The First 10 Days

Hola. We've been here about 10 days, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights.

Barcelona - One of the coolest big cities I've been to. I may be alone on this one, but I'd never heard of Gaudi. In case I'm not the only one, he's an architect who worked in the early 20th century on a completely unique style. The two major Gaudi sites we visited were Park Guell and La Sagada Familia. Both were very cool. If I could, I'd post pictures, but I can't at this point.

Additionally, Barcelona has a tourist area that would put Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco to shame. There's all the standard stuff (people dressed in costumes who want you to pay them in order to take their picture, souvenir shops, overpriced restaurants, etc.), but there was also an entire section of La Rambla devoted to birds for sale. I must say, when I'm on vacation and looking for a momento, I'm typically thinking parakeet. And now I know just the stop to find them.

There was also a nice city beach. It was super crowded, but the water was clean and very refreshing. I'd love to say I have first hand expereince with the nightlife, but we didn't really make it out past midnight. Seeeing how everyone is just finising dinner at this point, I can't comment further. But speaking of dinner, we ate a hectic but fun meal crowded into a bar with great tapas.

Pamplona - In my previous travels, I've never really sought out local festivals/holidays. It's hard to find a place to stay, expensive when you find one, and it hasn't seemed worth the trouble. But when you're thisclose to the Running of the Bulls, you go. And so we did. I was considering running with them, and watched for the first day to get an idea of whether this was reasonable or not. The course is short, there aren't very many bulls (6), and everyone only runs about 50 yards.

So of course I chose not to run. It's a very narrow course, the bulls are huge, and there are thousands of other people running. Compared to this, mountaineering seemed reasonable. At least on the mountain, you won't be undone by some drunk who hasn't slept in 24 hours. And for anyone following the news from here, the day the person was killed was the day I would've been running. All in all, I'm good with the choice.

With that out of the way, San Firmines (the whole festival surrounding the running of the bulls) is a phenomenal party. Everyone, and I mean everyone, dresses in white with a red belt and red kerchief. Then they party like rockstars with a few hundred thousand of their closest friends. There are people everywhere, all having a good time. With all the red and white and excessive drinking, I was reminded of going to football games in Madison. Except they do it every day for a week straight. The only downside was out hotel. Since we only booked a couple weeks in advance, we were a ways out of town and had to rely on busses that didn't run late enough into the evening.

San Sebastian - Thanks to Brian Hansen for the recommendation on this one. We're on the northern coast, where it isn't quite as hot and not nearly as humid as Barcelona. It's not far from the Pyrenees Mountains, so the fantastic beach is surrounded by hills. It makes for a beautiful setting. We went sea kayaking this morning, have spent some quality time on the beach, and took an old school railcar up the side of the mountains. Good times all around.

Adios muchachos.

Wine Region Comparison

We´ve just finished a visit to La Rioja, the main wine producing region in northern Spain. Given that we spent the past four years living less than an hour from the most well known wine region in the US, I think it´s time for a tale of the tape:

Natural Beauty - La Rioja has mountains, 1,000 year old buildings and at least a couple areas that aren´t overwhelmed by tourism. Napa seems less industrial and slightly more picturesque. No clear cut winner here.

Sustainability - Unfortunately, this will be based solely on the renewable energy capability from very limited observation of one guy on a bus. However, we have a clear winner. La Rioja has solar panels everywhere, and wind turbines are prevalent. Napa - lagging far behind at this point.

Affordability - We had a three course meal for two, complete with a bottle of wine, for $35. And it was quite tasty. I´ve never had one of those in Napa, because I can´t even get the wine for $35.

Information - La Rioja has a comprehensive museum devoted to all things wine. If Napa has one of these, they need to immediately fire everyone in the marketing department, because I´ve never heard of it. In fact, this is now how I plan to make my millions after grad school. I´ll come back here, copy everything this museum is doing, build one in California, and charge people an arm and a leg to visit. Perhaps I shouldn´t put this on the internet, but I´m pretty sure this has LIMITED readership.

Wine - Um, this is a guy who thinks anything not in a box or jug (sorry Carlo Rossi) is fine, so perhaps I´ll leave that to more knowledgeable people.

So at the end of this less than comprehensive comparison, La Rioja wins 3-0-1. How´s that taste, Napa?

I love the Barcelona metro

Really. I do. It is so easy to use that I didn´t even get us lost when we arrived in town and were heading from the airport to our hotel. That was use of the metro under pressure too. Sara´s backpack weighs about 1,000,000 lbs. give or take a few, so she isn´t fond of carrying it around. And she is definitely not a fan of carrying it if we´re lost. Fortuneately, we popped up from the metro stop across the street from our hotel, so it was all good.

As we booked a hotel the morning we left, we weren´t exactly in the city center. So we had to take the metro every time we wanted to do anything. They sell a block of 10 rides, of which we went through four in our five days in Barcelona. The crowning achievement was taking the metro 4 times before noon on the day we left. You might be thinking that´s overkill. And it might be, but you´d be forgetting a key point... that I love the Barcelona metro.

4th of July, Barcelona Style

We missed out on parades, hot dogs, ice cream and the chance to wear ugly patriotic clothing yesterday. Bummed though we were, we carried on by visiting the park where Barcelona held many of the events for the 1992 olympics. About halfway through the day, we realized there was a big event going on that evening in the park. I think it was the 15th poster advertising the festivities that clued us in. See, we´re super quick on the uptake...

Our version of a 4th of July show consisted of a series of fountains that were illuminated to coincide with chessy American pop music. Mostly one hit wonders from the 1990s, although they did manage to sneak some Prince in there. It was quite a show, and there are pictures, but that will have to be another time. We also saw a tribute to rock and roll, with a band that covered everything from Little Richard to the Doors while a light show was broadcast across an entire side of the olympic stadium.

We arrived

Made it safe and sound, with the bags and everything. I almost slept for an hour on the flight, but not quite. Of course, that meant there was no way in hell our hotel room would be ready when we checked in. Also, the hotel room key didn´t work the first and we had to have it fixed - twice. Add to that the fact that someone barged into our room while we were trying to take a nap on the first day and we´re off to a banner start so far.

Camping in the Rain

Camping exclusively in California can spoil a person in about 0.3 seconds. From April to October, it almost never rains. This ill prepared me for our camping as we drove across the US. The weather report ended up like this:

• Yosemite - located in California. Therefore, no rain
• Tetons - rain
• Yellowstone - rain
• Badlands - tremendous thunderstorm, including lots of lightning, and rain

That last one was especially exciting. When you wake up at 2AM and the tent is flashing more than a strobe light, that's a problem. The storm was far away at that point, but it proceeded to come directly overhead, and resulted in a couple hours of pondering what happens in the event that a tent is struck by lightning.
Despite the rain, we enjoyed the trip immensely. We saw some gorgeous scenery, a black bear on a hike, and stopped at Wall Drug where I had the biggest sticky bun I've ever seen.

Una casa para mi?

Sara and I are fresh off a weekend of looking for places to live in Ann Arbor. I think everyone knows how frustrating this can be: despite attempting to do a lot of research prior to actually visiting a place, there's a lot of misses and very few hits. Sometimes, it's easy to tell almost instantly.

Mr. Landlord, you may think you have the greatest place ever, but I think it's a downstairs unit where I can already hear the neighbors overhead, it's on a busy street that will be a tremendous pain to turn into and out of, and it's half underground. When I can barely see because there is so little natural light, and I'm viewing the house at noon, I consider that to be a bad sign.

At this point, I'm always tempted to say, "Look, let's not waste time here. There is no way we're going to live here, so why don't we skip the tour of the second bedroom and just go our respective ways." Instead, I wander around and feign interest for about five minutes before bolting. Good times all around.