crossed over to Italy for a bit for more views and came back. When we finally made it down to Chamonix we Ray took us out for lunch and we went poster shopping. Got some great posters for Big Blue. I'm exited. I suppose I should write more about how amazing Charmonix was, but thats about all there is to say. It was a nice little city, touristy, but in a local kind of way. It felt a bit like Leavenworth maybe. Much better than the monstrosity Barcelona had turned half of itself into. Overall rating 10/10 would honeymoon there (Like Lars' parents)
We got back to Kates house, Gretchen had dinner in the oven and I started writing this up. Dinner turned out to be roast lamb that was soft enough to be cut with a spoon. It was amazing.
Tomorrow we will explore lake Geneva and a bit of Geneva with Ray and the day after that CERN → ? with some CSE friends of mine. It should be a blast.
Lets see, I left off after coming back from a club with the two Belgian girls. I forgot if I mentioned that I went to the Gaudi Cathedral. This is important. Anyhow the next day we didn't really have a plan. I got up early the next day and at breakfast I met a guy that lived 6 blocks away from me in the U district. He was one of the creepiest people I've ever met. Strange slur when he talked and a bright blonde mustache. Its a bit hard to describe his creepyness on words. I guess the closest thing you can do is say euro-trash. I'm a bit scared to go back to the U district :). We did meet a cool guy from LA named Kyle. He worked on an Oil Tanker 6 months out of the year and got the other 6 months off. He recommended that we go to the Picasso Museum which was half a block away from our hostel. I was unimpressed. After our second art museum we went we realized that none of us were really fans, but still had to go just because it was a once in a lifetime thing. From there we took a trip up to the Gaudi park, which was really cool. I'll append this post later with comparisons of his style in different places. In any event there we ran into the guy from LA again with a few Aussie friends that we also met at Breakfast. They invited me to go out on a Tapas tour + Flamenco thing with them that night (which I never ended up paying for, but thats another story). It was also at the park when Jeff and Lars decided to start photographing masterpieces. We also got our first Conway shot of the trip there. After that we wandered aimlessly for a few minutes looking for lunch and ended up in a Boacillo joint where we paid 2 euro for them. (Current cost of food on the trip ~50 euro). After lunch we went to the Gaudi Cathedral again and I got mad at Lars for taking to many pictures.
Then we went to the Olympic Park, which was apparently right below Barcelona's Castle (Did you know Barcelona has a Castle?!). Anyhow we wandered around the park for a bit, I looked for the pool, but couldn't find it, decided to come back the next day and find it. In any event it was very pretty and I've got pictures, just like the rest of the trip.
We were all tired at that point and went back to the hostel. I decided to go on the Tapas Tour with the Aussies and the guy from LA. It turned out to be more of a pub crawl. We had Tapas and drinks, then we went to a Flamaco performance that was designed for tourists and drinks. I met some girls from Vancouver on the tour. It was cool that they were so close to home. Also found out a bit about our host Martin, he was from Argentina and used to work for Craft. But came over here for some reason or another. Very nice guy. Then we went to an Irish pub that was designed for tourists and drinks. Finally we went to a club that was designed for tourists, this time no drinks. Mainly because it would cost 23$ for two drinks. I wasn't about to pay that much. It was a lot of fun though. At the club I found out a bit out the girl who took us out the night before. She also had an interesting past. A business major from Paris that couldn't find work in her country. So she was just hanging out down here until the economy picked up. I asked her if it ever got boring going out clubbing 7 days a week, she said it wasn't her favourite thing to do anymore. I felt kind of bad for her. Eventually you must become numb to meeting new people, and just start putting them in categories of tourists that you have to try and take out. I figured a job like that would be fun for about 2 weeks and then suck. She had been doing it for over a year. In any event at that point she wandered off with some coworkers. I ran into the two Germans (The older cousin who was really cool, and kept yelling about Clumbos and the cute younger cousin) I met the first night in Barcelona. I hung out with them until far to late and then went back to the hostel.
3 hours of sleep later...
I should take a few seconds to mention that I really disliked Barcelona at this point. I've only seen the touristy parts and really wanted to get a feel for the real city.
I woke up, compared notes of the night with Lars and Jeff (See Lars' Entry) and met some Irish girls. We then bought tickets for the next day to France, but we were unable to reserve connecting tickets from our stop in France. I was really tired, but decided that I would take a nap after I found and swam in the Olympic pool. Time of leaving: 11:00am, estimated time of return 2:00, sounds good. I was going to meet Jeff and Lars on the Beach when I got back (Just like the second day) I found the pool, swam, chipped a toe nail, and was thrown off by the topless sun bathers. All in all it was a 2000m lesson in how out of shape I am. Really need to get back in the water.
Anyhow after that I wandered around the public park that was part of the stadium. It was prefect, a true public park, not a tourist attraction. I loved seeing how people spent their leisure time. I then decided to wander back to the hostel. (Current time unknown, possibly 1:00, estimated arrival time: 2:00). I got side tracked a number of times.
The first was before I even got out of the park. I wandered my way down to the Plaza de Espania and found the fountains that Barcelona is famous for. They were nice, then I managed to wander into a Beach Volleyball tournament, with the US vs Brazil. This really changed my opinion about the city. Any city that would host that for its citizens and make it free made me happy. It was really fun to watch, but I was tired and wanted to keep moving. Also at this point I should mention that I won the masterpiece photo competition. I continued to wander back, hoping that I was heading in the right direction.
About 5 blocks away from the volleyball game I happened upon another public park. There was a flock of parrots, a nice open area, 2 great play structures and 3 open air ping-pong tables. Far be it from me to assume that this is a standard park, but it wasn't a tourist place. There were kids playing and adults sitting and drinking some beer on a Saturday afternoon. I loved it. I think its a great use of public space.
Moving on, I wandered through the residential district a bit, and to my surprise found a street like La Rumbla except where la Rumbla is a tourist trap of epic proportion this was an unassuming walking path that looked like it fostered community in the surrounding community. Spaniards were sitting relaxing eating late lunches and having a good time.
It was here that I decided to have lunch. (Estimated time: unknown probably 3:00, estimated time of arrival: 2:00)I walked into a bar, which over here is more like a fast food / cheep eat place during lunch and had some food. The waiter was Asian, and it was very hard for me not to speak Japanese to him when I was talking. I'm fairly sure I let out a few hai, hai anyway. (Count it)
I continued wandering, taking a diagonal route through the city. I had no idea where I was and long ago decided I would not use the metro if I found a stop. (Estimated time: unknown probably 3:30, estimated time of arrival: 2:00)
To get back to the hostel I knew there was about a 90% chance that I would cross la Rambla first, if I did I knew I was going in the right direction. Hitting la Rambla was an experience, I actually hit it about 4 blocks before I got to the street proper. Restraints sprang up from nowhere, Spaniards disappeared and throngs of tourists took their place. There was even a visual change between architecture of the non-tourist and tourist areas. The tourist areas were more classical and the non-tourist areas were more modern. Once I found la Rambla I just had to ignore the fact that I wasn't seeing real Barcelona anymore and it was easy to get back to my hostel. (Time of arrival 5:00)
I proceeded to take a 5 hour nap.
Upon waking up I was told two things
1)Start drinking
2)get ready for a long night out
The details of the night aren't very interesting. I went out with Jeff, Lars and the Irish girls + an American girl, ran into the Germans again and went to sleep at 7:00
We woke up at 7:30 to check out and to get on the train at 8:30
The transit day for being a transit day had quite a few things of note happen. First it should be noted that I've been focused on reading the Brothers K while in transit and letting Lars and Jeff take care of things. This worked well in Spain when they spoke the language and understood what was going on. I assumed it would work now, that was my first mistake.
The first train ride to Montpellier was uneventful. It was long and I alternated between napping and reading. Jeff and Lars mostly napped. They did mention Boacillos a few times though. We got off and had about 2 hours of down time. I needed internet to contact Gretchen and Ray so we went to a McDonalds (free internet w00t!) and had lunch and caught up on email there. Then we wandered around the city a bit, took some nice pictures look at some artwork about climate change and I made a bet with Lars that involved slides and the payoff being one Boacillo to the winner. By this time Jeff and Lars had become obsessed with the word, that obsession has continued to this day.
Anyhow traveling onward to some assbackword train station in the middle of France I continued to read my book. We arrived at Valance (the aforementioned ass backword train station) and proceeded to wait for our train. Jeff and Lars talked more about the Boacillo more while I put my head down tried not to laugh and or kill them for talking about sandwiches for the last 2 days straight. 20 min before our train came to the station we decided we should figure out what track it was on. We looked at our tickets and then at the big board and didn't see our train. We double checked and didn't see it. Then we looked closer at our tickets. We noticed that we were in Valance TGV and the train station we needed to be at was Valance Ville. We ran out to catch a cab to where ever Valance Ville was. The cab driver took one look at the ticket and said “no you can't make it on time”.
We were fucked.
We went back to the place where you book tickets in the train station and asked how to get to Geneva. After about 7 min of bored looking on the part of the person behind the counter she wandered off for a few minutes and came back saying we were in luck. Turns out there was a TGV train heading to our next stop Lyon Part Dieu. (Which btw was where the train that we got off was heading, go figure) After getting confusing instructions from the station master which boiled down to “get on the train and get off at Lyon Part Dieu” we were on our way.
One catch though. The train was full. We spent the entire hour train ride in a baggage compartment with about 7 other people. All through this I kept on reading my book, in the hot, stuffy baggage compartment. Turns out the book at the time was talking about taking 3rd class trains through India, in hot stuffy trains. I felt like it fit perfectly.
We made it to Lyon with out incident after than and quickly and carefully bored our next train. Jeff and Lars promptly fell asleep. I couldn't and kept reading, good thing to. Keep in mind we had all been running off about 30 min of sleep that day. When we finally made it to Geneva I had to shake Lars and Jeff for 30 sec each before they woke up. Ray way waiting for us on the platform. When we got off the platform the first thing we were greeted by was some kind of activist giving away swiss chocolate. Best. City. Ever. Ray drove us back to his house showed us around and fed us a hardy Mexican dinner. At around 11:30 pm we all just passed out in the best beds ever.
At 7:30 am we were woken up by Ray (as previously discussed) and drove to Mt. Blanc near the town of Chamonix. We took a Teleferic (cable car) up to a height of 3428 m. For those of you keeping track at home thats near the hight of Mt. Rainier. Amazing views great pictures immense size. Pictures speak better than words here and I'll leave it at that.
We were up there for a few hours crossed over to Italy for a bit for more views and came back. When we finally made it down to Chamonix we Ray took us out for lunch and we went poster shopping. Got some great posters for Big Blue. I'm exited. I suppose I should write more about how amazing Charmonix was, but thats about all there is to say. It was a nice little city, touristy, but in a local kind of way. It felt a bit like Leavenworth maybe. Much better than the monstrosity Barcelona had turned half of itself into. Overall rating 10/10 would honeymoon there (Like Lars' parents)
We got back to Kates house, Gretchen had dinner in the oven and I started writing this up. Dinner turned out to be roast lamb that was soft enough to be cut with a spoon. It was amazing.
Tomorrow we will explore lake Geneva and a bit of Geneva with Ray and the day after that CERN → ? with some CSE friends of mine. It should be a blast.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Thoughts on Barcelona
Well no update last night because we all went clubbing. I'll attempt to catch up. Then I want to reflect
Yesterday: Early train to Barcelona, Met some Aussie girls staying at our hostel on the train. Checked into hostel after getting lost, walked La Rumbla (miss spelled). As a side note La Rumbla is a crazy walking street. Probably the best walking street I've ever been on that still supports cars. Lots of shops, and streetperformers, very intresting. I've got pictures, I'll put them up later. Moving on we walked down to a newly redeveloped pier. I thought it was fantastic. Great artwork, and facilitated a public space where shops could flourish and people could hang out. After that we wandered towards the beach. That same Turkish guy that I thought about not helping also tipped me off to a tram/ ropeway ride (Rope way is Japanese, I thought it was called a gondola ride, but rope way makes more sense to me now.) It was a great view, and at the end of it we decided to hike up a hill and we found a castle. It was my first castle, good times.
That concluded the tourist part of the day. On the way back we found two guys from Okalohama and we showed them to our hostel. I saw them later in the night.
Then we met up with Lars' friend Matt, a different Matt than the one we already met, and went out to a Tapas dinner. Tapas was cool, lots of small snacks for only 1 euro. After that we went back to the bar in our hostel. It was a really cool place. We met three Germans and they were really chill so we went out with them to a bar called the Dow Jones. Prices of drinks fluctuated as the night went on, but everything was at least 5 euro so it was really just a rip off. Its was also very crowded, especially for a Wednesday night. After that the 3 Germans left us and it was just me, Lars, Jeff and Matt. We went took a cab to a club called Razmataz, but it was closed so we went to a beach club called Shoko (しょこ). It wasn't my scene. Lars and Jeff were determened to get the real European clubbing Experience so they stayed until the club closed at 3:30. I wasn't feeling the club, to loud, the people were all elitist and it just wasn't a fun place to hang out. I just hung out on the patio until they were ready to leave. I met some cool people, a group of guys from Israel and a group of guys from Michigan. The guys from Israel were cool to talk with for a different perspectice and the Michigan guy was really interested in tech entrepreneurship, we had a good conversation. We got back to the hostel at 4:30 and I had to get up at 8:30 for checkout. Not fun.
Today I woke up we went to our new hostel and needed to wait for checkin. To pass the time we went to the beach. I just about passed out on a nice Patio chair, but was woken up by a guy asking for 5 euro for the right to stay on the chair. Needless to say I went to the sand. There I did pass out. This was at about noon. Lars and Jeff wandered off and said they would be back in an hour. After 2 hours I got up and thought it was odd that they weren't back yet. Thats when Jeff jumped on me. It turns out that because I moved 5 feet and was sleeping with my face down in the sand Jeff and Lars had been looking for me for over an hour.
We went to the hostel after that :)
I was still grumpy and tired after we checked into the hostel so I just passed out until 7:00. I woke up and we went to our first real Gaudi building the Sagrada Familia. It was breathtaking blah blah blah. See pictures and thats the best you can do with out going yourself.
Now I'm back here and kind of tired of Barcelona. Some quick thoughts before I go on my rant.
I liked our first hostel better, more English.
-- This is where I got interrupted typing and went out clubbing again with random people (we only stayed out until 1:30 and I manly hung out with these two very nice Belgian girls)
This one is fine to though you just have to meet the right people.
Anyhow, for the nth time I've come to realize that parties aren't about location, but about who your with. I didn't like the nightlife last night be cause to be brutally honest Jeff and Lars don't have the same stance on partying that I do. I also disliked Barcelona today because all I've seen of this damn city is tourist stuff. It gets old when you realize people are just trying to take money away from you.
Tomorrow I think I'll see Gaudi and Pacaso and then go for a swim. That sounds like a much better day than today. Even though today ended well.
Yesterday: Early train to Barcelona, Met some Aussie girls staying at our hostel on the train. Checked into hostel after getting lost, walked La Rumbla (miss spelled). As a side note La Rumbla is a crazy walking street. Probably the best walking street I've ever been on that still supports cars. Lots of shops, and streetperformers, very intresting. I've got pictures, I'll put them up later. Moving on we walked down to a newly redeveloped pier. I thought it was fantastic. Great artwork, and facilitated a public space where shops could flourish and people could hang out. After that we wandered towards the beach. That same Turkish guy that I thought about not helping also tipped me off to a tram/ ropeway ride (Rope way is Japanese, I thought it was called a gondola ride, but rope way makes more sense to me now.) It was a great view, and at the end of it we decided to hike up a hill and we found a castle. It was my first castle, good times.
That concluded the tourist part of the day. On the way back we found two guys from Okalohama and we showed them to our hostel. I saw them later in the night.
Then we met up with Lars' friend Matt, a different Matt than the one we already met, and went out to a Tapas dinner. Tapas was cool, lots of small snacks for only 1 euro. After that we went back to the bar in our hostel. It was a really cool place. We met three Germans and they were really chill so we went out with them to a bar called the Dow Jones. Prices of drinks fluctuated as the night went on, but everything was at least 5 euro so it was really just a rip off. Its was also very crowded, especially for a Wednesday night. After that the 3 Germans left us and it was just me, Lars, Jeff and Matt. We went took a cab to a club called Razmataz, but it was closed so we went to a beach club called Shoko (しょこ). It wasn't my scene. Lars and Jeff were determened to get the real European clubbing Experience so they stayed until the club closed at 3:30. I wasn't feeling the club, to loud, the people were all elitist and it just wasn't a fun place to hang out. I just hung out on the patio until they were ready to leave. I met some cool people, a group of guys from Israel and a group of guys from Michigan. The guys from Israel were cool to talk with for a different perspectice and the Michigan guy was really interested in tech entrepreneurship, we had a good conversation. We got back to the hostel at 4:30 and I had to get up at 8:30 for checkout. Not fun.
Today I woke up we went to our new hostel and needed to wait for checkin. To pass the time we went to the beach. I just about passed out on a nice Patio chair, but was woken up by a guy asking for 5 euro for the right to stay on the chair. Needless to say I went to the sand. There I did pass out. This was at about noon. Lars and Jeff wandered off and said they would be back in an hour. After 2 hours I got up and thought it was odd that they weren't back yet. Thats when Jeff jumped on me. It turns out that because I moved 5 feet and was sleeping with my face down in the sand Jeff and Lars had been looking for me for over an hour.
We went to the hostel after that :)
I was still grumpy and tired after we checked into the hostel so I just passed out until 7:00. I woke up and we went to our first real Gaudi building the Sagrada Familia. It was breathtaking blah blah blah. See pictures and thats the best you can do with out going yourself.
Now I'm back here and kind of tired of Barcelona. Some quick thoughts before I go on my rant.
I liked our first hostel better, more English.
-- This is where I got interrupted typing and went out clubbing again with random people (we only stayed out until 1:30 and I manly hung out with these two very nice Belgian girls)
This one is fine to though you just have to meet the right people.
Anyhow, for the nth time I've come to realize that parties aren't about location, but about who your with. I didn't like the nightlife last night be cause to be brutally honest Jeff and Lars don't have the same stance on partying that I do. I also disliked Barcelona today because all I've seen of this damn city is tourist stuff. It gets old when you realize people are just trying to take money away from you.
Tomorrow I think I'll see Gaudi and Pacaso and then go for a swim. That sounds like a much better day than today. Even though today ended well.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Day 2, Madrid Tourist Day
Today was much better than yesterday in terms of the whole staying awake thing. Its 11:00 pm here and were all not sleeping so things are looking up. Sadly Jeff and Lars are being boring and don't feel like exploring the night life in the city, even though its the last day we get here. Eh, we have 4 days in Barcelona after this, I think everything will work out.
Today we started out of Royal Palace which was very nice. I've never been to such big, open, luxurious buildings before. Its even crazier to think that all of these places were built before America was discovered. After that we went to the Royal Armory, nothing to talk about here, lots of armour and swards. Not a lot of English, so I went through it quick. Its a bit odd, there is less English in public spaces here than there was in Tokyo in Seoul. From the palace and the Armory it was a quick hop skip and jump to Madrid's Cathedral. We walked in right during Mass. Real priests singing, probably Spanish, hymns. It was the first time I had experienced something like that, very cool.
After that there was a non-trivial amount of wandering in which we found a small Cafe specializing in Portuguese food. We had a very cheep and good lunch. I was hungry in 15 min. I think its going to be a long trip :)
We then went to the Prado Art Museum. Theres not a lot to say about this place. It was big, there was lots of art, including more than a fare share of Masterpieces. We learned a few things about ourselves in that place. The most important thing is that none of us like Art. We ended up playing Masterpiece bingo with all 50 masterpieces listed on the ticket. Probably won't be doing a lot of art for the rest of the trip :)
After that our day got much more condensed hostel -> dinner -> me wanting to go out and everyone else wanting to stay in.
Also of note today. We started the counters for the number of times one of us says a phrase that the others don't really like. The count:
Unreal, just unreal - Lars: 4
Miss-pronouncing Prado - Jeff: 5
References to Asia, or speaking in Japanese - Gabe: 21
I clearly have a lot of catching up to do.
Barcelona tomorrow! I'm stolked, still heard nothing but good things. If its a good as I hear I might just stay there.
Oh Helped a Turkish guy with his pictures tonight. Almost didn't.
Updates tomorrow night. Then no updates for the next 3 days as I'm going to force Lars and Jeff to go out with me.
Today we started out of Royal Palace which was very nice. I've never been to such big, open, luxurious buildings before. Its even crazier to think that all of these places were built before America was discovered. After that we went to the Royal Armory, nothing to talk about here, lots of armour and swards. Not a lot of English, so I went through it quick. Its a bit odd, there is less English in public spaces here than there was in Tokyo in Seoul. From the palace and the Armory it was a quick hop skip and jump to Madrid's Cathedral. We walked in right during Mass. Real priests singing, probably Spanish, hymns. It was the first time I had experienced something like that, very cool.
After that there was a non-trivial amount of wandering in which we found a small Cafe specializing in Portuguese food. We had a very cheep and good lunch. I was hungry in 15 min. I think its going to be a long trip :)
We then went to the Prado Art Museum. Theres not a lot to say about this place. It was big, there was lots of art, including more than a fare share of Masterpieces. We learned a few things about ourselves in that place. The most important thing is that none of us like Art. We ended up playing Masterpiece bingo with all 50 masterpieces listed on the ticket. Probably won't be doing a lot of art for the rest of the trip :)
After that our day got much more condensed hostel -> dinner -> me wanting to go out and everyone else wanting to stay in.
Also of note today. We started the counters for the number of times one of us says a phrase that the others don't really like. The count:
Unreal, just unreal - Lars: 4
Miss-pronouncing Prado - Jeff: 5
References to Asia, or speaking in Japanese - Gabe: 21
I clearly have a lot of catching up to do.
Barcelona tomorrow! I'm stolked, still heard nothing but good things. If its a good as I hear I might just stay there.
Oh Helped a Turkish guy with his pictures tonight. Almost didn't.
Updates tomorrow night. Then no updates for the next 3 days as I'm going to force Lars and Jeff to go out with me.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Real First Day
We made it safely into Madrid, 45 minutes early. After something like 12 hours of traveling at 9 am Monday. (We left at 9 am Sunday).
Public Transportation was easy as pie especially with Lars guiding us to our hostel. We met up with my friend Matt, we had some Piasias. After that we wandered around the city. Nothing was open because it was a Monday and we were wandering during Ceseta. Right now I'm hella jetlagged and will be going to sleep at 6pm madrid time after getting 4 hours of sleep in the last 59 hour.
More detailed updates coming.
Public Transportation was easy as pie especially with Lars guiding us to our hostel. We met up with my friend Matt, we had some Piasias. After that we wandered around the city. Nothing was open because it was a Monday and we were wandering during Ceseta. Right now I'm hella jetlagged and will be going to sleep at 6pm madrid time after getting 4 hours of sleep in the last 59 hour.
More detailed updates coming.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
First!
I've created this blog to keep intrested people in the loop as Jeff, Lars and I travel through Europe. I'm making it public incase anyone else wants to see it, but this is mostly for me so I have a memory of this later. Don't expect perfect grammar or great writing, just a raw unfiltered stream of updates and thoughts about the trip.
In order to understand what were getting ourselves into let me list what we have so far:
1. Plane Ticket to Madrid, leaving on the 6th, returning on the 28th.
2. Eurorail pass 8 days of travel time
3. Plane Ticket from Rome to Madrid on the 28th.
4. We apparently just booked a hostel for Tuesday night (not Monday) but I wasn't involved with that.
This is the extent of our planning. That and knowing the approximate route are the 4 things set in stone right now. We'll be going Madrid, Barcelona, ..., Geneva, ..., Italy, ... and possibly staying with Kate's very kind parents in Geneva.
Welcome to Europe Trips College Student Style!
In order to understand what were getting ourselves into let me list what we have so far:
1. Plane Ticket to Madrid, leaving on the 6th, returning on the 28th.
2. Eurorail pass 8 days of travel time
3. Plane Ticket from Rome to Madrid on the 28th.
4. We apparently just booked a hostel for Tuesday night (not Monday) but I wasn't involved with that.
This is the extent of our planning. That and knowing the approximate route are the 4 things set in stone right now. We'll be going Madrid, Barcelona, ..., Geneva, ..., Italy, ... and possibly staying with Kate's very kind parents in Geneva.
Welcome to Europe Trips College Student Style!
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