Week 32: Spain, Portugal, France

Originaly, I was going to write portions of this post the night of or day after the events occured to give a more immediate and honest description of my experiences but my days got pretty boring and I stopped doing it. So, the first couple days were written in that style and the rest was written over the last couple days through the cloudiness of recollection.


19/10
Just after I had posted the blog last week, while we were in line for lunch Brian told me that I'd have to leave Can Masdeu the next day because they already a bunch of friends and family expected to visit over the next little while and they take precedent. To be fair, he told me this was a possibility when I arrived. It's probably for the best because the vast number of people who live there and visit the social centre (attached to the house) was too much for my agorophobic sensibilities.


20/10
I wandered around some parks in Barcelona today after checking in to the hostel; nothing special. But I was thinking a lot about the last couple weeks and considering giving up drinking (for safety and spirituality).


21/10
Seven and a half hour bus ride to Madrid! It went by alright though; I slept a lot.

I walked around Madrid centre a bit and checked out Parque del Buen Retiro which had an awesome art exhibit starting (I might go back just to check it out again). The park also has a large paved area where rollerbladers go; it was sort of amusing to watch a bunch of people practicing how to stop on their little brakes.

It had been a few days since I had been out socialising and I felt I was up for it. I'm unable to socialise without liquid courage but I'm definitely gun-shy right now, so I limited myself to beer the whole night. Woo hoo, nothing bad happened to me! Nothing eventful happened either; just a lot walking from bar to bar collecting "free shots" flyers from people on the streets. My group would down the shots and then move onto the next bar for more free shots.


22/10
I have been avoiding museums/art galleries lately because I'm cheap (wish they were free like in Scotland) but I figured I might as well see some in Madrid, so I bought the Art Walk pass which allows entry to three of their biggest art galleries (predominately paintings): the Prado (pre-modern), Reina Sofía Art Centre (modern and contemporary), and the Thyssen-Bornemisza (medieval to contemporary). Although the Prado collection is impressively large, the constant catholic subject matter gets quite tiring. And I don't "get" contemporary art, so my favourite gallery was Thyssen which is not a huge collection but a great sampling of important artists and periods in Western art for the past millenia.

At night, some of us went to a jazz bar just across the street from the hostel which had great music but ridiculously overpriced drinks (330mL lager for €4.50).


Remainder of Madrid
The next day was beautiful out, so I went exploring the local parks. Although the locals congregate in Retiro as I experienced earlier in the week, there are some great parks to the west that were virtually empty. It was quite peaceful considering a hundred meters away there was the chaos of Madrid traffic.


Granada
Wow, after the pace and populus of Barcelona and Madrid, Granada was like heaven.

It took some effort to find my hostel because I only wrote down half the directions but eventually I found it. And what a view! The hostel looks out at the Alhambra. As long as you've got the necessity of some food covered, it'd be tempting to stay up at the hostel for days on end.

But alas I only booked one night and I had plans to start WWOOFing the next day in a small village in southern Spain.


Sierra de Yuega
Despite expecting a girl (Chris is a girl's name in Spain), my hosts were very hospitable. They were overly generous, constantly offering me different foods (despite my reluctance to eat a meal before bed as is the Spanish custom) and teaching me to speak Spanish. I think they expected I would know more Spanish than I did because they knew very little English. Our attempts at conversation were quite humourous.

It got tiring to be working with the old man though, who has little understanding of a person's capacity to learn and retain new words in a short period of time. It also didn't help that he needed to assert himself as the boss and master repeatedly. He means well, I know, but his personality was too much for my little sissy ego and after two days, I had had enough. It's unfortunate because everybody else was so awesome and I think I would have been able to communicate effectively in a week or so. Oh well, on to Portugal.


Lisbon
It pissed down the majority of the time. Other than that, all I can say is Lisbon is frigging hilly. It was like I had to walk double the distance just because I had to go up and down as well as across.

The best thing about Lisbon is that they have a vegan buffet restaurant, Oriente Chiado. That's right, I said buffet. All-you-can-eat buffet!!! I gorged myself. I'm still not used to European restaurant hours though (because I don't eat out often), so I hoped to beat the supper rush and headed over at 17:00. Silly me, they're closed from 15:00 to 19:00. The wait was worth it, though. I ordered a bottle of wine and tried at least one of everything that was available; so good. If you're ever in Lisbon and feel like having something other than meat or fish, go to Oriente.


Guarda
I decided to spend the weekend in Guarda, a town in the Parque Natural da Serra da Estrela. According to Lonely Planet, Portugal is not a country for hiking; the people just don't do it. But there are some trails in the Estrelas that are supposed to be good and Guarda is the largest town in the area, so I headed there. I never did find any trails but enjoyed the walk along the side of the road because the weather was alright (not raining).

My other significant experience of Guarda was that nothing was open Sat afternoons (I arrived at 15:00) or Sundays. Luckily, there's a supermarket on the outskirts of the town though which was open, so I didn't starve.

Oh ya, and for Saturday evening entertainment I went to see Tropic Thunder (god bless the Portugese for subtitling and not dubbing). I think half the jokes were lost on the locals but I enjoyed it.


Salamanca
More cold weather and rain; I guess that's what November means anywhere in the northern hemisphere.

Again, I'm not prepared for the culture: I head over to the vegetarian restaurant, Alcacil, for noon thinking/hoping they'll be open (they don't advertise hours, just that they're open for lunch); the waitress tells me they open at two. Waiting isn't that bad if you have something to do, somewhere to go. It's shitty out, so lounging in a park us out of the question and since this is Spain, everything else closed at 13:00 for siesta and won't reopen until 16:00. Still, the restaurant was the high point of Salamanca for me (the city also has beautiful architecture besides a great veggie restaurant). The menu changes daily (a great sign of quality), so out of a choice of three plates, I went for the pasta with mushrooms which was proceeded by bread, salad, and soup and followed by a plate of clementines (vegetarian restaurant, so the dessert wasn't vegan friendly). I was content and ready to go wait for several hours for my bus (nothing else to do, everyone/thing was on siesta).


Bordeaux
Walked around St. Emilion in the rain for the first day trying to find chateaux that didn't require appointments for visits. I probably would have been successful if the map acurately displayed the location of chateaux. Everytime I walked to an area where I expected to find a specific chateau, it would either be a field or a completely different chateau.

I left the task of finding chateaux up to a tour guide the next day when I visited Medoc. We visited and tasted at Kirwan and Chateau d'Arsac.

Of course, I had to buy some bottles while I was in Bordeaux, so I bought two in St. Emilion (one for that evening and one to come back to Canada) and one from Arsac.

I really liked Bordeaux; the city was beautiful and they've got a shitload of wine. If I'm ever in the area again, I would definitely visit again.


Nimes
Eagerly up at five to six to catch the 7:11 train to Avignon where I hoped to catch a bus to Chateauneuf du Pape. The scattered clouds and misty fog rising from the vineyards created an extremely picturesque train ride. An auspicious begining to the day.

As the sun pushed up through the haze it transformed slowly from a bright orange semi-circle into the fiery white-yellow of suns that mean warm days. But as I arrived at the station in Avignon, the fog caught up with the sun. Objects a hundred meters away were practically invisible. If I was driving maybe it would have bothered me but I was thankful it was warm and dry again (compared to the days earlier in the week).

Well, getting to Chateauneuf du Pape is easy... if you have a car. But the lady at the tourist office suggested I go to La Bouteillerie du Palais des Papes which is a wine shop in the Papal Palace. Three tastings later, forty euro lighter and three bottles heavier, I headed back to Nimes with the hopes of doing some more tastings in the afternoon.

I tasted two reds from the town of St. Gilles which has a cooperative wine shop in the town for all of the wineries. The price-quality ratio was the best I've seen anywhere; quite a few award winners and no bottles over €10. So I bought two bottles (good thing, one of them was corked).

I was disappointed that I didn't get to visit any wineries but five bottles in one day is a pretty good haul (hauling them around in my backpack should be fun too).

The next day I was greeted by quite a surprise when I tried to collect my ticket at the train station; my credit card wasn't in my wallet... or anywhere else on me. The girl at the ticket desk tells me she can't print the ticket without the card, so I think "Fuck it, I've paid for a ticket and I've got a reference number; I'll just get on anyway.". Well, the guy checking tickets didn't see it my way and gave me a fine which I was supposed to pay at the Paris train station. Again, fuck that. I already paid for a ticket. I'm not going to pay a fine because I lost my credit card (so, I'll write a letter to their offices explaining the situation). Looking on the bright side of things, at least it was a direct service and I wasn't kicked off at some random stop in the middle of France.


That brings us to last weekend. I'll post this weeks exploits in a few days.

- Kasza