Today was a nice day! First up, I met up with Joyce Peterson for brunch.
I had an acai bowl. For Japan, this was pretty expensive – almost $10!
After this, we walked around Yoyogi Park, which is a large park with lots of picnic space. Next to the park is a forest with a large Buddhist temple in the middle and multiple large Japanese gates. It’s a big tourist attraction, so we started exploring, then when Joyce had to make another appointment, I kept exploring. It was really nice to see her!
Within the forest there was a botanical garden which cost (only 500 yen!) to enter. Lots of flowers, ponds, and even some bonsai!
One of the entrances to the gardens.
(I do wonder how old these are… Some bonsai take years to perfect, and still require maintenance. These looked quite impressive!)
This one wasn’t part of the gardens officially – it was growing along the path.
There was an ancient well (spring) inside the park too that was less impressive than it was made out to be – just a little circular pond of water flowing into a creek that fed one of the ponds in the park. Before I could see the well, I had to wait in a line of people for about 5 minutes 😛
Outside in the forest there were a number of (attractions? things? monuments?) including this one with a ton of large paper lanterns.
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Outside the park was an area of food vendors and a young Japanese guy beatboxing – I didn’t get a picture of him, but the sounds he was making were actually quite impressive.
I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like this guy was smiling towards me as I took the photo. This little weird electric car was next to a restaurant outside the park. It’s a single-seater, probably for doing food delivery. This little blue Kei car was cute.Mariokart? O.OI forget the Olympics are this old!
After the park and exploration, I stopped at an “American Burger” place to see whether it lived up to the name.
I got a chicken based sandwich, and it was actually one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve had, probably top three. It doesn’t look it, but with the jalepenos and fried chicken, it was delicious. (Maybe I was pretty hungry too…)
I was pretty tired of walking around (and just tired too – still catching up on sleep), so I went to my hotel (not the guesthouse – I had only booked for 6 nights, and when I went to extend my stay, the 29th and 30th were booked – so I got a different hotel for those two nights and booked the guesthouse again from the 1st through the 7th).
It was a private bed, but unfortunately it was also a very basic room, the bed squeaked each time I moved a centimeter, and the only light in the room made me feel like a lab rat. But, it was a place to sleep!
All for today! This post was kind of low effort, but honestly so was half of this day, so…
Most days in Japan so far I’ve started the day with nothing planned, and then ended up busy anyway. Usually someone else in the hostel is going out to do something in the city and I tag along. Today, Matt wanted to go get curry at a Japanese curry place he’d heard about, and I wanted to go check out a flea market some of the other guests had told me about. So we headed out via the trains!
Almost all the train stations here have these barriers that automatically open when the train doors open, rather than an open gap next to the tracks.
The neighborhood where the curry place was is really cute – it’s only a small distance from the tourist center of Tokyo, but was surprisingly uncrowded.
Matt told me that many old houses here the signs are the name of the house – usually named after the family name of the people who live there.These are the largest pitcher plants I’ve seen!Elliot, I know you’ll like this one 🙂I love the colors here.
As it turns out, the curry place had a long line, and unless we’d had a reservation, we would have had to wait for almost two hours. We gave up and decided to get tacos at a shop we’d passed earlier.
The tacos were pretty good! I always think it’s funny seeing food from a cuisine more local to where I live in foreign countries – it’s interesting to see what’s authentic, and what has been influenced by the country it’s being prepared in.
In this case, the tacos were relatively accurate! I like the tacos back home much more, but that’s not a big surprise. I imagine it’s hard to get ingredients as authentic here.
A classic bike from the 80’s. I think it is a Honda Trail 110.
After the tacos, we decided we were too late for the flea market (it closed at 2:30 PM), so we instead headed into the tourist center to do some vintage clothes shopping. I found a couple of cute shirts (I regretted not bringing more comfortable t-shirts), and some other neat trinkets I was wanted (but resisted the urge) to purchase.
I particularly liked the watch in the middle with the black face, but it was about $31 USD, a little more than I’ve paid for most of my watches.
We did run across a souvenir store, outside of which there were dozens of Gashapon vending machines (for a few hundred yen, they dispense little toys). I saw one for miniature camera models, so of course I got one.
The rest of the day was pretty relaxed. I came back the hostel and did laundry (and in the process, lost my wallet, which I didn’t find until this morning! It had somehow ended up in someone else’s pocket when I was exchanging coins with him for the laundry machine).
We again stayed up quite late chatting about various things (this time, about whether or not everything has a taste (does a ceramic mug have a taste?) and what even makes up taste in the first place.
The lady who plays an Erhu came back in, and a few people hadn’t seen one before, so she gave us another concert, which I this time managed to record a moment of:
A blog post written on the same day as the post is about? Wild!
I continue to forget to take pictures of my breakfasts – generally by the time I get breakfast I’m too focused on eating to remember! But, this morning I walked to a nearby grocery store to grab bananas, yogurt, granola, and orange juice. I also grabbed a few mini oranges for snacks throughout the next few days. The hostel I’m in has a kitchen, which means I can actually cook if I want! I will be taking advantage of it – being able to make my own food will be nice.
After breakfast (and writing the past two blog posts), I decided to head out to a nearby park. I wanted to spend the day very relaxed, so walking around the park seemed like a good idea (and a good way to learn my new camera)!
This flowerbed is right outside the hostel.OLYMPUS C4100
Honestly, not a lot to say here – most of these pictures are from the park!
These tiles were cute!
One thing I did notice walking around (that I had heard before) was that there are a lot of vending machines – on the corners of streets, tucked among residential houses. Mostly they have drinks, and one even had alcohol? This is how I know the legal drinking age in Japan is apparently 20 years.
Of course, I also took pictures of vehicles. There are a ton of kei vehicles here (Kei vehicles are a specific class of car in Japan, limited to a certain size and engine displacement. In return for the limits, they are cheaper and get tax benefits compared to normal cars)
This moped had a “The North Face” and Prius Hybrid Energy badge on it. Somehow I doubt this scooter is a hybrid…
There are still more mopeds here, and more bikes even. I’d say there are more cars than mopeds, but about the same number of bikes as cars.
…
More pillars for Felix!There were a lot of gardens as part of the park. I sat here for a while, reading.If you look really close, this is a selfie!I thought this light looked really cool.These lanterns were just hanging above this pathway.I liked the light sort of filtering into this small courtyard.This clock looked really cool among the trees!I really liked this poppy against the tile.This light tower looked cool framed through this wire fence.Another light tower, framed through tree branches.
As I was sitting here writing this post, another guest checked in – she is here from China, and brought her Erhu (a two-stringed traditional Chinese instrument) and she played a bit for us! She played Master Oogway’s theme from Kung Fu Panda – and it was beautiful. She’s been practicing for 20 years!
This, obviously, is not her – this is just the first good public domain image I could find for an Erhu.
After the park, I walked back to the hostel, stopping at a local grocery store for a couple of snacks.
After sitting and writing this blog post for a while, I left again, this time with several other folks from the Hostel, to get sushi at a nearby sushi conveyor belt place.
I think I got about 7 plates, which cost only about $13.75!
At this place, you order on a tablet, and then (sometimes as little as 60 seconds later!) your food zooms up on the belt next to the table.
The squid, close upCoffee jelly for desert!
After the dinner, we walked back to the hostel with a quick stop at a convenience store for drinks and snacks, and then we came back to the hostel to sit around the main area and talk and laugh.
4/20: This was mostly a travel day, lost to the 10 hour flight from Istanbul to Malaysia. I got to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport around 5PM local time, and then spent about an hour more figuring out how to get from the airport into Kuala Lumpur itself, which is about 60km from the city’s center. Google thought it would take 6 hours, but it didn’t seem to know about the express train between the airport and city center, which only took 30 minutes!
I didn’t realize when I took this photo, but my hostel is right near the base of the tallest tower in the middle!
As I drew closer to my hostel, I realized it’s right in Chinatown in Malaysia – and right next to Jalan Petaling, a well known street market. Lots of stuff to see nearby!
My hostel is the grey building on the corner.
I didn’t have a lot of energy, but for dinner I went downstairs to a restaurant owned (I think) by the hostel called Mingle Cafe and got Nasi Ulam Ayam Percik, a chicken dish:
The sauce on the chicken was so delicious. I actually am eating the same dish again for breakfast as I write this!
I also got some kombucha, and in total the whole meal cost just under $9 USD! The prices here are a big shock to me – food and lodging are both extremely cheap, with most dishes at restaraunts I’ve seen costing $4-6 USD, and my hostel costing (for a private room!) $22/night. If I had chosen to share a dorm with others, I could have paid only $6-9/night depending on the hostel.
Mingle Cafe, where I’ve been getting a lot of my food.
4/21: Today I actually got to explore a little bit! Supper had been so good at Mingle Cafe that I went back for breakfast. This time, knowing how cheap the prices are, I splurged a bit.
Mango Lassi, Iced Mocha, and the “Mingle Big Breakfast” – big was right, I couldn’t finish it all!
This was of course also delicious, and my splurging on two drinks cost me a whopping USD $15.77… I could get used to this!
Next, I began walking to the Perdana Botanical Garden a few km away. As I walked, I realized why many people don’t come to Malaysia during Monsoon season – it was in the upper 80’s outside, and the humidity was high – I was dripping sweat just from walking! However, it was beautiful, and you can tell you’re in a tropical country!
On my way, I walked through a section of Petaling Street, the nearby street market, but apparently only took a few pictures.
I’m tempted to buy fruits like this, but that’s exactly what the travel nurse I had an appointment with told me NOT to do . . . I might anyway 😛Some of the market is in temporary stalls on the street, but some of it is more inside buildings with hallways adjacent to the road, like this.The streets here are green and bustling. This street was one of the less busy ones I crossed.There are plenty of mopeds here too, but unlike the ones in Spain and Europe, these ones seem lighter. A lot of them look like they might be based on or inspired by the 70’s Honda Trail mopeds. I kind of like the look of these ones better!I like the purple-white color scheme on this one. It’s also quite old! The area where the speedometer would be was just a mass of wrapped duck tape…Still not as common as in Barcelona, but still far more so than in the US!I suspect many of these small ones are only 50-100CC, likely with a top speed of 35-50 MPH.
Malaysia isn’t known for its architecture that I know of, but I did see a number of cool buildings along the way. There’s a large tower close to my hostel that’s an easy photo subject (you’ll see it a few times throughout this post) and I found a number of other buildings that looked good too.
Another tower in Malaysia. I walked right by it on my way home later.I’m not sure this is a Muslim temple or not, but the influence is strong here – lots of Halal food, plenty of references around. In fact, I’ve seen multiple signs prohibiting “indecent behavior” in public spaces, usually indicated by a figure of two people kissing. Is kissing in public actually considered indecent?See?OLYMPUS C5050OLYMPUS C5050
Once at the botanical gardens, I was ready for something cold and sweet, so I fell prey to the snack stands just waiting for hapless tourists like myself to stumble upon them. I got a durian popsicle (not recommended, durian is an . . . odd flavor) and a lychee drink (I do recommend this one!)
The durian taste lingered longer in my mouth than I desired, and kept reminding me I’d eaten it every time I burped for the rest of the day. Oh well, new experiences, right?
Mildly refreshed, I continued my explorations of the gardens, stopping at some type of war monument.
Something about the silver lotus flowers on the deep blue of the water in the last picture above is really satisfying to me.
After the war monument (whose plaque said it represented the triumph “over the forces of evil” – funny how the forces of good always win), I found my way to the actual botanical garden.
Around this time, the sky (which had sneakily been growing darker and cloudier) began to rain. It was a relatively light rain at first, so I continued to enjoy my walk, shielding my camera from the rain with my hands while I wasn’t using it.
Then, it started to POUR – so like several other people who’d been roaming the park, I scrambled to a large shelter nearby.
Unfortunately, this shelter wasn’t perfect – the wind blew water in from the sides (so you had to stand more inwards) and many of the seams leaked. There were some dry spots, though!
I read my book for a while (Brandon Sanderson’s 5th book in the Stormlight Archives series – great so far, of course!)
Eventually, the rain was joined by lightening and thunder – a proper monsoon storm! It didn’t let up for close to an hour, and most of us just sat around, waiting. At one point, a golf cart with a few covered seats rolled up and took some of the others away (where to? hopefully somewhere dry!) and promised they’d be back for the rest of us – but 20 minutes passed without their return, so eventually, as the rain began to let up, I figured I’d venture out. I was already pretty damp, and the only electronics I had was my camera, so I took its batteries out (electronics getting wet usually won’t hurt them by themselves, if they don’t have any power source when they’re wet – as long as you dry them out completely before restoring power, they’re generally ok!)
Just before I left, one of the women waiting let the kid inside come out, and ran through the proper waterfall and pond now present in the little area with the tree pictured above, while the rest of us laughed as she shouted with joy.
Luckily, the rain finally begin to stop (and not get worse) as I continued to walk. The paving stones were slippery and I almost fell a few times, but I managed to get back in one piece!
The same tower!A moped graveyard…OLYMPUS C5050The river flowing through this part of town, now much higher than it had been a few hours before.
On my way home, I ran into an indoor market, with lots of street food, textiles, some antiques, a camera store, and lots of souvenir stores. There was also an art section selling a lot of really cute paintings for quite reasonable prices! I wish I had more space in my bag, but it’s probably a good thing I don’t!
I only got a few photos inside, but a lot of it looked like this – hallways with shops on all sides.Seagull? This is not a brand I’ve heard of before! The equivalent USD cost is $317, a bit pricey especially for an off-brand SLR.
After the market, I went back to the hostel, changed into clean clothes, and wrote the blog posts from yesterday. At the market I also picked up a few snacky items for dinner:
Tasty!
It’s funny – the food here is so cheap, that sometimes the prices in Malaysian Ringgits lines up with what I would expect to pay in USD – except that the Ringgit is worth only about 23 cents! The two meat pasteries, for example, were 4.50 each – a little pricey for USD, but converted to Ringgets, only $1.03 each! The drink was 9.90, pricey for even a specialty boba drink in the US, but not outside of the realm of possibility – but of course, actually only cost $2.26.
I really could get used to this… Maybe I should have spent 2 weeks here instead of in Japan!
The last thing I did was a recruiter interview (at 2:30AM local time!), this time for an actual electrical engineering role in Washington. I’m quite excited about this one – if working at Rivian doesn’t work out, I’m hoping this will. It’s a neat sounding job at a company that seems to have good culture, and should pay pretty competitively. It’s also a hybrid position – so working from home would be common, but not mandatory. The interview went well, so here’s to hoping I get a followup interview!
All for today! You probably won’t hear from me again for a few days, since this evening I fly to Japan. After a day or two to settle in, I should be back on track with more updates.
Second to last day in Amsterdam! Really, my last full day.
Breakfast today was at a cute little bakery/cafe that Vince recommended. Our mode of transit was (again) ebike, which led to some less blurry (but arguably more embarrassing) photos where the wind made our hair look crazy.
De Laatste Kruimel, the place we got breakfast.
Our breakfast spot was the little balcony above the water in the middle of the photo. As we ate, multiple tour boats passed below us, and more people stopped to take a photo from the bridge I took this one at. I felt like a zoo animal a little bit – it was funny to realize I had become part of the tourist attraction.
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Breakfast this day was really more of a late brunch – I had slept in quite a bit, so I headed back to the hostel and did the boring, not-blog-worthy parts of traveling (checking in to my plane, booking a hostel for Malaysia and and AirBNB for Milan, planning the next few days).
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Before another interview I had at 7PM, I wanted to get out of the hostel for a bit – so I took my bike along a river path behind the hostel in Noord (an area of Amsterdam). It was here I saw my first up-close windmill!
As I biked, I listened to an album of piano music by Philip Glass (titled “Piano Works”), which I happen to have downloaded on my phone – it makes great relaxing travel or biking music, especially when there are pretty things to be seen.
OLYMPUS C5050OLYMPUS C5050OLYMPUS C5050A neat bridge. There are a lot of drawbridges across the canals here to let riverboats through – something I also saw a lot of!The same windmill, from across the river.
While there, I noticed this bird helping its mate build a nest, and took a short video of it collecting sticks and bringing them back to the nest.
After returning to the hostel, I prepared for my second interview of the week. This was also for a technician position, which is technically below what I studied for (I should be applying to work as an engineer too, which I am! But so far am only getting interviews for technician positions… Oh well!)
This interview went really well and I already have a request for a second interview! The company seems interesting too – they’re a spinoff from Rivian working on smaller EVs (like electric bikes).
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After this I was pretty tired, but wanted to treat myself before heading to bed, so I returned to the streets on my bike and headed to Secret Garden, a fancy restaurant that had been recommended to me.
Chunks of watermelon with finely creamed avocado, grated feta cheese, and a slice of red onion on top, to be eaten in one bite. You wouldn’t think to combine these ingredients, but the sweet crunchy juice from the watermelon mixed well with the mild creaminess of the avocado, and the feta and small bit of onion added a nice little kick of flavor.Grilled duck breast with some type of cabbage and a sweet pumpkin puree. Absolutely delicous. I want to try roasting or sauteing chicken with pumpkin chunks and some type of green vegetable in a honey or maple syrup based glaze, I think it would taste similar.Earl Grey ice cream with coconut based (thick!) whipped cream and pineapple chunks. The ice cream was pretty mild but distinctly earl grey, and I really liked the coconut whip.
The only unfortunate part of the meal was the price – I left just barely satisfied knowing I would be hungry in the morning, and the total cost was $99… Would I do this again? Probably not, but it was worth the experience once!
The ceiling of the restaurant had these leaf-shaped lights with (fake?) vines dangling down between them.Neat vibe!
After this, I stopped by the hotel Vince manages to say hi (since he was nearby and on a night shift), before biking back to the hostel across the ferry.
I was tired this morning! I didn’t manage to roll out of bed (and shower and everything) until about 1:30 PM local time. Oh well – again, I’d rather explore well rested than try to cram every last second full of activities and not be able to enjoy it.
Breakfast was at a little cafe inside an art school that is in the same building as my Hostel. It was a simple chicken panini and a plain latte sweetened with honey – but the panini was delicious, especially the sauce to dip it in.
There are the WEIRDEST little cars here! Bikes here are what Mopeds were in Spain – everywhere, parked on the sidewalks and anywhere else they fit, and by FAR the most common mode of transport. On the roads, bikes always have the right away – even above pedestrians! You need to watch out when crossing bike paths, because they will not stop for you 😛
But! In addition to bikes, they have a multitude of 1-2 person electric and gas ‘cars’ that are likely limited to about 45km/hr top speed (close to 30 MPH). These require a different license than normal cars if I remember right, and can be driven on most bike paths too.
This one is electricCitroen Ami, I think. Electric!A fiat one designed to look like the original 500! But this is larger!This one is gas, and looks like it is from the late 90s or early 2000s.
These little cars existed in Spain and France too, but were far less common. Here, I see one every few minutes. The gas ones make the cutest little put-put sound.
On my walk, I found a man playing “Can’t help falling in love” by Elvis Presley on a saxophone, and stopped to take another (240P) video of him.
I also ran across an antique store selling tiles from houses rennovated in the 60’s – but these tiles were from the 1600s and 1800s! Quite old – and each hand-painted! Of course, most of them were pretty expensive, but they were fun to browse.
Though some tiles shared the same design, small differences between each made it clear that these were hand-painted. How cool!
After this, I walked to the Stedelijk Museum, which is a contemporary art museum (next to several other museums). Entrance for a student (which I feel like I’m close enough to still ;)) was only 10 euro, so I went in and explored.
After the museum, I took public transit back to (near) my hostel and grabbed a kebab pita wrap for dinner, before prepping for a remote job interview I had at 7:30 PM local time. I think it went well!
OLYMPUS C5050Dinner! Fanta, water, and a greek sausage kebab pita wrap thing.
Finally caught up to today 🙂 The next few days might be busy too, so we will see when the next dump of posts happens! All for now.
This one should be quick – most of the 13th and 14th were travel days by train. I stopped in Lille, a little town in Northern France, for the night – otherwise it would have been about 16 hours by train. I’ve found that the slower travel is worth it for me – less recovery time when I do get to my destination.
While walking to the train station in Lyon, I stopped at a cafe for breakfast, and snapped a few photos along the way.
A warning about high voltage inside!A view across the river Rhone.The gates of the Park of the Golden Head in Lyon
One neat thing I’ve noticed in Lyon – there are cracks in the sidewalks that have been filled in with little mosaics. According to one local I met, this is all the work of a street artist called Ememem (named for the sound his moped makes). He calls this art “flacking” – turning cracked blemishes in the sidewalks into public works of art that are owned by all.
The one on the left was the first thing I took a picture of in Lyon!
After a few hours on the train (during which I technically stopped in Paris, but only to switch trains), I was in Lille!
The trains here are often quite comfortable! FAR more than airlines in the US.The train station in Lille was very pretty.This is what a lot of “Old Lille” looked like. Cobbled streets with pedestrians everywhere, old buildings, and beautiful architecture.
I was pretty tired from travel, so I got myself a (supposedly) nice dinner (I don’t know if it was just not something I liked or if this restaurant wasn’t great) of Flemish (local) cusine, and turned in for the night.
It did look nice at least, and the salad and fries were delicious! The croquets left something to be desired though.
Lille -> Amsterdam, 4/14:
Breakfast was a mocha and a delicious breakfast sandwich at an apparently very popular cafe.
As I traveled on the train, it became pretty obvious as I drew closer to Amsterdam – windmills began passing by every now and then. I didn’t manage to catch any out the window, but I did snap a photo of this cool old warehouse.
Amsterdam’s train station was also really cool looking! I didn’t have much time to stop though – my next train left in 5 minutes so I had to run to the next platform!
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After crossing a large canal with a ton of other people on foot and bike, I was almost to my hostel (the red building in the photo below).
The room in the hostel is utilitarian, but comfortable and quiet. I don’t spend a lot of time in there anyway!
That’s all for this day! Still no Mopeds 😉 But, I can rent them here! We will see when it happens. I’m a little scared to have that much power on the roads of Amsterdam 😛
Today’s travels (4/13) have me headed from Lyon to Lille, both in France. Tomorrow, train schedules willing, I’ll finally be in Amsterdam – but to be honest, I’ve loved my time in Lyon and am sad to leave.
There are gonna be a LOT of photos in this one, since I spent most of the 11th walking around the amazing Parc de la Tête d’Or – or “Park of the head of gold”. According to Benoit (pronounced like Ben-whee), a local I met, legend has it that Louis 16 buried a head made of gold shortly after this park’s construction. Digging is, of course, forbidden. Wikipedia’s version of the legend says that Jesus’s head is supposedly be buried here. I guess legends change source to source, maybe that’s part of what makes them legends 😉 Either way, the parcel of land has been named this since before 1530!
One of the (many) attractions of the park is a section of botanical gardens. There are several very old greenhouses full of plants, and of course I explored them.
The parc was full of people jogging, lounging, exploring. Many were locals, though I could tell some were tourists like myself. It seems a popular place – the largest parc in Lyon, and apparently today was pretty sunny compared to the last few days. Everyone was out!
The greenhouses created some almost sci-fi shapes, which I enjoyed photographing.
While next to the one on the left, I also snapped a selfie in the reflection of the glass 🙂
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One of the coolest greenhouses had carnivorous plants! Not a lot of Venus Flytraps, but a TON of other types. I was really into carnivorous plants for a while, so I recognized a lot of these.
Sundews like these have long slender leaves with little hairs on them. Each hair has a glob of sweet, sticky sap to attract and trap insects. Once trapped, the leaf slowly curls around the insect to digest it.
When I had sundews, they tried to flower often! The flower must rise far above the plant, so as not to eat the pollinators 😛
Pitcher plants like this rely on their deep “pitchers” to catch prey and slowly digest them. The pitchers evolved to make it difficult to escape the slippery walls once an unwitting bug falls in.
There are SO many different species, and this greenhouse had a lot!
The pitcher plants took up most of this greenhouse, and their flowers were beautiful!
Butterworts like these look harmless enough, but their wide flat leaves are like flypaper – sticky, sweet smelling, and hard to escape once landed on! They also tend to have pretty flowers.
A few more pictures from the greenhouse:
The parc also had a free zoo! I didn’t walk through the zoo, but I did see a couple of zoo animals and a number of resident parc animals.
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As I continued to wander the parc, I discovered a large lake (well, I knew about it from Google Maps) in the middle of the parc. This is where I found most of the geese in the gallery above – but as I walked, I heard piano music and singing drifting across the lake (Zombie, by the Cranberries). I made my way around (eventually) and found a public piano with a crowd of people gathered around.
I took a video – but be warned, this is a digital camera from 2003 – video technology on consumer digital cameras was . . . not great. The sound is fine, but it is actually 240P quality.
Sometimes when I’m walking around a new area taking photos, I see things that I like more for the texture or color than the photo itself. Here’s a collection of these types of photos:
Besides the main attractions, the park was also filled with various little structures – benches, wells, grounds houses, and more.
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There was even a mini train around part of the parc!
I did not have time to explore the whole parc – by 5PM, I was able to check in to my AirBNB (I wanted a break from 16-person rooms), and I’d been walking since 11AM!
A few more photos from the parc and my walk to the AirBNB.
After resting and unpacking, I went back out for dinner (Tacos – but totally different than in the US, more like burritos with kebab/gyro filling) and went to a parc with a view over the city for sunset.
Sorry Katerina and Felix, no mopeds in this post. This was before you sent me Moped money! Mopeds are way less common in Lyon than they were in Barcelona, but I’m sure I’ll find one to rent before the 19th. I did try the rental bikes in Lyon though, and they seem to be the fastest way for short distances (besides a car, if you can find parking, maybe).
That’s all for now! Posts for 4/12 to come 🙂 I may not make a post for today, if there isn’t much to see – after the train, I plan to be lazy in my Airbnb in Lille for the rest of the day and go to bed early.
Today was a travel day! My route would take me from Barcelona-Sants (a train station here) to Lyon, France, where I would take a couple different trains spanning most of the day to get there.
I did have time for a quick breakfast at the closest cafe – one that was clearly themed for American tourists. Their food was a little pricier, but it was still delicious – the omelet and smoothie both, and the cortado I had was also tasty.
After that, it was a quick rush via the metro to my train station, where I arrived ~15 minutes early, then waited nervously for the sign to update and show me which platform to go to (mine was Cerbere).
We finally boarded the train and I was on my way!
I discovered that taking photos was hard – first, the windows are somewhat dirty. Next, we are speeding along quite quickly – quite a bit faster than cars on freeways here go! Google says around 320 km/hr for high speed trains in France, which I think I was on (that’s about 199 MPH).
Most of the landscape was like this, but occasionally nestled in the hills would be the ruins of a grand ancient building.
Lastly, I didn’t always get a window seat and sometimes that meant I didn’t want to be the one American tourist reaching over people to take a photo of the (for them, very normal) sights.
So – enjoy this small collection of blurry photos from the first leg of the trip 😛 (This is the Spanish countryside, we aren’t in France yet at this point.)
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As I rode this trip, I noticed another english-speaking tourist about my age sitting across the isle from me. He was reading a book about the social history of artificial intelligence and took out a film camera to shoot a few pictures out the window, so figuring I’d get along with him I struck up a conversation towards the end of the trip.
Sam is from London, and is on a little several-week trip of his own via train around Europe. He was also on the next train I was on, so we decided to sit together (I sweetened the deal with the promise of Uno).
While changing trains, we also met Laila, who’s been studying abroad in Madrid since January, and is from California! They were happy to join our little crew for Uno, so we found a booth with a table on the next train and played Uno, talked about public transit in the States VS in Europe (Europe wins by a landslide), our travel experiences, and our future plans and hopes for work (none of us want to find ourselves locked into a corporate job that keeps us there because it pays well, but also, money is important for quality of life . . . )
Laila also taught me how to say “Parles-tu anglais?” (Do you speak english?) – something that has become extremely useful in the last 24 hours, and also a majority of my French vocabulary (aside from “Oui” (yes) “Non” (no) and “Merci” (thank you)).
At the next station, we all had different trains, but we exchanged WhatsApp contact information, and I got a selfie of us all before we parted ways.
Train friends!!!Hi Laila!
I had about an hour before my connecting train arrived, so I wandered around Narbonne (the town we stopped in) and found someplace to grab lunch. The waitress’s answer to “Parles-tu anglais?” was a quick “non” – so I fumbled through Google translate and showing her my phone’s screen until she procured a simple baguette ham sandwich and an orange juice for 6,85 euro. I think by the end we were both relieved to have survived the interaction!
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. I did not have a window seat so I wasn’t able to grab a lot of pictures – but I did snap this one of the golden-hour countryside through the water spot stained window.
Lastly, there was this really cute little dog on the train. I really wanted to pet it, but I wasn’t sure if that would be ok.
I’m currently in Lyon France, but more to come on yesterday’s travels soon 🙂
Barcelona has started to feel easier to get around. While I still don’t know much Spanish or any Catalan (though I am told Catalan is less commonly used), things no longer feel completely alien to me and I feel confident getting around.
My first goal for the day was to get coffee with Declan, a friend I’ve known for a couple of years. They used to live in Portland, but moved in September to Barcelona for a graduate program in stop motion filmmaking, which cost them a whole $10k (for tuition). Walking to the coffee shop would have taken over an hour, so I finally braved Barcelona’s public Metro system. After a few fumbles (trying to put the ticket in the wrong way, then going the wrong direction for a stop till I realized I was getting further from my destination), it was easy!
I kept using the metro system and (I think) ended up taking it a total of about 6 times over the next day and a half. It was clean, fast, easy to navigate, and felt pretty easy despite not being able to understand any of the announcements.
I forgot to get a selfie with Declan 😦 but I did snap a photo of this vintage scooter! It looks a lot like a clone of the Vespa P200E.
Most of the scooters in Barcelona are newer – a lot of the rentals are even electric! I wonder if the trend towards newer ones is for safety reasons, maintenance, or some other reason.
Declan showed me their school’s studio where they’ve been working with their classmates on their final project – a stop motion movie about a little clay boy inside a cave created from his mother’s body. They showed me the puppet itself, and the different heads, expressions, and such that can be swapped or moved – and then the actual set itself. I wish I’d taken photos, but I was too busy to think of it.
I also got a closer photo of the tower I saw yesterday. This wasn’t a great photo, but I wasn’t really in the mood to try very hard.
After parting ways with Declan (they’re a busy grad student!) I headed to Parc de la Ciutadella, a large park with a bunch of old buildings (including a couple of greenhouses), a fountain, and a pond that you can paddle around on with ducks (for 30 minutes, after paying 7 euro).
The fountain in the parc.A close up of one of the griffins guarding the fountain.
There I met up with Ronan, a friend I made while in Barcelona. I thought when I met him that I’d found someone who could show me around – but it turns out he’d just moved from Ireland two weeks before! So we decided to explore more together.
At this point my camera died, and I hadn’t been able to charge the backup battery – so the rest of the photos from today are on my phone.
Josh had recommended La Boqueria, a street market in the (Gothic quarter?) – one of the sections of Barcelona that is very old, so we went to check it out after we finished walking around the park.
The gothic quarter was really cool – a lot of what you imagine when you think of old europe – narrow cobbled streets with shops on all sides and buildings leaning in over the top. A lot of it was pretty touristy and crowded, but nonetheless neat to see.
Once in the market, we both started to get a little hungry (it was past lunch time). There was a lot of seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, and empanadas.
There were a ton of stalls with fresh juice in small plastic cups for 2.50 euro each – after hunting for a bit, Ronan and I found one selling them for only 2 euro, and we each got one. I got a strawberry coconut. I also got a spanish sausage empanada, and a bag of (deliciously crunchy) green grapes.
After this we checked out a nearby cathedral that was an easy walk:
At this point we were both a bit tired, so I went and checked into my hotel for a small rest.
The hotel had a pool on the roof – the view was great, but the pool wasn’t heated, so I didn’t get to go swimming.
Dinner was a couple more empanadas I picked up from a nearby stall on my walk back to the hotel, and then I turned in early since tomorrow was my next travel day.
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