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."

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.

 

I am not a chick-lit heroine.

In most chick-lit, a heroine takes charge of her destiny after a major life event causes her to rethink her plans and goes on to live a hilarious, professionally successful, and romance-filled adventure. That's not what happened to me. To be sure I had a professional implosion, a romantic disaster, and a major health scare, but my response was to move in with my mum. That's real life, isn't it? You fail miserably as an adult and your parents are required to take you back?

The story I aim to tell isn't my triumph over adversity to find my ideal career/soulmate/passion for marathons. This blog is going to chronicle what I do and where I go in the meantime...meantime being my real life, just not necessarily the one I thought I would have. Traveling is one of the most pleasurable constants in my life and I'm lucky to have the opportunity to experience all the marvelous places I have visited.

The reason for this trip in particular highlights how when you think you have a plan for your life, you are shown how truly wrong you were. Because after my life fell apart, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, returned to school in preparation for a graduate degree, visited campuses, took tests, wrote essays, paid fees, sent applications...and wasn't accepted.

In fact, this trip was supposed to be a "last adventure" before starting graduate school and becoming a "real adult." Oh the sweet sweet irony. Instead, this trip is about being open to change, adventure, and sleeping in hostels.  This is about as introspective as this blog will get, I promise. I have six weeks to see ten countries and I get to share it all with my friend/babysitee/adult-baby/neighbor Sally, who just graduated from university and really has it all together. Hopefully she'll give me some tips.

Here's a photo of her when she was 11:

She's taller now. 

So here's our trajectory, which is what you're really here for I'm guessing. 

England --> Scotland --> England --> Belgium --> Netherlands --> Germany --> Czech Republic --> Germany --> Hungary --> Italy --> Spain --> France --> England

You can check here for a running commentary and some choice photos, and then of course you can see the whole unedited photo stream at Smugmug.