jacobblogs

Tag: food

  • Barcelona, Spain: 4/9

    Barcelona, Spain: 4/9

    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.

  • Barcelona, Spain: 4/8

    I have (two!) more days in Barcelona – I wanted to get some proper sleep, so I extended my stay by booking a hotel with a private room instead of a shared room with 15 other people. The cost difference is significant though – the hostel only costs about $30/night!

    Today, I started with breakfast at another cafe. I’ve been enjoying ordering whatever new coffee sounds interesting in the moment – this time it was a cortada (coffee and steamed milk, about a 50/50 ratio). I added a packet of sugar, and it was very enjoyable.

    Breakfast!

    Alongside the cortado, I got toast with eggs, cheese, avocado, mixed greens and tomatos. Plus, a glass of fresh orange juice – this has been a menu item every place I’ve gone – I think it is popular in spain. I’m not complaining!

    As usual, the breakfast was delicious, and I think this one was also around 15 euro. I think I tend to pay more than average (my research indicates 5-10 euro is normal), but I’m eating a larger breakfast than is typical (I think a pastery and coffee is more normal).

    After breakfast, I returned to plan the next leg of my trip in more detail and do laundry. The hostel has a washer and dryer, but they cost extra money – almost 10 euro for a wash and dry! That’s quite pricey, but the convenience is hard to beat, and I won’t need to do laundry again for at least a week.

    Speaking of the next leg, here’s the plan. Thursday around 11AM, I will board a train and spend the next 6 or so hours on my way to Lyon, France. I chose Lyon primarily because it was along the way and made the train ride not too long. There, I stay for an evening The next day, I will take a train to Luxemborg and stay there (the capital is the same as the country). Finally, on Saturday, I will take a train to Amsterdam.

    Training all the way back down to Milan would have taken too long and I would have had to leave Amsterdam earlier than I wanted to – so instead of spending less days, I ended up getting an economy ticket to Milan, which should allow me almost a week in Amsterdam! Going down by train would have taken at least 4 days if I wanted to not be travelling for more than 8 hours, so it made sense to me.

    After breakfast and logistics, I walked to Basílica de la Sagrada Família, an unfinished church from the 1800’s. It towers over everything nearby, and tourists swarm its grounds. I didn’t go inside – the lines and ticket costs didn’t seem worth it, but I did shoot a few photos.

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    Among the tourists there was a man blowing huge bubbles, and there were kids running underneath.

    I wonder how he was making money?

    I also shot a few other interesting things along the way…

    I couldn’t tell if this was an advertisement for something, or … just there.
    This stained glass covered multiple apartments within this building, probably an area a couple hundred feed wide and 4 stories tall!
    This tower is familiar to me! I used photos of it in an example for the “Tower building” activity I created for kid’s after school maker clubs. I didn’t think to wonder if I would ever see it in person!
    A view of the camera from up on top of the hill behind the city.

    After the basilica, I decided to head up the hill behind the city, where a large parc had multiple trails and good views of the city (the photo above was from there).

    This was a (closed) museum in part of the park.
    You can see how insanely tall the bascilica is compared to everything around it!
    I liked the colors of the tiles on this house. In this part of the hill, there were a few full houses (which were quite old) that I realized were single residences, not apartments! I wonder what they cost…

    The rest of the photos aren’t anything super special, so I’ll put them in a gallery with notes in the captions.

    Mopeds are VERY common here. You can’t walk anywhere without seeing a dozen!
    I liked this red flower on the windowsill.
    This lock was keeping cars from driving into the parc on the hill.
    I haven’t seen many tuk-tuks in Spain – which surprises me, given how much smaller the vehicles are here, and how popular mopeds are.

    Barcelona takeaways / culture shocks / impressions so far:

    Probably the biggest culture shock so far is how common smoking is, and how few restrictions there are on where it is done. It’s very common to see someone smoking at a cafe outdoors, or sometimes even inside (though this seems discouraged). My cab driver who picked me up from the train station was smoking inside the cab as he drove me! I didn’t realize that the US’s laws around not smoking close to buildings weren’t the norm – nor that a general public disgrace towards smoking wasn’t everyday either.

    This city is SO easy to get around! If I had a driver’s liscence here, I could rent a moped off any corner and get around easier than anyone in a car. Walking is super easy (definitely easier than driving), and I hear public transit is good – but I’ve been too afraid to try it yet.

    Food seems to all be fresh and high quality – maybe this is just where I’ve gone, but I think adjusting back to the US might be challenging…

    Anyway – Barcelona is now on my list of places I will consider living and working. It has its problems – high rent from foreign landlords buying properties to rent exclusively to tourists is one, but there are a lot of things to like here.

    Lastly – I just had the best mango I’ve ever had! It did cost about 5 euro, but I think it was worth it. Below are the before and after photos.

    Did you know you can eat mango skin? I thought they were toxic until a few months ago. They are kind of bitter, though.

    All for now! 🙂

  • Barcelona, Spain: 4/6, 4/7

    Here’s the first of Barcelona! I’m currently sitting in the courtyard of my hostel (very quiet at the moment, I think most people are out exploring right now), eating some fruit I picked up a bit ago, and writing this post.

    I don’t know how old this building is, but it certainly isn’t new. The hostel feels like modernity built into ancient bones.

    4/6: Sunday

    All I did this day was sleep. The previous day, I left Boston at 6PM on the 5th, flew for about 6 hours to Lisbon and arrived at midnight Boston time, or 7AM (on the 5th, still!) Lisbon time. There, I went through customs (A tired border officer said nothing to me and simply stamped my passport. Easier than getting into Canada!). After another two hours of waiting, I hopped (more like slogged) onto my connecting flight to Madrid.

    Once in Madrid, I took a taxi to the train station I’d booked a train to Barcelona on. At this point I had already been awake almost 20 hours, and was really starting to feel it. Unfortunately, the train to Barcelona was another four hours or so – in total, when I arrived at the Hostel, I hadn’t slept (properly) for over 27 hours. Lesson learned: it may seem cheaper to split some travel into a couple of tickets, but I would have had a much better time had I paid $100 more for a direct ticket.

    Once I got to the hostel, I took a much-needed shower, then fell asleep (at around 6PM Barcelona time) until the next morning.

    4/7: Monday:

    Being in Barcelona is really cool, but not knowing the language kind of terrifies me sometimes. Most casual interactions can be passed with a smile and nod, but interactions at restaraunts, for example, need some type of common language. My first stop was a cafe for breakfast – cafes are SUPER common here, I pass them every 3 minutes when walking in the city, it seems.

    The tuna was very oily – I suspect it was from a can submerged in oil. In this case, it actually helped a lot to make the sandwich less dry.

    “No ingles” was the server’s response to my poorly pronounced “hablas ingles?” – but he was, nontheless, a server, so he sat me down and handed me the menu (a QR code to their online menu). After some deliberation, I ordered a Cappuchino, a fresh-made juice containing Apple, Lemon, and some vegetable I don’t remember, and a Tuna Sandwich with Avocado. All were delicious and fresh. I think it cost about €13.75 (~$15 USD), which (considering the quality and atmosphere) seems on par or better than what I would expect to pay in the US.

    Freshness, excellent taste and reasonable prices seem consisten in all of my food experience in spain so far. Coffees (while much simpler and less sweet than what we Americans are used to) are usually only a few euros, and I haven’t paid more than €15 for anything yet.

    Even the pidgeons here are different! They have much pinker colors and iridescence on their wings. There’s a nest in the courtyard of my hostel, and they make the weirdest sounds! Sometimes they sound like owls. I have learned not to sit under that tree!

    After this, I headed back to the hostel and finished yesterday’s blog posts about Boston.

    Lunch was at a cafe that was a 3 minute walk from the hostel – a chicken feta salad with an excellent honey mustard dressing, sundried tomatos, and a tasty acaii smoothie. This was one of the more expensive meals I’ve had – coming in right around 15 euros.

    Then, I headed to the beach, and spent a LONG time laying in the sun. It’s too cold here to swim, but the sun has been hot and shorts and a t-shirt is comfortable during the afternoon. On the warm beach under the sun, the light breeze made it perfectly comfortable. I did use sunscreen, which is the only reason I don’t look like a lobster today.

    After this and some other things, my path back to the hostel took me through the parc (park) where the Arc de Triomf (not the one from Paris) is. Feeling especially like a tourist (something I am trying to avoid looking too much like here, lest I get squirted with water guns), I took my camera out and started snapping various angles.

    The sun was setting behind the arc. In one of my last classes, I learned that the less-defined edges where the sun is backlighting the arc are due to how different wavelengths of light refract differently. Since light is a wave, the edge interacts with the light going around it, and different colors bend slightly differently. Especially in older cameras like this, this creates “chromatic abberations” – or purple-blue fringing around more distant edges.
    I had to wait next to a crosswalk for a bus to pass before I could take this. Standing out in the open like that with my camera makes me feel like I’m sticking out like a sore thumb, but at least this is an area people expect tourists with cameras.

    I also snapped some photos of nearby interesting architecture. The abundance of balconies here is cool!

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    I’ve also been enjoying trying street photography. The camera I brought has a screen that will flip up 90 degrees so I can hold it at waist level and see what it is seeing – handy for when you don’t want people to realize they are being photographed.

    This man running his dog on bike caught my eye. I wanted to get a shot more directly from the side, but was too late with the camera.

    This building looked nice. Sometimes that’s all it takes for me to snap a photo, and sometimes I think too hard about it and decide not to.

    I especially liked the pastel yellow between the beige and grey.

    This woman walking her dog also caught my eye, and I feel pretty good about this photo! There’s a slight bit of motion blur to show them walking, and the camera actually focused on them. This was one photo taken from waist height so it wasn’t obvious 🙂

    There are plenty of dogs in Barcelona, and people walking them!
    This one turned out better than I expected – it was while I was walking by, also shot from waist height. The motion blur of the close tiles is pretty cool.
    This guy had a funky bike, but I caught him just after he went into the bush. Since I was moving the camera, there is a slight motion blur, but he is sharply in focus. Maybe I should try more motion blur photography.

    I was starting to get hungry at this point (the walk back was about 30 minutes, and with all the photos I was taking, it took more like an hour). A kebab shop happened convenitently across my path, so I popped in and got one (which I forgot to photograph).

    I didn’t want to be too touristy with my camera, so didn’t try for a great shot here. The kebab shop’s ingredients bar looked good through the window – probably pretty effective marketing, especially since it worked on me!
    I also snapped a selfie in the mirror while waiting.

    Again, I had planned for this post to cover three days – but I think I will split it again, since today (4/8) has a lot of photos 🙂

    All for now!

  • Boston 4/4 & 4/5

    Here’s the second half of my boston trip!

    Bova’s Bakery, where I got breakfast (and my passport-retrival celebration tart the night before)

    I had planned to go back to Bean and Leaf Cafe for another burrito, but ended up sleeping in till almost noon! By the time I got showered and out the door, they were closed. Instead, I headed to Bova’s and got a few pasteries. I did stop at the coffee place again for another espresso, this time with a shot of hazelnut!

    Wonder how this street got its name?

    I wanted to check out the Boston Common (a large park in the opposite direction of the North End), so after finishing my breakfast at a table next to the burial grounds, I started walking (and snapping photos).

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    I ran across another historic graveyard on the way, and snapped a few more photos of gravestones.

    This one was crazy! Not only did it have the angel of death at the top, it also had a scene carved into it, plus other intricate details.
    Another scene at the top. Death VS an angel of some type? Not sure…
    A graveyard friend!

    After the graveyard, I finally got to the Boston Common. The Common itself was large and pretty busy (and there wasn’t a lot to see), but right across the street is a garden park, so I spent a lot of time walking around taking photos there.

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    While I was walking, I saw another (cute!) guy with a camera. While I was taking the photo below, he got a picture of me! He came up and asked me about my camera, and we had a conversation about photography and he showed me the photo of me he’d taken. I don’t remember his name though, oops!

    A monument in the Common, seen through the buds on the trees.

    Walking back to my hostel, I snapped a few more photos of the interesting architecture along the way.

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    Something about this lion caught my eye

    After another short rest, it was time to head out for dinner and to explore the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) with a friend I met along the way.

    This is the best picture I had :( One problem with old digital cameras is their poor preformance in low light situations. A steadier hand and more careful setup of the shot would have helped, but for quick food photos when taking the picture isn’t the main focus at the moment, I typically just shoot and hope it turns out.

    Dinner was at Hobgoblin in Chinatown, a jazz bar style restaraunt with live piano music and delicious thai food with my friend. It was their recommendation, and it was great!

    Next, we took the Orange line train to the stop closest to the MFA. I really enjoyed taking the subway the few times I did in Boston – it was clean, about as fast as driving in a lot of cases, easy to navigate, and way cheaper than Uber!

    We did not have enough time for the MFA (a full day seems like it might be enough? we had two hours), but we did get through a couple of exhibits on ancient art (and a few from only a few hundred years ago!). I found a lot of pieces that had patterns I think would look really cool as tattoos, so I took photos for future inspiration.

    This bowl and several others near it had a simple design of a bunch of hands reaching across or into the middle.

    This bowl is from 10th-11th centry Iran, and features a peacock.
    The simple leaf design on this jar is really pretty. It is from the Song Dynasty during the 11th-12th centuries.
    This design makes me think of Ginko leaves a bit, but I forgot to take a picture of the information plaque.
    A cute ceramic mouse (or rat?)
    I really liked the blue on this bowl. I only noticed the subtle koi pattern in the middle while writing this!
    Josh, do these count as ducks? This is what I imagine you duck farming would look like…

    My friend I was exploring the museum with. The high contrast made this a little challenging for the camera, but I like how it turned out!

    We accidentally wandered into an administrative wing of the museum, and found this eery-looking empty conference room. This photo is through two windows, there is outside air between the window I shot this through and the one outside the conference room. The reflections also make it interesting!

    After the MFA closed at 10, we headed home. The next morning, I got breakfast at another coffee shop (this time a sour cherry cheese danish! Also delicious) and had a slow morning in. It was raining in Boston, and I got this picture from the window of my friend’s apartment (28th floor!).

    The green park is the Common, where I was exploring the day before! My hostel would be to the right of the nearest skyscraper at about 2:00 from straight on.

    That’s all for my Boston trip! Today’s itenerary in Barcelona is still up in the air, but it involves getting lunch and dinner, going to bed on time, and exploring! I might check out a museum, the beach, or a local park. Who knows, maybe all three?

  • Boston 4/2 & 4/3

    Now that I’ve had a chance to settle into Barcelona, catch up on sleep after 27 hours being mostly awake (it was hard to stay awake during the last train ride to Barcelona), I can write about Boston 🙂

    Day 1: Wednesday

    I flew in around 4PM local time Wednesday, and spent most of the day settling in. My hostel was quiet and each bed was in its own pod, similar to how I imagine Toyko’s Capsule hotels will be. This is the only good photo I got of them – I intended to get a nicer one with my camera, but then accidentally stayed past check-out (my booking app said 12, the actual checkout time was 11).

    I did stop at a New York Swarma Guys place and get a tasty lamb swarma, but didn’t take a photo of it.

    Day 2: North End, Paul Revere House, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Market, and Seafood

    The route I walked on day 2 (roughly). I was pleasantly surprised by how walkable and close everything here is!

    First, I stopped at Bean and Leaf Cafe (underneath a boring looking corporate skyscrape?) and paid a very reasonable $12 for a fresh orange juice and a delicious breakfast burrito.

    Orange juice and a breakfast burrito

    I didn’t have a set plan for the day, but I wanted a coffee and to go see the water, so I kept walking into the north end.

    My double shot vanilla espresso

    Along the way to the bay, I stopped at Caffe Ducali, an italian coffee spot joint to a pizza place by the same name. On accident, I told the barista I wanted a “Vanilla espresso” (not a Latte, which is what I actually wanted). When they handed me this tiny cup, I realized my mistake, but was too embarrased to correct it.

    I had ordered an espresso, and I was going to drink it!

    An actual gas lamp I found nearby the graveyard. Apparently the appartments in this section of the city predate electricity! I didn’t see a lot of gas lamps in Boston, so this one must be kept around for fun.

    As it turns out, I actually liked it a lot and came back for another one later. It’s just two espresso shots from the machine with a shot of vanilla syrup, but the coffee was tasty and not too bitter, and the added sweetness of the vanilla made it really nice to slowly sip as I walked around the next hour or so.

    The brick pathways were very old, but clearly a lot newer than the graves.

    My wandering took me next to Copps Hill Burying Ground, Boston’s second oldest graveyard, which was founded in 1659. I sipped my espresso as I wandered around looking at gravestones varying from 150 to almost 400 years old.

    I noticed a lot of skulls with wings on the tops of the gravestones–apparently, this was common on pre-revolution gravestones.

    Closeup of skull and wings
    This one had a skull and crossbones!
    The details of the (hand) carved letters is neat
    You can see a couple of letters we don’t use anymore on this one: the e over a y seems to be “the”
    1677!
    The 8/9 on this one is funny. I wonder if it meant 8/9ths through the year, or that they weren’t sure if the death was in 1678 or 1679?

    One thing (besides how OLD it was!) that I found neat were how you could see the marks from the gravestones being hand-carved. A lot of them had scribing lines that the craftspeople used to keep the text all aligned, as seen in the image below:

    You can also use the historical use of “f” as the letter “s” here, plus an old spelling of “lies” as “lyes”.

    After the graveyard, I continued wandering through the North End. Paul Revere’s house only cost $6 to go into, but wasn’t anything especially remarkable, just an old house showing a bit of insight into life during Revere’s time. I did learn that the Revere cookware brand was founded by him, which in hindsight, should have been obvious!

    Many of the North End’s streets are narrow, having been designed for pedestrian and horse traffic. Most are one ways, with narrow sidewalks about 2 feet wide. Walking is easy here – driving, possibly less so!

    Apparently at this point, I stopped taking pictures of the things I was going to and started taking pictures of things I saw. To be fair, the Institue of Contemprary Art wasn’t that interesting (although they only had two exhibits open that day), and I didn’t stop for food at the markets I passed through. For the rest of the afternoon before going back to my hostel for a break, I slowly walked to the ICA, then back to the hostel. Here are some photos I took along the way.

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    This one’s for Josh
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    After a break to refresh at the hostel, I headed back out for Dinner. Josh (my manager during my Rivian internship in 2024) gave me a couple recommendations, so I headed to The Daily Catch, a Scicilian pasta and seafood restaraunt.

    Stuffed Calamari and orange-pomegranate San Pellegrino soda – Delicious!

    I realized after ordering that what I ordered might have been an appetizer, so I also tried some of their house-made black pasta (which was also delicious!)

    Cross-city running adventure:

    I had plans to meet up with some folks I’d met earlier after dinner, so once I’d finished my food, I paid, ordered an uber, and rode about 2.5 miles away (which took 30 minutes with the roads and traffic). Upon arriving at my destination, I promptly realized I’d forgotten my bag (which had, among other items, my passport) at the restaraunt. Worse still, they closed at 9PM – right when I’d left. Calling got me no response and sent me to a voicemail box that was full. Their website had a contact form, but I really wanted to see if I could get it back now, not tomorrow. It was now 9:30, and an uber back would take another 30 minutes. After looking at Google Maps, I realized walking would be just as fast – and if I ran, I might just get there before the other customers finished eating and they were done cleaning. So run I did.

    After about 2 minutes of running I stopped to check Google Maps, realized I’d run in the wrong direction, and started paying attention to the maps. Then, after about 20 minutes of running, running through crosswalks when I wasn’s supposed to, and walking when I needed a break, I got back.

    The door was open, and the staff was still cleaning. I walked in, breathlessly explaining that I’d left my bag. My waiter laughed, said “we thought you’d be back!” and handed it to me. Whew!

    My evening plans were (obviously) cancelled by that point, so instead, I walked back to the hostel (about 20 minutes) and stopped at Bova’s Bakery (an old, famous, open 24/7 bakery in the North End) for a fruit tart as a treat. After running for 20 minutes and not losing my passport, I felt great!

    I was going to put all of boston in one post, but this is already pretty long, so I’ll put my last two days in the next post. We will see how breaking trips into multiple posts works!