Spain

My velocity is 295 km/h (184 mph) currently, and climbing. I'm sitting in a Spanish Renfe 'AVE' train en route to Madrid from Barcelona. The beautiful countryside is going by outside the window, and despite the many warnings I've heard that 295 km/h isn't exactly conducive to sight-seeing, I can see just fine. Honestly, I sorta expected the experience to be faster, like when you're standing near the freeway and a car goes by in a blur. More bullet-like, at least. I'm shocked at how much Spain looks like Napa valley. The vineyards here look especially cool at such crazy speed, with the rows of grapes ticking by like the edge of the Wheel of Fortune wheel.

Pictures:










Six days ago, I briskly said goodbye to my first Dakar host family, the Mendy's, thrilled that half the family wasn't home when I dropped by unannounced. Then I said goodbye (much more sincerely this time) to my second Dakar host family, the Gomis clan, promising a postcard and a return visit in a few years. Finally, I said goodbye to Senegal on a 2:40AM TAP flight to Lisbon.

Dakar's airport was really nice by Senegalese standards, but nothing had prepared me for the abrupt transfer to Europe. Lisbon's airport looks more like a high-end hotel than a transportation hub, though (possibly as some silly anti-terror measure) all the windows are covered in a dense black grid that frustratingly prevents your eyes from focusing. Nor was I ready to pay 1,50 euro for a cup of coffee after paying 50 CFA (10 cents) for four months. Besides the niceness shock and cost shock, Lisbon brought another surprise: a brusque TAP agent who told me my flight to Barca was canceled on account of the ominous, plan-destroying ash cloud. Fortunately, the agent at the gate told me the first agent was full of shit, and off I went.

From Barcelona's airport, I caught a speedy, brand-new bus to the city center for 5 euro and promptly got lost as hell trying to find my hostel. I stopped a local-looking woman with a meek "Pardon" (accent on the "-on") and then asked "Parlez-vous francais?" She shook her head. "Do you speak English?" Same response. "Parli italiano?" "Un po" -- success. Her directions, or at least what I understood of them, took me a lot closer, but the curvy alleys soon got the best of me again. This time, I whipped out my netbook, found an open network, and Google-mapsed it.



Hostel Itaca is nicer than some hotels I've stayed in, and definitely a lot more fun. There's a well-stocked kitchen, a dining room with balconies overlooking the street, two lounges with Wifi, and clean bathrooms. The staff is super kind and accomodating, plus you're in the historic center of town, a stone's throw from a million cathedrals. Definitely stay here if you come to the city on a low budget. I've slept a lot better these past six nights than I did in Senegal, getting at least 8 hours most nights notwithstanding the seven other guests in my room. I've been waking around 9 or 10, showering with hot water (rare in Senegal), and eating a breakfast of fresh fruit (a dessert-only food in Senegal), yogurt, and cereal on the balcony. At night, my hostelmates and I have routinely been out til 2 or 3 AM just walking the town.

Breakfast on the balcony:


Dinner on the balcony:


Highlights from my six days in Barcelona:

-Sunday night: watched soccer at an Irish pub with my hostel-mates. Man U and Chelsea kicked the absolute crap out of the opponents -- 8-0 and 6-0, respectively. (I'm a total dilettante soccer enthusiast now, having watched European games several times a week in Senegal.) After the match, we got delicious falafel and beer in the Raval district.

-Monday night: googled 'Catalan seafood recipe' and came up with Zarzuela, an extravagant seafood stew that we modified to fit our budget. The local grocery store had all the ingredients except saffron, plus decent Rioja for 1,35 a bottle. Back at the hostle, my South African roommate, Alexia, and I took charge of the cooking: she focused on the calamari, jumbo prawns, and muscles while I worked the vegetables, almonds, garlic, and spice. It was delicious. I highly recommend the recipe, especially if you can afford halibut, cod, and monkfish on top of the clams, calamari, muscles, and prawns...

Zarzuela:




-Tuesday day: toured the many paths of Gaudi's Parc Guell with a friend from Berkeley. One of the routes spiraled up to an incredible set of views facing all different directions -- complete with a friendly mojito salesman at the summit -- and then gently segued out of the park into the surrounding hilly neighborhoods.

-Wednesday: rented folding bikes from GreenBikes. The shop is run by friendly American ex-pats who came to Barca to study and never left. They care more about promoting biking than turning a profit, so theirs is the cheapest rental house in town. Another one of my hostel-mates, Theo, and I rode north-east along the beach for a while, stopping at various sculptures and architectural marvels along the way, including the skate park, where the cute folding bikes performed better than expected on the quarterpipe. Barcelona's downtown area, especially along the waterfront, is so chock-full of eye-catching installations that at times you feel as though the city planners were just showing off when they designed it.

After a while, we turned away from the water and let ourselves get lost in residential neighborhoods, zigzagging back toward the city center. Many streets had dedicated bike lanes, though it was occasionally hard to find them: on some streets each direction had its own lane (as in the US), on others both directions of bike traffic were together in their own protected lanes on one side of the street, and on some particularly large streets both directions of bike traffic were together in the middle of the road, three lanes of speeding cars on each side. To make matters or worse (or more fun, depending on your perspective), the lanes would occasionally end abruptly or switch sides, leaving you confused in the middle of traffic.

After dinner, we checked out a groovy gypsy swing concert at Big Bang Bar in the Raval district. The singer, though a Spaniard born and raised, sang in English with a totally believable twang that had me thinking of Woodie-Guthrie-meets-Django-Reinhardt.

Thursday: went back to GreenBikes to rent a bright orange aluminum Orbea, complete with Mavic Cosmos wheels, carbon stem, full Ultegra components, Selle Italia saddle, etc -- in plain English, a really sexy road bike.

I told Steve at the shop that I wanted to climb the mountain I had seen from Parc Guell, and he wrote me out a set of directions to mount Tibidaba. A few miles later, outside the city, I couldn't find Highway 304, so I decided to climb up to Parc Collserola instead. I started by taking the really steep, small streets that seemed to cut directly through the suburbs at the foot of the moutain all the way to the summit. No such luck. Instead, after ascending for twenty minutes or so and walking the bike up a long trail, I realized I was caught trespassing in a web of private driveways.

















I rode back down and found the right route, reaching the summit just as it began to pour. Seeing no other paved way down but the route I had already taken (boring), I descended via dirt trails into a suburb named San Just Desvern, where I grabbed a coffee and sandwich until the rain abated. Without a map, I followed the signs for Barcelona as best I could, which put me onto the freeway for a few hundred feet -- OOPS. To get back within city limits, I took the Tram a few stops and then rode the rest of the way back to the shop. Fortunately, the guys at the shop didn't care that I had turned their Orange Orbea fairly brown.








Friday: hiked up to Parc Montjuic to visit the National Museum of Catalan. Got lost (again) in the rain (again) but the park was absolutely gorgeous in the downpour so I didn't mind. I.eventually found my way and skipped the older art in favor of the vast modern collection and disappointingly meager photography exhibit. I also hit the free CaixaForum on the way out of the park, where they were showing the complete works of French photographer Henri Latigue, plus some of his test prints, albums, and negatives.


The museum


At the foot of Montjuic

Favorite piece:

Fragment of a mural by Xavier Nogues