(TJ)
We took a overnight train to Madrid, my neck was not in good shape after the train ride. I think they purposely design these seats so you can only lean back just enough that you start to fall asleep and then you wake up as your neck snaps from falling to one side or the other. Since this was the case I decided to try something someone else was doing, sleeping on the tray table that pulled out from the seat in front of you. Sure it feels good at first as you cross your arms and put your head on top. Then you wake up and your arms have fallen totally asleep and your neck is still screwed up and you’re totally disorientated. Has the CIA looked in to using these as non-torture torture method I think it would be highly effective.
We only spent two days in Madrid and went to the Prado museum and the Reina Sofia. After visiting the Reina Sofia I’ve decided that my calling is modern art. I can put five black dots randomly on a white canvas and call it a priceless work of art or just paint a canvas one color and viola its worth millions. I don’t know why I did not think of this before. The Prado has more of the older pieces of art, my favorite was “The Triumph of Death” by Brueghel in which a skeleton army was killing all sorts of people regardless of class or trade. They also had some what I would call surrealist painting from the middle ages with very imaginative interpretations of Heaven and Hell, the Garden of Eden, Creation of Earth, very imaginative for the middle ages.
(here is a link to an example of TJ’s favorite modern art pieces: http://www.spanisharts.com/reinasofia/miro/e_paisaje.htm)
(Michelle)
While the Prado is home to a wide range of artists, it fittingly has large collections of Spanish artists including, Velazquez, Goya and El Greco (Greek but painted in Spain). (On a side note, the Prado had 2 rooms of Titian). No photos allowed, so I have to go on memory. The one that was my favorite to see was “Las Meninas” by Velazquez. As I mentioned in my Barcelona entry, we saw a whole room at the Picasso museum where he re-created pieces of the Las Meninas, so it was pretty cool to see the actual painting. My second favorite was the two paintings by Goya called “La Maja Desnuda” and “La Maja Vestida”, where he depicts the same woman laying on a couch naked and clothed. He originally painted her nude and then due to outrage of the nude painting, he painted a second one with her clothed (refusing to paint over the original). During the 1815 Spanish inquisition, he was stripped of his title as court painter, as he allegedly wouldn’t reveal who commissioned the nude painting. Scandalous. It seems to me that nudes have been painted throughout time, so I don’t get the big deal with this one.
The Reina Sofia: The modern art that TJ and I are not big fans of was one floor in this museum. My least favorite modern art piece was a series of 6 clay statues that might be urinals. On another much better floor, there was a large Salvador Dali hall, which was very good. As the second largest exhibit of Dali I’ve seen (first was the Dali museum in St. Petersburg Florida), they had pieces like "El Gran Masturbador" and some nice pre-surrealist paintings of his sister. Other pieces I liked on this floor: Ponce De Leon “Accidente”, Pablo Picasso “Guernica”, and Pablo Gargallo’s statues of Greta Garbo.
We went to some tapas restaurants and also had a couple beers with some people from the hostel, but other than that, the art museums were the main focus in our short time in Madrid.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal – 06/08 – 06/10
(TJ)
The bike trail from Cascais was along a protected Dune area, a very nice ride. The view at the beach was nice accept the underage girls that TJ was staring at (his version of good scenery). :)
The Fado festival was held at the Castle of Sao Jorge. While the music generally seemed upbeat (see our attached video under Video link), Fado is usually about some sort of longing for unrealized dreams. The music and castle atmosphere were very nice and we really enjoyed it (TJ was even pleasantly surprised as he indicated above).
Oeiras Alive – TJ may have missed his calling as a music reviewer. All I can say is White Stripes put on an incredible live show. The videos taken on my little camera obviously aren’t good sound quality, so don’t judge off those!
At Cascais, which is a beach resort also an hour or so outside of Lisbon, you can get free bikes in this town so we rode our bikes down the boardwalk until we were told by the police that we were not allowed to ride bikes down the boardwalk. We did a detour back through town and started to head for a beach that Michelle had heard was nice. So we rode for about 10km, before we finally stopped to see exactly where this beach was (turns out the beach was 2 km outside of town). We ended up at a different nice beach and spent a hour there getting sunburned. I will say that the scenery at this beach was excellent but Michelle did not enjoy the scenery as much. We headed back to Lisbon to see a traditional Fado concert which I’ll let Michelle explain about. I’ll just say that it was better than I thought it would be.
Saturday night we finally got to the go to the Music Festival that we had extended our time in Lisbon for, Oeiras Alive 07. After talking with a few people at the hostel who were also going, we decided to go together. We skipped the opening acts in favor of some cheaper beer and headed to the park about 8:30. The White Stripes came on at about 9:30. Let me just say that they are awesome live, one of the top sets I have seen. Its blue’s meets Led
Zepplin with searing drums. If you have not seen them go see them live. I said go! Run! What are you waiting for….I said GO! The Smashing Pumpkins version 2.0 came out at about midnight, fittingly in long flowing white spacesuits with white capes. All they were missing were the white cone hats and it would have looked like something a lot more offensive had showed up with guitars. They were enjoyable but they were no match if you put them up against the White Stripes. It was great night out with some fun people and some really good bands.
Saturday night we finally got to the go to the Music Festival that we had extended our time in Lisbon for, Oeiras Alive 07. After talking with a few people at the hostel who were also going, we decided to go together. We skipped the opening acts in favor of some cheaper beer and headed to the park about 8:30. The White Stripes came on at about 9:30. Let me just say that they are awesome live, one of the top sets I have seen. Its blue’s meets Led
Zepplin with searing drums. If you have not seen them go see them live. I said go! Run! What are you waiting for….I said GO! The Smashing Pumpkins version 2.0 came out at about midnight, fittingly in long flowing white spacesuits with white capes. All they were missing were the white cone hats and it would have looked like something a lot more offensive had showed up with guitars. They were enjoyable but they were no match if you put them up against the White Stripes. It was great night out with some fun people and some really good bands.(Michelle)
The bike trail from Cascais was along a protected Dune area, a very nice ride. The view at the beach was nice accept the underage girls that TJ was staring at (his version of good scenery). :)The Fado festival was held at the Castle of Sao Jorge. While the music generally seemed upbeat (see our attached video under Video link), Fado is usually about some sort of longing for unrealized dreams. The music and castle atmosphere were very nice and we really enjoyed it (TJ was even pleasantly surprised as he indicated above).
Oeiras Alive – TJ may have missed his calling as a music reviewer. All I can say is White Stripes put on an incredible live show. The videos taken on my little camera obviously aren’t good sound quality, so don’t judge off those!
Overall, Lisbon and the area surrounding were a lot of fun and a trip to Portugal again would be high on my list.
Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal – 06/06 – 06/07
(TJ)
We arrived in Lisbon after a bus ride that seemed like 9 hours since we driving about 45 mph on wide open freeways and stopping in all sorts random Portuguese towns. I did learn however during our 45 minute break for dinner that the Woman’s Turkish indoor volleyball team is a force to be reckoned with, in your face China. The one cool thing about the bus ride was that coming into town we crossed a 17 km bridge to get into Lisbon, I think that it is one of the longest in the world. Fortunately, we found our Hostel relatively quickly in very hilly Lisboa, which is a less clean Portuguese version of San Francisco (not that there is anything wrong with that). They even have old electric street cars that kind of resemble SF’s cable cars.
Our first day there we went to Belem which is slightly outside Lisbon. Unfortunately, we got on the wrong train and had to walk about 30 minutes to get to Belem, good times. There was bunch of museums, a nice park and an old fort - All of which we did not go in since we did not want to spend the money or the time. Once we got to Belem proper we were starving and stumbled upon a great Kabob/sandwich shop. It was so good I am revising the best food list.
Our first day there we went to Belem which is slightly outside Lisbon. Unfortunately, we got on the wrong train and had to walk about 30 minutes to get to Belem, good times. There was bunch of museums, a nice park and an old fort - All of which we did not go in since we did not want to spend the money or the time. Once we got to Belem proper we were starving and stumbled upon a great Kabob/sandwich shop. It was so good I am revising the best food list.
- Steak with Bourbon sauce and Sarlat Potatos at the Bonnet restaurant around Dordogne, some of the best potatos ever.
- Pasta with Fresh Vegtables, made in Amboise by Michelle and Nadirah
- Japanese Food in Paris
- Frango (Chicken) Pita w/fries, 3 pepper Frango Baguette from Qui Qui P_ P_ Belem, Portugal
- Duck with Fatty Potatoes, made by Nadirah in Trailer in Dordonge
- Pasta at oddly fancy restaurant in Sligo, Ireland
Michelle also stopped at a nearby place that specializes in pastries that are famous around the world (Café Pasteis de Belem). She bought a sleeve of 6 and I must say that they were pretty good.
The second day we did a day trip to Sintra that is roughly 1 hour from Lisbon. We decided to go after hearing about a place called Quinta da Regaleira that was a must see. Apparently Sintra was the play ground of the Aristocrats and royalty during the late 1800’s so there is all sorts of palaces in the area. It is a very nice area that has some very large hills that border on mountains that are heavily wooded and the legend has it that they are magical (oooh). The Quinta da Regaleira was built in the early 1900s and the compound is built right into the side of a hill and probably takes up around 10 acres. The 10 acres are taken up by gardens, some of which are kept up nicely and others that are overgrown. The cool part about this mansion compound is that in addition to the gardens the guy who built the 
place had tunnels dug out where you could walk from one garden to another and even into buildings around the compound. I went into a bunch of these, fortunately I had brought a flashlight since many are hundreds of yards long and are pitch black. The mansion house itself was also very nice and reminded me of the Hearst Castle in California with Tunnels.
Afterwards we had some lunch and found out that there was a world toy museum in town. Of course I had to check this out, it was only 3 Euro. Let me just say that seeing their collection of toy soldiers over the past 150 years was totally worth it. They also had a display of some old sets of Lego’s. To my horror I recognized some of the boxes for a castle and fire station that they had on display as pieces that I owned (still do). Seeing that made me feel old.
(Michelle)
The bridge we crossed to get into Portugal was the Vasco De Gama bridge, and according to Wikipedia, it is the longest in Europe (not quite the world as TJ said, apparently China is building bridges like crazy). Cool scenery on the bus ride included many fields of Portuguese cork tree farms.
I have never been to San Francisco, so I can’t make the comparison to Lisbon, but I will say that they have the ugliest graffiti that I have seen so far in Europe. Regardless, Lisbon is a cool town and the price was right.
Belem is where Vasco De Gama left for his voyage to India and it has a cool age of discovery statue. The pastries from Belem are the bomb (coming from a person with relatively small sweet tooth).
In Sintra, we skipped the Moorish castle (since we saw Alhambra in Granada) and the Pena Palace for something a little different. The Quinta da Regaleira was created with the vision of the wealthy doctor who worked with architect Luigi Manini to create a property of mythological references. Even though I am not smart enough to understand all the references, I haven’t see
n anything like it. We saw all those Chateaus in France which were very fancy, but none of them had a piece of land as interesting as this. We spent about 5 hours here and would have spent the full day if we hadn’t have been hungry and too cheap to eat at the one café on the property. We also would have needed a slightly better flashlight than the one TJ had, as the caves were immense and you never would know where you would pop up. Since the local tourist booth pushes people towards the castles, it was relatively quiet at the Quinta which made it even better. As TJ mentioned, some parts seemed purposely not kept up, which also looked really cool. See picture of the outdoor aquarium.
Sevilla (Seville), Spain – 06/03 – 06/05
(Michelle)
After we checked into the Oasis, we went on the hunt for bull fighting tickets. We successfully found some by a somewhat shady ticket stand (the tickets were legit though and in the shade as he said). At the Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza, shade is the way to go (it is almost 100 degrees here). It is so important here that they label the doors by sun, shade or sun and shade (sun in the beginning and shade later). The shade section was packed, but the sun section had about 20 people who were frantically fanning themselves. OK
animal lovers, stop reading. It is pretty gross, but I was however impressed by the dance of it. The moves they do before the killing are very ballet-ish… they even wear what looked to me like ballet slippers. We had 3 fighters to watch (they each went twice, so unfortunately 6 bulls didn’t make it out that night). The first fighter (oldest at 27) was not so good. His bull did not go down well. The second fighter (age 20) was much more egotistical and entertaining. Several times after he did some good move or something he would run his fingers through his hair violently. His face was very expressive and he was often impressed with himself. While I was very entertained by Johnny Drama, my favorite was the third. Ismael was a mere 17, he looked like Leo D and he cruised and swung successfully in his tight bull fighting slacks. He did all the work himself (unlike the first two where the initially stabbings were done by their pit crew) and he was definitely the most skilled. The funniest thing though was the commentary by the two middle aged British woman during the first hour of the fight. It was clearly their first time as well and they thoroughly analyzed every part of it. “Well, that guy was a bit of a Nancy at first but he seems to have redeemed himself now”. “I don’t know why they have to use the horses, they are such gentle creatures”.
After we checked into the Oasis, we went on the hunt for bull fighting tickets. We successfully found some by a somewhat shady ticket stand (the tickets were legit though and in the shade as he said). At the Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza, shade is the way to go (it is almost 100 degrees here). It is so important here that they label the doors by sun, shade or sun and shade (sun in the beginning and shade later). The shade section was packed, but the sun section had about 20 people who were frantically fanning themselves. OK
animal lovers, stop reading. It is pretty gross, but I was however impressed by the dance of it. The moves they do before the killing are very ballet-ish… they even wear what looked to me like ballet slippers. We had 3 fighters to watch (they each went twice, so unfortunately 6 bulls didn’t make it out that night). The first fighter (oldest at 27) was not so good. His bull did not go down well. The second fighter (age 20) was much more egotistical and entertaining. Several times after he did some good move or something he would run his fingers through his hair violently. His face was very expressive and he was often impressed with himself. While I was very entertained by Johnny Drama, my favorite was the third. Ismael was a mere 17, he looked like Leo D and he cruised and swung successfully in his tight bull fighting slacks. He did all the work himself (unlike the first two where the initially stabbings were done by their pit crew) and he was definitely the most skilled. The funniest thing though was the commentary by the two middle aged British woman during the first hour of the fight. It was clearly their first time as well and they thoroughly analyzed every part of it. “Well, that guy was a bit of a Nancy at first but he seems to have redeemed himself now”. “I don’t know why they have to use the horses, they are such gentle creatures”.After the fight we attempted to find some local flamenco, but we were unsuccessful, so we headed back to the hostel bar. I will say that for 11:00 on a Sunday night, Sevilla was hopping. All the street cafes were full and there were people walking around even in the tiniest streets (there are many tiny streets here). In the hostel bar we made many friends. They were all very friendly and the shots were flowing. Pretty soon, Lourdes (bartender’s girlfriend) and I were belting out Roy Orbison tunes at the top of our lungs, much to the shock and dismay of most of the other bar patrons (and TJ) who had probably never heard Roy before. Good times.
The next day we went out for tapas of course, and then to the free Museum which was the home to many artifacts relating to Chris Columbus’ discovery of the Americas. There were loads of maps of cities, mostly in South America, that look like they were drawn by 5 year olds, but I guess that was city planning back in those days. This museum was totally in Spanish and it looked like it wasn’t completely open to the public yet, so we were done in there in about 15 
minutes. We were tired and it was HOT, so we went back to the hostel to hang out at the pool. That night, the hunt for Flamenco commenced again and this time we found some. I was expecting to see the dancing, but the dancers were allegedly sick. We were lucky though because some girls in the crowd knew how to dance Flamenco so they got up on the stage randomly for the last song. Since it wasn’t planned, they were just wearing jeans, not the cool Flamenco dresses. It is very expressive and had we understood the words, I’m sure they would have been very moving. Or perhaps it is something about how his wife left him and his dog died (or insert other bad lyrics from country songs), but it sounded good.
minutes. We were tired and it was HOT, so we went back to the hostel to hang out at the pool. That night, the hunt for Flamenco commenced again and this time we found some. I was expecting to see the dancing, but the dancers were allegedly sick. We were lucky though because some girls in the crowd knew how to dance Flamenco so they got up on the stage randomly for the last song. Since it wasn’t planned, they were just wearing jeans, not the cool Flamenco dresses. It is very expressive and had we understood the words, I’m sure they would have been very moving. Or perhaps it is something about how his wife left him and his dog died (or insert other bad lyrics from country songs), but it sounded good.Croquetas… I love them. I always ordered them in the tapas restaurants in Chicago and they really do eat them here.
Sevilla was a very pretty city to walk through. Every night they have loads of people whose job is to hose down all the sidewalks to clean them. That is the most clean obsessed I’ve seen so far.
(TJ)
Seville is Hot! Carrying my back pack for a mile is not fun in 100 degree heat. At least the Hostel was worth the trek.
EH TORO!!
The bullfight was interesting tradition to see once. However it’s the same thing over and over again, bull charges gets stabbed, gets stabbed by man on horse, gets impaled with sword thru the spine and collapses hopefully, x6. I was hoping they would liven it up maybe bring three bulls in the ring vs. one Matador in cage match, now there is some action I want to see. Or they could have just thrown a Christian to Lions, I’m sure all would be very entertaining. I kept hoping that I would see a bull smart enough to at least gore one of the Matadors. I know I probably won’t be going again but I’m pretty sure that Michelle will want to go again just because she likes the tight pants and the animal cruelty.
I guess I was not as impressed with Flamenco as Michelle. I think we may have just gone on an off night since it was a older man and another one playing guitar. To me it just sounded like shouting in different pitches accompanied by a guitar that had nothing to do with the vocals. I think that I may be able to do this if I had about five shots of tequila and knew some one who could play anything on a guitar.
EH TORO!!
The bullfight was interesting tradition to see once. However it’s the same thing over and over again, bull charges gets stabbed, gets stabbed by man on horse, gets impaled with sword thru the spine and collapses hopefully, x6. I was hoping they would liven it up maybe bring three bulls in the ring vs. one Matador in cage match, now there is some action I want to see. Or they could have just thrown a Christian to Lions, I’m sure all would be very entertaining. I kept hoping that I would see a bull smart enough to at least gore one of the Matadors. I know I probably won’t be going again but I’m pretty sure that Michelle will want to go again just because she likes the tight pants and the animal cruelty.
I guess I was not as impressed with Flamenco as Michelle. I think we may have just gone on an off night since it was a older man and another one playing guitar. To me it just sounded like shouting in different pitches accompanied by a guitar that had nothing to do with the vocals. I think that I may be able to do this if I had about five shots of tequila and knew some one who could play anything on a guitar.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Videos
Here is a post with our little videos (note, quality is not good):
(1 from Fado Festival in Lisbon, 1 from Flamenco bar in Sevilla, 3 of Whites Stripes at Oeiras Alive Portugal, 1 of Smashing Pumpkins at Oerisa Alive Portugal, 1 of Killers at Rock Werchter Belgium)
NOTE: With the exception of the Fado and Flamenco videos, there are other better videos of these exact concerts on You Tube already, so if you are into it, check those out.
Fado Festival:
Flamenco (singing only, dancers were sick):
White Stripes:
Smashing Pumpkins:
Killers: (you can't hear anything in this video - I think we were too close to speakers)
(1 from Fado Festival in Lisbon, 1 from Flamenco bar in Sevilla, 3 of Whites Stripes at Oeiras Alive Portugal, 1 of Smashing Pumpkins at Oerisa Alive Portugal, 1 of Killers at Rock Werchter Belgium)
NOTE: With the exception of the Fado and Flamenco videos, there are other better videos of these exact concerts on You Tube already, so if you are into it, check those out.
Fado Festival:
Flamenco (singing only, dancers were sick):
White Stripes:
Smashing Pumpkins:
Killers: (you can't hear anything in this video - I think we were too close to speakers)
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Feeding the Hounds 'Movie' link from Cheverney
I finally had a few minutes to search through my old email and finally found the blog link for Nadirah and Nathan (who we traveled in France with) and Nathan posted a video of the feeding of the hounds. I am putting a link to it here. Since TJ spent a lot of time explaining the incident, I thought the video was a nice touch.
http://nnjackman.blogspot.com/2007/06/trailer-park-livin.html
http://nnjackman.blogspot.com/2007/06/trailer-park-livin.html
Computer update
We called the place in Germany on Monday and it seems that the computer will be repaired sometime next Monday or Tuesday. After that, we will hopefully be able to catch up with the blog entries.
Most recent highlights -
Hair cuts in Lubeck Germany
Laura D. extending her work trip to hang out longer in Belgium
Rock Werchter (Snow Patrol, Killers, Keane)
Most recent highlights -
Hair cuts in Lubeck Germany
Laura D. extending her work trip to hang out longer in Belgium
Rock Werchter (Snow Patrol, Killers, Keane)
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