jacobblogs

Tag: Spain

  • Barcelona -> Lyon: 4/10

    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.

  • 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: 4/6, 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!