Iberia

Well, this may be the first time wandering off without a plan has backfired on me; but only half. Apart from the times of tickets for trains and/or planes, I usually don't have any concrete ideas of what I want to do when I travel. That managed to make this weekend both much happier than I expected, and slightly less entertaining than I hoped. How's that? Let me explain.

After encountering some of her classmates in Ireland, I got back in touch with my friend Theresa, my roommate from my summer programme in Korea. She had been spending her time since Africa travelling all over Europe with her boyfriend. I hadn't seen her in over a year, and since she wasn't so far away, I thought there had to be a way to meet up... And there was! I had planned back in January this weekend trip to Lisbon, but due to train schedules I was going to have a six hour layover in Madrid, which is where she was going to be for the weekend! Perfect.

Early Friday morning I hopped on the train for Barcelona. I got there with about an hour layover, so I used that time to go to the hipermercat (think supermarket, but waaay bigger) across the street from the station to get some food for the rest of my trip, since it's quite expensive on the train. Apart from my staples like fruit and granola bars, I also picked up a half litre of the most delicious orange juice I've had since living in Florida - it was squeezed and bottled right in the store! Not to mention the oranges they used were the mandarin/clemintine variety, which made quite the tasty juice. My time used up, I head back to Sants Estació and boarded my train for Madrid.

It's odd to think that the most comfortable train I was on was the shortest and only domestic trip, but then the line between Barcelona and Madrid had been newly remodeled and was a high speed train - hitting 300 kph (about 186mph)! The ride was just under three hours, and they were playing a movie... I thought, hey an american movie! Surely it'll be in English? No. Spanish with Catalán subtitles. Little weird. So I took a nap instead.

When I got to Madrid, the plan was to meet Theresa at her hostel near the Plaza Santo Domingo, so that meant taking the metro. Luckily I have an uncanny talent for figuring out subway maps (I think I mentioned that about London) so after glancing at the lines and buying a ticket (only €1 - pretty cheap for public transport!), I hopped on the next train and was there in no time at all.

After catching up for a bit we went out to explore the city. We seemed to be in the central area, as we saw so many different street performers - a mariachi band, some guys rocking out on dulcimers, magicians, "mannequins" (you'd put money in their box and they'd do some sort of performance - othereise they stood completely still), balloon makers dressed as furry characters, and so on. We walked around the streets for a while, eventually seeing the palace and plaza mayor and many monuments and impressive buildings. We ate dinner and kept wandering about until 9:30, when I headed for the next train station, so I could catch my overnight train to Lisbon.

I'll admit I really had no idea what I was getting myself into when I reserved these tickets. My plan basically involved travelling all day Friday, spending Saturday in Lisbon, and travelling all day Sunday back to Montpellier. So when I got to Lisbon at 8am following a restless night trying to sleep in the seated accommodation of the hotel train, I had hoped that I would arrive in the city centre as was the case with most train stations, or at least somewhere with tourist things to do. The tourist office in the train station apparently wasn't open on weekends (what's up with that?) so I went outside to survey my surroundings. The train station was right next to the port, and being so early in the morning it seemed like nothing was open. So I decided to just start walking and see what I could find; after all, I had 14 hours to kill. The first thing I noticed was how the entire city seemed to be uphill. Steep hills at that... It didn't take long before I was exhausted and stopped for some breakfast at a small pastry shop. I really don't speak any Portuguese, and the little electronic phrase book on my ipod isn't all that comprehensive, so I pretty much just went for what looked tasty and pointed at it. Obrigada. I spent the next hour or so just wandering the streets of Lisbon, admiring the architecture and the old feel of it all. I felt like it wasn't even part of Europe, because (naturally) it had that distinctive latin flavour reminicent of South and Central America. Eventually I ended up in what appeared to be Lisobon's chinatown, realising finally that this actually was a big city, for I found a public transportation map, and there was a metro system. Not a big one, but it was there. So I looked at the map for signs of things which might be of interest to someone who is just a casual traveller and speaks no Portuguese, and then got on the Metro headed for Campo Pequeno. The map showed that there should be a museum nearby; I ended up in a shopping mall. Now as I have mentioned before, these kinds of places are just as interesting to me because I can more easily see the differences in culture. So I wandered around for a bit, seeing what the commercial scene was like in Portugal. As it turned out, this was not mere shopping mall. Since I had come in from the metro, I didn't see it from the outside before hand, but it turned out that the mall was built around a sort of giant hall, home to various shows and concerts (I saw a sign for Jason Mraz appearing next month) as well as a cinema. After an hour or so, I decided to move on and see if I couldn't find that museum... I couldn't. I ended up walking to the Campo Grande, Lisbon's large central park.

When they say grande, they mean it. This park is huge. I walked for quite a while, snapping photos of the statues and flowers. When I made it to the other side I did find an art museum, but of course just as it was closing for lunch or some such. What I saw of the outside was pretty, though. So I walked back on the other side of the Campo, which took me past the University of Lisbon and even more statues and monuments.

Since every museum I passed was closed and I was at a complete loss as far as what to do in this city, I decided to take advantage of the fact that my eurail pass had been stamped for the day and take a train somewhere outside of Lisbon for a few hours. I got on the next train my pass was valid on, destination Tomar. I ended up getting off at Santarém, after admiring the lovely Portuguese countryside all along the way. It was a beautiful old town, but by the time I walked outside of the station and started looking around, it started pouring and I didn't have an umbrella. So I ended up going back to the station and taking the next train back to Lisbon.

It was getting dark and late by the time I got back, so I spent a little more time admiring the sea and the area around Santa Apolónia station, then bought some more food for the ride back. Another overnight to Madrid, changing stations back to Atocha via the metro, a short layover in Barcelona and back in Montpellier just after 9pm. It was overall quite the adventure, and even if I didn't have the greatest time there at least I can check off Portugal on the list of places I've been!

I can no longer say I've never been to Spain...

On account of one of my ancestors on my dad's side came from there, I knew one place in Europe I would have to go was Barcelona. Luckily for me it's only about 4 hours by train from Montpellier, so I decided to spend my weekend there.

My train arrived in Barcelona about noon on Saturday, after which I bought a subway pass and headed for the hostel I was staying at. The staff there was very friendly, and gave me a tourist map of the city, pointing out some of the places I should try to visit and giving me directions via subway. The first place was within walking distance; the Sagrada Familia, an elegant church designed by the architect Gaudi. Unfortunately it was covered in scaffolding, so it wasn't as nice of a view as it could have been. Still, it was quite impressive.

From there I took the metro towards the Passeig de Gracia, and walked to the Museu de la Xocolata: the chocolate museum. This was quite an interesting (and delicious) exhibition, telling the history of chocolate as well as displaying elegant sculptures carved from chocolate. Some of them were quite complex; I was impressed!

I then headed to the nearby Parc de La Ciutadella, home of the Barcelona Zoo and the Catalonian Parlament building. It was full of gorgeous statues and monuments, and the archtecture was also quite stunning. From there I made my way to the Catalonian history museum, hoping they'd have some sort of record or document room where I could try to trace my roots... They did, but unfortunately it was closed on weekends so I didn't get the chance to check it out. I don't really know any Catalàn anyway, so I'm not sure it would've done any good even if it was! The museum itself was open and luckily free for students, so I did take some time to explore it. As I left the museum the sun was starting to set, so I headed towards the sea to sit on the beach and watch it go down over the water...

On the way back to the hostel I stopped to take a picture of Barcelona's Arc de Triompf...

After a good night's rest I headed out Sunday morning for the Castell de Montjuïc. Since it's located on the top of the mountain, there is a cable car service you can take to get there. It was closed for maintenance, so there was a bus replacing it. This was noted by a sign in Catalàn, Spanish, and English, but while waiting for the bus I noticed a pair of very confused Japanese tourists trying to figure out how to get to the top. I used a little of the Japanese I hadn't yet forgotten (haha) to explain to them what was going on and how to get where they were headed. This is how I ended up with my travel companions for the day...

Yumi and Masako came from Kanazawa, which is close to where I stayed in high school. They were so grateful for my help that we spent the rest of the day seeing the sights. From the castle on top of the mountain we walked down through some of the botanical gardens, past the sites of the 1992 Olympics. We then went to the Catalonian National Art Museum, and saw exhibits from the 10th century up through modern times, including quite a few pieces by Picasso. We went also to the port and the monument of Christopher Columbus, after which they treated me to lunch as a way of thanking me for help translating - written Catalàn is somewhere in between French and Spanish, and I was able to parse enough to figure out most signs and whatnot, whereas they spoke nothing but a small amount of English; not really that helpful. They walked me back as far as the metro station so I could get back to Sants Estacio in time for the train back to Montpellier. We exchanged email addresses so they'll send me some of the pictures they took. It's always nice to make new friends! It's funny to think that this is one of the benefits of travelling alone.