Hyperspace Travel

First off : GPS rocks when you are in a foreign country (probably in your own country as well) and are refusing to take the toll roads, which leads you through tiny roads up and down rural mountain roads until you finally reach the new part of the highway that was under construction 50 km earlier.

Speaking of highways that under construction; a GPS apparently has to be manually updated every so often, and if you decide to take that brand spanking new highway with said non-updated GPS, you will find youself flying through hyperspace (according the the GPS) until you encounter a road that existed at least 4 years ago and re-incorporate into the real world again.

Asturias and Galicia are amazing parts of Spain, and I recommend that one and all visit them to eat salty fresh seafood, pound frothy apple ciders and enjoy crisp white wines, all while marveling at the lush mountains with rivers coming from the rocky northern coast of Spain.

Oh yea, and make sure to go with good friends when you do it.

Here are some pictures to do it all justice.

cudillero

Luarca

This is what traveling through hyperspace looks like

 This is what free wine, ham, and cheese from the desk man in a hotel looks like

 Tower of Hercules, La Coruña

 Abastos Market, Santiago de la Compostela

 Octupus a la Gallego with pimientos de padron

Lost in Andorra

If you are a young adult looking to travel in Europe; stroll in awe of ancient roman and gothic architecture during the day, and gorge yourself on foreign foods and party during the night, I wouldn't necessarily suggest Andorra as the most thrilling place to visit. However, if you want a pleasant mountain getaway, Andorra is home to natural parks with multiple trails, an ecologically sound amusement park called Naturlandia that has dogsled tours, paintball, and a wild rollercoaster thing called the Tobotronc, a rollercoaster car whose breaks you control that barrels down 5.4 km of downhill mountain track in and out of trees, and decently priced menus with good food.

Andorra is a very small country neatly tucked into the Pyranees mountains between Spain and France. So...do they speak Spanish, or French? Neither, their official language is Catalan, which is what they speak in Catalunia - the northeastern autonomous community of Spain - , but of course they speak French and Spanish as well. Coming to Andorra from Spain, or vice verse, can be quite obnoxious because there is a border check performed by the Spanish Civil Guard. Why would they do that in such a small country such as Andorra, and not on the borders of all of the other countries in the European Union? Because Andorra has weird tax laws, and goods like tobacco, booze, and electronics are very cheap. People who don't live too far used to come up every weekend to buy food and the above mentioned goods because it was reasonably cheaper than buying it in your own country.

I spent a weekend there recently, and took part in all stuff I just talked about, well, except the border check, the Civil Guard let us go without opening the trunk. Here are some pics

Maybe it was our easy-going nature, or the fact that we were far removed from anything stressful, but we forgot everything we could have forgotten all week long and still managed the reservations and directions (or lack their of as we got lost about 4 times even with the directions) without problems. Visit Andorra!

Patch it up

In the square between the Parliament building and the "Cubo de Revellín", a cute little black girl rode her bike in circles, gathering all of the leaves from the square and piling them in the middle. Under her round silver rimmed glasses she wore a patch on her right eye.

"Yoohoo!" she shouted, throwing her work in the before beginning a brand new pile.

After scattering her middle pile about the square, she changed places and made a pile in the corner, only to kick it to pieces upon completion.

Where were her parents?

Each time she mounted the bike, the tires lowered a half inch. She needed more air in them.

The menace of passing tourists invading her square prompted a hasty retreat.. All that was left were scattered leaves... 

Last stop Lille and Belgian border

Pulling into one of the most northern cities of France in the dark, my faithful travel companion Beth and I came to the conclusion that there were in fact two hostels listed under "Lille", and that OUR hostel was in fact not in Lille at all, but in some podunk suburb outside of the city that no French man or woman could tell us efficiently how to get to by car. While I believe that collective patience had been tested on the majority of our night time city arrivals, we both took the easier and more carefree approach to the setback by negating the fact that the other hostel had even been paid for and to just get a new one within the city itself. We decided to park the car in a pay spot which was free at night, and I had a wonderful time speaking with two silly cooks on their cigarette break in my broken French that had gotten us around for the past few days, asking them if we could legally park there without being towed. From what I remember, the conversation spawned from parking to drinking, "making the party", and some other nonsensical banter before we wandered off into the city to find a new hostel.

January in the north of France means cold and rainy, but with some insiders' tips we headed directly to a cozy restaurant called Le Broc', which specializes in fondues and all sorts of other tasty cheese platters. Being cold and rainy, the steaming pot of melted cheese with potatoes and meat that I ordered was insanely spot-hitting, but poor Beth had fallen victim to immune system failure (AIDS), couldn't eat her food, and was absolutely miserable. Even though she wasn't well, we still stayed out for a beer and a friendly bar tender invited us to a drink and spoke to us about his time in Spain before we retired to our pleasing new hostel.

The next day I took off on my own because Beth couldn't quite hack life outside of the bed and saw the main square that boasts a giant Ferris wheel and the Grand Palace, a theater, the Citadelle of Lille, the cathedral of Notre-Dame-de la-Treille de Lille (quite a name, I know), and an unnecessarily gigantic shopping center to buy stuff for more magic sandwiches. The city still had ornately adorned Christmas decorations which made the cobblestone streets that much more beautiful.

We managed to hit up a large weekend market in a suburb of Lille that was full of tents with clothes, art, books, food, and the most chicken rotisserie machines I've ever seen. With just enough time to peruse the market, have a bit to eat, see some nasty pantless man on the subway and grab our things, we easily caught our train to Brussels.

What a weird city. I've heard many European people say that Brussels is the ugliest capital city in all of Europe, but I'll be damned before I give them credit for their comments. The city sure doesn't have a consistent flow to it, with gothic, neo-classic, modern business and plain block-style buildings all packed in next to each other, but this did nothing to give me a bad impression of the city. We trotted randomly about the city, seeing the Manneken Pis (famous bronze statue of a small boy peeing into a fountain), Grand Place (central square of Brussels), Brussels Stock Exchange (no explanation necessary), and in the evening went to the Delirium Café which has 2,000 beers on tap and is full of posters, plaques and advertisements of beers through the years. Beth was not capable of continuing, but I decided to stay out and drink absinthe with random people I met in the street until terrible hours of the morning. This absinthe is serious business, 80 proof, that you take in shots traditionally by pouring the shot over a cube of sugar, setting it on fire, dropping the cube into the shot and taking it. This sends you on a mind bending drunken night with 3 Dutch men who were raised on farms, hate pigs, love to talk about how cheap the Dutch are, and have no sense of time, and /or sanity.

Beth took off for her plane earlier than I did so, alone, I single-handedly (and moderately still confused from the delirium bar-absinthe challenge the night before) took down the famous french fries and waffles of Brussels. I was also able to visit the Cantillon Brewery (one that specializes in Kreik style fruited beers) before heading to ANOTHER ON TIME RYAN AIR FLIGHT! Bus to plane to bus, oh wait, no buses available ´cause Zaragoza hates buses to Logroño past 7pm, just the last train that goes to Logroño which leaves at like 2 in the morning and costs a fortune (but does give you pillows, blankets, headphones, ear plugs, toothbrush, travel bag, and electric reclining chairs).

What a trip.

Operation Overlord (France part 4)

To get to the Omaha beach landing zone in Normandy, you have to go down about 10 minutes of very curvy roads with crumbled houses lining them. Upon exiting the car and stepping onto the beach, I felt very strange and kept imagining the landing craft, artillery and m-40 fire raining hell down upon everything in sight. There were some other young people there with champagne and plastic cups. After sketchily glancing at them and listening to them speak we decided that they were Americans tippin' some out for our homies. I had always imagined the beach with the landing mines, craters and barbed wire, but it was eerily calm and could have been mistaken for any other beach had it not been marked with countless signs, bunkers, and historical monuments on the green hills.

Above the beaches is the Normany American Cemetery and Memorial, where endless white crosses are laid out in 10 monstrous plots. The American flag flies high there which gave me a strange feeling as I had not seen an American flag in the air in ages. Inside the memorial are videos and photos that touch close to the heart of any human being that possesses a soul. Large diagrams on the walls show the battle plans of the assault on each separate beach, who was in command, the chronological process and progress of the allied forces advances through the months, etc. The entire experience left me quite solemn, but satisfied as if I'd finished something that I had been working on for years. I was gratified by calling my dad in the states directly from my cellphone to tell him of my recent experience, but only to be disappointed by him for not having visited the crater faced hills of Utah beach landing zone where the rangers scaled 90 degree cliff faces directly into the face of Nazi defenses - he said this was the best beach to visit -.

Fleeing from the strangely tranquil beaches of the D-Day invasion, we hit the road towards Lille in the far far north of France.

The Road to "The L.H." (France part 3)

Heading to Mt. Saint Michelle from Caen started out rather tame and ultimately was easy, until it became dark and we realized that we were looking for a rural hostel in a tiny village. A missed turn presented us with the tricky dilemma of finding out how to turn around and find the cozy village hostel (it was much simpler than we imagined).

Just around the corner from the quiet bed & breakfast / hostel was Mont Saint Michelle, an amazing place to visit that I recommend to all. I also recommend renting a car instead of public transportation trips to more rural areas, it puts the schedule in your hands and gives you total control, and the ability to see beautiful villages that are not connected with commercial bus lines.

Mont Sant Michelle is a medieval monastery and now turned village for wealthy individuals that was an epic stronghold since the 8th century. The views from atop it's terraces of the salt flats that surround it are truly breathtaking.

With the majority of the morning spent meandering about in the salty air, we finally got the car, and headed north towards Bayeux to see the Normandy beaches..

mon français se terrible (France part 2)

With a newly rented and cleaned Fiat monster truck, some ¨insider´s¨ directions from the car rental guy, and plenty of countryside to pass, me and my ¨trusty¨ map-reader Beth (soon to be known as Bess) made our way from Beauvais to Rouen. The drive there was a pleasant 1.5 hours in the midst of snow covered fields and rustic villages. It felt amazing to drive a car again, and even more so being as how the tour presented me with fun curves to take and great scenery to dangerously take note of whilst taking said curves.

We hit our first pit-stop in Rouen: home of a houses with twisted frames (reminiscent of Amsterdam), a Gothic cathedral where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heretical accusations, and one of our first Carrefour sandwhich station creations. Believe you me, we got creative.

Our destination for the end of the day was Mt. Sant Michelle, which is about 4 hours drive from our starting point in Beauvais, so our stop in Rouen was brief, but pleasant. The next stop was Caen.

It looked like this .

Just kidding.

But that's what it looked like a month after D-day as their was an intense bombing campaign to rid the city of Nazi forces and allow the allies to retake it. Caen offers two separate monasteries (one women's and one men's), a castle, and wide pedestrian streets lined with shops and bars. We had trouble getting a big enough beanie for Beth's massive hair on these streets, but none whatsoever in finding a beer and pizza pastry from the friendly people of Caen.

Then began my first stint of French night time driving...

Jawa crawler droit sale (france part 1)

When thinking of vacation, one typically imagines a beach, sun, sand, beer, pools, ocean, whatever... cold and a history of being well renowned for rain mixed with said cold are not necessarily the first two things one might head towards for ¨vacation¨, however, snow covered fields in the north of France actually sounds quite wonderful to me, and it was indeed so.

Let's kick it off with buses to buses to planes to buses to a gated hostel on the highway... that was.. the warmest, coziest, gated highway hostel EVAR. Oh and it was conveniently placed directly next to a Buffalo Grill. If you are unaware of what a Buffalo Grill is, I honestly only suggest that you take a brief glance at this glorious photograph, and most people's spontaneous judgments will do it the justice it deserves.

 Beauvais is "Paris" according to Ryan Air, and it served as the place where I would rent my first car, but more importantly, have my first Buffalo Grill dining experience, and in French! Beauvais had quite the beautiful cathedral that is apparently one of Europe's most impressive Gothic architectural constructions.

 That's me looking at the impressive doorway. It had flying buttresses (my favorite Gothic architectural design) that wrapped all around the building in a semi-circular fashion.

This monster is a Fiat 500. My first ever rental car. It was a champion of not using much gas.




Next was on to Normandy.