Our Last Day in Europe

We said goodbye to Spain and caught the plane back to Prague where we started this journey 3 months ago. We loved Prague and began to think that we were just Euro-happy when we arrived but we love it just as much the second time around. A very cold and dense fog has settled over the city, quite a contrast from the hot and muggy days we had here in August. We couldn't let the kids off easy and dragged them to one last museum, the sobering Jewish Quarter. It has the spookiest cemetery, and with the fog and cold it seemed even spookier.



The jews were forced to use this one plot as a cemetery for hundreds of years and they actually brought in layers of dirt to allow for more burials as it filled up. The headstones are packed in next to one another, all at crazy angles.

We also had to get in some more aimless wandering down narrow, cobbled streets.



Noelle's ram-horn hat is a hit and she gets a lot of compliments and cheek squeezings with it. She even got a banana from the old helper at the jewish museum. She has grown weary of my constant photography sessions and I promised her right after this photo that I wouldn't subject her to any more of them. No sooner than I made that promise, a japanese tourist loved her hat so much she made Noelle pose for her, first alone, then with a stuffed animal, then she got her husband to get one of her and Noelle, all the while struggling to figure out her camera. Noelle just grinned patiently.

Prague is really special on a cold and foggy evening, with the castle and countless lighted spires sticking up into the clouds. Luckily for the kids, the cold drove us back to the apartment or we would have wandered non-stop until the plane left.




I think that we're all ready to go home after such a long trip. We enjoyed sharing our adventures with our friends and family and we hope that you enjoyed reading about them as well. We will post a follow-up when we get back into the U.S.A. because if past experience is a guide, I'm sure we'll have some missteps getting home!

Hamilton's Top 10

We have come full circle and are back in Prague. Choosing our top ten sights from our trip has not been an easy chore. For some of us it was difficult to whittle it down to ten; for one of us it was hard to stretch it out to ten. Nevertheless we managed to compile four lists of our favorite sights/experiences.

Mark

10. Bacharach at night
9. Burg Eltz (the castle)
8. Paris
7. San Sebastian
6. Cinque Terre
5. Amalfi
4. Lauterbrunnen
3. Chamonix
2. Gaudi's Casa Battlio and Segrada Familia
1. Hydra


Allie Z

10. Meeting people (Kanstantinos, Lena, Leonardis, John, and Frank)
9. Cats in Greece
8. Sketching sights
7. Trying to speak French
6. Parthenon
5. Ordering new foods
4. Beach at Cinque Terre
3. People watching at Las Ramblas
2. Eiffel tower at night
1. Pintxo hopping in San Sebastian with Nere, Alberto and especially PERU


Noelley

10. Cathedral in Freiburg
9. Chamonix
8. Luxembourg Garden in Paris
7. Prague Town Square
6. Vatican City
5. Park in Hallstatt
4. Windmill on Hydra
3. Manarola, Italy
2. San Sebastian beach
1. Olive trees near Delphi

Jolene

10. Frank Gehry's buildings
9. Meteora Monasteries
8. San Sebastian beach
7. Eiffel tower at night
6. Swiss Alps
5. Amalfi
4. Chamonix
3. Gaudi's Casa Battlio and Segrada Familia
2. Hallstatt
1.5 Venice
1.4 Prague
1.3 Any local festival
1.2 Pintxos in Donostia with new friends
1.1 Hydra
1 Swimming in the Mediterranean Sea along the Cinque Terre coast

Birthday in Barcelona

We are staying in the Gracia area of Barcelona, which is full of walking streets, cafes, and plazas. There are few tourists it seems, mostly families and old couples. Our apartments in Spain, while nice and comfortable, haven't exactly been the most modern. The walls are paper-thin and the Spanish aren't known for being quiet. Our neighbor must have left town and set his clock radio to maximum volume, which awoke us at o-dark-thirty and we were serenaded for the next two hours with the Pope's Sunday morning speech. I suppose that is better than being a party to Friday night's lovers quarrel followed up by their amorous reunification. We did get out of the house by noon and walked down to the neighborhood plaza to check out the "castelers" making scary-tall human towers.



They send a little kid up to the top which is at the third-floor level. The crowd was having a ball and fortunately we didn't witness anything disastrous. Afterwards we headed to La Rambla, a famous tree-lined pedestrian street that is full of tourists. It seems to be listed in every guidebook as a Barcelona must-see, and judging by the souvenir stands and crowds people take that advice to heart. Jolene and I have always felt that it's seedy and really doesn't offer anything except good people-watching, which is exactly what we did. Our guidebook says that you're more likely to be pick-pocketed here than any other street in Europe and we wholly agree. We watched gypsies set up illegal shell games while "pickpockers" (Noelle's term) roamed the crowds. After a while we began to recognize the perps and Noelle and Allie even came up with nicknames for them. Bad things do happen to good and prudent people, but from what we saw almost every scammed tourist was completely naive and not using their heads. If you think you're going to win an easy 50 euro picking out which shell the pea is under than you're a fool. Likewise, if you walk around the crowded streets in one of Europe's largest cities with your bejeweled purse held by one finger at arm's length than you get what's coming to you. Here's a picture of us being willingly ripped-off at one of the La Rambla cafes.




Yesterday we explored Park Guell, a failed gated community designed by the architect Gaudi. Lucky for us it failed after the model homes, gatehouses, and infrastructure was built and it was turned into a public park. It's a great spot with a nice view of the city and lots of Gaudi's serpentine tile work and gingerbread houses.










It was also Allie's 12th birthday! She got a few small, airplane-friendly gifts and she elected to have my leftover alphabet soup instead of dining in her pick of Barcelona's restaurants. Noelle thoughtfully decorated the apartment with balloons and I hope we awoke the neighbors with our singing in English.

Gaudi's Barcelona

We've been doing our favorite European thing here, wandering the streets. I guess we did drag the kids to the Picasso Museum, but afterwards we wandered the streets home. Barcelona was the home of the "Modernista" movement in the early 1900's and it seems every street has an interesting building. Gaudi was the craziest of all the architects and his buildings are a treat to see. Noelle describes them as wet sand castles and Allie says they are "playful". Our first stop was the Casa Mila, a large apartment building. Gaudi left no detail undecorated, even the chimneys and rooftop equipment are styled.




Our next stop was the Casa Batllo, built for a rich merchant and privately owned. We were delighted to discover that since our last trip here the interior is now open for touring.



A tour of the Casa Batllo is a must for anyone who enjoys building things. There isn't a straight line in the place and every square inch was touched by a craftsman. The woodwork, ironwork, plaster, tile and glass are all over the top.






I can't imagine what it would cost to build something like this today. If I ever become a famous rapper I'm not going to cover my teeth in diamonds or buy a gold-plated Hummer, I'm building a Gaudi-like Casa Hamilton.

We walked home along the beautiful Passeig de Gracia, an elegant street where the who's-who of Barcelona all built themselves beautiful Modernista buildings to out-do each other. In our humble opinion, Paris' Champs Elysees is almost cheesy compared to the Passeig yet for some reason you never hear about it.

When you're down the street from a Gaudi building, you better come up with a good storefront to attract people. Noelle found that even she was too tall for the kids' door on this toy shop.





Today we spent most of the day at Gaudi's unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral. It's still under construction and will probably be finished in a few hundred years. The kids gave it two thumbs up and both agreed that it was their favorite cathedral in all of Europe.



Jolene and I were both amazed at how much has been completed since our last visit. The inside was dusty, dark and full of construction debris and now it is light, colorful, and seems nearly finished.











It's really hard to describe how amazing it is but when the kids want to sit in church for two hours and sketch the altar and columns that's a good affirmation. Jolene and I have found that some of our European memories from 13 years ago don't quite stack up to the realities that we find when we return. I guess we sort of "romanticize" about the past and find ourselves saying things like, "Didn't you remember that village being prettier," upon our return. We have found the opposite to be true with Barcelona and it feels even better than before. Maybe it's just because we started our last week in Europe and know that in one week we will be back in the USA.

Weekend in San Sebastian

The weekends are really fun in town with everyone young and old coming out to walk along the beach and socialize in front of the bars. We awoke Saturday morning to find a dozen or so soccer games set up along the beach.



Jolene went to Bilbao for the day so the girls and I took a hike up to the large statue of Jesus overlooking the town. We had to fuel up first. Spain is the land of gummy candies and you can get them in any shape, size, or flavor. I like the gummy flan or gummy fried eggs the best.







The old part of town is where all the narrow streets and neat little bars and restaurants are found. We loved wandering around there and enjoying the good and cheap food. We did end up making good on our one goal of finding a bar to call our own. Lena and her brothers own a bar by our house and we got to know them pretty well, stopping in almost every day for a coffee or sandwich. I wish we could have said goodbye before we left but they were closed up for the day.




Sunday there was a big running race from France to San Sebastian and the town was hopping. We met our friends Nere, Alberto and their baby Peru down at the race. We met them through some friends in Reno back in August and threatened to call them when we were in town. Nere grew up in San Sebastian and they live here now.


After the race was over they took us on a "pintxos tour". Pintxos are basque tapas and San Sebastian is the best place to find them. The bars are intimidating for us foreigners, with strange food lined up along the bar and people packed in like sardines. There is a lot of noise and the bartenders are always in a hurry which makes it difficult to ask questions. Nere and Alberto helped us out and we had some incredible food. Sundays are very social, with the locals and the racers all packed into the old part of town eating, drinking, and talking.







We had a great day and Monday night we went over to their house for dinner. We were sorry that we had to leave early the next day for Barcelona. San Sebastian is a great place and having some friends there really made our visit special.

These are a few of our favorite things

As we are nearing the end of our trip we have been talking and thinking of the many things we have seen and done. Although Jolene's favorite place is almost always whichever place she is in, the girls found it pretty easy to choose a favorite country.

Germany and Austria by Noelle

My favorite countries were Germany and Austria.

In Salzburg we saw a "floating Mozart" and ate yummy cake. There was a giant mall where I got sunglasses and ate meatballs.


I also really liked the town of Rothenburg. To start our visit there we saw pretty goats right across from our campground. We wandered into this very old town and found lots of people dressed up like in the olden days. We had a dinner of bratwurst and listened to guys singing Let It Be in German. We ended the day by watching beautiful fireworks.

In Hallstatt we stayed in a pretty campground with a great park across the street. The park had a diving board and a slide right into the lake. It also had a zip line and much more. Allie and I played on the zip line all day even in the rain. Daddy and I went to an old church that hundreds of painted skulls. They were shiny and mostly painted with flowers.

I also liked Germany because I enjoyed listening to the language and when they spoke English, the spoke with a cool accent.

I liked the bakery called Die Lohners. We had yummy pastries. Allie's favorite was called a Berliner. It had a cream filling.

Germany is very beautiful. There are big, pointy, craggy mountains and some glaciers. We got to see lots of goats and I even fed one. I called him goaty. One of his horns was all weird.

Germany was also my favorite because that's where we got Dagobert!




France by AllieZ

My favorite country is France. There are so many things to do and see. I liked riding the metro in Paris, hiking the trails near Chamonix, and exploring the half-timbered cuteness of Eguisheim.

I especially liked the variety that France offers. In five hours you can go from big cities across rolling hills over snow covered mountains to tiny villages along the coast.


I also really liked the people. They are very formal and polite and dress like they are going to the opera even if they're just going for a walk. The language is very pretty and fun to (try to) speak it.

The food was a culinary adventure. We often had no idea what we were ordering so we usually ended up with something that was unusual yet tasty. One time I thought I ordered a vinaigrette salad but it turned out to be cheese, ham, and deviled eggs in a yummy mustard sauce. I loved the bakeries. They are the best in all of Europe. Pain au chocolate was my favorite thing to order.

One of the reasons I like France so much is because France, especially Paris, is a place that almost every person knows about and we got to go there! It's cool having heard about it all my life and then getting to see it for myself.

The Basque Coast

We rented a car yesterday and drove along the coast from San Sebastian to Bilbao. Fortunately for us, the rental car company was out of the cheapo economy cars that we favor and we were upgraded to a luxury car at no extra charge. Actually, I feel that we deserved it after wrestling with Dagobert for 2 months. The sweet little BMW restored my faith in German engineering. Its little diesel motor had tons of power and torque and barely sipped any fuel. I'm sure that you can't get one in America because of emissions laws and most Americans think of diesels as stinky, smoky, and slow.

The coastline we drove is easily as picturesque as Oregon or Big Sur but because it's difficult to access it isn't on the tourist map. The roads are narrow and touch the coast at points, then dive inland and go through old industrial towns, then back out to the coast.



Our little beach in San Sebastian has been covered with trash since the big storm last weekend so it was nice to give the kids some beach time.






Jolene and I didn't own a car while we lived in Spain so we had only explored the coastline a few times, mostly when guests were in town and we rented cars. We remembered a nice little fishing village called Elantxobe where the road is so narrow that the local bus has to be put on a turntable and spun around by hand to make it back up the road.




Our one goal for the day was to visit a little church built on an island of rock. We came across it accidentally one time while out on a bike ride. As far as we know, it's not in any tourist guidebook and it doesn't see that many visitors. It is spectacular and if there was a coastal road like Highway 101 it would be on every postcard. It has a name, but I can never remember it since it's Basque and has a bunch of x's in it.







The kids are still recovering from colds so they were spared the 300 stairs to the top. I know, if there was a beach or playground at the top they would have bounded up them with enthusiasm. Maybe I'm just getting soft after 3 months of sightseeing.



Jolene ringing the bell. Quasimodo may be out of a job.




We stayed on the coast until the sun went down. Although we are on the west side of Spain, the coastline runs east-west here so the sun sets over the land. Allie and Noelle found it confusing when we first got to Europe to be on east-facing beaches and watch the sun set over the land. As west-coasters they just know that you go down to the beach to watch the sun set. I had to make a sand-diagram to explain why the sun was going the wrong way to Noelle while we were in Italy. This picture is actually a moon-rise.



The Spanish keep a schedule which takes some getting used to. The town wakes up around 9:00 am and is pretty active until about 1:00 or 2:00, then it becomes a ghost town until around 5:00 or so, when the shops open back up and the streets are full of people again. Dinner starts late and if you show up at 8:30 you would probably annoy the wait staff who is just getting ready. We are usually the first ones seated at 9:00 and after a lengthy dinner and a stroll back home we don't hit the sheets until midnight. We drove back home in the dark and still were the "early birds" for dinner.

The "Art" Museum

We awoke to sun and a desire to get out of the house. We went down to the bus station and jumped on the bus to Bilbao. Jolene and I used to live in a suburb of Bilbao and we had been wanting to check out the old 'hood for quite some time. Our first stop was the Guggenheim art museum. The museum opened about a month after we moved here back in '97 and at the time we thought it was an amazing building but questioned the logic of placing it on a polluted river in a run-down industrial city that most people hadn't heard of. We were shocked when we laid our eyes upon it after 13 years away. There has been a complete transformation of the area, with locals and tourists enjoying the bike and walking paths and we even saw kayakers in the previously dreadful river. The surrounding buildings look clean and shining and there are open, grassy parks all over. The building is still the centerpiece of it all and some new (to us) sculptures have really added to its appeal. I know what your Renoites are thinking--yeah, but do they have a train trench? Sorry but I couldn't resist throwing that one in for the home crowd.




The puppy (poopy as the Spaniards say it) was supposed to be temporary but the locals loved it and demanded that it stay.




Jolene and I have had the same ongoing debate over what constitutes modern "art" since our first visit to the museum. Let's just say that in my eyes, you pay 12 Euro to see the building and if you run across something that you think is art inside consider it a bonus.





Noelle was thrilled to find what she claimed was one of the best parks in Europe.




After the museum we took the metro out to our old neighborhood of Algorta. The kids weren't that impressed, but neither were we on our first visit. It's the kind of place that you have to live in to appreciate. There have been a few changes, but we were glad to see some of the old shops that we used to visit were still in business. We had a snack at one of our favorite bars and it was still good. It was getting late and we didn't want a repeat of the Paris train fiasco, so we headed back a little early to catch the bus to San Sebastian. We finished the night off with a great, inexpensive meal in the old part of town.

The Rain in Spain....Sucks!

We awoke again to rain. At least we're not in Dagobert....at least we're not in Dagobert we keep telling ourselves. This isn't your usual storm and when we did brave the weather to get out of the house we found trees down, streets flooded and our previously beautiful beach full of trash and lumber from the sea. Fortunately, the kids are great at entertaining themselves, with Allie reading books and Noelle always creating something. Sundays in Spain are very quiet and every store is closed. If you are dumb enough not to have stocked up on food (we are) then you'll be scraping together a meal from whatever you might have on hand (we did). Fortunately we had eggs on hand so I attempted to fry some up for our Sunday dinner. I couldn't find a frying pan so I tried to fry some in a deep sauce pan--a tricky proposition under the best of conditions. When they were ready to flip I went to find a utensil and found that the kitchen had almost nothing with which to cook. I grumbled and struggled, eggs began to smoke, I frantically opened and closed each drawer a second and third time hoping that I had missed a drawer with a helpful tool in it. My complaining got louder and the eggs were almost ruined. Finally I threw in the towel, dumped the pan in the sink and told the kids we were having peanut butter sandwiches. Noelle didn't seem to care as she was too busy building something on the coffee table to look up. Munching on stale bread and peanut butter, I voiced my frustrations to Jolene about the poorly stocked kitchen and told her that I was going to write to the landlord and complain. Noelle, silent up to this point, pointed over to her table and grinned. She had cleaned out all of the kitchen utensils to use in her creation.




A few months ago you may remember me describing how awful the shifting of Dagobert was. While in Greece, I had emailed Dagobert's owner complaining of the shifting and I could tell that he just thought that I was a pampered American, used to cruising easy freeways with an automatic transmission. I let the issue drop, preferring to just cope with it instead of searching out a shop, paying, getting reimbursed, etc. I finally received my redemption in the form of an email from him. He couldn't believe that I had managed shifting that awful thing for 6000 km!

Budget-wise, Spain has been a treat! Finally, we have been pleasantly surprised when we receive a bill at the restaurant or bar. If I could give advice to anyone planning a trip to Europe I would say to make your budget and then double the price of everything. Even previously cheap places like Italy and Greece are very expensive for Americans. To make matters worse, it seems like Europeans charge for everything--to park, to pee, to view anything remotely interesting. It got so bad that we sort of just gave in and every time we got an inflated bill for something we would start singing the lines of that song from Les Miserables about the greedy innkeeper, "...two percent for looking in the mirror twice!"

Staying Dry

We really don't have a lot to report on except staring out the window at the sheets of rain coming down. It sure beats being stuck in a VW van! We managed to get a hike in before the rain started yesterday morning. There is a neat seaside sculpture with some holes in the sidewalk that blast air up when the waves come in.













We managed to get some beach time in too. We awoke yesterday to rain and wind and it hasn't stopped since. We braved the weather to hike to the aquarium yesterday and while it isn't on the same scale as Monterey the lack of crowds made up for the small size. We got soaked on the walk home. It makes it easier to do school work and Spanish lessons when the beach isn't calling our name. The forecast is calling for warm weather this coming week so I hope that our next entry will be more interesting.

Slow Days

I thought that I should clarify my the last statement about our intended bar-hopping. Bars in America and Europe, but especially Spain, have two different meanings. For the most part, an American bar is either a place where college kids go after the game to get sloshed and hookup or a dimly-lit windowless tavern on East 4th Street where nobody knows your name. In Spain, bars are everywhere and are a center of social life and serve food, coffee, and drinks. All walks of life come into the bar, from kids getting a snack, to construction workers, grandmothers, or the local priest. Drinks are small, only a few ounces of wine or beer, and the tapas are incredible. We have gotten to know one of the bar owners down the street. We aren't greeted so much like Norm but instead the locals mutter to one another under their breath, "Here come those weird Americans again." We'll have to settle for that.





We are using our time here to catch up on some schoolwork for the kids. Some of us have colds so we are just kind of laying low for a few days. Having said that, even a fever didn't keep Allie from playing in the sand yesterday and Noelle is definitely the beach bum of the family.

Midnight in Paris

Our last day in Paris didn't go exactly as planned. After cleaning out our apartment, we stowed our bags at the train station so we could go out and do some final sightseeing before our 11:00 pm night train to Spain. We had a lot of time to kill so we walked around then spent some time in a street side cafe just people watching and waiting for night to fall so we could go to the Eiffel Tower.




The Eiffel Tower was amazing at night. The girls really wanted to go all the way to the top this time so we took stairs to the second floor and waited in line for the summit elevator. After standing in line for a while without it moving we realized that we would not make the elevator before it closed so we gave up again. We were disappointed but at least we got to see the city at night one more time.



We caught the metro to the train station and were riding along peacefully when I began to notice that the station names did not sound familiar. I looked at the map and realized that we had gotten on the wrong metro! We switched trains at the next stop and backtracked, then caught the correct metro. We pulled the watch out of the backpack and realized with horror that all of that "City of Lights" magic had whittled the time away. When we finally arrived, we raced out of the metro, ran through endless tunnels to fetch our bags, then sprinted to the platform in time to see our train pulling away. If we had been 1 minute earlier we would have made the train. As the train disappeared into the night we began to realize the significance: we were stuck in Paris at midnight with no place to sleep. There was a flood of emotion as angers boiled over, tantrums were thrown and tears flowed. Jolene and the girls just watched me and then calmly helped me off the station floor. Needless to say, it wasn't the highlight of the trip. It was touch and go for a while but I managed to find a hotel across from the station with one vacancy from a couple who cancelled an hour before. Jolene was able to get the station manager to write a note explaining our situation on the unused tickets in hopes of securing a refund. By 7:30 the next morning we were on a train to Spain and what looked to be a $600 mistake only cost us about $75 in an unplanned hotel stay.




We are now in San Sebastian, Spain in a nice little apartment overlooking the beach. The weather is unseasonably warm right now and we even did some body-surfing today.


Our place is the upper one with the two white stripes.



Jolene and I lived in Spain so it feels familiar coming here. It's nice to be able to understand the customs, the food, and especially the language. It's amazing how well you can communicate when you actually know some verbs! We will be here for a couple of weeks and our plan is to just settle in and hopefully become like Norm from Cheers in one of the bars down the street.