Bad trip, wonderful visit, & Bill Jones

So... we have spent one really delightful week with our great friends, Chuck & Diane Fitzgerald, in Encinitas, CA. I was so nice to see them again and also to not have to go anywhere or see anything. Their place is so nice we never wanted to leave.

To get there, we survived the 10+ hour flight from London to LAX, and the commuter hop to San Diego. Unfortunately, we had to fly from Lisbon to London the day before, and stay in London overnight. It was verry, verry harry. We stayed in a really awful place and paid a bunch of those expensive Britsh £s just to get to the awful place and back to the awful airport. I will never voluntarily go to England again; I don't care how many crop circles they have! Their Midsomer Murders are justified.

Bill Jones finally joined us in Encinitas, looking the same as ever after his rude uprooting. We are now on the slow train to Guadalupe CA where we will visit with Robin and Virginia for a bit. The most charitable thing you could say about American trains is that they are cute. Unfortunately Americans have no convenient transportation whatsoever in the majority of the country -- they seem to not even realize that their airplanes no longer save time, their trains are a sick joke, their buses are pathetic, and their road/highway system is so 20th century it's embarrassing. Oh, well, I may have to stay here for a while, so I'd better try to accept it. Like any other undeveloped country. No wonder the land is so much cheaper than it is in Portugal.

One reason I haven't written anything for so long is that I was waiting for Manfred to put the photos on the iBook, so I can put them on the blog. Obviously, I could wait forever and it would never happen until I insist. So, I hope there will be something by the time I get to upload this.

Back to Lisbon

Geneva -- Well, having a tooth pulled was never in my travel plans, but now I can finally eat again. Finally, I can eat again, but I'm still a bit shaky. Manfred won't download and new photos to the computer ("too much trouble"), so I didn't feel like writing anything. We extended the stay to 3 nights.

I looked into properties in the Sintra area, they are very expensive. Especially compared to WA. The drop in real estate values has not happened here. Maybe it will, but I don't see any signs of an economic downturn, except in the tourism sector there are much fewer American and Canadian tourists, but plenty from Europe. The rest seems to be humming along with business as usual.

Other than the tooth-extraction, our Sintra stay was good. As you can see from Manfred's post, we loved the place we were in. However, it was unseasonably hot, and I didn't feel very well, so we didn't go around much, only to the beach.

Today is my birthday, and most of me (all but the tooth) made it to 69. We are back in Lisbon, leaving today to fly to London. There we will stay overnight in an airport hotel so we can take the flight to San Diego in the morning.

Back to Sintra

Manfred writing, this time -- We are in Sintra again, for two nites, found a Hostel, just opened about two weeks ago, a short walk from the train station. We first thought that it was closed but the door handle was about 18 inches above ground level and it was rather small. 36 Euros for the two of us per nite including b'fast and free internet (full 4 bars) in the room!!

Two young people are running it, they have other jobs but spell each other off so there is someone manning the small front desk at all times. Plus they are so helpful. Oh, there is a kitchen where you can do your own food, buying stuff for sandwiches from the store and, making coffee or tea also drink beer or wine, then sitting and chatting either in a nice large sitting room, your own room or the terrace.

It is 7:45 am, I'm sitting in our room in my undies, windows wide open, looking at the near treed hills with one of the castle on it, the sky is blue and cloudless and the air is very mild, sort of like a Hawaiian morning, some of our friends may recall.

Last nite we had a great Chinese dinner here in Sintra. Odd, but a beautiful place. Two main dishes, crab salad, rice, chinese tea, ice cream desert for 20 Euros for the two of us, about $30., reasonable for Europe, even in a slightly cheaper Portugal. A good size and very tasty.

For the last little while, Geneva has been complaining about a tooth paining her a lot. Every time she bites down on it with food that loose tooth was painful. So we just happen to see a dentist office as we were going out for dinner last night. So today, with the help from our hostel host, we went there, just around the corner, and at 3pm she will have it out. The dentist said that she has several problem teeth, which one would she like to have out. She said "this one". Out it came. 40 Euros, about $60.

All this time we have not watched any TV, read any news paper or anything else newsy, it's great!!! The other day we were standing on the Lisboa subway platform, waiting for our subway, there across the way was a big news display screen saying briefly that Obama was to get a Nobel Prize!! That's all.

Sintra and Lisbon

Yesterday, we took the train to Sintra and looked around to see if there's a good place to live. We even looked at 2 properties, but one was too small and the other too big. We talked to a couple of American ladies who have lived in the area for many years, and they suggested a small town north of Sintra as a good place for horses. We came back to our rooms in Lisboa, and today we traveled over lots of the city, especially the "Old Town" by tram. The streets are very narrow and steep, and the trams are old and slow and very noisy. After one ride, I was ready to swear off them forever, because the driver made it so jerky and unpleasant. Then we got one with another driver, a beautiful, young Oriental girl, and the ride was very nice. We saw street after street of old buildings, some in terrible disrepair, some nicely renovated, and everything in between. It seems there are 2 or 3 restaurants on every block. The trams were full of tourists, all speaking different languages. We saw several impressive churches, including one of the ugliest ones I have ever seen -- ugly mainly because it was so dirty. Everything except tile turns black, here. "Tire dust" is probably the main cause. One difference between countries we noticed is the graffiti. In Germany, it's quite artistic and often attractive. We didn't see any in Austria, but we were in small towns. Italy had some, but Spain had none. Zero. The huge Barcelona subway system has no graffiti anywhere, and not even any advertising on the trains, inside or out. Portugal, on the other hand, has graffiti everywhere, the ugly kind. The subway here in Lisbon is very nice, not all that extensive, but most impressive, except for small stops with no escalator. The walls of the stations are all tile, so graffiti-proof, but it's there, inside the trains.

"If it is Wednesday, it must be Lisboa"

--- and so it is! We have to make a couple of corrections, it is true that we extended our stay in Madrid by one additional night but we used that next day (Tue the 6th) to go to Sevilla, not Granada as mentioned earlier. We decided that we could only go to one of the two cities, so we chose Sevilla with the Alcazar, because there were plenty of trains. We stored our suitcases plus in a locker in the main train station and took an early fast train (2 1/2 hours) to Sevilla. We spent about 5 hours there, saw the fantastic Palace, had a bite to eat and took the fast train back to Madrid, in order to make our overnight Hotel Train to Lisboa. Well, while it was most interesting and amazing to see the Alcazar, the heat was pretty unbearable, 37C in the afternoon!! (That really sapped our "hit points") All the fast trains in Spain require a reservation and with a 10 Euro per person fee, and that was all arranged before we left for Sevilla in the morning. After coming back in the afternoon we had to hustle getting the luggage out of the locker, take the subway to the other train station, to make that stupid night train to Lisboa. Stupid because we could not get a bed on it, all sold out, so we had to sleep in our seats on this 10 hour bad ride. The train went slow, jiggled around a lot and as Geneva said, the only saving grace was the dining car!! It was a really bad night. New rule: never again take a night train unless we can get beds.

We got into Lisboa at 7:40 am Portugal time, one hour earlier, we gained one hour. They just had a rainstorm come thru and it just quit raining. As we were walking slowly toward the exit, a friendly middle aged lady approached us, gave us a card and asked us if we would like to have a room for the night. (It must have looked pretty obvious, although it was just morning). She went on to say, 20 Euros per person, double bed, w/ sitting room, very clean and the (taxi) transportation is included. We looked at each other and said --- lets go for it!! And so we did. She took us to the taxi outside and after a 10 minute ride, her daughter was there to pay the taxi!! We went up one floor and it's very nice. Old building of course, but solid and clean, as promised. We paid for 3 nights. We lay down a little to recoup, then got ourselves a 24 hour pass for the bus and had some lunch near our place. We went on a bus ride then slept a little.

The above is sort of dry reporting what we did. One day I will have more time or what ever, to give of my impressions, observations and valuations of it all, some day. The computer battery was dead going onto the night train, so we could not write, the ipod needed charging, but geneva read her book on it anyway until it shut down.

Getting on the www has been hit and miss on our trip, via WiFi that is. It ranged from 10 Euros for multiple uses to totally free for as long as you want to non-existant.

Madrid!

We were hoping to get by with only 1 night stay in Madrid, but all our clothes were dirty and we had to find a laundry. The one recommended by Rick Steves was out of business, so we went to another. Then we wanted to do the Royal Palace tour. This famous palace is on a par with Versailles and Vienna. But, when we got there, they were having some sort of official function, so it was closed to view-visits. But the function was actually much more interesting. They had marching band, marching soldiers, several horse troops all decked out, and a beautiful coach. They all moved up and down in front and side of the Palace and even through the streets, so everybody could enjoy the scene. Such beautiful Spanish horses, moving in unison, was much better than the palace tour. There's a video at the bottom of this posting. If it doesn't show up, scroll around a bit to see it, then click the play button.

Anyway, we had to extend our stay for another night, and every extra day in Spain means one less day in Portugal. Next we go to Granada to see the Alcazar, 2 nights-- then > Seville > Lisbon as fast as possible. Getting to Portugal is probably an overnight on the train, which is either expensive or not fun.

On the road again

This is Manfred: As much as we loved Barcelona, we are moving on. Did some emailing, blog posting and a quick breakfast on the Rambla, then made our way down the metro and after a few stops we were at the big train station.
After paying a small surcharge to go on the "big boy's", fast train (AVE) to Madrid, we settled into our reserved airplane-type seats and rested, because the getting from place to place on the streets and in public transportation is quite a chore. The train, all white, the nose looking like a bullet, left 2pm sharp and smoothly glided out of the staion, except for a few switching noises the train just floated on air. The rails are welded and noiseless. In the 3-hour trip we stopped about four times and many times the train hit 300 km/hr. = 186.4 mph! The train station in Madrid is amazing, old walls, newer roof, 5 stories high, and it has a jungle in it! That is where the passengers hang out, with shops and eateries.

Barcelona - what a great place!

We have been staying in a small hotel just off the "main action" street in Old Town, the Rambla. It's quite nice, large room, huge bathroom, free WiFi (but it doesn't work for the iPod), €63/night. But no breakfast. The Rambla is huge, with hundreds of people meandering up and down, looking at the kiosks, having snacks, watching the erformers, etc. We don't have a photo of it, yet.
We went to the market place for breakfast, good place for ham & eggs. The market is unbelievable. There are photos.
Today, was Gaudi Day. Most people who come here have to do a Gaudi Day. We visited the 4 most-viewed examples of his work here: the still-under-construction Sacrada Familia church, an apartment building, a residence, and a park. They were exhausting, but worth it. We didn't go in any except the park. If you want to learn more, google Gaudi.

Sailing from Roma to Barcelona

We are sitting in the bar by the swimming pool (complete with calypso music) on the deck of a cruise ship doing ferry duty. We spent the night in a small ship's cabin with 2 very good beds and a cute little bathroom.
We didn't get to see anything of Roma except the horrendous traffic getting to the train station and finding the garage to turn in the car at the central train station. There we were, stuck with our bags, and Manfred wanted to get to the port city, Cititavecchia, where our ship the "Cruise Roma", was to depart. So we took the train there, a short taxi ride to the port , and then waited, tied to our bags in a small terminal, for over 4 hours, until the ship was ready to board, at 8:30 pm. After that, it was nice, exploring the ship and having dinner, watching the port disappear, etc. It is really a nice 20 hr. mini-cruise.

Manfred's addition -- We ate à la carte, hamburger w/ fries and drink, €7, spaghetti €6.50. We met a cute Korean girl, traveling alone thru Europe. Had a great night's sleep. I got up at 6:30 am to watch the dock operations on the Sardinia stop, the sun came up, some clouds, warm breeze and the first cup of cafe con latte. We à-la-carted it again for a simple breakfast, cafe con latte, €1.50 ea., omelette to order €4 (finally, eggs!), and fresh-squeezed O.J. €3. You can't think of Euros as dollars, there is always that +50% lurking in the corner!!