A merry little Christmas. . .

I did what I could for a Christmas celebration but with no tree, snow, decorations, food or any other recognizable trappings of the season it was just another day in Florence except fewer museums beckoned. The cathedral was open so I went to the early Mass. It wasn a high Mass. I counted at least 32 'altar boys. I'm serious. It was like a parade when they entered, under the watchful eye of security guards, I might add! The Mass was not entirely in Latin or maybe it was. Is Gregorian Chant Latin? I'm serious about that, too. I didn't understand anything except and occasional Cristo or Dio. The choir seemed to be the only part of the service that have moved into the new millenium. One of the hymns was in English although it wasn't one of the ones I remembered from grade school. Of course, at that time, I don't think the church had caught up to the current millenium at that time either. Oh, I guess there was one aspect of the entire thing that was current and that would be the sound system! Yes, in the 12th and 13th centuries the hall would be filled to capacity and the priest could play to the back row. These days they've removed the pews and brought in folding chairs for the handful of faithful and curious (I'm in the latter category) and need sound reinforcement just to keep the crowd awake.

Since it was a high Mass, there was a lot of incense being blessed out. Between that (makes me ill) and the cold, I thought it best to skip out early. I left as the masses were heading up for the Eucharist.

After that it was just day of wandering around the closed city. There were a few places open but nothing to write home about so I'll move on to Friday.

This was a bit busier day for me. Some things were still closed or had shortened hours but a bit of serendipity came up. I started out trying to get into the Forte di Belvedere but like opposing forces before me, I couldn't breach the walls. Or in my case, the closed ticket office. I moseied back to the town center going through the old city along the way. I wound up at the Palazzo Vecchio. I arrived just in time to take a self guided walk thru and end up back at the beginning in time for a guided tour of the secret passages. I like those parts of palaces and places. There was not great intrigue, however, connected to these particular passages. They were just hidey places for one of the Medici's personal little treasures-Paintings were on cabinet doors that held smaller items Mr. Medici valued. The passages just circled round back into the apartment that they started in. . .mostly ;-). The tour also went into the attic which the former construction worker in me liked. 25 trusses. The original 12 held both the roof and the new ceiling that had been added. The weight eventually proved to be a bit much so 13 new trusses were added in between the original ones. The ceiling is now suspended from those and the roof rests on the original ones. Interesting, huh? I knew you'd think so.

It was lunchtime after all that secreting around and I wanted to go somewhere I could just sit.. I remembered seeing a McD's from the bus on the way into two and decided to seek it out. I was needing some comfort food. One the way, I passed three museums that I figured I'd checkout after food. The first one was a Raphael exhibition in the Riccardo Medici Palace. The second one was a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit with items constructed recently from his various codexes (codices?) and the third was, uh, well, it was sort of. . .Ok, I wanted a break from all the high culture. It was the Serial Killer Museum, OK? Yes, I did two out of three and Raphael was not one of them. It wasn't horribly done (or maybe it was, if you catch my drift) and the audio guide was included in the price. Mixed in with the info on the subjects were various lessons in forensics. It was like watching CSI. Considering the name of the exhibit, was it right or wrong to include three exhibits on the ways to execute convicted murderers?

Let's move on. Today was very moderate in terms of sight seeing. I guess I'm reaching critical mass and I need to take a break to get prepped for Rome. I visited one church (St. Maria Novollo), one garden (Boboli), one palace (Palazzo Pitti). I tried to catch the sightseeing bus but it has a limited schedule during the winter and the timing didn't work out. I might catch the one route of that tomorrow. I'd like a bit more history of the city. Everything I've heard so far begins and ends with the Medici family and The Renaissance. If there was a RE-naissance, what happened during the 'naissance'?

Twas the day before Christmas. . .

. . .and you really couldn't tell. Commercialism hasn't overwhelmed the season here like in one particular country I know of. And the weather is not giving much away either. Yesterday wasn't exactly balmy but pretty darn close. Today, not so much nice as yesterday. Colder and overcast and a bit of fog in the air, too. Of course, I spent most of my time indoors looking at works of art, masterpieces and souvenir kitch so I didn't mind too much. My first stop was the dome of the Duome and yes, I climbed to the top. Well, it was early and nothing else was open yet! It was still a bit early when I came back down so I pulled out my cheapo MP3 that I had loaded with a walking tour of Florence and started the tour which started with a discussion about Renaissance Florence and the exterior of the Duomo. Talk about your timing. That discussion ended just about the time the Duomo and its associated museum opened so I paused my tour and visited indoors. The combo ticket I purchased also included the Baptistry so I toured that as well. Between the dome, the cathedral and that baptistry I spent a considerable part of my morning staring up at ceilings which were way the h... up there.

Working the crick out of my neck, I then continued my walking tour which included the pedestrian only street that sure did have an awful lot of vehicular traffic in it for something called a pedestrian only street. I visited a wee small church but one that is exactly as it was in the Early Renaissance, peered down into the Arno river and heard about its flooding issues and strolled along the the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge/shopping mall if you are into jewelery. Back in the day the shoppes all housed butchers and tanners.

As I was in the high rent district, so to speak, lunch was just a step above a street vendor (pizza) and then I doubled back on my tour and wandered through the Uffizi. I had another downloaded audio guide for my walk thru there and it was a bit more relaxed than the official one that I had used for the museum yesterday and I actually sort of paid attention to the info. I saw works by Raphael, Donatello, Michaelangelo and Leonardo-all of the Ninja Turtles! I saw lots of versions of Madonna and Bambino beginning with Early Medieval, the Late Medieval and ending with Early Renaissance and noted the different styles of the paintings. I saw some early and unfinished Da Vinci's and Michaelanglo's Piata and Botticelli's Birth of Venus. I mention that one because it is one of those images that gets a lot of popular play like Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man.

The Uffizi is another one of those museums that the building itself is worth the visit. The guide books and audio guides (at least the ones I've used) discuss the pieces standing on plinthes and hanging on the walls. I'd like to see the one that tells some info on the ceilings of the main halls which were covered with hundreds of small works (frescoes, maybe) based on painting found on one of the previous buildings that occupied the site where the Uffizi now stands. The ceilings were all vaulted, too and the ribs were even decorated with either carvings or inlaid enameled tile.

Not too sure what tomorrow will bring. The weather is supposed to get wetter but I can't complain considering the good turns I have been having in that regard. It's time to seek out food groups. Maybe it'll be rigatoni or canneloni or tortellini, fettucini, lunguini, lamborghini. Heck any 'ini' will do!

Home for the Holidays

Florence is where I'm planting my self for at least the Christmas part of the Christmas holidays and that's where I am now. I left Padova (Padua) almost without incident. I don't want to mention that I finally got on the wrong train and found myself sitting at a railroad siding and was escorted back to the station by a kindly conductor without the use of handcuffs or anything. I arrived here and aided by by hostel guidebook determined the bus I needed to take and asked the driver to let me know when we get to the stop for the 'ostello'. . .just like when I arrived in Padua (Padova) and we all know how that turned out. This driver was far more attentive to all his passengers and indeed, gave out a big holler of 'OSTELLO' for me. I stepped off and started looking around for the familiar little (and they usually are small signs) international symbol of the hostel, the house and tree in a triangle. I was peering around and heard a small voice behind me ask 'Ostello?' I turned to an little senior citizen lady and said 'Si, si'. She pointed across the street. I looked and didn't see the sign at first and then I finally caught sight of it. It was a huge red on white sign, OSTELLO, mounted on a wrought iron arch that spanned the entrance to what looked like a park or nature preserve. The entrance was flanked by four marble pillars that support the arch. 'Gratzie and Buon Natale!' I said to my elderly guide and headed into the wilds. Four hundred meters later, so sayeth the guidebook, I arrived at the hostel which is or maybe was a Florentine Villa. I intend to find out a bit more of the history of this place (as if there isn't enough history to be found out about in Florence).

Well, in spite of my mishap at my departure, I still arrived here with enough left of the day to do something. I didn't know where to begin so I thought I'd try to take care of some business. With India coming up, I've been squirreling away a few euros to exchange for rupees before I go so that I have some starting out cash when I get there. It took a couple of days for me to get some euros when I was at home and since I'm here for at least 6 days, I figured this would be a good time to take care of that. I found a bank and it turns out you cannot get rupees in Italy. I didn't bother to ask why not. Yet another presumption on my part gone awry. I'll figure it out when I get to India. . .I hope.

That nonaction transaction took no time so I still have lots of day left. That's when I remembered I had the clues to a Florentine letterbox with me. The search took me to one of the greatest treasures Florence has, the Galleria del Accademia, home of Michaelangelo's David. It was quite the walk (I don't have a bus map yet) but worth it. Outside the gallery, I pulled out the clue and the search took almost no time. I located the letterbox but it's right on the street so it took a bit of finagaling to be able to retrieve it without attraction attention. I tied my shoe about 6 times! I finally got the box out and performed the necessary stamping and went through the shoe tieing procedure several more times to get the box back. Then I went to see the greatest masterpiece of Michaelangelo. (I really should sort out my priorities!) After wrapping up this update, the rest of the evening will be plotting out the remainder of my stay here. Right now, it's chow time.
c'ya

A Tale of Two Cities

I left Bergamo yesterday and wound up in Padua. I arrive late in the afternoon with the intention of locating the hostel (hoping I'd be able to get a room as I had not booked in advance) and maybe taking in at least one site knowing the museums would be closed on Monday. The TI at the train station was closed and the ubiquitous newstands didn't have the cheapo maps so I showed the bus ticket seller the hostel guide open to the Padua hostel. He said "Si, Si" and sold me a ticket and told me a bus number. Right bus, wrong driver. I showed the drive the same thing with the hostel book and he said gave me the same "Si, Si". Along about the third stop along the way, his girlfriend, or possible one of may female admirers, stepped onto the bus and darn near sat on his lap. They had quite the conversation going. Eventually after having pulled away from a stop and gone quite a few twisting blocks, he gave kind of a start and looked up at me in his rear view mirror. He stopped at the next stop (no one had signaled) and indicated I should get out at this stop. We both knew he had screwed up and we both knew that we knew. I stepped off without uttering any of the epithets I was thinking. He starred ahead. I wandered around with the map from the hostel book but couldn't find any of the street names or landmarks. Eventually, I found a dog walker in a fur coat (go figure) who helped me out a bit. It became a kind of relay team of friendly Italians. I'd get so far on one person's directions and then find someone else who'd get me going the right way again until I was confused and would ask again. I'm glad the parking is so bad here because the final leg of my journey was directed by the municipal police giving out parking tickets at a church parking lot.

So that was my arrival here. My visit has been far more pleasant. I started with a tour of St. Anthony's Basillica. I had a private showing of the multimedia presentation of his life. It includes timed lights on still photos, paintings and backlit transparencies, slide presentations and even walls that fly in and out. I learned a bit, too.

Since most of the museums are closed on Mondays, that limited my options of touristy things to do so I went to lunch early. . .in Venice. I'm getting as much out of my rail pass as I can and it's only 45 minutes away. In Venice, I didn't even bother with the TI because I knew everything would be closed so I just picked up on the of the cheap maps and walked. The Grand Canal is right at the steps of the train station so I just walked along it for a while, then crossed over one of the smaller bridges and traipsed through the narrow streets, crossing lesser canals here and there all the while looking for a likely place to have lunch. Eventually, I wound back at the Grand Canal and found a kind of pricey place but what are you gonna do. It's The Grand Canal fer cryin' out loud. So I had my pricey lunch and then headed back to the train station. I thought about doing a Gondola ride but I admit that would really be kind of sad to do that alone, don't ya think. Besides, busted my budget on the lunch.

Back to Padua and just in time to catch on of the few things available on a Monday-a tour of the old Padua University. The building know as the BO because that's Italian for ox and the building used to have and ox on it when it was a 4 star hotel back in the 1200s. I sat in the exact lecture hall that Galileo lectured in and looked up through the very first anatomy lecture hall every built. Well, I thought it was cool.

I'm not sure what the rest of the day will hold but I was passing the internet cafe and here I am, updating. . . so considered yourselves updated. :-)

Milano in one day

You can't do Milan in one day but I only had one day so I tried to fill it. I had the guide books and the TI info and the maps. They all said the same thing-If you want to see Da Vincìs The Last Supper you gotta book a viewing time 4-6 weeks in advance. Not if you travel way off season you don't! I got out of the hostel too early for most of the museums and such that I wanted to visit. TLS opens earlier than the others and I decided to just stop by to see if there were any cancellations. I had to wait all of two minutes and then I walked right in. Like my visit with the Mona Lisa, there were only dozen or so of us joining the others for dinner. I had the 20 minute audio guide. It's like The Last Supper for Dummies kind of thing. Still, after having read the Da Vinci Code (I have an illustrated version) I cannot look at that famous fresco and NOT see a female sitting to Christ's right.

From there it was onto the castle which is home to at least five museum/exhibits. I didn't get to the castle history, or maybe I did but it was buried in all the other culture and info I pummelled myself with that day. I do remember that one of the featured works in there is an unfinished Pieta by Michaelangelo.

After the castle/museum, I had planned to visit the Pinoteca, another large art collection but I was approaching burnout on the cultural aspect of Milan so I headed to the aquarium. I said I didn't want t do them but this one was free and was more a bunch of a really big home aquariums rather than the sea world types with mammals and such. Then I et.

I think I did make a visit the Pinoteca and maybe that's where I saw the Michaelangelo. The day is kind of a blur. I did make it to the catherdral, The Duomo. It's massive! As I arrived late in the day, the climb to the top was closed so I didn't get to do that. And as I exited the catherdral, there was some loud chanting emanating from . . .well, I'm not quite sure where it was coming from but the riot police seemed to know so I decided to stroll down Dante Street, through all of the Christmas booths set up and then made my way back to the hostel.

From Milan it was a short trip to Bergamo. I had time after I arrived to settle in at the hostel and then a short bus ride to the Citta Alto which is the old part of town as well as the high part of the town. It has the cobblestones, narrow streets and the castle. To get to the castle is a ride up the funicular. I'm glad I took the ride up when I did because when it was time to go back down, it broke down so I followed my fellow stuck passengers for the walk back down.

Day two in Bergamo I completed my exploration of the old town including an historical photoexhibit of the city that would have been really great if it had been available in English, too. The historic park with the city history was a good effort but also only in Italian and the civic tower was closed. I still had a good part of the day left to accomplish a mission I had assigned myself and the reason I chose to visit Bergamo in the first place. I wanted to find the statue of Enrico Rastelli, one of the greatest jugglers of all time. Because I was looking for a statue, I didn't find it until the next day after a bit of internet research. Turns out it's not just a statue but part of a memorial monument at the family tomb.

For the rest of the day, I just cruised around the city, did some grocery shopping and tried to get squared away for the next couple of days which I had not booked. And that's kind of where I am now. The great thing about traveling alone is that I can make all the decisions about where to go and what to do. The bad thing about traveling alone is that I have to make all the decisions about where to go and what to do. I never did get anything booked. So I got on the train to Venice this morning, not really knowing where I was going. I didn't even know which towns we were going to go thru. I had sort of made up my mind just to ride the train to Venice and stay in whatever hostel I could find (they have a few of the mixed dorm style hostels there). Then I heard the train announce Padova. What the heck, I thought, I'll do Padova tonight and early tomorrow and make a quick visit to Venice tomorrow afternoon. I think I would have had to come back through Padova on my way to Florence anyway so I'm ahead of the train a bit this time.

Well, that's the reader's digest version on the last few days. I hope one an all of my regular readers are having a nice holiday time. I don't know what the weather is usually like in these parts but other than that rainy day of travel to Milan, it has been cold (but not bitterly so) and sunny! My weather luck has been bordering on phenomenal for this trip!

Italian Riviera

Day two in Cingue Terra did not go as planned. The plan was to take the train to the northern most town and hike back along the trail that hugs the cliffside. Turns out, that because of the rain they've been having, the trail isn't hugging tight enough and part of the trail was closed because of a slide and the rest was closed because it was just too darn slippery &/or dangerous. I still made a visit to each town, I just took the train instead of hiking. Monterossa has a virtual aquarium (closed) and the anchovy salting exhibit which is a 10 minute video (in Italian) showing the salting process of anchovies. It's probably a bit more exciting during the season when they actually have anchovies to be salted. I still managed to fill 90 minutes wandering around the town. The next stop was Vernazzo. They have a castle or rather castle ruins. I made the climb to the top for the misty view and then had a nice chat with the ticket taker lady on the way back down. She must get kinda of lonely in the ticket booth this time of year. When I asked her to suggest a place in town for lunch she said "You only have two choices. The pizzaria on the left or the pizzaria on the left." I chose left. Corniglia was the last of the five I had to visit. Near the train station is a sign proclaiming "[Climb the steps to the heart of Corniglia. Amazing things await]!" Aren't the square brackets the ones you use to signify that you are paraphrasing? Well, if they aren't then you should know that I'm paraphrasing. I climbed the 382 steps to the heart of Corniglia and awaiting at the top was pretty much the same sign but written in the past tense.
So I had done all five towns and still had a full day. Turns out that Pisa was less than two hours away AND there's a letterbox there. So my last day on the Riviera, Italian style was spent in Pisa. I didn't see a real obvious TI at the train station but I knew where I wanted to go so I purchased a little map and made a beeline for my destination. It was almost a direct shot from the train up through the middle of town. Turns out that pretty much anything you'd want to see as a tourist in Pisa besides the tower is right there in the same Piazza which is the heart of the old town site. The Cathedral, the Bapistry, the Compostela and two museums are all a stones throw from one another. Everything was there except the letterbox.
I'm surprised that the tower is still leaning. Based on the amount of photographic evidence that must be available worldwide, everybody has had a hand in pushing that tower back up! I witnessed dozens of people holding it up, at least long enough for a snapshot. Me. . .I climbed up to the top and jumped up and down on the downhill side to see if I could ge an E-ticket ride back down.
So that was almost the end of my time in 5 Terra. I had an afternoon train to Milan so before I left I stopped at the post office to send a package stateside. (No, it wasn't Christmas stuff. Sorry, it was just a collection of things I've been saving for building a scrapbook.) Anyway, I was standing in line with my phrase book at the ready and a local asked me where I was from and said he'd help me with my transaction. I don't think it would have been that difficult but he seemed to have his heart set on helping. Afterwards he gave me a tour of the church which had been closed when I tried to visit previously. The most notable thing about the church is that the figure of Christ on the crucifix above the alter has his head turned to his left. Nobody knows why? I declined the offer to see his wine cellar and headed to the trainstation. It was a wet rainy day. Good for train travel. I arrived in Milan found the hostel and crashed because I was soaked thru by the time I got in. Out of time

5 terra

My only full day in Genoa was wet and cold and I tried to spend most of it indoors-three museums, the Aquarium and an Italian cinema. The museums were a 3 for 1 deal and mostly paintings (including a few Primitives) housed in three different palazzos-Rosso, Bianca and Tursi. I like acquariums but didn't really want to include many of them on this trip because I want to see what is unique to a particular city but I let the weather dictate the day and I kept things close together. They have seals at the Genoa and one little guy in particulart was a hoot. The acquarium wasn't very crowded when I was there and when I was at the underwater viewing window of the seal exhibit, I was the only person there. The small seal was gliding by the window at the same speed I was walking. I thought it was a coincidence until I stopped. He stopped. I walked the other way. He followed. I knelt down. He sank. I walked along and then stopped behind a pillar and peeked around it. He kept going past the pillar but stopped and waited. We kept this up for quite a while. I don't know who was having more fun.

After playtime with the seal, I took in an American film dubbed in Italian just for fun. I knew the story as I had read the book the film was based on (Twilight) so I wasn't completely lost but I probably would have been had I not known the story. It was an experiment, OK?

So that ended my dreary weather days in Genoa. My train ride the next day (Friday) was a short on to Riomaggiore, one of the five villages that make up the Cinque Terra region of Italy. I was in town, checked into my hostel and back out touring before noon. I had info on a Letterbox in the next city down the line so decided to do that for the remainder of the day. The box is listed at being in La Spezia but having attemped the find there, I'm thinkin' the clue is a bit off and that the box is actually in Pisa where I'm going on Monday. Nothing on the ground in La Spezia matches the clue but during my search I found two museums and explored them instead. The first one was a combination of archeological, religious, historical and fine art. I think I was the only visitor in the museum. A map was provided and each room was numbered and it was important to follow the numbers. Docents/guards were there to direct me at each entrance/exit and turn the lights on and off as I moved through each room. There were a few rooms in the center where I guess it was OK for someone to be left alone because there would be no one at the door and I'd enter the room and just sort of stand there in the dark until the lights came on. In the sculptures room, I waited for what seemed like a long time (it was probably less than a minute) then went and stood in front of the security camera and waved. The lights came on after a few seconds and I saluted a thank you. The lights blinked. Coincidence? You tell me.

So what did I see in this museum. I don't remember. The first bit was all religious bits-Crucifixes, headpieces to staffs, chalices, all kinds of painted enamelled artifacts, reliquaries, carved bits of ivory, wee statutes in silver, gold, bronze and wood. That was just the first room. The second room were the miniatures which I thought were going to be small models of things but 'miniatures' here refer to the miniature paintings that make up the illuminations in illuminated manuscripts for the age of that sort of thing (12th century-ish?). In some of the cases the entire pages were displayed. Some were texts and some were music scores. About a the last third of the room showed only the miniatures so it you couldn't tell what they were illuminating.

After the religious artifacts were religious paintings on wood. Madonna & Bambino being the most often depicted subjects with dyptychs of The Nativity &/or The Gift of the Magi and The Crucifixtion being the second favorite topic.

Periodically, in each section, one part of a room would have some archeological bits discovered when the building housing the museum was being renovated.

The fine art paintings finished out the tour. I haven't gone into details of much of this because I figured you might be kind of tired of reading my non-descriptive descriptions and all of the informative pamphlets and plaques were in Italian so I can't say much about what I was looking at.

The Sigilli museum is unique and kinda cool. It was something to warms the hearts of sphragilists world wide. No, I'd never seen the word before either. You know those wax seals kings and such used to use-that's what it's all about. There are hundreds of seals here and they all used to be a private collection until the collectors donated the whole lot to the city of La Spezia. Seals are still used today though not exactly in the melted wax way most of the time. However, apparently, the Pope still does seal certain documents in this manner. My interest in this museum comes from my having recently added a few wax seals to my hobby room. Now that I have a bit more information (I bought the book at the museum that was written by the former owners of the collection) I'm gonna try to find some older style ones rather than the story bought ones I have or maybe make a few of my own!

So La Spezia was a bust as far as letterboxing goes but surprise winner in other areas.

Saturday, I started my tour of Cinque Terra. I meandered through my base village of Riomaggiore including the museum. (A wee little one room exhibit.) I then walked the path overlooking the sea to the next town Manarola and visited both of its museums (Wee little one room exhibits, also). Then back to Riomaggiore, grocery shopping, dinner and the day is done.

I was concerned about my stay here because when I booked my hostel online, I could only find a mixed dorm hostel and we know from one previous experience with that situation that I was not looking forward to my accomodations. My concerns were for naught. My hostel is 10 bed, four room apartment, with two almost full baths (shower, no tub), common area and kitchen. There is a doorway at each corner of the kitchen. You enter through one door, going counterclockwise around the kitchen, you walked past the stove and sink with cabinets above and below. The first door is to my bathroom. Go to the next door you pass a counter top with cabinets above and below and the fridge. This second door is my room with two beds and a wardrobe, amoire or chiffarobe thingy that you can't open full because the bed is too close. The room is smaller than any college dorm room I've ever seen Go to the next door and you pass the windows overlooking the street. You enter the common area. There's a 9" TV that may or may not be a color TV. There's no picture. Keep going straight and you enter the other bedroom which is bigger than the one I'm in and has two beds. The second bathroom is off the common room. Remember I said there are10 beds. So far, I've accounted for 4 of them. The other 6. . .they are lined up around the perimeter of the common room! Centered in the common room, by the way, is the dining room table! And yet, I'm still not concerned. Had I been here at the height of the summer season, I'd've stayed elsewhere but my first night, I had the place to myself and there were two roommates who took the other bedroom last night. (Guess what, they're Aussies!) Unless a soccer or rubgy team stops by for the remainder of the weekend, I don't foresee and problems.

Genoa/Genova

I'm trying to make a habit of booking my train tickets now rather than just showing up at the station with my Eurailpass in hand. More and more of my trips are requiring reservations and I don't want to get stuck in the station too long. I went to the station in Nice yesterday to see about getting a mid morning train to Monaco and then a mid afternoon ride to Genoa from there. Turns out there was going to be some kind of railroad strike but not a complete standstill. I could either go to and return from Monaco or I could go to Genoa but not both. I skipped Monaco mostly because the only thing I planned to do there was leave a few Euros at the casino and I don't really need to do that.

It was certainly a good day for train travel, too. The day I arrived in Nice, it was a totally blue sky and while a wee bit cold, still good for walking and exploring. The second day, it was cold and totally cloudy but tolerable as long as you were walking and exploring. Today, it was raining. I good time to be watching the Med go by out the window. And there's a touch of snow here and there. As it was only about 2:30 by the time I got to the hostel, I would normally have sought out the TI and at least walked around the 'old city' if not the neighborhood of the hostel. Today, I'm gonna be a slug. I did get some info for tomorrows walkabout and now here I am updating but that's gonna be the day. This is a hostel that has dinner so I'll be doing that a bit later, too.

Two quick notes-1)A young fellow checking in not long after me is from Portland, OR and even though he was wearing a 'Ducks' t-shirt we still had a friendly chat. 2) The gal who checked in is named. . .you thought I was gonna say Raphaella, huh? No, her name is Ornella which is unique but the real kicker here is that her mother's maiden name is Podesta!

Dog tired and pigeon poop

That's what I am today-dog tired! With just one day to do Nice, I started out early. Throughout most of Europe, most museums are closed on Monday. Here in Nice, some of them close on Tuesday. Such was the case of two of the ones I wanted to visit but that was good in the long run because it allowed time for two other galleries that turned out to be free today so it was a double good thing. I skipped the paid tours so I didn't get a thorough history of the city but if you've been with me for other parts of this trip you know that I don't remember the history all that well anyway. I do know that the castle that was on Castle Hill was destroyed in 1706. What's up there now is all late 18th and 19th century bits and pieces put in place to be tourist attraction really and I didn't count the steps all the way to the top but the path is built with a gently slope lots of switch backs and short risers so the hike up is actually quite pleasant and there are lots of stops for panoramic views along the way. All that makes up for the fact that the museum isn't open anymore.

OK, so Nice wasn't quite as nice as I thought it was on mt first impression but I still like it better than I like Marseille and the info from the TI is way better. An excellent reason to return to this area is that Nice offers a great starting point for other adventures like hiking or Mt. biking in the Alps.

Oh, the pigeon poop part-I stood too long in one spot as I was perusing my city map and a pigeon zeroed in and scored a direct hit on me! Thats the second time in my travels something like this has happened. The last time it was a blue footed booby and that was 28 years ago in the Galapagos Islands but that's a whole 'nother deal.

Nice is nice

Especially after having just come from Marseille. I arrive here at around 14:00 (that's how they tell time here). The TI was to be found right outside the trainstation. The internet cafe I needed because I forgot which hostel I'd booked was one block awy and the hostel I'd booked was another 5 blocks or so away. I was checked in and ready to sight see by 16:00. The area of the hostel has that nice 'neighbor' kind of feel to it and is close to stuff. The town is clean. The beach is less than a 1/4 mile walk along wide boulevards. I had to cross through a major town square on my way to the beach. The square is filled with all holiday trappings ('trappings' in a good way). There's also a mega Ferris Wheel that looks to be a permanent attraction. I took a whirl on it to get a birds eye view of the area. And I had a dinner that required a knife and fork! Okay, it was American food but I wanted to see how the French do American. They did good but you really can't mess up a ham steak, can you? Tomorrow I'm gonna save my lunch money and do a French dinner.

Boy, I really messed up this part of the trip. Marseille should have been a one nighter and the other days should have been added here. I'm only here for two nights which really means only one full day so I've really gotta make tomorrow count.

Note to self: next visit to France should be all about Nice!!!!

Marseille, part dieux

Well, I'm not overly impressed with Marseille. Maybe you gotta be into yachting to appreciate this place because as just a regular tourist, I did find much to do. The fort was closed. The other big church was OK to look at but, uh, seeing as it is Sunday, I didn't wanna do the tourist thing. This City History museum was A) NOT where the TI lady said it was and B) NOT open. The Roman Docks museum was free and almost worth it but since all the info was only available in French I can only guess what I was looking at. The Longchamps Palace is very nice architecture to look at but the Natural History museum housed inside is a waste of 4€. It's just a collection of stuffed animals (including tigers cubs!!! Where's PETA and the SPCA?) The Veille Charite had free part but most of the collections in that part were closed and a paid part that was for a temporary exhibit of paintings by Van Gogh and Monticelli. I paid extra to get the audio guide that explained for the undereducated such as myself what these two guys were doing together in Marseille (Van Gogh was influenced by Monticelli and Monticellie was a native son) and about the some of the paintings. It wasn't a hugh exhibit but it was nicely done. The rest of Marseille should take a page or two out of their playbook.

My next to last task of the day was to secure a seat on a train to Nice for tomorrow. That deed done I'm back at the hostel and thinking about seeing if anyone wants to learn how to juggle.

What to say about Marseille

I arrived here not too on Friday but then connecting to the right connections once I arrived got me walking after dark in a strange city. From the train station, the directions said take the bus. Nobody knew where that bus stop was. The friendly policeman I finally asked knew the right person to ask. It was a guy from the transit office. I had to take the subway to get to the bus stop and then walk through the strange city. In every city in Europe I've had the pleasure of using above ground public transit in, there is either a visual or audio display announcing the stops, even the ones that the drivers don't stop at because no one on the bus has signalled to stop and no one is waiting at the stop. As long as the bus in on schedule, they won't stop unless one of those conditions has been met. Well, my bus stop was about ten or so stops down the line so I didn't pay too much attention until I realized that the visual indicator wasn't working so I had no idea where we were or when my stop was coming up so I asked the pleasant lady next to me A)did she speak English and B) "prochein arret? {next stop?}. She did not and she wasn't sure. I indicated on the display where I wanted to get out and she pointed to herself and nodded. That was her stop as well. When we got off the bus she asked me if I was going to the youth hostel (my bad french and the backpack are dead giveaways) and then she gave me directions for my walk to the hostel! So it appears the South of France is going for that warm and friendly vibe that I have so far mostly associated with Iberia. Gotta love that!

During the walk to the hostel (and it was only a matter of 2 or 3 blocks), I stopped at a little grocery store to get some dinner stuff. I had picked up a little bit of stuff at the street market in Sete as I passed thru it on the way to the train station that morning that I was gonna have for lunch on the train but never was hungry enough. Wouldn't you know it, this is one of the few hostels that has a kitchen WITH a kitchen staff that is still serving evening meals this time of year. They refer to them as snacks but its a full meal with veggies, dessert and everything. At check in the girl pointed to the menu. I looked at and asked her if it was real food. She said it was so I'm gonna dine in tonight. I gotta wait awhile, tho, cuz they eat late over here.

So while I wait let me share this observation with you? What is the world population these days? 6 or 7 billion or something right? So with all of those billions and billions of people, how come of the handful that I have met during my trek four of them have the same name (sort of). In Edinburgh, one of my hostel roomies was a 78 year old Mexican lady named Rafaela. In Barrtitz, I chatted with a youngster at a bus stop named Rafael. In Barcelona the desk clerk was named Rafael and in Sete, the desk clerk was Rafaela. The spellings are mine but no names have been changed. And I seem to recall that a lot of the desk clerks at the hostels have been named a variation of Ann(a).

Dinner is still not yet serving so I'll catch up on today's activities. I slept in and almost missed breakfast but I got in just under the wire. I hadn't yet visited the TI, so I checked with the desk and got a free city map and a good day's route to begin exploring Marseille. I headed to the street market first because it only runs for a half day. I scored a few shirts to replace a few bits of my current wardrobe. Then lunched at a Marseille KFC like place and then down to the waterfront. Found the TI there and picked up another map and suggested walking tour of the old city to add to my itinerary. I started that walk but came across the city chu chu tour bus and hopped on that instead. The tour wasn't as informative (or maybe I just didn't pay attention) as other trips like that have been but it did get me to the top of the hill where the Notre Dame de la Garde is and that was one of the day's objectives and unlike most of the driving tours, this one stopped long enough at this basilica to allow for a bit of exploring and photo ops. I'm still amazed by all the churches, cathedrals, basilicas and chapels that are found over here. The artistry and crafsmanship, time, effort and energy that went into the design, construction and decor is incredible. Buildings can be put together so much faster these days but look at what's lost. *sigh*

At the end of the tour, I decided to save the old city visit for the next day and started the walk back to the hostel. I had been given a suggested walk/bus/walk route as a return trip and followed that. I walked along the docks, past the two forts that guarded the harbor entrance since way back and then along the sea wall. Marseille kind of has beaches but they are like the beaches of Barcelona. That is to say, they are fake, manmade, artificial, not naturally occurring. And sadly, not very pretty. Maybe they only do some kind of beach cleanup when folks are out there using the beaches cuz they were pretty scuzzy lookin'.
And that was the day.

Sete, still south, still France

I arrived here under the cover of dark. Not intentionally, just bad planning. This, sadly, is just a one night stand, which upon arrival was OK because I couldn't see what I was missing. A lot, it turns out. I'm still at the hostel which is sitting on a goodly sized hill and the city, canals, docks filled with sailboats and the Mediterranean Sea are stretched out before me. I'm only going to get to take in as much as I can during the 1K walk from here to the train station (its all down hill) but this is one for the 'must come back' list!

The South of France

That's where I be now-back to the weird keyboard layouts and expensive internet access. I was gonna try to upload some pics but the scandisk drive seems iffy so I don't wanna risk it.

Anyway, I had to leave Barcelona with sooo much left unseen. Today was just train ride so let me present a few things I picked up in Barcelona. Mostly, the folks in that region would really like for you to call them Catalans. Public nudity and prostitution are legal in Barcelona. I did not have any encounters with either, however. "The Elephant Man" can be viewed on You Tube apparently, and the street where the hostel I stayed at is part of the red light district. The beaches in Barcelona are not naturally occurring. They were created as part of the city improvements made for the 1992 Olympics. Other improvements made at that time including installing indoor plumbing to one of the oldest sections of the city which is right in the very center of the city. Prior to 1992, if you lived in that quarter, you had to go to a city square to bath. The national sport is Bullfighting and there is a lot of opposition to this especially in Catalunya where their 'national' pasttime is building human castles/pyramids! Catalunya nativity scenes feature all the usual suspects at the manger plus a little guy named 'caganer' who has dropped trou and is taking a poo. Another Christmas tradition is Tio de Nadal which is a log with a face painted on one end and has four sticks as legs. Tio sometimes has a little hat. At some point Tio gets covered with a blanket and then the kids beat him with a stick and gifts drop out from the blanket. (Insert Dave Barry quote here)!

All alone in Barcelon-a

Yes, I'm all alone. . .that means since Monday the 8 bed mixed dorm has just been lil' ol' me! Woo hoo. I like it cuz it means I'm not crampin' the style of any of the young studly travelers (not that my presence really seemed to matter anyway)

Alone but not lonely. It's quite a big and busy place and friendly. I've said it before and it deserves mentioning again, the people of Spain are a warm and friendly group.

Yesterday I learned about Gaudi, yet another world reknowned person about whom I was clueless. I visited Casa Mila aka La Pedrera, inside and out. It was an apartment building he designed mostly based on forms found in nature. Not a right angle to be fount. From there I headed out to a high end housing development he designed but it sort of flopped and is now a city park. Only a few of the lots were ever purchased-one by Gaudi and the other by guy named Guell, who was in league with Gaudi and for whom the park is now named. The final spot I visited was the Sagrada Familia. To call it a cathdral is not grand enough. Gaudi spent the last years of his life working on it. He died in 1926 and work is still continuing on the project! The place is massive and the outside facades are almost completely covered in sculpture and ornamentation.

After a full day of Gaudi, I went back to the hostel for just a short recharge and then attended. . .wait for it. . . ready. . .a Spanish cooking class! Yep, me cooking. Who'd a thunk it? To be fair, it's not like I was really in the kitchen doing anything. What this 'cooking' class is is kind of gimmicky way to give folks an excuse to drink excessive amounts with a bunch of complete strangers all in the name of cultural exchange. There were about 15 of us, (mostly Aussies). We met at a bar and took over the back half next to the kitchen. First, the way to make real Sangria was demonstrated and then we were invited to step up and give it a try. En mass 14 people arose and made for the bar where all the fixin's awaited. Being a tea totaller, I hung back a bit but I didn't want to be a complete party pooper so I inched my way to behind the bar and filled my glass with all but the alcohol parts. While the Sangria was being mixed, our Chef Carla was doing all the prep work for the main course, that being what else but Paella. About a pitcher per person later, the cooking began and it really wasn't a class so much as a demonstration with a history of the dish. At the end of the demonstration the paella was left to simmer and then soak and more Sangria was mixed. At just the right moment, Carla served up our seafood Paella and all was right with the world . . .except the shrimps still had their faces on and I don't know when the calamari was added unless it was hidden in with generically named white fish that was one of the last things added but I did manage to get a few pieces of that down at the beginning but then after a bit I wasn't hungry enough to pretend to enjoy it anymore. But anyway, I now know more or less how to make paella and since it is a very customizable dish, I can do it with faceless shrimp and no squid if/when I ever get a kitchen again!

That was Tuesday. Today was very mild especially compared with yesterday which shot my budget all to heck. I did the walking tour of the Gothic part of the city. The free tour, you see. Then I meandered back through the tour and visited a couple of the places-the Barcelona Catherdral and the Museum of the City History. Guess what? There's an old Roman city underneath the current one. Big Surprise, eh?

So that has been my time on the Iberian Peninsula. I should like to come back to here to spend more time and eat more and better places than I allowed for this time. I'd also like to spend more time outside of the big places but that's another trip. Tomorrow, I'm headed back to France for a bit as I make my way to Italy. At least I hope I am. I forgot to check with the train folks and it looks like I need a reservation to get from here to there. Ooops!

They don't speak Spanish in Barcelona

OK, yes they do speak Spanish but that is only one of their official languages. The other one it Catalonian. That's the region the Barcelona is in and they are quite proud of it. I don´t know what the difference is but my limited Spanish doesn't work as well here as elsewhere in Spain but the people are just as friendly and helpful and they don´t seem to hold it against me that I'm speaking the wrong language badly.

I arrived early Sunday morning on the night train from Madrid. None of my normal 'first things first' places were open (tourist info, b'fast places') at that time of day, at least on a Sunday so I made my way to the metro and found my stop but had no idea which way to go when I emerged from underground. I came onto a really wide pedestrian way between two streets and just picked a direction and started walking. When I got to one of the metro stops I'd passed, I figured I was going the wrong way so I backtracked (it was only a couple of blocks) and found the street the hostel was on and headed down it. It looked like an alley but I'm used to European streets and knew better. Eventually, I saw the familiar little house with the pine tree. Recently in my travels, I have been getting dorm rooms to myself . I was hoping that such would be the case this time but no such luck this time. The big city hostels are kept busy year round, I guess. I was able to check in though even though check in is usually not available until much later. I was glad of that because I need to a shower after two successive nights of night trains, I was feeling pretty ripe. When I got to my room, it was full of slumbering roommates AND I had forgotten that this particular hostel was again a mixed dorm arrangement (it's all that was available) so all of the roommates were male. Well, being that they were all young males and it was a Sunday morning they weren't so much slumbering as passed out. I grabbed what I needed for the day out of my pack plus my shower kit, freshened up, stowed the rest of my stuff and headed out and figured I'd worry about the lads later. I strolled back out to that same big pedestrian walkway I had first come on to. It's called La Rambla and by now it was no longer empty. It was a full on market place now. Mostly tourist stuff but other things were tucked in between the kitsch. Some of it was kind of weird/fun. There were a bunch of human statues. One was a guy sitting on a toilet, pants down around his ankles and everything. Another had a headless mannequin in a suit and tie painted silver from, uh, neck to toe and beside it was a table with just the head, also silver. That's where the human part of the human statue came in. I don't know how long La Rambla is but it's quite a ways. As large a place as Barcelona is, I figured the best way to get the lay of the land was the standard hop-on, hop-off tour bus and the landing zone was at the top of La Rambla. This particular bus tour was divided into two separate routes. One covering the old city and waterfront and the other going to the newer and north part of town. I did them both with doing any of the hopping on/off bits but took notes for future reference. Once back at the landing zone I meandered back down through La Rambla but this time checking out the storefronts more but still having a gander at the goings on at the market area. Lots of the statues were still at it and it was really cold. I was glad I had tipped the headless guy but whatever he made for the day, it wasn't enough!

Remember my little alley like street to the hostel? It was mostly empty when I arrived and starting to come to life when I left to look for the tour bus. My return back to the hostel was after dark and the place was packed. Everyplace that had looked like a garage (which was most of the way along) was a storefront! All the places out on the main drag were geared for tourists. This is where the locals shop and probably dine and I hope to grab at least a lunch or two from one of these places before I leave. Well, my day ended and I returned to the hostel figuring the lads would be up and away by now and I could sort of settle in. Two of them were still in bed! I grabbed my reading material and headed to the common room. I don't know who the two bodies were but at some point they passed through the common room because when I was finally ready to call it a night, I went to the room and it was empty. I readied my bed and then read for a bit more and finally fell asleep. I did hear when the guys starting coming back in the very week hours of the morning but they came back in shifts and were more respectful than the young men I had roomed with back in London. And they went to sleep right away. I was up and out as quietly as I could in the morning, though I'm not sure there was much that could have disturbed them.

Today, I did the waterfront even going so far as to dip my toes into the Mediterranean Sea! I walked on the beach, rode to the top of the Columbus tower, visited the Maritime Museum, went to a 3D Imax movie (Dinosaurs! Alive) in Spanish and lost money in the Casino. Now I'm catching up on my blog and it appears, I've done something to scare off my roommates because it looks like I have the room to myself. Normally, I would get a feeling a inferiority but instead I'm gonna try to figure out what I did and get ready to do it again because for a few days when I get to Italy, I'm gonna be in a mixed dorm again!

Night train to Madrid

My first route through Spain was only going to the major cities. In my effort to add in some smaller towns, I decided to skip Madrid. Well that didn't work out too well because not only did I only get two little towns in, I had to skip Sevilla and wound up back in Madrid but only for the day! I arrived at 8:30am, stowed my backpack at the train station lockers, did the free walking tour (neweurope.com), then did a tapas tour and was back at the train station in time for the night train to Barcelona! Madrid is kind of a blur but during the walking tour, it was interesting to hear the Spanish side of the same time period I had heard about from the Portuguese perspective just a day or two before. Apparently, around the time of Columbus, the two countries figured they pretty much owned the world and had kind of decided to divided it up amongst themselves! Portugal seems to have been better at the negotiating table and that¡s why Brazilians speak Portuguese!

Lisbon, Day Two

This was the day I learned everything I ever wanted to know about Lisbon. Well, not quite but the tour guide was pretty passionate about his country and provided lots and lots of background. This was a walking tour of the city and as it was a rather chilly day, there were only two of us brave (or silly) souls on the tour. The other was an Aussie (I have met so many Aussies out here, I'm wondering if the last person out of there turned off the lights!). We started with about a 30 minute Portugal history lesson just standing there in the square. Beginning back in Roman times. . .yes, it had that familiar ring. The city is this old but the stuff isn't quite that old because one conquering army torn down or built over the previous etc, etc. But here's the thing with Portugal-since the early 1200s---never been conquered. The reason Lisbon doesn't have much left to show for its Roman and subsequent design styles is cuz of the 1755 earthquake that lasted for, I think, more than 10 minutes and had been guessed to have been about a 9 on the Richter scale. It was on a Sunday. The very devout were in the churches whose roofs collapsed. The trembler shook the embers out of the fireplaces so lots of folks were than caught in the fires. The ones that escaped the initial collapse of everything around them and outran the fire to get to the river were caught in the tsunami. Must have felt like Armegeddon. Well, that was the Portugal/Lisbon 101. After that we meandered through town looking at how they pulled themselves up and became the city that they are today. They took advantage of the sort of clean slate they now had and didn't just rebuild what they lost but improved on it.

Long before the earthquake though, Portugal had lots going for it. It was a hugh empire and still today you can see it's influence around the globe. If you've eaten Indian food, specifically Tandoori, that's Portugeuse. Do you like tempura? Portuguese. Peanut Butter and Jelly? I have no idea where it comes from but I'll bet there's some Portuguese influence in there somewhere.

There are of course several churched in the city but the most incredible one, I think, is St. Nicolas'. It was the richest church and was filled with all of the kind of trappings a rich church of that era would have---lots of gold ornamentation and incredible painting and stained glass and all of it lost when the church burned. Rather than try to rebuild and fall short of the previous splendor, the rubble was cleared and the ceiling was painted in ochre. Pews were brought in and that was pretty much the extent of the restoration. You either hate it or love it. I'm in the latter category.

I didn't do much more after the tour except find my way back to the metro station and headed out to the main train station because I had a night train to catch to Madrid.

Lisbon

Before we get to Lisbon, you're gonna have to go on the same ride that I did to get here. That ride starts with the morning bus into Burgos from the hostel that never came. Turns out it doesn't run that far out on Sunday. The really rotten part about that is that I specifically asked about the bus when I checked in and was told I could catch it right out front until 11:oo! Ah, I'llchalk that one up to language difficulties. I pulled up my hood an started to walk. I had taken about 15 steps, when a car slowed down and the driver hollered "halooo". Now, I don't normally take ridess from strangers and had it been nighttime, I'd've kept on walking. Carlos spoke almost as much English as I speak Spanish. He had seen me waiting for the bus and then start my walk. He explained that he has done the pelligrino (pilgrammage, I think) from Santiago de Compestello to Burgos so I guess that means he knows what the walking in the rain is like. He dropped me off just a few blocks from the cathedral. See what I mean about the Spanish folks! And having had transport I found myself with time for a sit down breakfast. I picked a place right next to the cathedral. It was a pretty good choice because it was kinda like a Denny's. That is to say the menu had pictures. I pointed to a close approximation to sausage and eggs but chose the chorizo to at least keep it a little native. It went down very well. One American style breakfast, a relaxing cuppa and then I was ready for the tourist chu-chu tour of the town. This ride looks like a train but runs on tires and motors to the city highlights much like the big city tour busses except this is not a hop on, hop off deal. You go thru the whole town in about 45 minutes. After the ride I basicallly walked the same path, or at leasst the parts of it I wanted to explore more of including the castle ruins. The castle bit themselves date back to the Romans around 700ad oor something but there is some evidence of human habitation dating back to several hundred years BCE. This place be old!



After following my highlighted version of the highlights, I visited the outside of the museums that are closed on Sunday. And that was prettymuch my day unless you want to count the many, many hours I then spent in the train station. When at last it arrived I was eager to board and get in a bit of sleep. I had only booked a second class seat which meant I did not get a berth but I thought it would be a regular seat but it was a cabin type deal that I was sharing with a very, very chatty Brazilian. He said he didn't speak much English but I guess he wanted to try out all that he did know. After about two hours, another passenger joined us and she spoke Portuguese so that got into a very animated conversaation and Idozed off. I did manage to be awake when it came time for me to change trains. The change was quick, easy and uneventful. The next two hours to my next destination went through some really nice scenery. My favorite topography is a wide flat valley with the mountains/hills easily visible. If you've been to the Mission Valley in Montana or New Meadows in Idaho you knnow what I'm talking about. That's the kind of area we traveled through. The bottom land was more farmed than ranched as far as Icould tell and the major crop looked liked it might have been olives?



At the end of that train ride I wound up in Castelo Branco. I don't want to say this is not a recommended tourist destination but right now it seems to be more of wannabe. And they're making a run at it, too. Of course this is way off season, so they don't have their best face on right now but rather now is when all of the work is happening to present the things that the tourrists will want to see. For, instance, they have their own castle ruins at the top of the hill overlooking the town but they are in the process of excavating those ruins plus several other sites around the town. While these places are not publicized as places to visit, the public is nott prohibited from these areas either. I witness several folks walk under heavy equipment operating in thesse areas. I have a bit too much OSHA in me to try that but still managed to see some of the digs going on.


Castelo Branco was just another overnighter and considering the previous evening I was glad for an early end to the days activitiess. I had a late luncch of the third item on the menu (turned out to be a pork dish with fries and a banana for dessert) and went back to the hostel.


One really long sleep later and I was chowing down on the full on continental breakffast. A short walk after b'fast and I was at the train station for my trip out of the interior to the coast.

I arrived in Lisbon at one of the newest train stations. It exits out (almost) into the Park of Nations, a great long public park along the river. The area is filled with museums, restaurants, gardens, sculptures and other attractions, all built or installed for the 1998 World EXPO. I say the train station almost exits into this park because it actually goes through a three tiered shopping mall complete with a food court, multiplex and a couple of anchor type stores. There was even a Bata shoe store there!

I found a tourist info place to get directions to the hostel. Some hostels, having been hostels since way back, are sometimes located on some prime real estate. Such was not the case for my Lisbon hostel. In fact, my Lisbon hostel was not even a Lisbon hostel. Reading the descriptions of the different hostels in the city on the webbsite I chose the one not located in the city center thinking it would be a little quieter. It was also only about 1/3 the price. Sometimes the price difference is a great savings other times (like this time) not so much. Not only was out of the city center, I was out of the city! While I save quite a bit on the room rate I sort of lost out on some of that saving because of the time and cost to get to the city to do the stuff. The first day of getting to the hostel really sucked mostly because of how high my expectations had gone when I first stepped out into that hugh, bright, clean train station/mall/park only to find that my hostel was on the other side of the river , which by the way took a train (subway, bus and boat to get to! To be fair, the train and boat terminals were big and bright, too.

My first day, yes, I visited the mall. My destination was the park so since I was going through the mall anyway, I did a few laps. There was a Nike store, a Bata shoe store (that's kind of a Maryland thing), Icoste. I think those were the only store names I recognized except for McDs, BK and Pizza Hut. I made it through unscathed. That is to say, I made no purchasess even with everything in full Christmas mode!

I spent most of the rest of the day in the Oceanarium. It's a great big aquarium-Bigger I think that the National Aquarium in Baltimore but laid out in kind of the same idea with one big central tank representing the Atlantic Ocean and then other separate exhibits and tanks representing microcosms of other ocean or other wise fishy parts of the world-coral reefs, wetlands, tropical rainforests and the like. They don't have the seal, sea lions or dolphins but the otters were fun to watch. The current temporary exhibit "Here be Monsters" wasn't very impressive.

From there, I made a short stop into what I thought was the science center and I guess it was. It was three or four floors filled with all kinds of hands-on experiments. One area was devoted to the various visual puzzles, another looked at sound waves and so on. It was mostly geared to introductory or elementary level kind of stuff-kid's games with science and wouldn't you know it, the place was full of kids. Thus the 'short stop'. I didn't think I had spent that much time ateither place but it was after dark by the time I started my journey back to the hostel. On the subway, I began to wonder how long the boats run. Luck for me, they run after dark!

I'm gonna stop here and make sure this gets published and continue Lisbon next time.

Wyoming?

Bye-bye to Bilbao and the coastal region. On this dreary, wet and windy day I left the coast and headed inland. I'll have to check my geography to figure out if those were actually the lower parts of the Pyrenees that I went through today. It was a 'purty pitcher', not in spite of the fog, mist or clouds but because of all that. When the train was up pretty high we were kind of in really low clouds &/or fog and I kind of nodded off. When I woke up I might have guessed I was in Wyoming. The terrain looked exactly like the middle part of Wyoming between the praire of the mid-west state and the mountains. I think this might be the first wide open space I have seen on this journey! It's not quite Big Sky big but it's close.

And that has been my introduction, sort of, to Burgos. I arrived just before noon and went looking for the TI but let myself get side tracked to the catherdral. I had received a tip from one of the people at the Maritime Museum yesterday that this was a 'must see' place. Right call on that one! This one is pretty grand and pretty old. . . kinda. There's been some kind of church or chapel on the spot since 1221 or something. This one has been the most extensive as far as what's still there and what you can actually get to see. Several chapels with incredible alters, a choir with 103 individually carved seats. It took about 100 years to complete the seats. And, my favourit bit-a papamousca. I'm not sure it's spelled right but it it a piece of medieval sculpture that looks a bit jester like. It's attached to a clock. At the top of the hour it opens it's mouth. Papa is a kind of slang word for 'eat' and mousca is 'fly' so every hour the jester eats a fly. I was surrounded by magnificent displays of devotional art taking decades or more to complete and I picked out the clown! But I wouldn't have seen it if the audio guide hadn't mentioned it so somebody else liked it, too!

The train ride, the cathedral tour and lunch at a downtown family restaurant was pretty much the day. I had plans of other stuff here at the hostel but the facilities are limited so this will pretty much be it. (Free interet again!!) This is just a one night stand here but I will have all of tomorrow to explore more of Burgos because I´ve got a night train to Portugal.

This is another nonhostel hostel. Maybe that's why it's spelled hostal. But I´ve got a single room and don't even have to go down the hall for the bathroom. These hotel/hostels have TV in the rooms. I saw Monk in Spanish last night. And on the joyous note, I'll bit an hasta la bye-bye from España.

Gotta love the Basque people!

Yesterday I spent my time roaming around the old part of the city. There were the narrow cobbled-like streets, the oldest church, the historical museum and like that. Today my first task was to see if I could remedy the oops I created for myself yesterday. I went directly to the train station and fortunately, it wasn't crowded and the wonderful, wonderful ticket agent there (Carmine, I think she said her name was) took the time to get me on my way. It was great because when I gave her the name of the the town in Portugal I was trying to get to, she said couldn't find it. However, Carmine is not one to give up. She kept typing and meanwhile was enlisting the help of her coworker, possible her supervisor, and everynow and again he would walk over and give her some instructions and together, they were able to come up with the tickets I need to get me on my way to Portugal. A grand shout out of thanks to her for that.

With that wee problem solved I continued on with my day a bit lighter in step. I had my same tourist map from yesterday and this time instead of the 'old city' section I followed the part for Abando. I don´t really know what that translates to but it was a highlight of the more modern places around town even though it started at the town hall which is a really impressive town hall. Next photo upload op, I'll try to get that one on here. There was a modern sculpture right across from the town hall so that´s the tie into the modern city, I guess. I took the funicular train to the scenic overlook. That's something the tourist info people here should tell you to do first! What a great visual aid. Back down the hill and across the glass bottomed footbridge over the river! That a weird sensation especially since it had been raining most of the morning and the bridge surface was slicker than deer snot on a doorknob! In spite of that I made it the Guggenheim where I spent the rest of the morning and a good start of the afternoon. This is one of those museums that provides audio guides. When you see a piece that you want more info about, you locate the little info sign or card associated with it. If there's a number on the card with a little picture of headphones or some similar audio icon, then you punch in that number and here a pleasant voice telling you about the art work and the artist &/or some related little known and ever less cared about fact. Punch in the #1 at the stary and you get the introduction. At this museum, the introductory commentary provided a great tour of the building itself because it is a work of art just by itself. (Architecture by Frank O. Gehry) I like that kind of stuff. In fact I think a large part of my visit in the Louvre was taken up with the history of the building! The other aspect I enjoyed about this particular museum is that the works are accessible more so than most of the other places I've visited. There is one entire wing filled with giant iron sculptures that you don´'t just stand around and look at. (I´ll get the name of the artist in here soon.) You get to, in fact, have to walk through them. The commentary for these works is by the artist himself and he describes the pieces from the inside out. There were at least two galleries with works like that that I got to.

After I left museum, I continued my stroll looking for a likely spot to have lunch. Forgive me, but I went to a Burger King in a shopping mall. (My budget was shot after paying for the train reservations to get to Portugal!) There were two stops left on the days walk-the Belle Art Museum and the Maritime Museum. I went for the boats. The Maritime Museum is a medium sized museum or maybe it's even a small museum but it's really well done so it seems like there's more to it. I gleaned more of the history of Bilbao from this museum than I did from the Basque Historical Museum yesterday. Of course, that was due mainly to the English language film/slideshow available in the Maritime Museum, I'm sure.

Now I'm back at the hostel, sharing my day and looking forward to tomorrows sights. I've been told the cathedral in Burgos is not to be missed. I'll let you know!

Big oops on the horizon. . .

. . .but more on that in a moment. Today was exploring Bilbao. The hostel is just out of town on the western edge, I think. I´m not really sure because the street doesn´t show up on the map city map supplied by the info desk at the hostel which isn´t exactly a hostel. I´m staying in my first pension which is basically a really inexpensive motel room. It´s about on par with a Motel 6. It´s more than a hostel but that´s because I opted for a single private room rather than the mixed dorm situation that I avoid after my experience in London. But, alas, no breakfast included *sigh* I´d gotten kind of used to that little continental meal. Today I was on my own for desayuno and decided I was going to try to find a real restaurant and maybe get as close to an American cardio vascular delight as I could find. Lots of places with Bar in their name were open at 8 AM. I peered in to some of them but they only seemed to be serving croissants and wee small cups of coffee/expresso. After a while, I was even hoping to spot some golden arches. I´ve been seeing a very specific ad for that place ever since Biarritz-a small billboard with a freckled face lass smiling out and there are the arches quietly placed in the upper corner. That´s it. That´s the entire campaign. I have yet to see an actual McD´s since I first saw the billboard. Probable better off. Anyway, I didn´t find my pseudo-American breakfast but ducked into a little cafe/bar place across from the museum I was going to go to once it opened. I had half an hour. I order what I thought was just a plain croissant (I say 'ordered' but I usually just point at something and say 'Uno, por favor'). Turned out is was a funny little sandwich. Ham, with a slice of hardboiled egg and what I think was a bit of tuna on top of the egg. That and a cup of hot tea was just perfect to sit with and watch the rain. Before the museum opened, though more folks started crowding in so I thought I´d best leave and make room for other paying customers. I would up skipping the museum and spent the next bit trying to track down the free walking tour people. I had the phone number but only about 1 in four public phones work. I would up taking my own version of a walking tour just looking for a phone. I finally found one and it turns out that the tours are still happening except only in Spanish or Basque (remember how the signs in Wales are in Welsh and English? Everything here is in Spanish and Basque). So I just continued exploring on my own never knowing exactly what I was looking at. Tomorrow, I'm going back to the museum I skipped today and will also visit the branch of the Guggenheim that´s here. I probably won´t know what I´m looking at there either even if it´s in English!

OK, now the Oops! I´ve been looking over what´s coming up on my itinerary and all through Spain and Portugal, I´m only hitting the big cities. I don't really like the big cities and wanted to see something of the smaller places so I did some rerouting. Checking to see what hostels are in what towns and seeing what trains might get me there. I was cross referencing this internet site with this guide book and seeing if that info matched the map that came with the railpass and somewhere in all an Oops! occurred. Instead of going from here (Bilbao) to Madrid and staying there for 3 days, I booked three different hostels along the train route to Lisbon. Turns out I need reservations on the train for each leg of that route AND they're already booked! Between my museum tours tomorrow, I´m going to go to the train station to see if I can Spanlish my way through my alternatives. Either way, the adventrue will begin on Saturday.

Hasta la bye-bye for now.

Over the river and through the woods. . .

Free internet and a more recognizable keyboard, too!

I tried to leave Biarritz around 9:30: am but even though my Eurail Pass map shows red train lines going from Biarritz and in a round about way connecting here to Bilbao, evidently you can´t get here from there. So my days travel went like this a late morning bus from Biarritz to Hendaye. I had an fun non conversation with a youngster at the bus stop. He wanted to speak the little English he knew and he really wanted to answer the questions I was trying to ask in the French I didn´t know. He did manage get me to understand that I was going to have to take the bus we were waiting for to the end of the line and change to another. So I did the first part of that. I took the bus to St. Jean de Luz. Since there was an info desk there, I just thought I´d confirm Raphael´s instructions. According to the nice lady at the info desk, there would be a big green bus in a 1/2 hour going to Bilbao. I believed here until it was almost an hour later then I followed Raphael´s instructions. I took a bus to Hendaye. From there I took a 5 Minute train ride to Irun (there´s an accent on one of those letters) where I went through a sort of customs check-a passport check, really. Then I found the next bus to Bilbao, abit more than an hours trip. Finally, out of that bus station down into the subway to catch the underground to the city district where the hostel is, just a mere 50 meters from the exit. I gotta say so far, the generally feeling is that I´m gonna be more comfortable in Spain than I felt in France. The few Spaniards I have spoken to in just the brief time I have been here have been more pleasant and smiling when I ask for information. If I had had more encounters with other French folks like young Raphael, perhaps I would have a better feeling. However, I´m returning to France later in the my trip so I´ll try harder at the language to see if that will improve the situation. While I make no claims of being able to really speak the language, the little bit of high school Spanish that I recall seems to be having some effect.

My last evening in the hostel at Biarrtiz, I had dinner with two other native English language speakers and a Frenchman who had lived in English speaking places. It was sooo relaxing. One guy is taking a year off before beginning his formal studies in language at Leeds. He was fluent in French and would soon be heading to South America to begin a short course in Spanish as a Foreign Language before beginning a tour of that continent. The other English speaker, a Canadian, was a just graduated Sociologist and was doing her own RTW before jumping into the job market although she did mention some things about working while on her journey. The French fella is sort of decompressing in his native France having just left the world of finance. He´s taking some time to do some real surfing while he does some cyber surfing for either his next career &/or next place of employment. He´s looking closely at Austrailia. It was cool to find some other folks out here checkin things out and for all different reasons.

At breakfast this morning, I joined one of my roommates and we then joined with a friendly Dutchman who was bicycling back to his home. He said he usually just camps but the day before had just been so wet he decided to give himself a chance to dry off. I guess he was riding a mountain bike because he referred to it as a ´bush bike´. When he heard that I was from the Pacific Northwest he told the story of a friend of his who was camping there and a bear got into his tent. Not really knowing what to do the guy started yelling at the bear but oddly enough the guy yelled in English! I´m sure that´s why the guy escaped unscathed. Had he yelled in his native tongue, the bear wouldn´t have understood.

One more story-On the longest and next to last leg of the journey today the was what I´m guessing was a three generation family. Grandma, Mom and Son. They were sitting just ahead and across the isle from me. Son and Grandma shared a row and Mom sat in front of them. Most of the trip Son and Grandma has a nice conversation going. Towards the end of the trip Son received a cell phone call. The call went on for awhile and the longer it went on, the more excited Son became and the louder his voice got. I watched Mom. She was smiling and shaking her head. Grandma was bouncing in her seat laughing to herself. More than a few people were turning around and looking back at him. Finally, Grandma had enough and started nudging him adn Mom joined in too and the phone chat ended. I haven´t a clue as to what was being said but I was the only one enjoying the moment without truly eavesdropping.

Well, that´s a good long one for this time. Tomorrow I´m gonna explore the town and rethinking my time in Spain. I´ve got too many (and only) big cities on the itinerary.

Plan B

I only used that title because I just left Brive, traveled thru Bordeaux on my way to Biarritz and tomorrow I'll head to Bilbao. Boy, ya just can't mak ethis kind of stuff up!



Yes, it was a long travel day to get here but gave me time to plan for Spain which starts tomorrow. I try to watch the scenery go by but I find myself drifting away in thoughts of the next hostel, the upcoming holidays and how come you put groceries in a bag on the East Coast but in a sack out West and then realize "Oh, I'm back in a wine growing region!" That was when I started planning out Spain. I also found myself on one of those late arrivals into town. I knew the hostel was kind of close but I didn't seen my second favorite sign- a lower case "i" indicating tourist information so I decided to take a cab. Bad idea. I've used taxis only a few times and each time it seems the hostel is about 6 or 7 €. This one was 8€. That would not have bothered me except the trip took less than 90 seconds! So beware of the rip off cabbies if you travel to Biarritz!



After that unpleasant start, things looked up. The next day was a walking tour and into the city center which is right on the beaches of the Bay of Biscay. Even though it is mid-November and it was mostly overcast, there were more than a dozen surfers scattered along the beaches. The surfers were all out there in there neoprene wetsuits sitting on top of the water meanwhile over at the Port Vieux beach, the senior citizens of The Polar Bear Club were taking their daily swim in just the regular tank tops and Speedos!



After the beach tour, I did lunch at a little bar. I decided to try a sort of sampler platter of tapas. I had the pate, the fish soup, little shrimp with something else, two different kinds of salami with different cheese on different bread and a little bowl of little pastries and little squids. Sorry 'bout those little squids, but they remained on the plate. They were presented beautifully but I left them for last and wasn't hungry enough to be that adventurous by the end of the meal. Stuffed with tapas and a slice of basque cake for dessert, I then visited the Chocolate Museum. Not a chocolate factory, they still managed to provide almost sensory overload of the Cocoa bean aroma. Free samples, too. I guess I wasn´t that stuffed but I still had no room in my stomach for squid or maybe I just didn´t have the stomach for squid.

Earlier today, I took the bus bqck into town to visit the two museums that were closed on Monday. The first was the Sea or Maritime museum. It's a sort of cross between the history of the town and an aquarium. While all of the informational signs throughout the aquarium are in French, they do have an English audio guide. The various tanks and displays of the aquarium only have species found in the waters surrounding Biarritz but that's still quite a few species. Grouper, striped this and sharp beaked that. There was a sea turtle, a massive crayfish, crabs, sea horses, a couple of eels, lots of flounder-ish type and at least two types of rays and of course the shark tank. Only four inhabitants but one was a type of tiger shark. On two levels there were seals. All of that only covered about 1/2 of the contents of the museum. The rest of it was devoted to all of the maritime/historical aspect of Biarritz from the days of whaling (boo hiss) to present day fishing methods with the various collections of artifacts and models of boats through the years. All in all, it was very well done and a pleasant way to spend the morning. In fact, considering the way the weather changed in the afternoon, I probably should have just stayed there and stared at the fish the rest of the day

Brive (pronounced breeve)

I thought this town was going to be another bust like Tours. I did what research I could at the hostel for things to do here. After having missed out on the grotto up in the Tours area, it was really lucky for me that there were quite a few grottoes around here. That was good because there's not much more. Up and at 'em early today to make sure that I didn't miss any excursions that might be going out in the morning. I had my directions to the tourism office- "go left from here, turn right at the traffic light and then soon you will see the, um, the . . .big theeng. That is toursim"
The 'big thing" is a lighthouse kind of thing but I got side tracked when I arrived because Saturday is market day here in Brive. Good thing, too because the hostel is one that does not include breakfast so I was one my own. The market was huge. There were fresh cut flowers and today's vegetables all cuts of meat including a kind of scary table that had two boxes of live rabbits right next to a cold case filled with rabbit, uh, carcasses all skinned and dressed. I was wondering how you say "For meat of pets" in French!
After getting stuff for breakfast and a picnic lunch (no rabbit), I found headed to the tourist office and arrived just as they opened. Turns out my punctuality was for naught. The grottoes I had the brochures for were either closed or had no public transpo headed that way and there are no other tours operating this time of year (that's going to be my motto). However, Brive does happen to have its own grotto, open year 'round AND free! We like free. Just 2 kilometers through town. Of course these free ones weren't nearly as spectacular as the pictures for the ones I didn't get to but these had the added bonus of being the Grotto of St. Antoinne which means these were not just pseudo cavelike entrances that didn't "go". Each of the grotto was shrine and had a statue and you can go there and make an offering, light a candle, pray for something, etc. I prayed for transportation to a cave. So far I have not been answered but maybe that's cuz I couldn't get my candle to light. Cave, grotto-they all leak.

That adventure took about two and a half hours or so 'cause I wandered up the hillside next to the grotto to look at the statuary up there, too. Still had a bunch of day left and no real direction so I went back to the market because there was stuff there besides food. I've been thinkin' ahead a bit to the India portion of my trip. I'm not sure my western wardrobe is gonna work overthere. I've always had an androgonous look about me but the culture there is so different, that might be trouble. I wasn't too concerned about it because I was pretty much going to go right into a tour group and had kind figured on the safety in numbers kind of thing but I've had to make some travel changes and I will be in India on my own for the first five days. I will of course be in Mumbai which is modern up to date kind of place but still a different culture. So I wandered through the market in Brive and bought a scarf. I figure that'll get me started in Mumbai and I'll get the rest of what I'll need when I get there.

After that tremendous shopping spree, I was ready for a hot cup of something. In my search of a Starbuckslike place I realized I was on the street where I lived, so I just headed back to the hostel and took a nap instead. A bit later I was up and out again with still not much to do so I headed towards the Fine Arts Museum I had passed by earlier in the day when it was closed. Along the way, I noticed that lots of people were going the other way. Well, sometimes my herding instinct makes sheep look like independent thinkers and I started following the crowd. I wound up at my first professional (coulda been semi-pros) rugby match. Brive vs The Other Team. The stands were packed, the players were in a fist fight less than two minutes into the game resulting in one opposing player being sent off, I had hardly any idea what was happening but I think the score was close at half time when I left. I'll have to find out who won later.

And that's the end of this day. Long long travel day ahead tomorrow for final French destination at the foot of the Pyrenees, or maybe it's in the Pyrenees. I'll find out tomorrow.

No tours in Tours

It is getting down to slim pickin's out here in the tourist universe at least for this particular "flyin' by the seat of my pants" tourist. Holiday train connections put me into St. Malo too late to be able to appreicate all that that little berg has to offer. I take the blame for that one for not knowing the holiday schedule however the next days delay wasn't a holiday thing. I wanted to get the early afternoon train out of St. Malo to get to Tours by late afternoon. According to the schedule I had in hand, that was quite doable. The schedule I had in hand did not account for work on the train line. One of the three legs of the trip (the longest one, too, of course) was on the bus. To late of an arrival into Tours left no time to scout so the next morning was spent trying to get the scout in but alas, by the time I found out about the various villa and chateau tours still operating this time of year, they had all departed. I did a modified version of the self-guided walking tour of the town. There is still a bit of the old town-ness to Tours--narrow cobbled streets, some half timbered buildings an occassional ruin but they have moved on and are really wanting to be cosmopolitan. The reason I came over this way is to spend some time in and see a bit of the Loire Valley but I'm thinkin' this area is probably best seen with more personal transportation available. After missing the arranged tours and then doing the town, the front desk at the hostel told me "Oh, by the way, here's your free ticket to the grottos just outside of town". A bit of investigation revealed that no public transportation went out that way so I wasn't going to be able to take advantage of that particular freebie. Too bad, too because I think it might have been the highlight of my visit to Tours.

So I was up and out not too early but still early enough to catch the 9:05 train out of Tours to Brive. A couple of changes later and I would be in Brive by 1:30 and be back to my normal routine. Funny how things don't go as planned; ain't it? The 9:05 train was a bus. The connecting train was delayed 15 . . .no, 20 minutes . . .wait, you can take this train . . .Okay, this train won't work so I'm going to give you a note for the ticket agent inside and he will get you a ticket for the next train going in the same direction you are going and you'll only have to wait three hours. And sure enough three hours later I finally was on the train. The only good thing about that particular train ride is that it carried us out of drizzly, gray cloudy weather into a sunnier day. (Have I mentioned how good the weather has been on this trip! I've been lovin' every minute of it)

So here I am in Brive. Now what? I'll see what brochures I can find here at the hostel and try to do some planning but before I do that just few- a few random observations because the internet if free here but there are no scandisc ports.

For quite awhile now I've been traveling through different regions all in varying degrees of autumn leafing. A day or so I ago it appeared that I had maxed out on getting to see changing leaves. Most of the trees are now naked or almost so. I say almost because the other day I saw a stand of (possible birch) trees (really white bark) qnd they were leafless except for large spheres of green scattered throughout. Harkening back to my forestry years, I'm guessing it's some kind of parasitic thing. Actually, I keep thinking mistletoe or mistletoe-like but I don't know if I'm even barking up the right tree with that thought. What I do know is that from a distance, it looks like a bunch of wild poodles are hanging out in the birch trees of the Loire Valley.

That's it for this installment except to say that I don't proof read these updates because it would use up too much of the time when I've got to pay for access but since to day is free I ,ight go bqck qnd check it. But just so you know, the keyboards are laid out a bit different in each country. I'm no great typist anyway so when you throw that into the mix you get the mess you have been dealing with. One this keyboard, for instance the q & a are reversed the , is where the m is supposed be. You have to use the shift key to get a period. All of the numbers along the top row are funcitons of the shift key as well. The w & z are reversed and it goes on and on. Well, I'm not gonna proof this one either but let you figure out what other keys are moved around based on how often I screw up! By the way, can you find these keys on your keyboard---§@éàüçè ?

Omigosh! It's a photo

That would be me in front of the abbey in Bath. It took ten minutes to upload this one picture and I only had the memory disc directory to choose from so I didn't know what the image was going to be. I'm going to randomly select more photos for this entry and we'll see what we get. I think I have time for one or two more.

That's a self portrait at Conwy Castle in Wales. You can kind of see the castle against the backdrop of the trees on the hillside. I'm standing on the town wall in this shot, too. I've got time for another random selection. Let's hope I'm not squinting in the next one. I hope it's a good photo because I haven't found the ' remove photo' button yet!

This is the 'Madonna and Child' by Michaelangelo and is located in Bruges, Belgium. It is one of the few of his works that ever left Italy. And you can see why. Most places would have displayed this standing up (and most bloggers know how to use their photo editing software well enough to know how to rotate an image)

This is one of the building disguises Munich uses when it's fixing up a place. They hang a 1 to 1 scale photo of what the place is gonna look like over the old building. It would work a lot better as a beautiful way of hiding the construction zone if it weren't for the giant advertising going on but that's probably what paid for the covreing in the first place.

So a few crappy photos to start with. I'll keep working on this aspect of the blog as computer time permits.