We're in the home stretch of the European part of our trip now, with just a few more days before heading back to London. We've survived what to this point has been the longest slog, from Sicily all the way to Germany, with just a few days to recover in Venice.

Janna's last posting had us waiting out the day in dull Messina, before getting on another night train that would take us to Rome and then finally Padua. The trip north went fairly smoothly, though there were a few tense moments when we first caught a look at our "beds". We'd been booked into the bottom bunks of a cabin, which we were pretty happy about because our experience had shown us that the bottom bunks are the place to be (more ventilation, less cramped, generally more comfortable). Well, at least that was our experience on Spanish and French trains. These were Italian trains, in which (by some bizarre stroke of design engineering) the bottom bunks were tiny spaces made more tiny by the fact that the armrests and headrests do not fold away but instead stick out into your sleeping space. My first reaction upon looking at this was to freak out, which is never helpful when dealing with train conductors in another language. He actually thought I was worried about luggage storage space and couldn't understand why I had a problem with the bed. After much haranguing, we got him to put us in another compartment, which was better. In the end, we both got bits of fitful sleep, but have decided that 2nd-class-couchette-night-trains are for the birds, and we're pretty glad to be through with them.

From Rome we took another train north to Padua, about 20 minutes outside of Venice. We chose to stay in Padua mostly because the guidebook suggested it as a cheaper, more hassle-free alternative to bunking down in Venice. Like staying in Pisa instead of Florence, this turned out to be a smmooove move. Padua, like Pisa, was a nice, quiet, friendly place and we both found ourselves happy to be staying there. We stayed in the Youth Hostel for a couple nights, spending the first night getting cleaned up and basically bumming around Padua.

The next day, Monday, was our day for exploring Venice. We had only one day so we lowered our expectations and threw ourselves into speed-seeing mode. As it turned out, it was more than enough to get a feel of the city. It's a very pretty place and is remarkably quiet, given that there are no cars or scooters zipping around, and the whole water-instead-of-streets thing is quite amazing. But after about 5 or 6 hours of exploring canals, alleys, piazzas and other various bits, we found that we were fairly happy with our introduction to Venice and headed back to the relative tranquility of Padua for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday morning we said goodbye to Italy and hopped a train for the Bavarian capitol of Munich, to spend the rest of the week with Uli and Pascale, friends from my Paris days. The highlight of our stay here so far has been our day trip to Castle Neuschwanstein, in southern Bavaria. Bavaria is hands down, no question about it, the most gorgeous place we've been so far. You leave Munich by autobahn, doing about 90 MPH as BMW's cruise past you at 120 MPH, for about an hour before leaving the motorway. From there, in the shadows of the Alps, it's small roads over and through lush, green, picture-perfect countryside until reaching the site of the famous castle, built in the late 1800's by crazy King Ludwig. Neuschwanstein is the model for castles everywhere, from Disney to Sound of Music, and is pretty damn cool. Set way up on the hills, we got to watch as dozens of paragliders and hanggliders circled above, taking advantage of what I'm sure is an even more amazing view than the one we had.

Today we'll be exploring Munich itself, probably put away a few beers and pretzels in the process. We'll let you know how that goes soon.

Tchüss! Michael

Picking up where Michael left off, I'll report on our time in the Aeolian Islands (Isole Eolie in Italian). The ancient Greeks believed that this archipelago was the home of Aeolus, god of the winds (no, not that kind of wind, Leonard!). Homer recounts that after Ulysses dispatched the skanky Cyclops, he sailed to the island where Aeolus hung out in his humble adobe hut/palace/whatnot. Of course, the leather bag in which Aeolus kept his winds was summarily untied by one of Ulysses' pally-wallies, driving the Greek fleet to Lamos, a city of giant cannibals called Laestrygones. After the big Ls dined on some of the pally-wallies, they had a good time hurling boulders at the fleeing ships; of course, the rule of cool dictated that only Ulysses' ship should escape. It did. I do think he enjoyed further adventures, which anyone may read about ...

Anyway, by now you may have noted with disgust that so far in our travels, we've missed the Prado museum in Madrid, flamenco in Barcelona, Michelangelo's David in Florence, and the Sistine ceiling in Rome. The reigning Mayors of Lameopolis. But our greatest disappointment was only to come ...

Our arrival by hydrofoil in Lipari, the archipelago's largest island -- and the most amenable to tourists -- began with the frisson that comes of youthful risk-taking (not BAD risk, Moms Patneaude and Schmidt -- the GOOD kind! I swear!). Though we intended to head straight for the youth hostel, we'd met an American guy, Brock, and his Russian wife, Olga, on the boat, who mentioned that one might obtain decent housing from locals who would approach us with offers on the gangplank at Lipari. Sure enough, upon alighting there we were bombarded with "high-qual" business cards. One particularly sweet-faced young woman caught my attention (by having nearly thrust her card into my eyeball), and after an absolutely hopeless pseudo-conversation in pidgin Anglo-Italian, Deep and I agreed to follow her "vicino" and "vedere" (nearby, to have a look-see). I understood that much. 

The place was our own little flat, with a "cooking corner", shower, double bed, rooftop sunterrace, and our own balcony -- complete with laundry line and clothespins. For 40 euros a night, we couldn't refuse. We'd save money by cooking our own meals (e.g., meat-and-two veg omelettes, chicken-and-two-veg fajitas, nummmmmers). Michael's cooking ROCKS! Awesome househusband material! If only I were awesome breadwinner material, that is ...

Our Masterplan for the Isole Eolie, though, was a nighttime trek up the volcano on the island of Stromboli. We were dying to see the Liquid Hot Magma that is continuously spewed from the volcano's northwestern flank. It's called the Sciara del Fuoco. Woo hoo! So we slapped down 50 euros each (yes, we really wanted this) to be taken by biggish motorboat to Stromboli, where the expert Alpine guides would take us for a 3-hour hike up and up, to view the spew in the darkness for one hour exactly. Then it would be 2 hours down and the boat ride back, to deliver us home again, jiggety-jig, by 12:30 am.

We, along with about 30 hardy-looking German tourists, happily boarded the Principessa at 3pm sharp. Choppy waters quickly had us humming the theme to "Gilligan's Island." We were seated in a booth below deck across from Thurston and his wife Lovey, who was particularly susceptible to motion sickness. Mrs. Howell was a trouper. She held a sick bag (one of a seemingly endless supply provided by the affable crew) to her face for a good twenty minutes before losing it. We suddenly realized that about 6 other women were engaging in the same activity. Well, when the smell hit me, I could no longer take pride in my "stomach of steel." I made it to the loo just in time to blow mucha chunkarunka. After that, I felt better, but only by holding my nose did I manage to keep my composure, ha ha, for the remainder of the trip. And it was only after the ordeal ended that Michael confided to me his own method of restraint: he didn't want to be the only man on board to lose his lunch. As it turned out, Thurston gained that honor -- all over Michael's shoes. Nice. The waters became ever more choppy as we neared Stomboli; nevertheless, Forge On to Stromboli! was our (mine and Michael's) cry. It was not to be. The passenger consensus was: Return in Shame! We did, to the tune of endless sickbags filled, taken up by still-affable crew to be discarded to mysterious locations, and replaced once more. Home again -- and not EVEN a three-hour tour -- at last. Back at the flat, we woke from a four-hour nap to our own time-warp. What day was it? What time was it? Time for a long, leisurely dinner to forget the preceding events and to replace lost sustenance, anyway.

Our lovely fishy dinner, seated outdoors at a traditional Eolian ristorante, was marred only by a passing tourist. It soon became clear he'd been a fellow passenger on the Principessa when he mimed "sick bag" at me, laughing at my appetite's evident recovery. Funny Man!!! Defiantly, I mimed back my favourite "I'm the Champ" sign of triumph. So there! (Deep and I had big yuks (laffs) over it, really.)

That's pretty much it for Lipari and environs, but since I'm so bad at getting up the energy to write these things, I guess I'll keep going while I do have the wherewithal. One interesting thing (interesting to me, and I'm sure to my mom) that's happened is that suddenly I am able to SLEEP! About the third week into our travels -- since our stay with Daniel's kind parents outside Roma, I believe -- Mother Dear, I began to sleep long and deeply. Though I'm not certain, it could be that I no longer suffer from all the worries I'd always had about work, nor from all the many complex and pretty krikin' impossible life-plans I was wont to invent, with the greatest anxiety, in the wee-est hours. Not to mention the sales conference presentations I always wrote and rewrote in my sleep. Toss, turn, etc. All that stuff used to keep me awake till late and wake me up too early. And now that I'm a little used to enduring the vagaries of travel without undue concern, what is there to stop me from sleeping 12 or 13 or even 14 hours? I've got one year to make up for 30-odd years of fitful nights! Woo hoo! P-S-Y-C-H-E-D!!!

Peace out.

J.

Whew! Been a while since we've been able to update as we haven't had too many chances to get at a computer. Here's a quick rundown of our last two weeks or so.

Pisa-Florence (Sunday, Apr 28 - Wednesday, May 1): We've decided to make Pisa our base camp for exploring Florence, about an hour away by train. We're paying twice as much for our 2-star hotel but can't seem to tear ourselves away from the 'luxury' (it actually has a TV and it comes with towels!!!) Our first 1/2 day in Pisa was the travel day from Barcelona that was referred to in Janna's previous post, complete hell (at least for me), so we took it easy and mostly wandered around the town. Pisa's a nice little town, not really a city, that has a bit more to offer than just the leany-thing. A nice main drag running the length of the town from the train station up to the main square where the tower and duomo sit there chillin', with loads of little side streets running each and every way. The strange thing about it is that it has this eerily empty feel about 75% of the day, populated mostly by tourists, until about 5 o'clock when the entire town seems to go for a walk.

We did, of course, go see the tower and I enjoyed it more than I expected. Yes there are loads of dumb tourists (including us and Leonard and Louise) and lots of stands selling lots of crap. But this tower wasn't built as a joke, and it shows. The cathedral, for which the tower was supposed to complement, is really pretty and the tower, lean and all, is also quite impressive. But it does lean and lean a lot. And in the end, it's really pretty cool. Lenny (don't tell him I called him that) practically demanded that we take his picture "holding up" the tower. I thought it was dumb, he thought it was hysterical. What can you do. (Just kidding Leonard!)

We spent the next two afternoons (Monday and Tuesday) commuting to Florence. The first day we fought the crowds of tourists to check out the Duomo (cathedral) and the river. The second day was spent waiting in line for 4 hours to get into the Uffizi gallery, only to find out that the Statue of David isn't even in there! Janna claims to have told me that before we got in line, but I don't buy it.

The Wednesday, May 1st, was a holiday in Italy so everything was closed. We decided we'd seen enough of Florence and as we weren't expected in Rome until Thursday, we pretty much bummed around Pisa for another day.

Rome (Thursday, May 2nd -- Saturday, May 4th): Got up early for our 7:30 AM (ugh) train ride from Pisa to Rome where we were to spend the weekend with the parents of one of Janna's coworkers. We felt a little weird about staying with people we'd never met before, but when we finally arrived and were met by them at the train station, all of our fears melted. Mr. and Mrs. D were very nice and totally welcomed us into their home, which was nice and big and in the country, about an hour outside of Rome. It was so amazing, or at least we were amazed, to be away from it all out in the country, with big lawns and trees and hills everywhere, that we found ourselves pretty blasé about even going into Rome. When we finally did get into Rome our first day we had maybe 3 hours of sightseeing (speed-seeing more like it) which took us from the Colleseum to the Forum to the Pantheon before getting the bus back to our little bit of heaven. The sights of Rome were quite impressive, but I found myself feeling completely underprepared for the experience, as if I needed a college degree in Roman history to really appreciate what we were seeing...yeah the rocks are cool, but it would really help to know why they're cool.

We did get into Rome a second day, with a quick peek at the Vatican, but again, not really much in the way of a close examination. We didn't go inside the Basillica and we didn't go inside the musuem to see the Sistine Chapel, as it was all closed by the time we even made it there. But in truth, neither one of us really felt too much regret at missing some of these things. Hey, we had out country home to get back to.

Toarmina, Sicily (Sunday, May 5th - Wednesday, May 7th): Sunday we bid adieu to the D's in Rome and took a 7 hour train ride the length of Italy to the island of Sicily. Here we were met by our friends from London, Simon (my coworker) and Christine, who had rented a villa for a week in the shadow of Mt. Etna. We spent the first night after arriving visiting the town of Taormina, catching up on old times (well, the last 3 weeks) and celebrating Simon and Christine's newly announced engagement. Day two (Monday) was a trip up the still active Mt. Etna volcano, which most recently blew its stack about a year ago. This, of course, doesn't stop the tourists from traipsing up and certainly doesn't stop the souvenir vendors from setting up shop. While there were no signs of lava flow and, therefore, danger, there were certainly quite a few signs of destructions past. Burnt out houses, gondola car-rides that had been shut down and perhaps most creepy, pavement that was warm to the touch even the air was crisp and cool.

Tuesday was again spent wandering around Taormina, which has a great view of the Mediterranean sea and fantastic cannoli, but easily the best part of the few days with Simon and Christine were the down and dirty, surprisingly vicious games of Uno had back in the Villa. As it was a self-catering apartment, we took the opportunity to head to the grocery store on both Monday and Tuesday and do a bit of home cookin'. We broke out the Uno cards and taught S & C how to play and before long, the hostilities were flying. I will, of course, point out that I won the first night's battle, earning the Murphy-Schmidt team free cannoli, while Janna won the second night, earning no cannoli, but the equally impressive title of "Lord of Time". We Rock!

Lipari, Aeolian Islands (Today, Wednesday, May 8): Said farewell to our friends and took a ferry to the nearby Aeolean Island. We'll spend a few days here, trying to do some diving and maybe doing a night climb up the active volcano on Stomboli island.

Check back later for more!

Deep and I are in Pisa now, having taken an evening train from Barcelona Spain to Cerbere France, then an overnight train from Cerbere to Ventimiglia Italy, then a morning train from Ventimiglia to Pisa. Michael had such a claustrophic and sleepless night in the couchette (sleeping car) that upon our arrival, we chose not to take the quick train from Pisa to Florence but to stay in Pisa at least one night, get some rest, and see the infamous tower. Our new Oklahoman travelbuddies Leonard (not Lenny) and Louise Wibbledorf are here too. When they get back from their errands (Leonard needs a new Gilligan hat, having dropped his old one in the train's W.C. on a particularly bumpy section of track), we've agreed to go pose a hundred feet or so from of the tower, as most tourists do, holding our arms up and our hands flexed so as to appear to be holding the thing up. High hilarity will be enjoyed by all, I am certain.

At the end of our stay in Barcelona, we took a little side trip south along the coast of Spain to a place called Tarragona. It was so lovely -- and peaceful, and it didn't feel built to rip off visitors -- we decided to stay overnight. For this little jaunt, the Time Out Barcelona guide totally hooked us up.

We found a friendly, relatively inexpensive pension (sorry -- I can't find an "o" with an acute accent) and a great place to eat called Bufet el Tiberi. Since the latter is a for-real buffet, we were able to take impressive culinary risks, though we cheated because of course we could see what we were getting. For us it's either cheat or eat pizza, though. At the table next to us was an American guy, and we sorta fell into conversation, as you tend to do, especially when you are desperate to remind yourself that you have mastered at least one language. It turns out he is the New York Times' Bureau Chief for Turkey. Michael talked politics with him while I pretended to be too fascinated by my paella fidua to add my own trenchant commentary, and then thank goodness we talked publishing a bit. He's the author of many books, some with his wife, the most recent being an insider account of "Celebration, USA," the Norman-Rockwellesque, planned community created by Disney in 1996. Order your copy toDAY!

Earlier in the day, we'd explored the Roman walls and, on our way to the beach, met a feral cat who almost let us pet her -- until her foodmaster, an old Tarragonan man, came by and gave her some leftover sarnie. She was a little more friendly then, enough to allow us to almost pet her teenage daughter and friend. The old man could speak Italian, Dutch, and a bit of English and easily could have talked to us about the cats for many, many hours. He kept pointing at Cat 1 and saying "only leetle duche, only leetle duche," which we finally interpreted as "she only likes to be touched a little, even by me, even after I've fed her, but her daughter was brought up to be much more affectionate." Deep and I are becoming so interlinguistical, ness pah?

The people in this town are SO LOUD and physical and if you are new to the scene you may think that you are about to witness muchos fisticuffs. But everything seems to resolve amicably. Phew. The children scream at the top of their lungs at all times. While having dos cervezas grandes en la mesa fuera (two big brewskis at an outdoor café), Deep and I watched a bunch of those little rapscallions chasing a big frog all around the pavement. Until a big bad senora (no tilde for the "n") came by and put it in a plastic bag. Confiscationment!

Walking home that evening, we came upon seven traditionally-costumed Spanish songstylists serenading four older laydeez waving their hankies (no, Michael, not panties) from a low balcony. We were quickly surrounded by German tourists, and fearing we'd soon be devoured (like a paramecium's ciliae directing us toward its food vacuole), we hightailed it back to our digs. 

Well, Leonard and Louise are lingering outside, so I'll sign off for today.

xoxo Janna

Day two in Barcelona and the first day was a real yawner, meaning I yawned practically every minute of the day after a 100% sleepless night on the train from Madrid. Finding yourself bleary eyed, with no prearranged accommodation in a brand new city is an experience you need to experience at least once in your life, but only once if you can at all avoid it. The train ride was actually fairly uneventful (and we even had the correct tickets this time), and we shared our cabin with a pretty nice couple from Holland who, like most Dutch, speak better English than we do. But somewhere as I was just about to drift off into lala land, someone made a noise in the hallway and I was done for. Wide awake for the remaining 6 hours of the trip, with every noise from every inch of the train reverberating through my head as I tried to will myself to sleep. It's a funny thing, though, how not having worked for the last week and a half helps take the edge off a sleepless night.

When we got into Barcelona we stowed our bags in some lockers and headed for the main drag, La Rambla, where we found little difficulty finding a hostel with space, albeit in a co-ed dorm with about 10 bunkbeds. Fortunately for us, we were the only ones in that dorm the first night, so when it finally came time to get some much longed for sleep, there was no one else to bang a locker or stub a toe and keep us awake. As tired as we were, the first afternoon became a bit of a housekeeping afternoon...sorting out finances and emails at the i-cafe, booking our tickets to Florence at the train station and doing a load of laundry in the hostel. Trying to slog through a museum or appreciate architecture on no sleep would have been a real drag.

We did manage to rally, though, for a night out in the touristy part of town. The highlight had to have been the American woman "singing" jazz tunes with her band along one of the side streets. This woman, fairly young and dressed for a cocktail lounge, fancied herself a singer but mostly just had an overdeveloped sense of her talent. Everyone else watching seemed think she was quite unique, so I guess she was doing something right.

Today, Wednesday (though it is hard to keep track of the day sometimes), was spent in the company of Antonio Gaudi. I'm not much of a student of architecture, but this guy rocks. Gaudi is basically to Barcelona as Christopher Wren is to London or Frank Lloyd Wright is to Chicago and the US...their buddha of buildings, their favorite son of the stone, their godfather of gothic (ew, sorry). Check out this link and have a look at the Temple of Sagrada Familia (Temple of the Sacred Family). Gaudi was very gifted and given free reign over his work. He was also very religious and according to some accounts, absolutely nuts. One look at the Sagrada Familia and you realize that all of the above is very true, including the nuts part. I haven't read anything about it so I don't know the significance or symbolism of much of the church, but it reminds you of your old crazy Aunt Edna's house, where old crazy Aunt Edna hasn't exercised much restraint in her decorating choices and keeps adding and adding to her collection of knick knacks and paddywhacks and hangy things and gaudy (no pun intended) ornimentation. Sagrada Familia looks like any old gothic church, but with a million things stuck to it. Gaudi was a fan of nature and natural forms so every place on the church has bizarre combinations of shapes and forms. One set of huge columns, for example have big turtles for feet, and there's a giant Christmas tree growing out of the side of the church. It's really quite amazing and I know I'm not doing it justice, but it was really weird! We also went Park Güell, which is a very cool park built into the sides of a hill, kindofa cross between something from Bedrock and the movie Alien. Check it out, that link above has some cool pictures.

Tonight I think we'll head to this pub that has a pub crawl for travellers. Not very local culture-ish, but it'll be cool to visit other travellers. Today we met a real cool couple that we immediately hit it off with, Louise and Leonard Wibbledorf, from Tulsa. Turns out Louise and Leonard (don't call him Lenny if you meet him) have booked an itinerary very similar to ours so we may be travelling a bit together. The amazing thing is how they managed to go travelling in the first place, Louise acutally won 87-some-odd thousand dollars by matching 5 numbers on the Nebraska lottery. Wow! They're lots of fun, it'll be good to have some companionship on the road.

Anyway, more later.

Michael

Madrid 19 April 2002

Sorry -- a cursory entry for today. Arrived in Madrid, went to park, can´t remember what else, and at night went to Chesterfield´s, a tex-mex music place. Outrageous prices but great blues band from 12am.

Madrid 20 April 2002

Don´t tell, but Michael and I slipped into the Starbucks across from the Prado museum for a morning of furtive latte pleasurrrrrrrre. Later, staved off further hunger pangs at McDonalds (for extra shame!) before meandering through the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Queen Sofia). There´s an exhibition of collaborative works between Warhol, Basquiat, and Clemente there now. Tremendous. The canvases were at least 8 by 10 feet each, with many twice that. The Warhol/Basquiats were best, because Clemente´s dirty pastels often clashed with Warhol´s and Basquiat´s purity. Or sumthin. My favourite, though, was created by all three men: Cabeza de Grano (Pimple Head), it was called. (184, en oleo. acriclico y serigrafia sobre tela.)

Madrid 21 April 2002

For un restaurante typico experience tonight, I chose Ribiera Do Miño from the Madrid Mini Rough Guide (follow this book at your peril -- most of the listings don´t exist! Time Out guides are much more reliable!). RDM is a marisqueria, which means it´s a fishy sort of place. I coerced Michael into ordering the mariscada (assorted shellfish platter) por dos, at 22 euros. It arrived in about two seconds: an artistically-arranged mountain. But of course it took forever to get at the bits of real food inside all the skinny-winny legs. Poor Deep. Because of my apparent enthusiasm for this project, he´d refrained from telling me that for him, shellfish are more work than they´re worth -- tiny amounts of sustenance and great sums of detritus. He had to pick up some sunflower seeds on the way home, the poor lambikins . . . There was one truly exotic offering, called percebes. Each one looks like a little black wrinkly mound with a flat bottom (as if it had been prised off a big rock), with 4 or 5 hard black asparagus tippy-looking things growing out of it; and each of the tips was covered in what looked like prehistoric green pointy scales. Sorta like Sleestak fingernails, if you´re a Land of the Lost fan. So what you do is pull off the asparagus tippy things (watch out for the big squirt of Sleestak juice!) and suck out the little muscle-innards. Yum yum. Tastes like chicken. No, clams really. Ultimately I guess they look cooler than they taste. Weah, weah. Ooh! Michael just found percebes in our little dictionary. It means "goose barnacles" ... Urg. Never again.

Don´t worry -- Michael has plenty of nicknames, but lambikins is NOT one of them.

Madrid 22 April 2002

Deep Dish, in his ultra-sophistication, has developed the habit of looking out for a juicy word or phrase on a sign or billboard here -- e.g., today he spotted "Las Noches de Pepe" (an upscale strip club) -- conjoining it with "Telemundo!", and then pronouncing the whole thing muy vociferoso right on the street, in his best Spanish TV-presenter voice: "Las Noches de Pepe TeleMUNDO!!!" This is annoying, but I trumped him when we spotted a bingo sign, quickly shouting "TeleBINGO!" I can recommend this as a satisfying vocal exercise, even if it is just the sort of thing to get you beaten up.

Went to a hip hop class at Academy Performance, a proper dance school housed within the Castellana Sports Club in the Estacion de Charmartin (the same train station at which we arrived from Bordeaux). Was pretty skeert as the main office was filled completely with amazing dancers and their headshots, some of whom I recognized from videos (I spoke to one American girl named Faby who dances w/Michael Jackson). And the day before, everyone was scurrying off to a masterclass being given by wacko jacko´s choreographer. So this was a serious place. The class was fine, though -- sort beginner-intermediate, filled with nice kids and some bitchy older girls in highstylin´ gear. Teacher was a cute young feller named Antonio who may not have the smoovest mooves but they´re interesting enough; and he does pick kick-A hiphop tunes. It didn´t matter that my Spanish isn´t great. Cinco, seis, siete, ocho! ...

Practicing my Spanish en las alimentaciones mostly, asking for bread, fruit, some olives, x grams of sausage and salmon and cheese -- the "Italian Picnic" tradition DD and I began in our Amalfitan hotel room. The EU´s conversion to the Euro has made it much easier here since it means that at the checkout counter you hear numbers at most in the tens rather than the thousands, so I´ve had no problem at all. It´s good to know the hundreds to ask for grams of stuff, but gesturing wildly works too.

Leaving Hostal Perez (44 Juan Alvarez Mendizabal -- metro stop is (Jesse "The Body") Ventura Rodrigues) tomorrow, where we´ve been staying while in Madrid. A hostal is not as cheap as a youth hostel (in Spanish, albergue de juventud), but the hostel in the area was full up. And we got a private double with a sink and shower, which was faboolio. The owner speaks absolutely no English (more Spanish practice for me) and he´s very nice. Caveat: don´t come if you abhor chronic whistlers. Señor Perez does it endlessly and tunelessly. What a strange life he and his family live, though -- they congregate all day in their little kitchen watching soaps while strangers (he never even took our names) pad up and down the hall to use the toilet. There´s a bidet too for you cosmo gals and guys.

Peace out.

J-Smoove

Impressions of: Bordeaux

Let's start right of by saying that our dim view of Bordeaux probably has more to do with our very high and probably very uninformed expectations than anything else. We chose it as our first stop primarily because we we're looking for somewhere on the way to Spain. Having each spent quite a lot of time in Paris, we decide against going there and instead chose Bordeaux, expecting what you expect when you think of wine country: lush rolling hills, a relaxed and laid back attitude and nice breathable air. Bordeaux itself has none of these, though they're more a feature of the surrounding areas.

Bordeaux the city is basically a smaller version of Paris. In fact, having lived in Paris and being fairly acquainted with the feeling of Paris, I spent most of our time in Bordeaux feeling as if I were in Paris. It has narrow, claustrophobic alleys that pass as streets, with zooming cars forcing you onto the sidewalk (what there is of one) where you struggle to keep you shoes clean of the not-too-infrequent piles of dog crap. An air quality (or lack thereof) similar to that of a much larger city that left our heads aching and mouths tasting of the inside of a shoe after a 3 hour bike ride. There's also loads of construction at the moment, as they're digging up the entire city to put in a new tram system. The entire riverfront is a disaster because of this...too noisy, dusty and congested to be of any real recreation value. Not that the brown river is anything worth looking at in the first place.

And our expection, again probably unrealistic, of a cheaper living was completely shattered within a few hours of arrival. A pint of beer costs about €4 ($3.60/£2.40) a bit more than even in London and you can't really get a decent meal for less than €10/person. Not horrible when you're employed, but when you're notworkin' and on a budget, it's a bitch.

If you're coming to Bordeaux as a stepping off point to the surround wine regions, and limit your time in the city itself, you'll probably find that you have no real gripes. Make sure that you have a car or you'll be stuck taking the bus tours of the wine regions, which are fine, but pricey (about €50). The tour we went on took us to the Côtes de Blaye, which was not nearly as scenic as expected, though nice nonetheless. You're better bets are probably the Medoc and St-Èmilion regions, which are supposed to be more of the lush-rolling-hill type places. Also, we quite enjoyed our day trip out to the coastal town of Arcachon. A typical beach and boardwalk type place, it was still very nice and made for a great afternoon, especially since our weather was great.

So in all, our impression of Bordeaux wasn't too outstanding. The city itself is dull, crowded and polluted. But if you're coming to visit the wine regions and don't expect too much of the city, you may not be that disappointed.

Official notworkin.com rating: Bronze Rucksack 

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rating guide
copper rucksack=1 (worst rating)
bronze rucksack=2
silver rucksack=3
gold rucksack=4
platinum rucksack=5 (best rating) 
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We've just arrived in Madrid (that's in Spain, ya know), having taken our first night train from Bordeaux last night. We've done an awful lot the past few days, so I'll skip the gory details and give you the highlights.

tuesday: Pretty much spent the whole day around Bordeaux, the highlight of which was a 3 1/2 hour bike ride. We rented the bikes from the riverside rental place and followed the bike trails out of town. It was far from scenic, though, with most of the ride spent following the motorway. In the end, it felt like we'd sucked in enough pollution to lop a few years off of our lives, but at least it was exercise, which felt good.

wednesday: We decided to get out of Dodge and took a 45 minute train ride to the coastal town of Arcachon. Nicer than the average seaside resort town, we had great weather and spent most of the day in an alternating pattern of lounge, hike, lounge, hike, lounge, etc. As ways of spending an afternoon by the sea goes, this approach is surpassed only by the time honored pattern of lounge, drink, lounge, drink and I think it made for quite a nice afternoon. Some highlights included finding a fantastic market that we pilaged for our lunch and a rickety old observation tower that you climb (armed with requisite levels of fear) to get a nice view of the beach and surrounding countryside. A couple of the more amusing moments included watching all the French people walking their little rat-dogs as well as a bizarre pony ride operation which involved putting little kids on even littler ponies and walking them up an down the boardwalk.

thursday: This was a travel day, as we took the night train from Bordeaux down to Madrid. The day started off innocently enough as we were, for the third day in a row, enjoying (term applied loosely) our free breakfast of baguette, butter and corn flakes, when we were joined by a (seemingly) quiet Spaniard named Antonio. Now Antonio, you see, seems to live in the south of Spain but has a girlfriend in Paris, and is therefore always driving up and down between Paris and Seville. We know all of this because Antonio "offered" (with great difficulty due to the fact that he only speaks Spanish and French) to drive us down to Madrid, acting as tour-guide along the way. As it dawned on us that Antonio was trying to get us to pay him to take us to Madrid, we gently tried to pry ourselves from the "offer" by muttering stuff about already having paid for our train ticket, etc, etc. But like a good car salesman, Antonio deftly deflected all of our objections until we had to finally just say no, sorry, we're not getting in the car with you. As we left, he gave us a number to reach him at in case we changed our minds and kept saying "Appel moi! Appel Antonio". I swear the rest of the day we expected to see Antonio pull up along side us saying "Appel Antonio!".

Later that day we finally began the trip to Madrid. First we had a 3 hour train ride to the border town, followed by the overnight train. When we got to the border with a 2 hour layover, we went looking for a nice place to eat our food and stumbled upon a dance studio which had an aerobics class that started in 10 minutes. Well, within those 10 minutes, Janna had talked herself into the class as I stood outside watching for an hour. Who says you can't keep in shape on the road? After that we hustled to our train where we'd booked a couchette, or sleeper car for the masses. It's basically a cabin with 6 fold-down beds for which we thought we had made a reservation the day before, costing 20 Euros (about $18). When the conductor came around we found to our horror that the reservation guy had booked us on the previous night's train. After much consternation (in Spanish) on the part of the conductor, we were forced to put down another 20 Euros to stay in the Couchette. Can you say...suckers. "Note to self, please check the ticket dates next time. Thank you."

friday: We arrived, bright and early and bleary eyed in Madrid this morning and took a bit of time to find a hostel to stay in. After finding our place, we settled in at a coffee shop to plan our Madrid strategy. Today we started off with a bit of maxin' and relaxin' in the city´s main park, complete with ducks and a pond and lots of sunshine. After only a few hours in Madrid, I'm already liking it much more than Bordeaux. It's seems much more open, cleaner and a whole lot friendlier. We'll probably spend a 4 or 5 days here before heading up to Barcelona, so I'll have a lot more to report in a few days.

Till then. Adios!

Hi, all! It's Day Two already. Michael and I are in a cybercafe in Bordeaux, having just come back from a tour of two vineyards. The second one, called Branda, consisted of a surreal exhibition called The Soul of Wine. Seems that three years a rich feller restored this medieval site and turned it into both a vineyard and an Art experience -- the latter complete with Poetry of the Five Senses ("You must smell the pure vanille. It is en hommage to Louis Pasteur, whom you know?"; "You must see ze sculpture that means we pray to ze gods for ze four elements to be beautifull in the sky, after Picasso", "Now you must seet een ze audiobooth and hear ze vinyard poetry de Baudelaire"; and so on). What a krikin' relief to get to Taste. Their motto here is Hic Uva per Omnes (This Vine is for Everyone), but I warn you, they're a lot stingier about their portions than that.

Most impressive about Bordeaux is the prominence of poopy sidewalks. Michael says Paris is worse, but that doesn't make my shoe any cleaner. Michael and I have, by necessity, developed a system whereby we issue a quick squeal to warn the other of impending kerb-doo. The streets are rife with (let's call them) les chiens de breadboxment -- the latter vocab you will understand if you are familiar with my own personal regional French. Yes, let's call them that, in tribute to the prevalent size of dog found here, and/or in tribute to the shocking dimensions of their corresponding piles.

The cats of Bordeaux, we are certain, are much more dainty in their toilette.