An Insider's Spain

Way back in May, a week after I submitted a paper (which got in!) and a two days after Nathaniel gave his final oral presentation for his dissertation, we headed off to Spain!  It was a very different sort of vacation, as Nathaniel grew up in Madrid and has an insider's perspective and also lots of friends still living there.

The first day, Nathaniel was actually a little quiet—memories started flooding in as soon as we hit the Madrid airport, and included things as small as being on a particular ramp or hearing the recorded metro voice.  We spent the afternoon walking in the Retiro park, eating bocadillos, looking the book shops, street vendors and performers, and just generally people watching.  Dinner was at Casa Mingo, where Nathaniel's family used to go regularly.

This one is for my mom, the Iris junkie.

The following day, we saw the royal palace, walked through the downtown, saw the museo del Prado, and visited the botanical gardens in Retiro, which had an abundance of irises and other flowers in bloom.  In the evening , we had dinner with a bunch of Nathaniel's friends from school.  It was fun to meet them, joke around, and just have a relaxing evening. Sunday was more memories: we visited Nathaniel's old church congregation, walked by his old apartment and school, and met with another dear friend.

The following day, we left Madrid, which began a very different phase of the trip.  We did some hiking and drove down to Toledo.  There, we saw the El Greco museum, which has both art and living spaces restored to late 16th century style.  We also saw a cathedral, tapestry museum, Jewish museum, and an Alcazar which had been converted to the most elaborate military museum I've ever seen.  Toledo also has a marzipan factory, so I had to put some in my mouth.

Then, off to Córdoba!  After dinner, we had tea and sweets in cute little Moroccan tea shop.  The following dat we saw the Mezquita, which was thoroughly strange.  It was once a mosque, but a cathedral had since been built in the center, and services were going on while we were there.  The guide brochure had a strong catholic bias, with only one of six panels devoted to its Muslim history, most of which read a little bit like "it was a church, and then the Muslims tore that down and built a mosque, and so we feel totally justified in making it a cathedral, because it was once a church.  Do you hear that?  We were here first."  I exaggerate, of course, but it was very defensive.

Mosque-cathedral hybrid.

Just a cute alley we found.

We also saw a roman water wheel, and another alcazar, which was a child's dream fort with lovely garden and a fun irrigation system.  I would let you guess who was dorking out about what, but the pictures give it away.

Nathaniel dorking aout about irrigation.

Me dorking out about flowers.

Next up was Granada.  We arrived in the evening, caught a flamenco show, and watched the sun set over Alhambra.  We got up early the next day because Alhambra tickets sell out quickly, and that was the major reason we were there.  Thankfully, we got to see it, and it was both amazingly elaborate and extensive.  When I wasn't cooing over the gardens, I was on a mission to find all 17 wallpaper groups, which I'll post about later.  After we spent most of the day in Alhambra, we took a quick hike and then headed over to Huelva, where Nathaniel had another classmate (Charli) we were going to stay with.

Orange and cream colored pomegranate blossoms.

We used Huelva as a launching point to see Sevilla.  There we saw yet another cathedral and alcazar; the latter we recently recognized in a Game of Thrones episode (Dorne).  We also saw an amazing face-off between a duck and a peacock.  The duck was apathetically looking for food while the peacock was aggressively shaking its feathers at the duck.  It went on for about 10 minutes before we moved on.  Eventually we joined up with our hosts Charli and Laura who encouraged us to do silly touristy things.  That evening, it was Charli's goal to present me with food I would refuse.  We began with caracoles (snails), then proceeded to tiny clams, a large octopus tentacle, and finished with little squid.  I ate everything, but by the time I got to the squid, I was very full, so only had one.

Charli's idea.

After departing from Charli and Laura's place the next morning with bellies full of fresh churros dipped in hot chocolate, we made a quick stop at the replicas of Christopher Columbus's ships, and then headed to Segovia.  There, we marveled at the massive Roman aqueduct and had dinner at the famous (both within the Chaney family and without) Restaurante Jose María, which lived up to every expectation.  Jose María himself even came by our table to ask how things were.

For some reason, every statue of Christopher Columbus we
saw has him pointing.

Ordesa was up next—it was a bit of a drive to the park, as it is on the French border.  There we spent three nights up in the mountains.  We saw beautiful wildflowers, and families of chubby marmots and sprightly mountain goats.  The rock formations were simply stunning—the beauty of Ordesa cannot properly be put into words.  I'll just put up a bunch of pictures instead.

Roman bridge.

This waterfall fascinated Nathaniel.
It came out of the side of the rock.

Looking hardcore with my ice pick.

Despite the snow, it was hot.
And because of the snow it was bright.
So we build this shelter for lunch
after deciding an igloo would take too long.

The gap tooth in the background is a pass,
with France on the other side.

His turn to look hardcore.

But I needed the last word in hardcoreitude.

After hiking, we made our way down to Barcelona, which felt far more foreign than I expected, probably due to minor language barriers.  We had a lovely evening with Nathaniel's brother, who was there on business, then saw the old city and the Sagrada Familia the following day.  At first I was hesitant to go inside the basilica, as it reminded me of a drippy sand castle, but inside, the architectural mastery was shown to its fullest, as the colored glass windows cast fantastic shadows over smooth geometric shapes.  The day after, we saw Castell de Montjuïc and the area surrounding the Olympic grounds.

Like any long trip, I was ready for the routine of home at the end, but I was less exhausted than trips usually make me.  I think this was due to our slower-than-usual pace and much of it being already familiar to Nathaniel.  If we are blessed with the ability to do so, I would love to make Spain a regular vacation destination for us, returning every five or six years.  It has a piece of home.

Let's end with this awesome flower we saw in Barcelona.
Two petals are each half pink and half white.

East Coast Australia

Nathaniel needed to travel to Sydney for a collaboration, so we took the opportunity to take our vacation in Australia this year, road tripping up and down the eastern coast.

Our first day, we took to the road and quickly adapted to driving on the left, which was easier than anticipated. We drove through the hairpin of Ku-ing-Gai Chase National Park, and then headed north to The Entrance, making it to the sand dunes of Birubi Beach before staying in Cessnock. On the way to our hotel, a wallaby jumped a gross the road, and we slowed to see several of them on the side, just staring at us. We saw another wallaby jump across the second day at dusk too, but most of out wallaby sightings were roadkill. Deer:EasternUSA::Wallabies:EasternAustralia.

We decided that the second day we would head directly up to the Whitsundays region, and make it there on the third day; that way, we’d get the chance to see a areas off the coast, get the bulk of the driving done early, and shave some drive time altogether.

Two things from the drive up will be forever locked away in my heart. One was racing alongside a train in the perfect road trip moment, a stream of uncountable rust-colored coal cars floating above a bed of grass; I felt the sort of freedom you feel when you know that you can do whatever you want, for a while at least. The second moment was watching a small flock of cranes slowly land on a weeping willow tree that stood at the edge of a pond. They perched there, looking like a perfect picture, but we were gone before I could have thought about my camera. I actually enjoy that about driving; it forces you to just enjoy the moment and lock things away in memory rather than with a camera. I like cameras too, but it’s nice to be restricted from using them sometimes.

We stayed at Isla Gorge National park, and woke up impatiently to slow sunrise, for which we did not wait. We drove through the sugarcane fields; I was sorely tempted to pull along the side of the road and run through them, but Nathaniel was against trespassing. We made it to the popular Arlie beach, where we stayed two nights, filling the day between with snorkeling out on the Great Barrier reef. For the snorkeling, we took a boat out to a permanent platform area, which had an underwater observatory from which we spotted “Chunky” the turtle who frequents the platform.

After Arlie beach, we took a slower journey back south to Sydney. Over the next three days, we walked in a rainforest where NWC swam in an isolated waterfall pond, visited the Etna caves, and rented bikes in the coastal town of Hervey Bay, where we accidentally witnessed some older white ladies performing some hybrid between belly-dancing and aboriginal dancing at a street fair. We ended that last day camping in the Rainbow beach area, where NWC tried his hand at fishing for the first time, and I sculpted the dense sand. When NWC was finishing up for the night, he was flanked by two huge pelicans (I'm talking chest-tall), anxious to eat his remaining squid.

In the morning, we did the same (fishing and sand drawing) and NWC caught a half-foot puffer fish with his las bit of bait. It was adorable and we threw it back, but not without some angst as to how to remove the hook. We also ran along the beach, since there had been a bit too much of sitting in a car. We spent the second half of the day in Brisbane, where we walked through the beautiful river park and visited the Queensland Museum. While wandering around, we noticed that ibis had near replaced pigeons as the common city bird, but pigeons were still to be found occasionally. In the evening, we saw a spectacular preview performance of Macbeth. On our way back to the hostel, we witnessed some giant bats perch in the trees; I’m guessing they were flying foxes.

From Brisbane, we drove through the Gold Coast, visited the 1899 lighthouse in Byron Bay, and explored the hinterlands a little. The town of Bangalow was beautiful, and we ate at the fabulous Utopia; we had a piece of macadamia nut cake with lemon icing that I’m hoping to reproduce. We browsed the shops before moving on to Belligen for the night. When enquiring at the local YHA, the receptionist might well have been high; an older hostel resident had to furiously ring the bell to bring him out, and when he arrived, he had to tap his wrists before saying left or right (I’ve done that too, just not several times in a row). My favorite moment was when we asked if there was wifi, and he just gave us the hang-loose gesture as a response. When pressed, he confirmed verbally, Of course, man. To which we recounted that another YHA on this trip had wifi so slow that we couldn’t even check email. That may or may not have to do with the bloke we saw playing WoW consuming all the bandwidth. Anyway, now I want to start a trend with the hang-loose sign meaning wifi.

We ended up camping in Belligen (only for financial reasons...the hostel was very appealing), and we saw a massive colony of giant bats emerging for the night a we set up the tent.  The next day, we did more rainforest walks in the stunning Dorrigo National Park, and drove along Waterfall Way. That night, we camped near Singleton, close to where we spent our first night, and we drove to Lilianfels the next day, where we showered and bathed to our heart's delight in the mist, had high tea, rode everything in Scenic World (the railroad was our favorite), and climbed the 900-ish stairs up the Three Sisters.

The next morning, the clouds cleared and we rushed out to see the Three Sisters, but my camera's memory card had a hardware failure at the end of that adventure.  I bought a new one for the final day, but I haven't yet been able to recover the photos on the old one--that's a whole other story.  Anyway, after savoring the relaxation of the hotel once again, we headed to Sydney.

There, we walked through the Royal Botanical gardens, visited the Art Gallery of NSW, and ended the day with an outdoor performance of Madama Butterfly, with the opera house in the background.  It was lovely.

All through the trip, we were amazed at the similarities between the USA and Australia, both historically and culturally. At other times, we were stuck by how British it was, but those moments were surprisingly rare. NWC’s favorite was the sign that said “Queued Traffic,” meaning that traffic jams frequently there. (My favorite sign was a Koala crossing graffitied to look like a monster.)

It's a huge and beautiful country, and I'm glad we got to see so much of it, even without much photo documentation.

02042014 update: This was picked up for an Australian travel and souvenir blog by a bloke I met at the airport on the way home.

Nepal and India

This post is waaaaaaay overdue.  We came back in June; it's now November.  Forgive me if some details are fuzzy, though I did use a journal sporadically on the trip and wrote half this post soon after returning.  I'm currently suffering from hiccups as punishment.

Before I left for India, my labmate told me that India was an assault on all your senses, and the experience was true to his words.

N and I left at the end of May, flying nonstop into Delhi to catch a night's sleep before continuing onto Kathmandu in Nepal.  There, we instructed a taxi driver to take us to the Suzuki dealership in a certain part of town, where we met up with another couple--good friends from our Berkeley days whom I will mysteriously call Petra and Mike. Magically, nothing went seriously wrong, and we found them waiting for us.  We stayed at Petra's extremely generous aunt's house and explored Katmandu before heading out to Pokhara to begin the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek the next day.

The trek itself was lovely, but the story is much like any traveller's experiences there in late May/early June: beautiful mountains playing hide-and-seek among the clouds, rainfall, prolific flora, and welcoming tea houses with hot food, decent beds, and the occasional hot shower.  I became obsessed with omelettes for whatever reason--my body probably craved the protein.  The really unique aspect to our trip was the adventure involved in obtaining and then ridding ourselves of a guide and porter.

In Pokhara, we hunted around for a guide and porter, mostly because we wanted to support the local economy (Petra and Mike were the enlightened ones in this respect). We were also looking forward to seeing some of the incredible feats of strength--I had heard stories of porters running up the mountains with packs, the strong-for-their-home-elevation tourists lagging behind with nothing on their backs.  N and I were won over by an older gentleman named Lale, who ran a shop and told us that he was a guide, and that his wife looks after the shop when he's trekking.  Petra and Mike didn't like him as much, but he was willing to agree to our demands, specifically that the guide carries a pack and that we could push the schedule.

Making group decisions is hard (especially in retrospect when things go badly), but I'll freely admit that I pushed to go with him.  We made a deposit for 7 days, him thinking that we would take 10, and us thinking that we might well take less.  I'm fairly certain that he agreed that we would get money back if we returned early, but it's hard to remember.

The next morning, we came to meet Lale, and he said that we were waiting for our guide and porter.  Aren't you our guide?  No, it would be his nephew.  Feeling a little deceived, we waited, and waited.  Eventually the guide arrived, and we caught a taxi then a bus, and we picked up our porter somewhere along the way--our guide's friend.  At some point, the bus broke down and we had to transfer to another one.  Given that the first bus was full, it was crazy crowded, so we sat on the top with the luggage and food being transported, which is illegal.  When we passed the police, they called up, and the guide and driver said we're tourists, and he waved us on.  Apparently tourists get to bend the rules.  Given that tourism is the nation's largest industry, this almost makes sense.  Regardless, the grumpiness from being lied to and the guide being late lifted, and we enjoyed ricocheting through the mountains, ducking under power lines and branches, and seeing the spectacular views of tiered farmland.

When we finally got started on the trek, we had to walk through a town.  The guide and porter started to carry our packs, and we walked leisurely.  N bought a hat, and we waited for the guide and porter, who took their time.  Perhaps they're just saving their strength.  They'll toast us on the uphill and in the higher altitudes.  We waited, walked ahead, waited, walked ahead, waited for directions, walked ahead.  The road turned into a trail, and got steeper.  Eventually it became clear to us that they're just slow.  Okay, still manageable.  The trail is clear, and we can just tell them where we'll stop for lunch and the night and they can go at their own pace and we'll meet them there.  We discussed plans with them, and they offered resistance, but eventually we got our way.

Fast forward, and everything came to a head that night.  I'm the least confrontational of the four of us, and so I opted out of the epic discussion that evening.  Apparently Mike offered progressively easier options, but still with a fast itinerary.  There were angry phone calls with Lale, and I could head voices from where I was trying to sleep.   The guide and porter simply claimed that it was too hard and that they had never carried packs before.  Again, I wasn't involved much in this, but by morning, we set out without them, intent on visiting Lale and asking for a partial refund of our deposit when we returned.

The rest of the hike was stunning from the tiny flowers to ginormous mountains.  We played cards wrapped in heavy blankets, read next to windows framing cloud-filled valleys, and I got to take steroids for altitude sickness.

When we got back to Pokhara, Lale refused to refund us, and said that if anything we owed him more money. We got the tourist police involved; we told them we were happy to pay for the two days time that the guide and porter actually worked (one day up with us and one day to return by themselves). Then the tourist police laid the smack down (our guide was probably not licensed) and we got our money back.  I have no problem giving money to people, but A) if I'm going to donate money, I want it to be to a good cause and not because I'm being ripped off and B) it's not okay to allow the precedent that might hurt future travelers.  We think Lale tried to follow us afterward, but we savvily ditched him by getting in a cab.  It's sad because Pokhara was really beautiful, and I think we would have stayed there longer had we not been worried about Lale doing something stupid.

Petra taught me that everybody's got a water buffalo.

Superhero shot.

Baby goats!!  Oh, and, you know, gorgeous mountains.

After recovering from the trek, we had some more fun in Kathmandu, and then settled on doing a land crossing to India.  The bus ride was a little tedious, but I got a fair amount of reading done.  Our first real stop was Varanasi.  There, we indulged in food, showers, and air conditioning.  We found Lonely Planet's recommended Blue Lassi and Brown Bread Bakery, which were as good as the book described.

The next morning, we took a sunrise boat ride on the Ganges, where we saw the docks in full action, as well as a the body of a deceased holy man floating down the river.  After more eating and rest, N and I opted to head out to a tiger park while Petra and Mike stayed in Varanasi for another day before heading off on their own adventures.

Himalayas to Varanasi: opposite extremes in almost every way conceivable.

We didn't see any tigers at the park, but we got plenty of AC, decent food, showers, flushing toilets, and rest.  This was all especially important because both N and I were having stomach issues--this was probably my fault for going for some sketchy street food.  We were also burnt out from numerous scam attempts and logistic issues during the trip.  I won't detail them; it's just a hazard of travel.  We ended up resigned to just spend a significantly more money on drivers in the second half of the trip to make things easier--we wouldn't have been able to see the Taj Mahal otherwise.  We also splurged on a fancy hotel in Dehli that had mood lighting settings; we considered it and the tiger park to be our three-year wedding anniversary gift to ourselves.

People washing and playing in the Ganges (left).  N at the Red Fort in Delhi with the longest beard he's ever had (right).

Sunrise on the Ganges.