Jenn's Spain Set

Jenn has grouped a selection of her pictures of Spain in a single set. This includes everything from Madrid, Sevilla, and Barcelona, and all places we went in between. You can find it here:


Jenn's Spain Pictures

Sevilla, Spain pictures

Sevilla was great. I think I liked the Alcazar the best, but the Plaza de Espana and the Cathedral were very impressive. I'd go back again. However, the guide books all say not to go during July or August or you will fry like a skillet of paella!


OK, here are my pictures for Sevilla, Spain.

Posted my Toledo Pictures

Whew, I'm getting tired of posting pictures on Flickr... :-p

But, I've made it through my Toledo pictures.



Here they are...

Segovia Pictures

I just got done posting my pictures from Segovia, Spain. Unfortunately, the pictures inside the Alcazar did not turn out well: mostly blurry. The exceptions are some of the shots of the stained glass windows. Very nice.



Here are my Segovia pictures.

Pictures of Avila, Spain

I just finished uploaded my pictures of Avila, Spain.


You can see them here.

My Pictures of Madrid

Whew, I've been working up a sweat trying to get some pictures uploaded onto Flickr. But, I've finally got some of my pictures from Madrid posted. Just Madrid. You can see the set here:

My Madrid 2005 Pictures on Flickr

Part of the reason it is taking so long is that each picture file is pretty big. The 5 megapixel camera is generating files as big as 4MBs. Plus, our broadband connection is optimized for downloading, not uploading. Also, it seems Flickr has been having some "issues" again. Sigh. And, if that isn't enough, we've had two power outages here in the past 24hrs. Thanks PGE! Hope the city condemns you...

Jenn has uploaded a lot more photos than me, but she hasn't divided them into sets yet. You can see her "raw stream" here: Jenn's Photos on Flickr

Now that my Madrid pictures are up, I hope to get the Avila and Segovia picutres up next.

Home, Sweet Home

We are back! It's kind of surreal in a way to be back home. The house is almost exactly as we left it. It's almost like we never left...

As I type, Jenn is sleeping. The last thing I remember is Jenn and I getting back from dinner around 5pm and I went downstairs to pet Kona. The next thing I know it is 11:00 and dark outside. Whoa, I must have been tired. After waking up in a strange hotel over the past 3 weeks, it was just as strange to wake up in our own basement...

Today was a very long day. Long long long. We had a 7am flight from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. Ugh. That meant waking up at 4am (Amsterdam time or 7pm Portland time the previous evening...). We left the hotel around 5am and took a Taxi (unmarked BMW) to Schiphol (pronounced skip-pool) airport.

We get to the airport and there is this huge line. I mean, it's 5am people!!! Oh well, we finally get to the ticket counter and the woman gives us our boarding pass and tells us that since we want to check our backpack, we will have to wait with them for over an hour and a half because the conveyor belt isn't working. Huh? Apparently if we had regular suitcases we could leave them with her, but because we have a bunch of straps and the conveyor belt isn't working... What? What is worse is the line to get through security looks very long indeed and if we did wait over an hour with our backpacks, because the conveyor belt wasn't working, we never would have made it through security to catch our flight. Finally, we decide to do as she asked and went over to the place to wait with our backpacks (because the conveyor belt didn't work...) but was met with a kind woman from another airline who said we could just leave our bags with her. We decided to take her word for it, because we never would have made it through security otherwise. I had a funny feeling that we would never see those packs again, but we went with it.

It was a quick flight over to Frankfurt. The only problem is that we had a 5 hour layover. Ugh. Not enough time to take a taxi into town and see Frankfurt. So, it's holiday in Frankfurt airport. Since we didn't get that much sleep, the goal was to just find a quiet place to rest our heads. We get in the long line to go through yet another security check. Funny thing, there are huge signs everywhere in this wing of the airport stating that they must subject you to all of these extra checks because the American government says we have to. But, when we finally get to the check point, the guy looks at our tickets and says "Portland? No." What?!? Was the flight canceled? Does he just have a thing against Portland? Then he finally says that we cannot enter the security area more than 2 hours before our flight. Ugh...

So, we head back to the main part of the airport, which has virtually no seating outside the restaurants, and an even smaller amount of seating marked 'no smoking'. Jenn spots a bench in the nonsmoking eating area and we crash. At this point I'm so sleepy that I just put my head on the table in front of the bench and quickly fall asleep. I'm awakened by the sound of two Americans yelling "hey, that's Andre Agassi. Is that him? Yes, that Agassi!" I never got a good look at him, but Jenn later confirmed that she did in fact see Agassi with a small child an another unknown woman who was not Steffi Graft.

finally 11am local time comes around and we go back through security and head for our gate. Jenn has her camera in her back, but I was carrying mine in my pocket. So, I surrender it to the security people before going through the metal detector. On the other side I am told there is an extra check for the camera. I'm taking to another station where the seem to examine my camera with what looks like a hair blowdryer. So, I have to ask what they are doing. I'm told they are checking my camera for explosives. Oh. Apparently my camera isn't a bomb and I'm given it back. We eventually find our gate and crash in some small chairs. There are some longer benches here that would have been great to sleep on if they had let us through before, but then Jenn wouldn't have seen a famous tennis star...

Then, just before boarding, we are asked to leave the boarding area. Huh? We collect our stuff and head out. Then, one by one, they check our tickets and let us sit in the boarding area again. They is just more of the same strangeness. It is nearly time to leave and both Jenn and I noticed that there is no plane to board... But, we are hustled down the ramp, then down some stairs to the tarmac to some buses, which eventually takes us to our plane.

The flight from Frankfurt to Portland takes 10 hours. *sigh* Still we managed. What surprises me is that the Portland/Frankfurt flights both way are completely full. And, it was a pretty big plane too. It was no 474, but it was one of the larger Airbus (A360-300, if I remember correctly), which seats 2,4,2 in econo-class. The plane held well over 200 people, maybe even 300.

We waited and waited and waited for our packs to arrive at the carosel. But, finally there they were. Yippee! :-) Jenn's mom Linda was outside and took us home. Like I said before, things are a little blurry for me after that. We had dinner, then came home. We had been awake for nearly 24 hours, except for brief naps in the airport and on the plane. Next thing I know I'm waking up at 11pm in our basement... :-)

Anyway, it is good to be come. We had a great trip. Now we just need to get our sleeping schedule back to normal. Luckily, we have a 3 day weekend to work on it.

We'll both probably start uploading pictures to Flickr tomorrow...

What a great place!

Amsterdam has been great! We've seen canals, boats, leaning buildings, and prostitutes in little rooms. Okay so that last one wasn't that great but when in Amsterdam...

Today we went to the Van Gogh Museum. It was really exciting to see so many of his paintings that I'd never seen before. We even got to see a couple from Arles. We also went to the Rijksmuseum but it's under construction so we only got to see a fraction of their collection. Although after Van Godh museum the stuff at Rijks seemed a little stuffy (Greg just hurmphed when I wrote that).

We spent the rest of the afternoon the same way we did yesterday, walking around the city. It's kind of like the walking wounded right now. We both have neck pains and at least one foot that hurts every so often. Maybe it's all the walking?

Tonight we are taking a candlelight night boat tour of the canals. It's starts at 9:00. The only problem is the it doesn't get dark until about 11:00. So much for those night shots. Oh well, they're better from dry land.

Tomorrow we may go on a bus tour so I can see some windmills and maybe some tulips. Then the day after, a day trip to Haarlem or perhaps The Haage. It's still up in the air.

Well, Greg's back seat internet driving is driving me nuts so I'm going to sign off. :)

Amsterdam!!!

Yep, we are here! We got in yesterday just after 2pm and we've been walking all over town ever since (except for a brief stop to sleep in our hotel...). Wow, what a great city. I think this remains my favorite! I just love the canals and bikes and generally friendly people. A nice change from the noisy grumpy hustle of Paris.

The weather has been excellent! I think we've really lucked out. Yesterday was a mix of cloudy and sunny. It did get really dark and threatening a little bit after we got here, but last night got nicer and it was sunny all day today.

Amsterdam is everything I remember, and a bit more. It is definitely more crowded than I remember. Sunday afternoon seemed like shoulder to shoulder in some of the more popular plazas. There are definitely more "coffeshops" than I remember. The trams are different. There is actually a ticket agent who rides around in each tram so that you can buy a ticket. However, we got 3 day passes in the train station when we first got off (although we've only rode once...). But, enough is familiar to me that I've actually been able to retrace some of the same steps that Shawn and I took when we were here before. Look for the matching photos that I'll post as soon as we get back... :-)

OK, Jenn's turn... :-)

Paris!!!

Wow, we finally got a chance to stop by at an internet cafe... We've been busy! :-)

We got into town Wednesday at the Gare de Lyon train station and it was only 2 metros to our hotel. The hotel is called something like Hotel de Hauts de Passy. It doesn't have a lot of stars, but it on a quiet, pedestrian only street just a few blocks from the river, in an area due east of the Eiffel Tower and across the river. Very nice area! The street is lined with little specialty shops for just about everything we could possibly want. I'm really happy with the place.

So, Wednesday evening we just walked around the area around the tower and then caught the Botabus (water bus). We road that up the river than got off at the Notre Dame and took a few pictures. Later that evening, we road the botabus after dark for some great Paris city light views. Very nice!

Thusrday we did the Musee D'Orsy, which has a rather large collection of great impressionist paintings. The Van Gogh and Monets were especially great. But, one down note is the the Musee D'orangerie is apparently closed for renovations. Oh well.

Yesterday we took a train down to Giverny to see where Monet lived and painted his famous water lillies. I have too say that although the gardens are wonderful, it was a lot of time consuming work to ride both the train and wait and ride the shuttle bus (we had to wait an hour at the train station for the bus to come take us to the gardens). I'm glad we saw the gardens, which are beautiful, but I'd have a hard time recommending the trip to someone else.

Today we went to Fontainbleau (sp). This is an impressive fortress palace south of Paris. It was the home to several French kings through out the 14th and 15th centuries, but is probably best known as the home of Napolean I during is reign. It is huge! I think it may be a lot larger than Versalle. But, it has been neglected over the years and only part of it has been restored and is open for viewing. In all, it only took half a day to get down there and see it and get back. It was worth it. We took a lot of really great pictures both inside and out.

So, today is our last day in Paris. Tomorrow it is off to Amsterdam! Yippee! I can hardly wait! We may or maynot be able to get on the internet while in Amsterdam. So, this maybe our last entry until we get home. One of us will at least log our return and then we will start posting all the pictures! :-)

Until then...

Last Night in Arles

Arles is very nice. In fact, Provence is very nice, from what little we have seen of it. It is lush and green and full of old Roman ruins and other wonderful sights. I wish we had more time to see it. We will definitely have to come back again soon! And, yes, next time we will get a car and see the country side more. sigh. Next time!

Last night we stayed out late and took a bunch of night pictures in Arles. They look really great, on our tiny little lcd screens. The highlight for me was capturing the famous cafe from the Van Gogh painting from roughly the same place he did. This capped off a great day of following the carefully recreated places where Van Gogh did many of his famous works. It is a bit contrived, but it was fun and we ate it up.

Today we did manage to get to Avignon! It is just as nice as the guide book says. I wish we could have spent more time there. But, we did manage to touch the major highlights. Old Avignon is a beautiful medieval walled city. The wall is nearly complete around the entire old area (several miles of wall!) and has nice towers about every 100ft or so. But, probably the highlight of Avignon is the Palace of the Popes, which is a huge fortress that housed the pope during the age of 'French Popes' (can't remember dates, but I think it was 14th century --will check...) The only downside to our trip was that it rain! I mean it poured! We tried hiding in a cafe for lunch during one terrible downpour, but we still got soaked. It is such a change from dry dry Spain. But, I guess we had better get use to it: the forecast for Paris is even cooler with more rain. Oh well. At least Paris has some of the worlds great art museums!

Speaking of Paris, getting a hotel was a bit more of a challenge. Sorry Lynda, didn't get a chance to try Hotel Muguet, but thanks for the tip! I forgot to write down the name of the place we did finally get, but it is just across the river from the Eiffel Tower. Also we booked a TGV (highspeed train nearly 200mph!!!) from Avignon to Paris for tomorrow morning. We can hardly wait!!! It is truly one of the wonders of the world and the one place that both Jenn and have been before and wanted to see again.

So, tomorrow morning it is a bus from Arles to Avignon (oddly enough the train from Arles does not go to the TGV station in Avignon -- only the bus does), then the TGV to Paris! Wish us luck! Hopefully it won't be like the trip from Barcelona...

Btw, I think I already said we decided to skip Nice. Even with the highspeed trains it was going to take too long to get from Nice to Paris. So, we will save that adventure for another trip when we can spend more time there and see more of the surrounding country. Next time!

Next stop: Paris!!!

Arles

Wow. Arles is fantastic! Van Gogh stayed here starting in February 1888 and we got to see the sights of some of his paintings. The two best were Cafe at Night and Garden of the Sanitorium. We just saw Cafe at Night in Seattle and visiting the cafe is almost like walking into his painting. We are going back tonight to take more photos after dark.

The sanitorium is also in pretty good shape. If we had been here in winter and the fountain was working, we could almost recreate the painting.

We also went to the sight of The Yellow House. Unfortunately the house the Van Gogh stayed in was destroyed at the end of WWII. The other buildings in the painting still survive.

Well, time to book the hotel in Paris. Greg claims today is the midpoint of our trip but I refuse to believe him. :)

Bonjour!

Four trains out of Barcelona we are finally in Arles, France. I know Greg was just down here for like an hour so I will try not to bore you too much with repeating what he has already said.

As happy as I am to be in France, I already miss Spain. Barcelona is one of my favorite cities. In Spain, I could try to speak the language. I could even understand some of it. I at least knew numbers. Here in France I don't even know how to say I don't speak French (although Greg is trying to teach me). Not only that but their keyboards are really frustrating!

Anyway, France is going to be great! I'll just have to adjust to not knowing the language. Tomorrow we are taking a break from trains and exploring Arles. What I saw of it tonight was lovely. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Greetings from Arles, France!

The hotel we are now at has unlimited internet access for free! The catch? It's a French keyboard and many of the keys are in the wrong place (more so than Spanish!!!). So, I'm back to hunt'n'peck days... Also, it was a long day, so if I stqrt typing like this I hope you understqnd:::

The long day: Yesterday we got our reservation for Barcelona to Arles, France. Just two trains, or so we were told... We had a scheduled stop in Narbonne, but when we got there today, there was no train to Arles. Here we are, Jenn and I speak almost no French... Finally I manage a little 'oo ay la train poah Arrrl?' The train conductor was helpful but assured me that the train to Arles left an hour ago, despite the schedule the people in Barcelona gave me. 'Oh,' I said, 'la Span EESH!!!' He laughed. I felt pretty good about deparaging the Spanish in front of a Frenchman...

So, he tells us to take the next train to NEEmah, and points to the board with the name Nimes. We wait in the station then catch the train to Nimes. No problem. We get to Nimes, go to information, give them my best 'oo ay la train pouh Arrl?' But, there is no train to Arles! None. Ever. We must take the train to Avignon, THEN we can take the train to Arles. Is this for real? It's starting to get later in the afternoon and I'm starting to wonder if we will figure this whole thing out before the trains shut down for the night. But, we take the next train to Avignon and go to Information and OUI, in half an hour there is a train to Nice... with a stop in Arles. FINALY we get to Arles about 8 hours after we leave Barcelona...

France is beautiful, but noticably different from Spain. Hard to describe without a degree in architecture, but the buildings look very different. It's a nice change. Alres is very small and sleepy compared to the noicy cities of Spain. We had our first Provencial meal of local red wine, fish soup with a side of croutons, cheese, and garlic paste, AND a main cource of trout. 'tray bone' I managed... It was very good. Tomorrow we plan to kick around town then we'll start planning day trips via, gulp, more trains...

Until then, 'of-wah!'

Other people´s pictures

OK, for those of you who need to see pictures of where we´ve been and can´t wait for ours, I have this suggestion. Check out Flickr! Here are some helpful links.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/gaudi/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/toledo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/avila

Bye Bye Barcelona!

Last day in Barcelona. Wow, what a beautiful city!!! Right now I have to think that it is THE most beautiful city that I´ve been to, but we´ll be in Paris and Amsterdam next week to make some comparisons. [sorry, no spellchecker again...]

Barcelona is certainly very different from Madrid or Sevilla. The way people dress is probably the biggest most obvious difference. The dress in southern Spain is certainly more, um, provocative. :-) This may be because of the weather (about 10-15 degress warmer for us in Sevilla vs. Barcelona), but there is definitely a cultural change. The other difference is the number of people here who can speak at least some English. In Madrid/Sevilla English was pretty rare, but in Barcelona it is much more likely that the people you encounter speak at least a little English. Finally, I don´t want to say Barcelona is more conservative than the southern Spain, but it does seem more European. In general I´d say we´ve been treated very well through out Spain. Not everyone was completely patient, but most at least tried to be helpful. It certainly ranks higher than my experiences in Italy...

I think we´ve seen most of the outdoor sites that can be seen here in Barcelona, but we didn´t get to any of the major museums. Gaudi, Gaudi, Gaudi! Yesterday we saw the park Guell(sp) and the famous cathedral Sagrada Familia. Both outragous! Really amazing. Can´t say enough superlatives. Today we saw the two Gaudi builds on Gracia. We toured La Pedrera and got to see an apartment displayed in original condition and went up to the roof. Beautiful! We also went down to the first floor, where they have an art museum, where they were displaying works of famous artist that have drawn seens from Don Quiote. They included Dali, Picaso, and others.

Yesterday I tried to book our next stay in Avignon, but couldn´t find anything reasonably priced in the center of town. So, we´re going to spend the next 3 nights in Arles, France (much cheaper!). This is only barely a disapointment. Arles appears to have many cools things to see and places to be. This town is probably best known for Vincent Van Goah´s extended stay here. The guide book says that Vincent´s craziness got him in so much trouble here, that they imprisoned him in his house for over a month! It may be no suprise then that there are no original paintings of his left in the town... :-( But, we will be able to see some of the things he painted, including, famously, the cafe at night scene, of which we have a print in our living room (and saw the original in Seatle last year with Lynda and Carter). Very cool!

Oh, one more funny that happened to us today. We were stiting in a cafe in front of Sagrada Familia (we just had to see it one more time before we left) and they had this mocking bird in this cage. It is apparently it belongs to the cafe. But, the funny thing is that this bird was apparently mocking the traffic noices! Laugh! A bus would go by and make this creaking noice and the bird would go ´CREAK´. Then a care would hit the breaks hard and the bird would go ´SCREACH´. But, the funniest was his mock of a moped taking off. ´Gahrrrrrrrr´ Too funny!

So, tomorrow we take the 8:45am train to France. This will be a bigger challenge for both Jenn and I. We both at least had a little Spanish in school, but no French. Should be interesting, but as long as we at least find our hotel, I´ll be happy. Oh, did I mention that we have a 15 minute layover and have to change trains? I can´t even remember where...

Oh, I finally finished up my 1GB card. I think I ended up getting around 700 pictures on it, at 5MP each (Btw, Jenn´s waaay ahead of me on the picutre count -- I think around 1000!). Man, I can hardly wait to get them uploaded. I´m typing right now in a cafe that has already said I cannot upload photos here. Oh well. As soon as we get home!

Next time I type, we´ll be in France!!! We´re planning to start off in Arles, then do day trips to Avignon, maybe Orange, maybe Aix en Provence. We´ll see. Then, perhaps a night in Nice, though it is a little out of the way... Then Paris, then Amsterdam. What a GREAT trip! Wish you all were here with us. :-) We are reading each of your comments, but haven´t had time to respond to them. sorry...

Barcelona!!!

Yep, we´re here! Quick warning, no spell checker on this entry (like Madrid, this cafe´s configuration is making blogger think I´m spanish)... So, sorry in advance.

The overnight train wasn´t so bad. That was the 4th time that I´ve been on an overnight train and the first time that I slept more than a couple hours. Not sure why I slept so well this time, maybe I was just tired. One funny thing though. Jenn and I decided to have paella one last time before we left. But, when we got on the train, the conduct insisted that we go to the train car (we spoke no English and wouldn´t except that we were not hungry). So, we got to the diner car, got the waitress to give us some water, and just sat there for a while. Ah, nice to relax. But, after a while the waitress got a little concerned (also spoke no English). She kept pointing through the menu and showing us great food options. She seemed to think that we just didn´t understand that it was dinner time (it was actually nearly 11:00pm). After awhile, she finally gave up. Then we decided to go back to our room (a nice private room with a bathroom and shower -- on a train!!!). But, the conductor was still confused. Finally, Jenn managed to explain to the conductor in Spanish that we just weren´t hungry. This seemed to work. But, about 15 minutes later he knocked on the door and asked again if we wanted some dinner. :-) Oh well. That was the last time. We did have breakfast on the train, which was also included with the price. Next time we´ll be carefull not to eat much before taking an overnight train which includes dinner...

The original plan for Barcelona was to try and find accomadations in the trainstation. But, after flipping through the guide book, there was no mention of a location service. Also, we were reading the prices for medium range (ie not hostals) hotels and finding that there are virtually none under 100€ for two. Turns out Barcelona is very expensive for hotels, like Amsterdam. So, we ran back to the internet cafe (still in Sevilla) and booked our hotel online. We didn´t save any money this way, but it is so much easier. Our room is roughly the same price quoted for other places, but it is very nice and centrally located (near plaza espanya).

So, although we were pretty foot tired from our last day in Sevilla, we still managed to walk around the hills above our hotel. Montjuic is a mountain the overlooks the harbor. Because of it´s strategic location, there an impressive looking fortress on the top with many mounted artillary. It also has an impressive view of Barcelona and the Medaterainian. After than we took a gondola over the bay and to the beach. This bothered Jenn a little, since she doesn´t like enclosed spaces or heights too much. But, I tought it felt pretty solid, better than it looks from on the ground. From the beach we made our way back to the metro and back to our hotel.

So, we´re just killing time waiting for the resturants to open up. Typically, resturants don´t open for dinner until at least 7, though usually much later. According to the guide book, the typical dinner our in Barcelona is between 9 and 12.

The internet cafe here just told me that I may NOT hook up my camera. Sigh. The place back in Sevilla was really great! I should have done it then. Live and learn...

That´s it for now. We´re going to do the open top bus tour tomorrow. I can hardly wait! Type later.

Last Day in Sevilla

Whoa, been walking in Sevilla today nearly non stop for the past 6-7 hours. Tired! So, we decided to drop by the air conditioned internet cafe for a little typing. But, I forgot the cable for the camera again! Grrr!

Great city, Sevilla, at least the old parts. We did the Alcazar and the Catedral. The Alcazar is very impressive. Much of it is a homage to the Alhambra in Granada. So, there are strong Moorish influences. Lots of little fountains, ornately decorated ceilings, and tileworks. Outside there is a huuuugge garden. We were there for over 3 hours and didn´t see everything. Took many many many pictures. Looking good. However, I´ve notice a strange thing with my camera. For some reason, some of the pictures with flash are turning out blurry. Not sure why, perhaps I´m moving as I take the picture. But, if a shot looks blurry on the LCD, I take another and it looks fine. Hmmm. Also, I´ve calculated at my present picture taking rate, I will run out of memory some time around Paris. Oops, need to get another 1GB card.

The Catedral De Sevilla is very nice, very large, and has a bell tower with view of the entire city. Picture allowed in side, but no flash. So, to keep the camera still without a tripod I was leaning the camera against walls, chairs, whatever I could find. They look OK on the LCD, but we´ll see when they are blown up.

The catedrals of Spain are similar to the Cathedrals throughout the rest of Europe except for one interesting feature. The choir and pipe organ are located in the center of the interior rather than on one end. This is suppose to produce much better acoustics. The pipes of the organ are huge and ornately decorated and run up the walls on both sides of the choir area. We didn´t get to hear the one in Sevilla today, but did hear the one in Avila and I have to tell you it was very impressive!

We catch the night train to Barcelona tonight. I´ve never been able to sleep much on trains before, so this will make tomorrow kind of tough. But, rather then spend an entire day traveling, we get an extra day in Barcelona (or Sevilla, depending on how you look at it). Can not wait to get there! From the pictures I´ve seen, the architecture of Barcelona is some of the best in the world. Really great stuff. Jenn and I are already talking about getting a day pass on the open top buses. Many many more pictures! :-)

Greetings from Sevilla!

Woohoo, we´re in Sevilla! I´m at a real Internet Cafe this time, rather than the 15mins for free access at the hotel in Madrid.

Yesterday, as Jenn said, we went to Toledo. Absolutely great place. Really amazing old twisting streets and great old buildings. We each took about 100 pictures. I think for me the highlight is the old city gates. We entered through the east one (took many pictures) and existed through the north one (took many more pictures). The cathedral is also simply amazing! But, we didn´t go inside since they didn´t allow picture taking (pretty common for the major cathedrals).

However, I wouldn´t be Greg if I didn´t have my complaints... :-) First, the Lonely Planet map in the guide book was somewhere between useless and misleading. Ugh. Once we bought a map locally we finally could get around. Second, although the streets are only about 6-7ft wide, they allow cars, which will try and push pedestrians out of the way. Ugh. Finally, I was a little disapointed by the Alcazar. It looks impressive from afar, but up close it becomes obvious that it is very new. Turns out it was completely destroyed by Franco´s forces during the Civil War of the 1930´s and required complete restoration afterwards. Apparently there was quite a battle there. You can still see bullet/artillery damage on the Museum de Santa Cruz.

Jenn already typed about the train mixup, but the other funny thing was trying to ride the commuter train on our general Europe Rail Pass. Turns out there is a special gate for people like us, but when we got back to Madrid (the first time) we got stuck at some turnstyles that only people with commuter tickets can get through. We just stood in front of them looking foolish for about 5 minutes before I caught the attention of a security guy who rattled off a whole bunch of Spanish, looked at our tickets very confused, then rattled off a bunch more Spanish, then gave us the little ´metro-like´ tickets that can get you through the turnstyles. After that, we went back to the information desk and got the Spanish-plus-finger-pointing explanation on how to use their system with our kind of ticket. After that, it was no problem. Oh, and the train station in Toledo was disconnected from the track system so that they can upgrade it for AVE (high-speed train) so we had to take a bus from a nearby station to the Toledo station. More confusion...

But, Toledo was well worth the trip!

Today we road the high-speed AVE train in First Class. Nice. But, I think the French TGV goes faster. We thought we could see Toledo from the train, have to check that. Also, we saw another AMAZING castle soon after that. It was just by itself on this hilltop. Have to figure out what that was.

Sevilla looks great. But, I´d like to take a minute to bash Microsoft´s map service (who´s name escapes me right now). I carefully printed out a map from them that clearly showed both the train station and our hotel. But, turns out the map was oriented 90 degrees from what I expected (East up rather than North), so we´re trying to walk south, but also follow some of the street names, but it´s not working out, we´re getting lost, I´m getting frustrated, Jenn getting tired, ughhh. Finally we stopped for help at an information booth in a mall and turns out we were only a block from our hotel, but with the map we never would have found it. More reasons to be made at Microsoft right now...

So, now we are off to see the sights. Sevilla looks pretty cool. The guide book says it was THE major port for trade with the Americas until the river silted up and a coastal port was used instead. Sevilla then declined until just recently when it hosted a world´s fair about 10 years ago. It has been on the incline since. But, it is clearly not as wealthy as Madrid. While walking around near the hotel we saw what looked like abandoned apartment buildings. Looked like they could be very nice if they were restored.

We are here for two days and then it is an over-night train to Barcelona, or as the people in Madrid said BARTHalona. :-) I love the TH lisp thing they do. GRATHious!

Hola!

Lesson for Today: I am never in too big of a hurry to check to be sure I´m on the right train.

Greg and I took the train to Toledo today. Imagine our surprise when it left early. After a few minutes it dawned on us that an early train probably isn´t a good thing. We ended up getting off at the first stop and catching the next train back to the main station. By then we´d missed the first train and had to wait for the second one. We caught the second one and were on our way.

Toledo is a beautiful city. It used to be the capital of Spain. We spent the day wandering the streets taking pictures. This will probably come as no surprise to some, but I´m up to almost 400 pictures. Fortunately I have the camera that´s only 2.1 pixels.

Tonight in honor of our last night in Madrid we had Pealla (again) at a restaurant near the train station. It was really good. Now that my stomach is feeling better I´ve been having a good time trying the food and wine. I was even adventerous and tried the green cheese stuff even though I didn´t know what it was.

Tomorrow we are off to Sevilla!

Happy Mothers Day!

Ah, wish we could do more to celebrate mothers day...

However, we are having a great time! We saw much of western Madrid today around the Opera house and the Royal Palice.

Then, we took a bus tour of Avila and Segovia. Both were excellent places to visit. The tour was all spanish speaking people, and us. :-) But, the tour guide tried to say everything in both spanish and english. Jenn and I each took about 100 or more pictures! It was amazing!

Much more to come. We are staying one more night in our current hotel. We plan to tour Teledo tomorrow. Then, we will be off to Sevilla.

One down side. Madrid seems to be a fiesta for pickpockets. I´ve been ´tried´ twice now. But, I´ve still got everyting. Ha!

More soon...

Prado and the Park

We decided to go to the Prado today (despite advice to see other museums). That said, it was good. I enjoyed their display of Spanish painters the most. I´ll share more later.

After that we went to the Park of Good Retirement (I´ll put the spanish spelling here later). This is an EXCELLENT park, and really huge. In the center is this large man-made lake that people rent boats to row around. Very nice. We took lots and lots of pictures here. Hopefully we´ll be able to upload them while still here, otherwise we will have to ´retro-post´ when we get back.

After the park, we to the ´tapas´district... I don´t have the name in front of me, but I´ll add it later. We had lunch at a mexican place. Ha. Not that good, but it was good scouting for a planned night of tapas y cervesas tonight.

Btw, Jenn is feeling much better. More soon...

Greetings From Madrid!!!

Well, we finally made it! I will type as fast as I can since I am at the internet station in our hotel, which allows 15mins of access...

The flight from pdx and Frankfurt was fine. Nearly perfectly smooth the whole way. It did get bumpy over Ireland. Go figure... However, the food wasn´t very good... and the seats, in econo, were the smallest I´ve ever seen.

The flight from Frankfurt to Madrid was great until our approach when it got VERY bumpy yikes....

Last night we went to the Plaza de Mayor. Very cool. We were quickly hustled to a table where we ate chicken piea (sp - i´ll fix this latter - spell checker is spanish...). It was very good. Kind of like rissoto only spanish. :-).

I´m having a hard time using this spanish keyboard...

That´s all the time I´ve got. Jenn´s still in bed. She ate something yesterday that didn´t agree with her. Hopefully she´ll be better soon. We hope to do more exploring and go to a museum or two today.

Took some great pictures. Hope to share soon.

-ge

Hitting the Road

One last entry before we hit the road. We took a few pictures of us with our backpacks. The mantra was pack light! But, these packs still look pretty big.


Jenn can't wait to get away from the mess of Hillsdale House. Here you can clearly see the half-completed main stairs and the paint flaking off the ceiling. We won't be thinking about this for the next few weeks.



Greg Works the Straps. REI's Valhalla pack has at least 137 straps...


The hunchback is ready!


Sheba is suspicious...

Skipping Granada

Bad news. We just found out that the Alhambra in Granada is booked solid for the days that we could go. We're both very disappointed... :-( So, we have just decided to skip Granada all together and spend more time in Madrid and Sevilla. Word to the wise: book the Alhambra months in advance. Plan your whole vacation around it.

I managed to call long distance and book a bus tour of Avila and Segovia. Normally I don't go for bus tours, but I saw it on Expedia and decided to buy a voucher on a whim. We are booked for May the 8th. All in all, booking the bus tour went pretty well. So, I was embolden to try confirming our hotel reservation in Madrid.

So, here is how it goes:

phone: ring ring ring ring
her: Rafaelhoteles Atocha.
me: Hola. Habla inglés?
her: Yes.
me: I would like to confirm my reservation.
her: OK.
phone: click...click, click, click...dialtone....

Hmm, that's strange, I'll try again.

phone: ring ring ring ring
her: Rafaelhoteles Atocha. (clearly the same woman)
me: Umm, er, do you speak english?
her: yes.
me: Can I confirm a reservation?
her: yes.
phone: click...dead silence for several minutes... I hang up.

We'll try again after the next shift change. Next time I'll make Jenn call...

Update: Jenn called 9 hours latter and got through OK. Turns out the front desk needs to forward you to the booking desk and that's why I kept having problems... But, from now on, Jenn is doing all the hotel calling... :-)

Maps

I've broken our trip down into 7 legs. Here are some maps to help with the geography. All 7 legs will be by train.


We start off in Madrid. We hope to spend 3 days there, then 1 day in Sevilla, 1 1/2 days in Granada, then 3 days in Barcelona.


From Barcelona, we'll head to Avignon for a few days, then at least one day in Nice before heading to Paris for 3 days.


After we've had our fill of Paris, it's off to Amsterdam for 3-4 days.

I hope to provide more details on what we hope to do in each of these locations before we leave.