Don't make us go back!

For the last four days of our epic journey I booked us a fantastic AirBnB room in Holland Park (Notting Hill neighborhood). Our host was the fascinating Jaana and her home was pristine in a gorgeous wedding cake of a townhome. While we had an open invitation to stay with Lizzie and family again, we knew we were much less fresh-faced than when we'd first been there. Basically we were animals, used to eating torn scraps of baguette and somewhat warm beers, speaking almost exclusively to one another in grunts and gestures, bathing infrequently, and hanging our underpants just everywhere to dry after an old fashioned sink wash. (Future employers: We are totally responsible adults in real life, we swear)

Four days sounded like so much time, and we tentatively planned a day trip to Brighton for Victorian beach amusement, and birthday celebrations that would empty the UK of its alcohol inventory. As you can imagine, we woke up on July 8, our first morning back in London and realized there was so much to do we could only cling to this time with our filthy fingernails. We walked through Kensington park to the Victoria and Albert Museum where we focused on the truly important exhibits: Fashion and Jewelry. We probably could have accomplished much more that day if I hadn't known about the Jewelry exhibit. The gallery didn't allow photos, but that didn't stop me from spending a full two hours there, much to Sally's horror, taking notes on jewelry styles and designers of different eras. I'm not even exaggerating (I kind of wish I were). We also visited the Wallace Collection, a townhome/cubic-city-block-mansion of art collected by five generations of Wallace men. I was inexplicably enchanted by the home's varied marble fireplace mantles, again, I am not kidding here when I tell you that I walked through this house taking photographs of the fireplaces and loudly praising them as Sally sat with head in hands waiting for the sweet release of death. Here's the proof:

 

I should also mention at this point we were at about 463 miles walked according to my absolutely imperfect pedometer. So now we were on a mission to reach 500 miles, we just had to. So we walked. One morning we got up and walked from our AirBnB to Camden Market, a six-and-a-half mile walk that we were about halfway into when the strap on one of Sally's hearty travel sandals tore free. She valiantly trudged on, not only to Camden but back into the center of London.

 

 

Another good reason for all the walking was that London's underground staff had decided to strike on July 9. After visiting Camden we had planned to make our way to the East End for a Sandeman tour, but could only get as far Euston Station, where we encounter a queue for the bus that was approximately 200 people deep at 2pm. Not good prospect for getting to Liverpool Station by 2:30pm. Sally wisely pointed out that it was not worth trying to run there, so could we just stop walking for a minute? That's how we ended up at the British Museum, ostensibly to use the toilets but since we were there, we took a gander at the Rosetta Stone.

The good thing about London is that where there's a will, there's a pub. So that's how we killed time before meeting Lizzie for drinks and Indian food. And after a perfect summer evening telling Lizzie about Francis and other adventures, Sally and I spent three hours trying to get home. It was a damn nightmare. 

Our last day in London was also my birthday. We ate breakfast with Jaana on her rooftop patio, walked to Westminster Pier where we caught the Thames River Service boat to Greenwich. The day was beautiful, the town was really cute in a touristy way, and it was an adventure of train rides back to London.

 

We finally made it to the East End for the Sandeman Real East End Tour. The itinerary looked so fun, a great afternoon adventure, but what the website didn't say at the time was that the tour started on July 31. So we trekked over to Liverpool Street Station, walked from clock tower to clock tower looking for a red umbrella, but 2pm came and went and we were just standing there, totally disappointed. It turned out okay though! We walked through the East End on our own and I pointed out to Sally streets that looked familiar from Call the Midwife. Thank goodness I watch so much British TV. 




We went back to the AirBnB for a bit before heading over to Lizzie's, so I took the opportunity to walk down Portobello Road, admiring the colorful homes and varied market stalls. 

 

 

The rest of the night wasn't captured in photographs, so I'll romanticize it a fair bit. Lizzie & Co had prepared for the big night by setting up a saber-ing station of 20oz beers. Three and a half years ago  when we traveled through India, I taught the Brits how to quickly and effectively remove the cap and lip of a beer using only a dinner knife. Sure it's sexier when a sommelier pops the top off a champagne bottle, but let's be serious: when you have to get to the alcohol, you have to get to the alcohol. This is the endgame of my wine career. Get the good stuff into your mouth. 

I lied, here is the sole photo from the night. Credit: Elizabeth W.

I don't know if British butter knives are weaker than Indian cutlery, or British bottles are thicker than their Indian counterparts, but we had a fairly difficult go of it. I think the men were finally successful, but I was woefully unable to make myself an amber glass ring. The good news was that we did have a bottle opener, so we were able to enjoy a few drinks before heading out to a wonderful South Chinese restaurant specializing in roasted meats and hand-pulled noodles. The entire experience was unique (a delightful departure from Americanized Chinese take-out) and provided deeply entertaining conversation. I am so lucky to have such accomplished and witty friends! On our way back to Southwark we stopped in for more drinks and a pile of chips/crisps to enjoy into the wee hours of the morning. We did precisely that, and on July 11 Sally made our way home. 

A few hours later we were up and out, wishing Jaana well, and met Lizzie again for brunch at Kensington Square Kitchen. It was as hard to believe that we were leaving as it was to anticipate actually taking the trip seven weeks ago. Sally and I didn't have much to say on the tube ride to the airport, or making our way through security. When we got into the terminal, I saw a sign and joked to Sally that it read "Breakfast Pizza" to which she responded, "I could eat." 

And so, the perfect end to our trip together was this: Sally eating a plain cheese pizza while I ate a plate of fish and chips with mushy peas. I couldn't have asked for a more amiable travel partner, nor a better counterpoint to my rather heavily sarcastic outlook.  As Sally finished her last European pizza, I turned to her and said, "Our plane is boarding in ten minutes. Now we have to run."

Welcome home to Sevilla

This might be a very short post because what is there to say about Sevilla? Photos are better:

 

Doesn't that look wonderful? Okay well I've come up with a few things to say. From autumn 2002 to May 17, 2003 I lived in Sevilla, studying culture, language, and international business. I lived with a "Spanish Family" which pretty exclusively means a divorced and/or retired Spanish woman who needs extra income, so she lets rooms. But that's fine, my Señora was fine, and her home was a backdrop to just the most delightful year of my life. I met people with whom I bonded instantly, and count as friends to this day.  I (we) traveled extensively through Spain, though to be fair, once one lives in Andalucía, the idea of going elsewhere is absurd. 

Beaches? Go to Cádiz. 

Alcohol? Welcome to Jerez de la Frontera, have some sherry. 

Delicious seafood? Málaga can get it. 

Home of flamenco? La Triana in Sevilla. 

Love to ski? Head for Granada. 

Site of the world's first bull-fighting ring? Grab a seat in Ronda. 

Most amazing mosque you'll ever see? In Córdoba, obvs. 

Spookiest religious festival? Semana Santa in Sevilla hands down. 

Oldest city in all of Europe? Cádiz again. 

Only place in the world you can walk into the UK? La Línea de la Concepción (to Gibraltar). 

Ice cream so good it makes Italian gelato look like garbage? Rayas in Sevilla.  

Boom. You're welcome world.

Sally and I got to Sevilla at the tail end of June, when Venus and Jupiter in conjunction lit up the night sky after the sun finally set around 10pm. That's also when we sat for tapas and tinto verano at night, and marveled at parents walking their toddlers through the streets until 1am. The first night we arrived around 10pm and threw our bags down and ran out into the streets. Sally had been listening to me and a few other travelers wax romantic about Sevilla, so she was nearly as giddy about seeing it as I was. We wandered through the maze of Santa Cruz, randomly turning right and left and being totally alone but never creeped out (like the time the guy followed us in Berlin). Locals say that even a map won't help you through Santa Cruz, and that everyone gets lost, so I was pretty chuffed to always get us where we needed to go. 

It's so beautiful!

Rather surprisingly, Sandeman doesn't offer city tours here, but luckily for us, our amazing, fantastic, delightful, and very last hostel of the trip, La Banda Rooftop Hostel (with view of La Giralda) works with a tour company that does a few different tours, the first of which we did the afternoon of our first day in town. Before that we spent the morning in the Alcázar and then the Catedral de Sevilla, climbing La Giralda for a view of the city and marveling at the completely unique design aesthetic for which the city is famous. But let's get to it: the tour.  You've gotten a fair bit of European history from my posts so far, most notably of Barcelona, so I'll keep it as brief as the 2,000 years of city history allows.

Phoenicians were probably the first settlers of the area, though mythologically speaking, Hercules is the city's founder. The Romans developed the area extensively around 45 BC, and in fact the hills of Sevilla (now the town Italica) was the birthplace of two important Roman emperors: Trajan and Hadrian. Hadrian rather famously directed construction of a rather famous defensive wall...in 122 AD in Britannia. And preceding Hadrian, Trajan was famous for expanding the Roman empire as large as it would ever get in only 21 years (that's why they needed a wall later). When the Roman empire fell, the area was overtaken a number of times throughout the fifth and sixth centuries, finally by the Visigoths whose capital was Toledo at the time, but saw the utility of a walled city on the Guadalquivir river. They ruled in Sevilla for a few hundred years before the Moors (Berbers from North Africa) conquered the region (and up to the Pyrenees!) in the eighth century. 

I didn't realize that Berbers were not necessarily Muslim, and that it was the Arab conquering of North Africa at the same time the Berbers were conquering Andalucía that ultimately brought Islam to Spain. A series of Caliphates presided over the province until the mid-1200s when Ferdinand III began reconquering the region for the Catholic cause, and while Sevilla fell under Ferdinand, Granada remained an Islamic seat of power in Spain until 1492. We all know what happened in 1492. 

What a tool.

Did you know it was basically Columbus's fault the Muslims and Jews were pushed out of Spain? Because when he came to Queen Isabella for the first time in 1485, she didn't have the funds to send him on his absurd adventure, but she was embarking on a religious reconquering of a very wealthy area of Spain. So instead of simply forcing conversions and having tests of faith and charging outrageous tax rates to any non-Christians, Isabella decided it would simply be easier to own all of the heathens property. "Go home," she said, to families who had lived in Spain for nearly 800 years. If they couldn't, well, they were murdered. Mama's got to make that paper. Seven years later, her coffers fat with the riches stolen from persecuted Muslims and Jews, she waved Columbus on his way. Seriously, can you believe we celebrate this douchebag in the US?!

Okay well that is as far as I'm going with the history lesson. The more important detail is that our tour guide Medi was hysterical and insane. When our large group assembled in Plaza Nueva at 5pm we had no idea what we were in for. With Medi's constant snapping fingers and running frantically around, we looked at each other cynically; could we really stand it all for 2.5 hours? But his pushing and pulling, specifically moving us to enact historic scenes for one another, and as visual aids for his scandalous stories, really made history come alive in a delightful way! 

Members of the tour literally chasing after our guide

We did stick with him...for more like 3.5 hours. We learned about the flags of Spain, Andalucía, and Sevilla, about the varied architectural styles that make up the Catedral and its Islamic foundation that can still be seen in La Giralda (a minaret) and the Patio de los Naranjos (the cleansing area for Muslims). We learned that perhaps it is Christopher Columbus in the fanciful tomb inside the cathedral, or at least one of his relatives. We learned that the beautiful Arabic designs in and around Sevilla are not from the Islamic period at all, but a Christian reinterpretation called Mudéjar. 

 

We learned about the Roman architectural elements that keep the streets of the Santa Cruz neighborhood 5-7 degrees cooler than the large modern boulevards, as well as the expulsion of the Jews, owed in some part to Sevilla's Sosana (played by Sally), a Jewish temptress who betrayed her family to a Christian lover, watched as they were all slaughtered, became a nun for a while, then realized she wanted to get married for real, and ultimately when she died, asked that her traitorous head be hung from the window of her family's house in Santa Cruz.

Where Sosana's head may have hung for 120 years

Whoops, got more history in there. Okay, tour over. We found a place with cheap tinto verano and yummy tapas, and enjoyed the late-night sunset before it dawned on me that we were right in my old neighborhood. So I took Sally along Avenida Eduardo Dato to see if we could find the big Sanyo sign atop my Nervión neighborhood apartment building. The sign had been replaced, and it was quite dark when we got there, but it was the old complex, and I reminisced aloud as we strolled.

The next morning we doubled down on Medi and took another of his epic walking tours, this one covering a totally different facet of Sevilla. I promise I won't bore you. More photos:

 

 

After the tour we were starving, so we took Medi's lunch suggestion and had a great cheap meal at Taberna Coloniales, followed by more delicious helado from Rayas. We took an afternoon breather back at La Banda before we headed out to see a show at the Museo de Baile Flamenco. It is considered a living museum, because while there are both permanent and rotating exhibits, the museum also teaches workshops of dance and music, and shows two nightly performances that change depending on the dancers and guitarists performing. The show we saw consisted of an opening dance, a guitar solo, a female solo dance to very sad, dramatic music, a vocalist solo, a male solo dance to very joyful music, and a big finale! Sally noted that the male performance seemed like a hybrid of Irish river dancing and tap dancing and wanted to start taking lessons. The hour-long performance was beautiful, but the dancing was too fast for my camera. Here's a shot of the dancers, singers, and guitarist taking a bow:

 After that I dragged Sally to La Carbonería, my local haunt a million years ago. It was shockingly empty, but we bought a pitcher of sangria and sat down to watch a smaller scale flamenco performance, for free! Around 11:30pm we realized our sangria intake exceeded our food intake and dashed into the streets in search of nourishment. Sally found homemade potato chips and I found a chicken kebab, so we wound our way back to the hostel for a nightcap on the roof. 

I feel as if I've not conveyed our experience in Sevilla to you, but maybe it's as easy as this: Sally and I walked and walked, ogling a beautiful city under the bright sun and midday heat, cooling off with ice cream and fizzy drinks and generally celebrating life. Our last day in Sevilla was lovely and slow, enjoying the morning at the hostel, walking out to the Plaza de España, meandering through Parque Maria Luisa, drinking coffee, eating lunch, and mentally preparing for a new country. 

 

Our next stop, France. 

But first, Sally and I reenacted one of the last photos I took the last time I was in Sevilla:

 

YES.

Barcelona, twelve years later

How is it possible that we are only two weeks away from the end of our adventure? With this snowballing threat of reality rushing ever closer, we boarded a plane from Venice to Barcelona on June 28, 2015. I couldn't quite believe my good luck in returning to Spain after twelve years, and was so excited I naively ignored the weather forecasts. My return to Europe has heralded a heat wave that approaches the severity of what the continent experienced the last time I was here, in the summer of 2003. That summer, while I sat blithely in my Florentine apartment in my underwear crafting top level dance moves with my flatmates, people were dying by the thousands. We had no idea it was that serious since we only watched MTV, and only managed to hydrate ourselves with cheap cocktails and the occasional watermelon.  

exhibit A: sweating and drinking in 2003

exhibit B: erin and a watermelon in 2003

Sally and I are much more aware and prepared this time around. However, there is just no way to avoid a long hot walk from the bus stop with your 30lb "I packed so light!" backpack. We stayed at the Rodamon Barcelona Hostel off of tres chic Passeig de Gracia, quite close to Gaudis two outrageous townhomes, Battlo and Pedrera. And although the temps were bordering on 95F, I'd promised Sally a rare treat in Spain: bagels. Twelve years ago I visited Barcelona with a raucous band of friends from my study abroad program in Sevilla. We were also known to walk endlessly, but in Barcelona we found a bagel shop and parked ourselves there for two, yes two meals. Sally would have sold all her belongings for a good bagel at that point, so we found the shop online, got some sketchy directions and headed straight over. Like I said, we aren't museum fanatics.

 

Me the Sevillanas at La Pedrera, 2002

The good news is that the bagel shop is still there...the bad news is that it was not open, per internet promises, and Sally clung to the metal cage the street wailing for her lost love. Perhaps she wasn't quite so dramatic, but only because we made a beeline to a pizza shop across the plaza.

*Ed. Note: I forgot to bring my camera for this whole day. Here is a stock photo depicting Sally’s reaction: 

Now full of her second favorite food, we slowly made our way up to Parc Guell, another Gaudi project. On the way we heard 50s music in the streets of Gracia, and followed it to a plaza where a spontaneous swing dance party was taking place! We watched the dancing and enjoyed the music for a little while before trudging on. In the interim between my visits to Parc Guell, Barcelona wised up to the money-making opportunity they had, and began charge for access to the architecturally developed areas of the park.  Eight euros was a bit dear for our cheapskate traveling goals, so we traipsed through all the free parts of the park and eyeballed the rich people sitting on benches in the paid access part.

After some quality people watching in the park, we descended, ate popsicles, and hiked across town to La Rambla. This boulevard falls under the category of “you must see this, even if you don’t know why.” La Rambla was historically a central trading, meeting and market place, and religious center, but now it is really just an outrageous tourist trap. We thought we might sit for an afternoon liter of beer, but upon seeing the TEN EURO price tag at each of the outdoor restaurants, we ran screaming down the road to the waterfront.  The waterfront is rather commercial as well, complemented by a towering monument to Christopher Columbus, whom Barcelona claimed as their own, and are still apparently not embarrassed by that completely unsubstantiated claim.  Anyway, I tease, but Barcelona has plenty of lovely sights that were new to me entirely, and which we discovered our second day on (you guessed it) our Sandeman Free City Tour.

The general region of Barcelona and Tarragona were settled by the Phoenicians in early 500 BC, though there may have been small tribes living there when the Phoenicians arrived. Three hundred years later the Romans came to Spain’s east coast and set up Barcelona as a functional city, though still very small. The tour started in the Gothic Quarter, which was built by the invading Visigoths of the mid-sixth century AD but still has walls from that Roman period. 

  

We headed to the Call Judeu, where we learned that Barcelona’s first synagogue was built in approximately the third century BC, the remnants of which can still be seen in the Jewish Quarter of Barcelona. We didn’t go in the old synagogue on our tour, but read more about it here and see some neat photos! For all the religious tolerance during the Roman period, the Jewish story takes a predictably tragic turn in the Dark Ages, when the community was able to avoid the Black Death due to their hygiene practices and of course the fact that the Christians had walled them into their own ghetto and thus didn’t come into frequent contact with the infected. Obviously that meant they were somehow responsible for the plague. Then of course Jews lived through a series of forced conversions to Christianity, culminating in the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century. Traveling through Europe really is a history of how terrible humanity has been to Jewish populations, geez.

The most important thing to know about Barcelona is that it maintains a fierce sense of independence from Spain, maintaining that it should be a separate nation. There are a few reasons for this, so I’ll try to outline them briefly.

First of all, Barcelona is the capital of Catalunya, a province that became part of the territories belonging to the Crown of Aragon in the 12th century. Barcelona would have been the western-most part of that territory, as it covered both sides of the Mediterranean. So yes, nearly 1,000 years ago Barcelona was independent. I’m not sure that’s a legitimate claim to sovereignty now, but let’s go on.

Second, the most understandable reason separatists hate Spain is that under Franco’s fascist leadership (1936-1978), Barcelona was shockingly oppressed. Franco believed in one Spain, and squashed any displays of regional pride, language, culture, and leadership.  Not only did Franco set up puppet courts to try citizens for falsified crimes (then execute them), he invited his fascist friend Mussolini to test out his bombs on the city, which he did in 1938. And it is troubling that still Spain doesn’t decry these atrocities as vociferously as it should. And I know 1978 isn’t terribly far in the past, but I still think there can be a balance of provincial autonomy while sharing in the greater nation of Spain for international prominence and stability. 

Lastly, the ugly side of Barcelona’s independent streak: rumor has it that they think they are better than the rest of Spain. They believe they are smarter, financially stronger, and ultimately more European than their campesino countrymen. They pay more taxes than other provinces but receive the same benefits as those lazy Andalusians, and are not equally represented in the central government. Taxes and representation, that is a call to independence that any US citizen can understand. I think the regional bigotry is pretty harsh, but then I’m from Northern Virginia, an area that would also like to separate itself from the rest of its commonwealth.  I suppose I just think that it is better to try to change Spain’s political leanings from within than to write off the country as a whole. 

I’m sure what I’ve boiled that argument down to is grossly insufficient, but I’ve got to move this post along, so please forgive me.

When the free tour ended, Sally and I went to the meeting point for the Gaudi and Modernism tour, which covered a much different Barcelona experience. The tour didn’t enter any of the buildings we learned about, but gave us a good overview of important architectural works in Barcelona. The Modernisme era was Barcelona’s answer to Art Nouveau in France, a twenty year period at the turn of the 20th century that sought creativity, nature represented through architecture, and a rejection of the bourgeoisie. Ultimately, of course, the bourgeoisie would appropriate the style and end the movement. Our first stop was the Palau de la Musica Catalan designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner in 1905. It is still a functioning music hall today, with a spectacular interior dominated by a stained glass ceiling representing the sun in the sky (here’s a photo on wikipedia). We went on to see a number of other buildings including Casa Battlo, Antoni Gaudi’s homage to Barcelona’s patron saint, St. George, La Pedrera, his last completed project before his death, and finally La Sagrada Familia, which he worked on until his tragic death in 1926 (hit by a street tram, then left in the road for hours because passersby thought he was a vagrant). 

A note about La Sagrada Familia: this cathedral is in its 135th year of construction. That sounds ridiculous until you realize that Notre Dame de Paris took 182 years to build initially and has been under constant renovation since the 1300s, and that Brussels Cathedral of St. Michael took a cool 900+ years to finish. So all in all, La Sagrada Familia is right on track. Now, that doesn’t mean I want to pay 20 Euros a second time to see a still unfinished building. Still, in 12 years I can see a difference from the outside. And a follow-up note: while this cathedral was originally designed in its entirety by Gaudi, his original plans were lost in a fire set by Catalan anarchists in the early 1900s, so what is being built today is perhaps based off of his original design as remembered by architects of the time who saw the plan. I don’t know, for some reason I am just not a fan of this “big deal” tourist site. Call me when it’s finished. 

2003

 

2015

Okay you guys, I know this is a LOT about just Barcelona. Here are some pretty photos of Catalan street art and then me with my brother Mario who lives and studies in Barcelona and with whom Sally and I had tapas on our last night in town! The next morning we all met up again and went to the beach for a few hours, but I have no photos of that. I could tell you all about how Barcelona got its beaches, but at some point we are all going to die from old age, so let’s just move to Sevilla.