Month: April 2008

“Bonjour Adrienne!”

Our time in the South of France is reluctantly coming to a close. We are heading to the train station in a little while to make the trip into Italy.
The night before last we went out for a couple drinks and then decided to head home so that we could get an early start on heading to Monaco the next day. When we made it back to our hotel we started flipping through the 8 channels on our TV, which seemed a bit pointless since the only channel in English was CNN Europe. But, we happened across Rocky dubbed in French. Let me tell you, you have not lived until you have heard Rocky referred to as “Monsieur Balboa”. It was totally hilarious to hear a French translator attempt to capture an Italian-American meathead dialect… and I probably should have just had a laugh about it and moved on… But as Jon started to drift off to sleep, I became obsessed with how they were going to translate the quintessential line from Rocky, “Yo Adrienne!”… Would he say “Bonjour Adrienne!”?… “Excuse Moi Adrienne!”? It played on my mind and I couldn’t avert my eyes… I watched the entire Rocky movie in French and in the end when the line was finally uttered, they removed the first word altogether and he merely exclaimed “Adrienne!”… I guess there’s just no way to translate some words…

Monaco was really nice! But it was sooooo richy rich. There were Ferraris and Lamborginis and Bentleys everywhere… And the marina was exclusively filled with yachts of varying sizes and stature. There were no fishing dingys in this port, that’s for sure.

Jon and I had an agenda though- we each budgeted $100 Euro to spend in the casino, in the hopes that we would walk out with much more. After blazing through $20 Euro each on the slot machines we moved on to Roulette (which I have found out definitively is pronounced Roo-Lae and I’m not a total idiot for calling it that all along…). The Roulette table were soooo confusing! Everyone has the same colored chip, the difference in colors only accounts for the different denominations being bet, not who is doing the betting. There were three workers at the table watching who placed what and moving bets around with these long sticks when beckoned by the patrons. I thought my brain was going to explode trying to keep track in my head of all the numbers I had bet on during each turn. Finally I took out my notepad and started writing them down… It was seriously just me and this elderly man who had our notepads out. It was a little demoralizing. I couldn’t believe it- it’s totally different than Vegas! High rollers were buying in with stacks of $500 Euro bills and then tossing their $100 Euro (there is no Euro sign on this keyboard) chips onto the table willy-nilly from 10 feet away and just calling out to one of the workers as to where they wanted the chips placed.

I was sucking pretty bad, but I was able to pull it out a few times when the chips were literally down (I had one left when I hit and won 40 Euros and stayed in it). Jon was hot though! He hit straight up on the 17 on the first spin! (The chip minimum on each chip was 5 Euro). We ended up playing for a few hours and came out of there dead even, which is about all you could hope for. (Well, I was hoping for way more but I wasn’t sad to come out of there with as much as I went in with…).

Since we ended up with more money than we were expecting, we decided to splurge and have a bottle of champagne at a marina cafe. It was so weird eavesdropping on the Americans/British/Irish people seated at the tables in front and behind us. They were talking about the million Euro homes they had purchased, and taking trips on their yachts. It was bizarre to have this window into a totally different world.

All in all, it was a very fun afternoon!

Next Stop: Cinque Terre, Italy

You Can Take GM Out of Flint, But You Can’t Take Flintoids Out of GM.

Current Location: Nice, France

Jon and I have been spending the last four days in the French Riviera.  We took the train from Barcelona to Perpignan, France. When we crossed the border into France the passport police boarded the train and started going car by car checking passports.  The officer had almost reached us when he paused to look back at his fellow officer who had been knocking on the door to the bathroom since entering our car. Suddenly the door opened and this dread-locked, and seriously dirty, hippie girl rushed out and tried to hurry past the officer and go into the next car. He started calling out to her and following her and the officer who was about to question us rushed past and joined him. They ended up pulling that girl, and three of her travel companions off the train with all of their stuff, and questioned them on the platform beside the train.  Finally another officer boarded and glanced at our passports for a second and moved on. This was a point of slight worry for me because I’ve been having some problems with my passport. It was issued in 1999 before I went abroad to London to study for a summer.  After that I traveled for a few weeks to various countries, and since the EU passport freedoms had not been imposed yet, I received a stamp from every country I went to. Upon my return to East Lansing, I promptly misplaced my driver’s license and chose to carry my passport in the back pocket of my jeans on countless nights out to the bar. Then a year after graduation I moved to Dublin, and received a stamp, and traveled to a few more countries and received stamps… So… let’s just say that my passport has seen better days. It’s all crumpled, and the US seal on the front is pretty faded when compared to Jon’s. The edges of the pages have started to yellow from age, and in the picture I look totally different. My hair was halfway down my back and I was in mid-blink which gives the overall impression of me being totally stoned.  On top of all of this, when Jon and I first flew into Europe we went through Point of Entry Passport Control in Paris before continuing on to Madrid. For whatever reason those assholes just looked at our passports and didn’t stamp them. I didn’t think about it at the time but they have to be stamped upon entry! When we went to Morocco they questioned us at passport control as to where our point of entry stamp was, but ended up letting us go forward. When we re-entered into Spain they re-stamped us but the guy who did mine didn’t press hard enough so it looks like it says 2006 instead of 2008. I was really given a hard time by the passport control in Portugal and I think that if Jon wasn’t traveling with me with the exact same stamp, but one that had turned out, on his passport, they wouldn’t have let me forth.  Anyway, I guess it’s not a big deal in France.

In any case the delay caused us to get into Perpignan an hour late, but we picked up our cute Opal convertible and headed on our way. Opals are made by GM which we thought was appropriate considering we are from the former GM capital of the world. 

France has been wonderful! Everyone has been amazingly friendly to us.  The idea of the French being rude is greatly exaggerated. I just think the only place most people go to in France is Paris and you often find that in big cities people might be a little gruffer than in other places. It would hardly be fair if people from other countries judged how nice Americans are as a whole by the average New Yorker… I know, I lived there. It’s hard living in small places and having to fight your way for anything- a beer, a parking spot, a sandwich, whatever.

It is utterly spectacular here. I don’t have my camera on me right now but I will try to post pictures soon.  I especially loved the French countryside. It’s breathtaking, and peaceful and absolutely lovely.  I would love to move to France someday. It’s really been a great trip.  We went to the best preserved Roman arena in the world in Nimes (much better preserved than the Coliseum in Rome) and the aqueduct which was really cool.  But mostly we’ve just been touring along the coast, enjoying the weather and the scenery.

Tomorrow we head to Monte Carlo, Monaco for the day and we’re hoping to strike it really rich because we feel like we’ve been hemorrhaging money.  Wish us luck!

Next Stop: Monte Carlo, Monaco

“Take over, take over, take over Bar-ce-lo-naaaa”

Current Location: Barcelona, Spain

Hey! So… I think I have some catching up to do…

We rather reluctantly left Lagos and took the train up to Lisbon. We had intended to spend a couple of days in Lisbon, but we were enjoying Lagos so much that we decided to add on an extra day there instead. In the end it was the right decision because it was raining and miserable in Lisbon.  It seemed like a cool city though, if we had had the time and weather to complement a longer visit. As it was we just walked around a bit and then went to a “fado” show that evening. Everything I read about Lisbon indicated that attending a fado show was a must as it´s a traditional Lisbonian method of story telling by singing… blah blah blah. Anyway, it was nice but I definitely wouldn´t recommend doing it if you are on a limited budget. We were bemoaning all the alcohol we could have purchased on our trip instead of paying to see some chick sing (however lovely) in Portuguese.  But maybe that speaks to a greater problem…

Anyway, from Lisbon we flew to Barcelona.  One of our must do´s in Spain was to go to San Sebastian because it is now considered the food capital of Europe. The flights directly from Lisbon though were way too expensive so instead we flew to Barcelona and then booked a night train to San Sebastian. We figured we would save on a nights lodging as well, and wake up refreshed and energized for a Saturday and Sunday in San Sebastian. Wrong. We were in a cabin with two other couples. One couple was nice and pretty quiet. But later on in the night another couple boarded and joined our couchette after the rest of us were already sleeping. Jon and I had the two bottom twin beds and there were two more twins stacked up over each of us. The guy from this new couple couldn´t figure out that he couldn´t just shut the door to the cabin, but that he had to actually latch it as well. (The way the beds were situated, he was the one with the easiest access to the latch). So, the door slammed open right by our heads about 6 times before Jon finally got up and latched it himself. It was really annoying. It´s weird to have such loathing coarsing through your veins towards someone you´ve only seen from the lower torso, down. (The beds were so tightly packed that there wasn´t even room to sit up in bed).  I had taken a night train with multiple beds when I was 21 and traveling through Europe… But… I am no longer 21 and I guess I´m just not as compromising.

San Sebastian was absolutely lovely! It´s a really quiet, but very cosmopolitan city right on the ocean. It´s in Basque territory and there is a lot of Basque nationalism- they retain their own language etc. We walked in to downtown at 7:30 in the morning and it was so peaceful.  The first pension that we had been considering had a “Completo” sign outside. We just started walking and came upon another one and rang the bell. An older woman answered speaking Basque and invited us in. She was the cutest lady! We had obviously woke her up because her hair was a mess and she was still wearing her robe, but she was incredibly warm and kind to us even though she couldn´t speak English at all and we obviously don´t speak Basque. She had a room for us for the night and it was seriously the nicest place we´ve stayed on our whole trip. It was sparkling!

We took a snooze to make up for the lack of sleep on the train and then got ready to head out. We had been feeling a little disappointed because we had desperately wanted to go to one of the world famous gourmet restaurants while we were there but hadn´t been able to confirm a reservation anywhere because of the language barrier. It was now Saturday afternoon and we were going to head back to Barcelona on the night train on Sunday night. As we walked out of our room though, the older lady´s daughter was sweeping the hall and we decided to ask her for recommendations. She spoke some English and when we told her that we hadn´t been able to confirm reservations and had actually been hung up on once, she promptly took out her cell phone and started calling! She must have called 5 or 6 places before finally finding us a table that night at Martin Berasetegui restaurant! We were ecstatic! He is one of the most famous chefs in the world!  

In the afternoon we decided to walk around and see the city.  Almost right away we entered a pedestrian plaza where a crowd had gathered.  There was a group of musicians and suddenly they started playing. The crowd was made up of people who had just been walking by.  When the music started though everyone joined in singing! They sang several songs together and then the music stopped and everyone went on with their day. It was so cool to watch- really uplifting and heartwarming.  They seemed to be Basque nationalist songs.  Many people in the Basque territories would like to secede from Spain.  Here’s a picture of all the people singing:

That night we got dressed up and headed out to the restaurant. We had decided that we were going to pretend like we were rich for the night and have a meal we wouldn´t soon forget. It was actually the first thing we had put on our credit card for “Future Jon and Nancy” to worry about…  The meal was insane- it was a 14 course prix fix paired with 5 different glasses of wine. Towards the end of the meal Chef Berasetgui actually came to our table and asked us if we had enjoyed the meal!  He´s a superstar!  We left there three hours later, full, drunk and happy.

The next day we took a day trip to Bilbao to visit the Guggenheim. Unfortunately as the day went on I started feeling worse and worse. I was feverish and achy and I couldn´t really stand up without feeling dizzy. A few hours later Jon started feeling bad too so we left the Bilboa early and headed back to San Sebastian.  I´m pretty sure we both caught something from sleeping submarine barrack style with a bunch of strangers on the train two nights before. We decided to upgrade to a private cabin for the overnight back.  It was a million times better! There was a little sink in the room and even a tiny shower!

We are now in Barcelona. We´ve been here for four days just kind of hanging out and seeing the sights at our leisure.  The people in northern Spain seem much friendlier than those in the South.  We´ve had a very pleasant week back in Spain. Barcelona is beautiful! Our first day here Jon made a lunch for us and we went up to the castle on a hill and had a picnic on the castle grounds.  It was so nice! Then walking back down we happened upon the old outdoor high diving platform from the Barcelona Olympics. It was amazing! I never really though about what those divers could see when they walked out on the platforms. We could see right out onto the platform. They would have had a total panoramic of the entire city skyline! It was amazing.  It also seems like it would be more than a little terrifying but.. I still plug my nose when I go underwater so I guess it´s nothing I´ll ever have to worry about…

Yesterday was “El Dia de Libros”- The Day of Books”! It was a huge festival! That´s why the roads were closed. The streets were lined with vendors selling books and tables where people could buy roses.  Books and roses, roses and books… I was in booknerd heaven!

We went to watch the match last night and met a couple of Brits. It was so fun to be a part of that. It´s amazing how many different chants they have for their teams in Europe. It really gets you pumped up to watch your team. (The title of this post was taken from one of the chants- it was really pissing off the Spainards in the bar…).  It was so fun! Maybe if the Lions had some cool chants devoted to them, they would be inspired to give a crap…

Tomorrow we leave Spain for good (at least for good on this trip). We are heading to France next. We are renting a car (a convertible!) to drive around the French Riviera and we pick it up in the morning. It´s a rough life… 

Next Stop: The French Riviera

 

 

Running Out of Time!

Hey! I´ve been a total poker at writing lately… I only have a few minutes left at this lab, but I plan to write a true update tomorrow!

I´m off to watch Barcelona vs. Manchester United in the futbol semi-finals… The roads are closed down here in Barcelona and the SWAT teams are already out… It´s going to be nuts!

In the meantime I´ll leave you with this final insight we´ve made during our time here:

Red and white horizontal stripes are taking Spain by storm! EVERYONE is wearing them! We´ve been ¨Where´s Waldo(ing)?” all over this country!  It´s getting to be exhausting… Sheesh.

 

Beach Bums

Current Location: Lagos, Portugal

The festival in Sevilla was a lot of fun! It was really like a huge fair (Feria).  We didn´t ride most of the rides but we did take a turn on the Ferris Wheel, which must have been the baddest Ferris Wheel in the world… Maybe that´s a bold statement but… It was really awesome! After everyone got in, it started going so fast that I got nervous that it was broken! I was actually lifted out of my seat everytime we reached the top and started back down. It was super fun! All the women were dressed in these really colorful traditional dresses… (They looked like the dress the Chaquita Banana lady wears…).

The most amazing part of it was Jon playing the carnival game where you have to shoot pellets and get three cans down. This whole trip he´s been having less than restful nights of sleep because he always sleeps with a fan, and wasn´t able to track one down that was small enough to pack and would work on European circuitry before we left. Well, he shot all three down on his first go at it and they gave him a card that he could turn in for anything with a value of “1”. We figured it would just be a bunch of crap like you get at U.S. carnivals and amusement parks… But when we looked up at the “1” section… it was coffee makers, toasters, irons, sandwich makers and… a small fan/heater! It was completely and totally fortuitous.

Sevilla was great.  It´s a big college town and there were young people everywhere. I swear there was more English being spoken than Spanish. 

We are now in Lagos, Portugal which we totally love. It´s a fishing/beach town in Southern Portugal. Everyone is so friendly here! It´s an easy place to imagine packing up your stuff and moving to forever. I think this is a common sentiment because it´s filled with ex-pats from everywhere. Every single person who we´ve asked how they ended up here, they all seem to respond with, “I came here on a short holiday, and decided to stay.”

We´ve just been hanging out, walking around, eating fresh seafood, meeting “locals” and relaxing on the beach. Probably not too exciting to read about, but needed by us nonetheless. We´re recharging our batteries. Tomorrow we are heading to Lisbon and then on to San Sebastian, Spain.

P.S.
Is anyone reading this? Just a word about commenting- I had to set it up for people to register and get approval before commenting because otherwise it would fill up with spam in about a day. But once you register your comments in the future won´t have to be held for approval…

 

Air Out, While We Wear Out…

The above sentence has become somewhat of a slogan on this trip… There is just no way to keep our backpack´s worth of clothes smelling fresh between nights at the bar, and days in the sun.  We have dubbed our packs “The Fresheners” because I had the presence of mind to stuff several fabric sheets among our clothes when I was packing. That definitely has helped… But some days we just have to roll with it, put on our smokey clothes and “air out, while we wear out”.

Today though is finally laundry day. And it came not a day too late. We decided to fly back to Madrid last night instead of wasting a day taking the train from Marrakech and then the ferry back into Spain. The flight was only marginally more expensive and we probably saved 10 hours. So now we have a free day to wash our clothes and just decompress from our time in Morocco. Madrid seems so sterile now… New and shiny.  We both took really long showers in well pressurized and mostly hot water, had very meticulous shaves, and set out to the lavanderia with a pack full of dirty clothes. In about half an hour our transition will be complete!

I just wanted to wish my very dear friend, Maggie a very happy birthday today! I hope you are having an amazing day!

And I wanted to wish my friend Bridget the best of luck on her wedding today! I´m sure it will be wonderful and I wish you and Johnny a lifetime of happiness.

We will be celebrating these two momentous occasions tomorrow in Sevilla Spain. We´re heading there for their Feria De Abril which is one of the biggest festivals in Spain!  It should be fun!

Love you!

We picked up a rug, some handcrafted goods, and two Algerian children in Morocco.

Morocco is unlike anywhere I have ever been.  If I had to sum it up in one word, it would have to be intense.  The medina in Fes was incredible! It was filled with winding roads, filled with people, donkeys, goods and more people. The smell of kabob fills the air.  It is definitely an authentic Moroccan city, and I highly recommend a visit if you ever find yourself in Morocco.

From Fes, we made a beeline for Marrakech. It was an 8 hour train ride and we were running late so we paid slightly more for first class. First class just means you have an assigned seat and you sit in little rooms like the trains in Harry Potter, or The Darjeeling Limited. We didn’t want to risk not being able to sit together in second class. There was a couple from Dakkar and two women from Algeria with their two kids in our room.  Everyone else spoke mostly French so for awhile Jon and I just chatted amongst ourselves.  But the little girl in our room would not be deterred by a mere language disparity. Within the first hour she was climbing all over me and saying “I speaka Engleesh” over and over again. The highlight of our meeting though for her must have been the moment she discovered the two hair ties I had around my wrist. She promptly took them off and started “styling” my hair in various configurations.   She was really cute, if a little hyper. She kept singing in French which was really adorable. At one point she even busted out with the tune from the Smurfs! I guess the show was invented in Germany and was called the Shmoofkins or something like that…

Anyway, we arrived in Marrakech that evening and took a taxi to the riad we were staying in. A riad is a traditional Moroccan home. Many of them have been turned into guest houses. They are hidden behind walls, have a courtyard and fountains etc. They are really quite lovely. It was very surreal to be walking up the old steps to our room as the sound of the Mullah calling the faithful to prayer rang out throughout the city.  It’s hard to put into words the kind of emotions the sound evokes.  I remain moved everytime I hear it.

This is the mosque closest to our riad.

After dropping our bags off we decided to treat ourselves to a nice meal while the exchange rate was still working for us. (The dollar is worth squat in Europe at the moment). The restaurant was phenomenol. There were candles everywhere and a man strumming the oud. It was  really peaceful.

That is where the peace ended though. Marrakech is CRAZY! The traffic is insane. People, horses, bicycles, scooters, cars, and trucks co-exist in a perpetual state of frenzy. You have to give yourself up to the skill of your taxi driver everytime you enter a cab. Crossing the street becomes a strategic play for your life.  And yet, I have seen no accidents… amazingly.

Yesterday we spent the day in the souks (outdoor market) which is definitely tamer than the ones in Fes. There are many more Western faces here and the city has a much more cosmopolitan vibe. I’d say about 70% of the women here cover their hair but many wear stylish clothes and high heels too. Out of respect I’ve been trying to wear more conservative clothes as everything I’ve read indicated that women showing their legs or upper arms here can be equated with a dude walking around in a speedo in the States. It’s been a bit hard though because I only brought one longer sleeved shirt! I’ve made due though just wearing pants and my jacket for the most part. It’s actually been a little cool so it makes it easier.

As the sun was setting last night we were sitting on a terrace overlooking the main square. There were three mosques on various sides of the square and when the call to prayer started from each it was an amazing thing to witness. The calls rang out almost in song, the person in each minaret attempting to be heard over the other. From our location we could see the throngs entering the mosque closest to us. Each person entering the mosque bent over at the entrance to remove their shoes giving me the impression of waves lapping at the door.

Once the sun goes down in Marrakech, the real party begins. There is a huge plaza that fills with kabob stands, henna artists, fortune tellers, fire eaters, and snake charmers. It is amazing. 

Okay, that’s all I’m going to write from Morocco.  Jon and I are flying back to Spain this evening.

Over and out from Marrakech.

 

In Fes

This is just going to be quick because we want to get out there but here’s a synopsis of our time in Fes.

We arrived and managed to dodge all the taxi car drivers standing around the train station. If you didn’t know, Morocco, and Tangiers and Fes in general are known for faux taxi drivers and guides. Everything we read said to avoid this at all costs as they will totally scam you.
The next morning we headed to the Medina and were immediately accosted by a really aggressive faux guide. When we tried to say no and walk away he started getting really mad and even shoving Jon a little! He called us scorpions and told us to go home and drive our Rolls Royces and return to our palace if we weren’t going to hire him! It was a major bummer and a bad way to start out. He finally left and we went to decompress at a cafe. But after that things were great. The Medina was a complete sensory overload! We managed the whole day without getting harrassed again and actually even took on (accidentally) a guide at the end of the day for about half an hour and it ended up being pretty fun, if hectic. More on that later! I have to run!

PS- if there are a lot of typos it’s because I’m using an Arabic co,puter and the letter position is all wonky.

Fes Bound

We finally made it to Algeciras and caught the 2:30 ferry to Tangiers. At this point we realized that we had been far too ambitious in our original plan to catch the earlier train. Things operate on a different schedule here. It took us forever to go through customs to even get on the ferry, and then we had to line up again once the ferry was ,oving to go through passport control again. In the meantime we met an American named Zach who was traveling by himself while on spring break from his college in Edinburgh Scotland/ The three of us decided to take turns watching eachother’s bags so that we could expedite our process through passport control. I was fortunate enough to be standing in front of two pretty funny (not on purpose) old hippy hash dealers. How do I know they were hash dealers? Because they were openly talking about it. But more on that later…

After we arrived in Tangiers Jon, Zach and I went to find authentic Morrocan food. We stumbled upon what might have been the grossest place to eat in all of Tangiers and promptly ordered three plates of chicken and rice. When I spotted the cochroach openly running around to no one’s concern… that was about it for me. Thankfully it seems that was the exception, not the rule as we’ve had GREAT food since then.

After that we parted ways because Zach was heading straight to Marrakech and we were going to Fes first. Jon and I boarded our train and a young Morrocan woman came and sat with us. Turns out she is an English teacher at a middle school and spoke perfectly! She was absolutely lovely and we chatted nonstop for the three hour train ride, until we had to switch trains. Her name was Majouba and she spoke candidly about Morrocan culture and things that might help us on our travels.  Our goodbye was filled with hugs all around and talk of a visit from her to the US.

Ok, as a final word I’m going to leave you with a bit of hippy wisdom I overheard from those American hash dealers standing behind me on the ferry.

Hippy 1- Europe would be great if not for all the Europeans.

Hippy 2- The world would be great if not for all the human beings!

Hippy 1- Nah, because then we wouldn’t get to see it…

 

Trapped in a Hallway


Current Location: Marrakech

Our trip into Morocco got off to a bit of a rocky start. We decided to get up really early to take the train from Malaga to Algeciras and the ferry to Tangiers Morroco from there. We wanted to catch the 11AM train to Fes which meant we had to get on a bus from Malaga by 6AM or so…. We woke up at 4:30, showered and everything. We had told the hostel owner the day before that we would be leaving early and he told us to just leave the key on the dresser and lock the room’s door behind us because he had another one to get into the room. So… we did just that, only to find that when we got to the first floor, the front gate of the building was key locked! So, we ended up having to sit in the hallway of the building for almost two hours before we were able to rouse the owner and get him to let us out. Here’s a pic of us waiting….