Copyright (C) 2003 Adam Boggs
My last report ended my tour of portugal down the southern part of the country known as the Algarve, the party spot for many europeans, austrailians, and americans alike. My last night there I spent in Lagos, where they happened to be having a Festival do Doces. There was a huge building filled with people selling all sorts of sweets, cakes, candy, wine, and... of all the luck... half of it was full of beekeepers selling their honey! Most of them didn't speak english, but I communicated to them that I was a beekeeper in the US, and many of them gave me tastes of their honey, fresh cut-comb, and one even pulled out a bottle of mead he had stashed under the table and gave me a taste of it. One spoke english pretty well and told me about beekeeping in Portugal, saying they had the same problems with varroa mites and other bee diseases there. I bought a jar of honey from him, and some crispetas to dip in it. Yum!
The party there ended late, with music and dancing in the streets and lots of people having a good time. I had to get up at 6:30am to go to the bus station, and then take the bus to Sevilla, Spain. Sevilla is a pretty large city, but very nice. The first thing I noticed was how incredibly hot it was compared to the coast! It was 42 degrees celsius (or about 107 F). Whew! I lugged my big bags all over looking for a place to stay and almost died of heat exhaustion. But made a good day of touring, and managed to catch the huge cathedral there before it closed. It is the biggest cathedral in spain (and indeed the most impressive I have seen so far), and had a tower with a spiral ramp that went up several stories for a great view. The organ was very impressive, and everything was ornately carved and often covered with gold. The cathedral houses the tomb of Cristobol Colon, the famous explorer whose remains were supposedly brought back from the New World and placed there. I only had an hour to visit before they closed, but it was a pretty impressive space.
That night I happened to see a flyer for a walking tour: Carmen, the subject of a famous (though I had never heard of it) opera by Bizet, has come back from the dead and gives tours around Seville. It just happened to be that night, so I went. Carmen worked in the Tobacco factory, which is now a university, but used to be owned by the government since it was such a lucrative business. Seville was the only port in which ships arriving from the New World were allowed to stop, which is funny because it's not on the ocean, you have to sail up a river to get there. Carmen falls in love with a security guard there, and sang us a song with her accordian about it. Attached to the accordian were the faces of Carmen and Don Jose, whose faces met and separated as she played. The tour continued with the story of Carmen, who got sent to jail for knifing some other chick, but escaped and had an affair with Don Jose while in hiding, but he kills her at the end out of jealousy. (just like any good love story ends.) It was a very entertaining, funny, and educational tour, and I was glad I was at the right place at the right time to catch it.
Where the carmen tour ended we could see across the river where people were gathering for a party over in Triana, the neighborhood where the gypsies used to live until property values rose too high and they couldn't afford to live there anymore. The party started with a boat on the river that had a log attached to the front. They would grease up the log and put a flag at the end, and kids would try to run down the log and get the flag, falling a few meters into the river if they didn't (or even if they did) get it. It was captivating, and I told myself for an hour that I would only watch for 5 more minutes to see if they got it. The fiesta topped even the party in Lagos, and made pearl street mall on halloween seem like a mortuary. There must have been several thousand people in the streets, food, music, flamenco dancing, and more. I was exhausted from getting up early for the bus and still putting in a full day of sight seeing, and left at 2:30am, but I swear people were still showing up when I left, and the party showed no signs of dying down.
The next day was Sunday, and I had decided to stick around and get a bunch of errands done: go to the book store, do my laundry, get a hair cut, go the market, etc. But I had forgotten that in many Catholic countries, there is absolutely NOTHING open on Sundays. So I took it easy, saw the Plaza de Espana and wandered around town a bit. Plaza de Espana is a huge park! I spent a few hours walking around in it. I wandered by a theater that was doing a traditional flamenco show that night, and bought a ticket. Wow! It started with a guitarist and a woman "singing". The singing was more like wailing, and sometimes really loud and very emotional, but discordant. It was quite shocking since it's really not what I expected, and I looked around the room to see other people's reaction too, and I think everyone was pretty surprised. But after a while it became very interesting. The dancer was excellent, and danced alone and with a huge amount of energy. The guitarist played a solo that took my straight to a gypsy bonfire in the middle of the night. In the end it was a very unexpected cultural experience and a wonderful show.
At the show I met a woman named Nicole from San Francisco who I kept running into that day. She was there with her friend, Theresa from LA. It turns out they were going to Arcos the next day too, but had a car and were driving. They offered to give me a lift, which was nice because it was already late and I had to get up early again for the stupid bus, and also because the hill towns are much easier to see by car. We went to Arcos, but it was so incredibly hot that day that we couldn't do much hiking around with all the hills, so we hit the road to drive through the "mountains" and a "forest". It was a bit cooler, and we found a swimming pool in another one of the small towns up there that was absolutely wonderful! What a find! From there we ended up in Ronda, a slightly bigger town that also had huge cliffs through it. I parted ways with my friends and took the train to Madrid.
Madrid... Wow, Madrid is a huge city with lots of honking cars, buildings, plazas, and people. I stayed in Puerto del Sol (door of the sun), which is a plaza from which all distances are marked in Spain. (whatever that means.) The major attractions were the Prado art museum, which has more art than I can tolerate in an afternoon, but featured Las Meninas by Velasquez which I studied in school and was very excited to see in person. The Reina Sophia museum had some classics, such as Picasso's Guernica (which is also really incredible to see in person), and some more contemporary work as well. It also had a bunch of Dali originals which were very cool too. The Palacio del Rey (King's Palace) was also amazing, and while the king and queen don't live there anymore, it's still used for important events such as when Spain signed the documents to join the EU. Afternoons were spent lazing in the huge Parque del Retiros, where some shade, iced horchatas (spanish sweet rice drink), and some good people watching were had.
Besides that, the night life is pretty active. I met up with a German couple my first night there (and now have a place to stay in Berlin!) and ended up staying out until 3am. Afterward, while walking back to my room, some girls walked by and yelled "Futbol!" (soccer) Futbol? Hm, maybe someone won a big game since they're trying to dance with me or something. Ah hey, someone's got their fingers in my pocket! I walked away quickly thinking I got away clean, and realized they stole my map. Very clever, I didn't even feel it! But it had the phone numbers for the German couple on it. Damn. So I went back and found them up the street a bit and said "Mi mapa, por favor." They turned me around and pushed me in the in the direction of where they balled it up and threw it on the ground, clearly pissed off I didn't have any money on me. I did have my passport in my front pocket but had a finger on it the whole time. Whew! (I usually don't carry it around like that!) Anyway, easy lesson to learn, and nothing lost. It's definately an interesting experience having someone else's hand in your pockets though.
I took a side trip from Madrid to spend a night in Toledo, which is an amazingly preserved medievil town. The old part of town is a set of narrow twisty streets that is just a blast to get lost in. I have a great picture of a bunch of cars parked in a lot, all of them with dents, scrapes, and missing tail lights. It turns out all cars there have those, it's impossible to drive through these streets! The center of the old town is a big cathedral... starting to get tired of cathedrals, but it was nice. Still nothing compared to the one in Sevilla.
Left Toledo, spent a few more hours in Madrid, and headed on the night train to Barcelona. Finding a place to stay in Barcelona was difficult, both because it was really hot and carrying my bag around was miserable, and because every place was already booked for the whole weekend. I found one place that had a 3 bed room for 60 euros, which was a bit high for me, but I happened to run into a Hungarian guy named Zoltan on my way out who was also looking for a room. So, we split it and it ended up being ok. There were some really interesting sights in Barcelona. There was a famous architect named Gaudi who designed a bunch of stuff -- a park, an apartment building, a cathedral, and some other things. His theme was to mimic natural forms, so even the landscaping in his park had a very organic feel to it. It felt like Dr. Seuss land actually, which strange mushroom buildings, caves with stalagtites and weird structures covering walking paths, and so on. The cathedral was similar, with the main pillars all looking like trees and branching at the top. Typically cathedrals are made of the same material, but he employed different rock types for the supports depending on what types of load it would have, which was a fairly novel architectural approach for his time (1850s). He had some disease that was supposed to be fatal so he dedicated the last years of his life to making detailed plaster models and drawings so that his successors could carry on his legacy. He ended up getting run over by a train (so much for fatal diseases) in the 1940s, but they are still working on the cathedral, and probably always will be. It's massive, and also has some Dr. Seuss like qualities to it. When it is done it will be just as big and a lot more interesting than the Sevilla cathedral, IF they ever finish it!
Alas, it was time to move on from Barcelona and indeed Spain after spending nearly a week and a half in the country. On the way out I stopped for the afternoon in Figueres, which is the home town of Salvador Dali, and a place where he created a museum before he died. It even has his tomb in the basement. The man is truely amazing, and while it didn't have many of his famous surrealist art there (I got to see a bunch of it Madrid though), it had more sculpture, pen and ink sketches, furniture, 3D stereoscopic drawings, and a bunch of jewelery he made (I didn't even know he made jewelry). It was definitely worth the stop. A week and a half just doesn't seem long enough to visit an entire country, but I think I made good use of it! Sevilla, Arcos, Rhonda, and the hill towns, Madrid and Toledo, Barcelona and Figueres... what a good time!
Now I am in France in a town called Arles in the French Riviera. Everyone goes to Nice, so I decided to avoid it and get away from the mobs for a bit to recouperate my energy. Later this week I will head north into Switzerland and visit my friend Lara, and then head back south again for Italy. I'm hoping it's a bit cooler in Switzerland, and hiking in the alps with good swiss chocolate will be nice. I can't even get chocolate here because it melts immediately.
Sorry for another long ramble... I even cut out the digression on quantum superposition, schrodinger's cat, and how it relates to the ability to catch a train that supposedly doesn't exist and track down a couple of germans in Madrid by wandering around randomly. I will save that one for my next dissertation.
Best wishes to all,
-Adam
