An American Moron in Paris

Bonjour everyone! I'm back from the dead a few days ago. I apologize for being gone from the blog...I'm sure my Mom caught you up-to-snuff with my predicament. Let's just say that I was enjoying my time in Lyon (pronounced like "Yonne"...I don't understand the French and their wacky language. They have "L"s in words and don't pronounce them...then they insert "L" sounds into words that have no "L"s. What the "L"???). Lyon is a beautiful city with a lot of history. I learned all about "Le Resistance," which had its base of operations here during WWII. This city has a lot of secret passages you can sneak through that the Resistance used to evade the Nazis. Lyon also has some great farmers markets where you can purchase some tasty wine. Quite tasty. Just watch how much you consume.

Our hostel in Lyon was the best we've had this entire trip. It was up on a tall hill in the St. Georges district, and it overlooked the entire city with its sprawling rivers. I would just hang out there on the patio for hours looking down at the city. The environment at the hostel was quite fun. It was especially a hoot watching the flamboyantly gay Frenchman/bartender turn the place into a discotecque and start getting all Coyote Ugly on us, dancing and laying all over the counter top and humping chairs. We talked with several of the travelers going through. During the infamous wine drinking episode, I had a great time talking with a guy from Thailand who had just graduated from film school in London and was going back home to direct commercials in his native country. I learned important stuff from him, such as where to get the best kebabs in France, and to not see the "Transformers" movie because it is supposedly pure summer popcorn movie crap.

But now we are in Paris, and I must admit, I am pleasantly surprised. Everything anyone has told me about this place has been wrong. This is a great city and it's not at all disgusting, or rude, or the hellhole every jaded stuck-up American I've met along the way has made it out to be. We caught the end of Le Tour de France on Sunday. It was nuts...I was trapped in a sea of bodies waiting for the bikers to come down the Champs-Elysses. But we saw the bikers ride by about 14 or so times, which was great. I was so happy for how our guy Levi did, and how Team Discovery Channel did. It was definitely worth seeing this.

Eric and I have spent the rest of our time here exploring the city. We went to the Louvre yesterday, and to all the big monuments the day prior. Today we'll be hitting Notre Dame, the Orsay museum, Montmarte and other things, then try to see Versailles tomorrow. I love this place. I could spend a week or more here if possible. The only problem is the price of everything here, but hey...it's Paris. Just suck it up and enjoy it.

A Note From Brian's Mother

Dear Readers of "The Travelin' Fool,"

Please excuse my son, Brian, from posting a blog today. He's not feeling very well due to partaking in a little bit too much wine last night. He's slowly recovering at the HI hostel in Lyon, France and is finally getting some food back into his stomach again. He'll be back on his blog in a few days when he reaches Paris. And he's promised me he's learned his lesson about wine. Poor boy thinks he can handle a full bottle when his scrawny body just can't take the abuse. I thought he would have learned his lesson a few years ago in Italy (boy, what a disaster that was!), but you know how kids are. I did the best I could on raising the child, but there's only so much a poor mother can do. He's got to figure things out on his own now. He's a smart kid, but sometimes, I just don't know what's going on in that crazy head of his.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Martin

Livin' on the Fringe

Bonjour from Avignon! I'm at another screwy French keyboard again, so it'll be a short message, unfortunately.

I've had PLTB---"Post-Le Tour Blues---these past few days. It was just so surreal (especially for an avid biker like me) to be witnessing the holy grail of all bike races on Monday...and then it disappear so suddenly. But we may have a 2nd chance to catch it on the big finale in Paris this coming Sunday. That would put away my Le Tour blues and definitely be the icing on the cake.

After Le Tour left Foix, the rains came through and made the day quite depressing. We climbed up to the Chateau du Foix on the hill overlooking the town. It's a 1000 year-old castle which looks pretty cool, and since it's the only thing to do in town besides the jazz festival at night, we went up it along with the other gullible tourists. We then walked the 2 kilometers back to Camping du Lac. This campsite wasn't too bad...except for the French lady with the purple hair and her horrible gyrating on the disco dance floor beside the restaurant. Just watching her made me sick to my stomach. It felt like I was at Deiter's Dance Party. And I don't know where they dug up that horrible music. It was Euro-pop from the 80's which I had never heard. It sucked. They could have at least played "99 Luftballoons" and I would have been OK with that.

To block it all out, Eric and I drank wine, ate our experimental frozen pizzas which we cooked over Eric's hobo stove (Note: don't attempt putting the insides of two frozen pizzas together to make a stuffed pizza...especially when cooked over a grill. It doesn't work), and watched this really nutty French game show called "Interville" where towns across France compete with each other. They dress up in big-headed animal costumes (such as frogs, alligators, rats, beavers) and then run through crazy obstacle courses. Then they have this live bull come and ram into you while your standing on pedestals, throwing you up in the air while wacky sound effects are played as you hit the ground in pain. All the French kids at the campsite were laughing their heads off at that part. Then between all the crazy events, the French fly-girls come out with their pom-poms and shake their bootylicious stuff like the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. And this is family television for France. What a country!

We got out of Foix on Tuesday, and after a long day of catching trains...and missing trains...we finally made it to Avignon. We helped a German couple from Frankfort (who looked like Velma and Shaggy from "Scooby Doo," except with German accents) find the campsite we were hiking towards. Once we got there, however, the sign said it was all filled due to the big enormous arts festival going on in Avignon. Eric and I about turned away...until Velma and Shaggy solved the mystery and showed us that backpackers with tents were still welcome inside. Jinkies! This campground is a hoot...I feel like I'm at Woodstock with this giant tent city filled with grubby stinky hippies. Last night, some drunk French granolas were serenading us on the guitar outside our tent with their renditions of American tunes. It's a real treat to hear Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" sung by a bunch of people who don't quite know the words.

We spent all of today inside Avignon's city walls observing the really cool fringe festival going on. It's probably similar in a lot of ways to Edinborough's Fringe Festival. Here, hundreds of theatre troops from around France and bordering countries were giving performances. The city is slathered in theatre posters, giving the place an off-Broadway feel. I attended a clown/mime show called Housch-ma-Housch that was a lot of fun. It felt like watching Mr. Bean with sound effects. In Blue Man Group fashion, Housch-ma-Housch unraveled several rolls of tape and passed them up into the audience to continue pulling on. The lady in front of me kept getting pissed at me when the tape I was pulling kept catching her hair and messing it up. All I have to say is "Tape happens."

Tour de Force

From Foix

Back again, folks. This time, I'm in the sleepy town of Foix (pronounced "Fwah"), located about 100 kilometers or so south of Toulouse. You'll have to forgive me for the brevity of this message. My time is short here due to the exorbient 3 € an hour internet rates as well as the screwy French keyboard that's not set up like a QWERTY KEYBOARD. Why do these French always have to be so different with everything (I'd put a question mark symbol here, but can't find it on the keyboard. This really blows). Spanish keyboards weren't too different from English ones. They just put the @ symbol in a different place, so that was an easy hurdle. In this country, however...shoot, I'd rqther just resort to postcards again. They were much quicker than having to hen-peck on a keyboqrd, plus much cheqper:

It was a pretty awesome experience to actually see Le Tour de France go through Foix this morning. Around 9:30, they had the "caravan" start it out, which is basically the fastest parade of floats you'll ever see in your life. Each of the sponsors of the event had one, with their sexy French "booth babe" girls out on each float shaking their stuff. Some passed out free stuff like bottled water, hats, gummi bears, etc. A float with a giant pair of glasses and a sexy glasses girl handed me a cloth to clean my glasses. When you're a travelling bum such as myself right now, you'll grab at anything that's free.

Then on the large yellow Le Tour main stage, they had the announcer of the parade speaking while other events were going on. After being mesmerized by these two weird women dressed in gold spandex bodysuits contorting their bodies into positions not suitable for young children to look at (which still begs the question, "What does any of this have to do with cycling (insert question mark here)"), we took our places along a barricade of the prestart route at about 10:30 to get some decent pictures of the bikers as they came though. At 11:15, the entourage of multicolored spandex came whizzing by, and in less than a minute...it was all over. Shoot...this was quicker than the bull run a few weeks ago. I just took a lot of pictures, hoping I just happened to capture some important biker (any of you Le Tour experts out there feel free to browse the photos and let me know if I at least got Levi Leipheimer or Michael Rasmussen).

Then within an hour of the riders going through, Le Tour packed up all the barricades, the Le Tour village...and took off. I couldn't believe it. If this was America, they would have stuck around a few hours more to make some bucks off of you. Nope, not here. They waste no time. On to the next town.

So Foix is a sleepy castle town once again. Hardly even feels like Le Tour was here.

Toulouse: Le Trek

From Toulouse

Bonsoir Monsieurs et Mademoisselles! We're here in beautiful Toulouse right now, experiencing overcast skies and periodic showers. It's mid July, and I can't believe that people are wearing warm black jackets and going around carrying umbrellas. Just add a baguette underneath everyone's arm and stick berets on all of them and it would complete my stereotypical image of the French. I think our proximity to the Pyrennes mountains makes this region cool in the summer time. I remember walking in Bordeaux and the lady at the desk of the hostel was dying, and it was probably 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Makes me laugh.

I'm glad we're out of Bordeaux. It really didn't have much going for it, other than the wine. I guess I should have figured that out after seeing the logo for the town of Bordeaux, which looks suspiciously like a biohazard symbol. With all the dog crap scattered on the sidewalks of Bordeaux, a biohazard symbol would probably be very appropriate, now that I think about it. We enjoyed our last night in Bordeaux, having a fish and rice feast, drinking rose wine and eating Camembert cheese and bread with this guy Peter from Quebec we befriended. He looked strangely like a shorter version of Tom Green, except not as annoying. He was originally from Newfoundland, so I picked his brain on everything I could about Newfoundland, including how to properly pronounce it (in case you're curious, don't say the letter "O").

We then went out to find a place to drink. We got duped into going into a bar that had a big American flag hanging from it. We figured, "Oh, they must like Americans. Let's go in there!" It was a Harley-Davidson themed bar with all these black leather-clad girl posters on the walls. Very manly. But then they charged Eric a whopping 5 Euros for one bottle of Budweiser (called "Bud" over here due to trademark issues with the real "Budweiser" name (called Budvar) in the Czech Republic). That comes to be about $7.50 American dollars for a Bud. We then realized that Budweiser here is considered an exotic "imported" beer, so we've vowed off of any Anheiser-Busch products here. If you want cheap beer in France, it's either "Kronenbourg" or "1664." Or just get some wine. Nobody drinks beer here anyway, and why should they? The wine is great here!

So after roaming the streets of Bordeaux late at night, and realizing that nothing is open late here in France since they will only work 35 hours a week and no more, we decided that it was time to move on from this biohazard town. So we hopped a train the next day over to Toulouse. It's a major improvement. There's life here late at night, due primarily to the fact that Toulouse is a major college town. About one-third of the population (or about 120,000) are students here. Most are gone for the summer, but the college vibe and energy is still here. Toulouse also some great museums and sights to check out. Today, we spent time at the Musee des Augustins, which was probably my most favorite museum on this entire trip. It has a wide variety of artwork, stretching from the 1200s up until the early 20th century. I especially enjoyed the gargoyles on display, stretched out like a bunch of French can-can girls ready to kick up their legs. Also present were a few Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec paintings, as well as some gorgeous works from the Art Nouveau movement that I really enjoyed.

Upon arriving in Toulouse, we met up with a doctoral student named Joni (nickname for Jonathan) who was going to host us for the evening. There's an internet site called "Couchsurfing.com" in which people across the world volunteer their couches and floors to travellers. So basically, anyone can have a hostel set up in their house. And one of the major perks is that you don't have to pay a thing to stay at these people's homes. So we hung out at Joni's little studio apartment in the heart of old-town Toulouse. Joni was an interesting character, to say the least. He was studying to be a neurosurgeon...was born and raised in Israel by his French parents, then moved to Toulouse for school, and was moving to Holland within a week to continue his studies. Joni was also a major granola at heart. He just became a vegan, so he fixed for us a rice dinner with imitation meat and some lettuce salad on the side. He was so nice to feed us, but I must admit, after the third serving of rice (since that was the only thing on the table) it was starting to get a little old and I was dying for some flavor.

Joni was a riot to talk to. He led us around town for the evening to show us the sights. Then we crashed on his uncomfortable futon bed. In the morning, we had to leave around 10 am so Joni could meditate on his straw mat in front of the futon. He was just starting to get into meditation as well and was attending some "meditation camp" outside of Florence, Italy in a few weeks. I was curious about all this "meditation" and asked him what exactly he thought about when he meditated, and he says, "You can't explain meditation. You just have to experience it." Uh, all right then. I just left it at that, not wanting to cause an international incident by calling him out for speaking mumbo jumbo on me.

After getting kicked out of Joni's place, we had another death march with our packs on to get to the bus station to take us to our campsite. However, once we got there, we realized that the bus schedule was lousy and had limited runs to the campground, so we ended up getting a cheap 1 star rathole hotel in the heart of the city. The location was excellent. However, the drunk Frenchmen yelling outside your window and getting into fights at 3 am got old in a hurry. If I had a pick between drunk Frenchmen and drunk Spanishmen outside of my window, I'd go with the Spanish, because at least they are happy drunks most of the time.

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

From Bordeaux

Bonjour, my friends! After 5 weeks of roaming around Spain, we finally got enough courage to make the jump over the border and into France. It was a hard change to make... we were just starting to get used to the Spanish lifestyle: the 2 to 3 hour siestas during midday just to chill out... the beautiful beaches... the cheap boxes of juice... the beautiful beaches... man, we're really going to miss those.

But now it's on to bigger and more mysterious things. It's literally like we're throwing ourselves in freezing cold water and seeing if we can survive again. We were quite hesitant on coming to France, because everyone we've met along the way has only had negative things to say about this country. Across the board, everyone mentions how rude the French are to Americans and how they just go off on us for not being experts at their language. But so far, I haven't seen any of that. Where I'm at, the French have been anything but rude. They've actually been quite pleasant.

We're in the city of Bordeaux right now, home of the wine by the same name. The hostel we've been staying in—Auberge de la Barbey—is a pleasant change from our Camping Igeldo experience in San Sebastian. Anytime I go from camping to a hostel, I feel like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer awakening to a strange new world. "You mean, there's something called a MATTRESS that doesn't force me to sleep on the hard ground? And I can now keep my food cold in something called a REFRIGERATOR? Wow... these new fangled conveniences of your civilized world amaze me! Next thing you'll be telling me is that I can communicate instantly with the world through big tubes linking everyone together. It's almost too much for my puny Cro-Magnon brain to process!"

This hostel feels like it used to be a residence hall for university students at one time. It doesn't have much character aesthetically, but it does provide a lot of food for breakfast in the morning, which is a major plus in my book. As I mentioned before, good breakfast equals good hostel. The location of this hostel is in a seedy part of town where all the illegal immigrants have set up shop. When we first walked around the neighborhood here, I had that cheesy opening song from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" going through my head, where everyone is so darn happy, bursting open windows and saying "Bonjour!" to each other. So when I paired that with what I was actually seeing around me—the young lady pushing her mom in a wheelchair and getting urinated on by a dog in an overhead balcony... the tourists stepping in piles of dog crap on the sidewalks and cussing... the French "gangsta" rappers bumming around with their shirts off, their pants dragging off of their asses and bottles of hard liquor dangling from their hands—it just seemed like such a disconnect. That's what I get for Disney handing me such a sanitized version of France.

I think the most bizarre sight we saw was late one night after returning from an Irish pub. We had been drinking some store-bought Bordeaux earlier, then had gone to the pub for a half pint of beer to drink (French prices on beer are insane... it's better to stick with the wine.) As we were walking back to the hostel, we happened to see this angry-looking midget on the sidewalk, with his shirt ripped off, showing off his rock-hard muscles and tattoos while walking a giant great dane. We both thought we were hallucinating. I mean, this guy could've just jumped on this dog and used it as a mode of transportation. We also realized that, despite the size of this guy, he could probably kick both of our asses. So we quickly walked away to avoid any chance of pissing off a French midget.

Here in Bordeaux, we've tried to have the ultimate Bordeaux experience. This morning, we stopped by a local market and I picked up some Camembert cheese, because I've read from multiple sources that this is the thing I'm supposed to do. The lady opened the cheese container for me and let me "squeeze the cheese" to check its quality. We then set off on a mission to have an official wine tasting at a chateau on the outskirts of Bordeaux. Like two bumbleheads, we didn't know what we were doing. They had prearranged winery tours and tasting for 22 Euros and above, but we didn't want to pay that much, so we decided to cobble together our own winery tour. After two hours of trying to figure out how the public transportation worked here, we jumped on a bus for Medoc, which is on the northwestern outskirts of Bordeaux. Medoc is supposed to have a lot of wineries to check out, and you're supposed to reserve tours and tastings well in advance. But we decided we'd take our chances and just sneak into a wine tasting and see what happened.

The bus eventually dropped us off in a suburban area where we didn't see any wineries at all. So, after trying to read the confusing maps, we just started walking east, hoping that something would appear. Meanwhile, I started smelling something funky coming from something near me. At first I thought it was Eric, because that kid can sweat a lot and sure smell rank in a hurry. So I distanced myself from Eric as much as possible, but that putrid stench kept following me. Frustrated, I looked at the bottoms of my sandals, thinking that maybe I had stepped into a pile of French dog crap. Nope... my sandals were clean. Then I thought that I was the one stinking really bad, which concerned me because I had just taken a shower earlier that day. I smelled under my armpits, but they were clean. Where the hell could that smell be coming from?

Then, as I was taking off my backpack, it suddenly occurred to me: IT'S THE CHEESE! It's the cheese inside my backpack that's stinking! Oh, thank the Lord it's not me! So we sat down at a bus stop, made some sandwiches and tried out the Camembert. Let me tell you... despite the rancid smell, that is one great cheese! No wonder why these French folks love it so much. It's a little on the runny side like Brie, but it's dang tasty. And I had somehow bought the real deal and not one of the cheap knockoffs found throughout France. I think I found my new love... and her name is Camembert.

After having our lunch, we then wandered down the street some more. It looked like a hopeless cause... we didn't see any wineries in sight. Then, over the horizon, the clouds suddenly parted and before our eyes, we saw a giant field of grapes appear, with a sign pointing the way to the Chateau du Taillan... a winery! It was a wine tasting miracle! So we approached the winery and wandered around inside its giant mansion, but we couldn't seem to find anyone. We then wandered over to an adjacent building where it appeared they might conduct their tastings, and we waited for someone to appear.

After 15 minutes, a group of people being led on a tour suddenly appeared, with a camera crew in tow. As we inquired about the wine tastings, the camera crew pointed their cameras straight at us, making me feel a little uncomfortable and wondering what the hell was going on. At first, the lady leading the tour was hesitant, but then said, "Well, all right. Come and join us with the tasting." So we joined the group at a table above the chateau, and for two hours, while the camera crew was filming us, we were wine tasting. The two ladies in charge were speaking completely in French, so like clueless Americans, we just smiled and tried to mimic what everyone else was doing... swirling their wine in glasses, smelling the wine, sipping it, then spitting into these plastic spittoons. Every once and awhile, they'd say something in English to us so we weren't totally clueless. Luckily, there was a German couple in the group who also couldn't speak French, so we weren't the only morons present.

I have been to wine tastings before in Napa Valley and Amador County, California, and at those, there was none of this spitting out your wine into buckets and just tasting it. People actually drank the wine. So I applied my experiences in California to my wine tasting here in France, and within about 10 minutes, my glasses of wine were completely bone dry. The lady talking to the camera noticed this and proceeded to come right over to me, point at my empty glasses and say, "Oh, it looks like your friend came here for the tasting, but YOU just came here to DRINK!" So everyone was laughing at me, the cameras were all recording this, and I was just sitting there, looking like a complete schmuck. It made me feel like Thomas Haden Church's character Jack from the movie "Sideways" who couldn't seem to get wine tasting right, either. Way to go, Brian. Here I am, an ambassador for my country, and now the French are going to perceive all us Americans as a bunch of uncivilized drunks.

So after being filmed for two hours, we were finally allowed to go. The lady didn't charge us anything for the tasting, which was extremely nice. We later found out that the camera crew was there to make a documentary for French television on this winery and 3 others, all of which were run by women, which is not common in France. It's going to be a 2 hour documentary which will air in March 2008 in France. More than likely, we'll make a small appearance in it as the two grubby Americans just stumbling upon a winery and wanting to drink. Great... just how I wanted to use my 15 minutes of fame.

After walking around the grounds of the winery, we headed down the road to a convenience store and bought a 5 Euro bottle of red wine that was made by the chateau we just visited. The man at the checkout counter looked at the bottle and started glowing, saying such wonderful things about my smart purchase. I've never been complimented before for buying a wine... and coming from a Frenchman, it meant that much more. He and an elderly women at the store then wanted to know where we were from. We told them America, and they couldn't believe it. I guess Americans never come to their neck of the woods, so they found it so odd that two clueless Americans would just wander in randomly off the street and buy a great local wine. Fortunately, the two French people didn't say anything bad about America... at least not to our faces. As we left the store, we could hear them laughing. If the French were indeed rude as people say, at least they had the decency to badmouth me behind my back, and that is OK in my book.

Overall, I can't believe the good fortune we had in actually making it to a wine tasting. The wine gods were definitely smiling down upon us today. I just love it when a plan comes together... especially when you're as clueless as we are.

Beach Blanket Bozo

From San Sebastian

I´m not too happy this morning, folks.

My camera is dead. Again.

But before I get into that, let me give you the lay of the land here in San Sebastian. It´s a nice little beach resort where the Euskadi culture reigns supreme. The town itself doesn´t have a lot of tourist attractions to check out...maybe a gothic cathedral or two. Other than that, it´s all beach...when they actually have beach here. During the morning hours, there´s quite a bit of beach along the city walls. Playa de la Concha is the most popular of their three beaches, where all the beautiful people strut their stuff amongst the not-so-beautiful people washed up on shore like beached whales. As the afternoon hours wear on, though, the tide rises, and the beach starts disappearing, until everyone is crowded on a thin strip of sand. I´ve never seen so many people crammed into such a tiny sandbox before. It´s quite amusing.

Nearby the beach is a small mountain called Monte Urgull, or as I like to call it, Mt. Jesus. The reason I call it that is due to the giant statue of Jesus up on top, overlooking the town below. It´s similar to those big statues of Jesus that you´ll see up in the mountains of many South American countries. On Saturday, Eric and I hiked up Mt. Jesus to go pay our respect to the big guy. Eric didn´t seem too thrilled. After a few steep climbs, we finally made it to the base of Jesus...and lo and behold, they had a museum about the history of San Sebastian underneath Jesus. I was really impressed with this museum. It was multilingual and done up incredibly with great multimedia presentations. And all for free, too!

But then we both had to use the bathroom in a hurry. We had to climb up into the base of Jesus to get to the bathrooms. Who would have thunk that Jesus would have a bathroom at his feet? I came up with a great marketing slogan for this town: "Come to San Sebastian, and you, too, can sit on the throne with Jesus!" Well, now that I think about it, maybe that won´t go over so well. Scratch that idea. When you get to the top of Mt. Jesus, you´ll notice that Jesus is actually very happy looking. He´s smiling wide with his hand up, like he´s waving hello. You don´t see too many happy Jesus statues. But after I trekked down Mt. Jesus and hung out on the beach, I could see why Jesus was so happy. He´s got the best view in town, looking down upon a topless beach. Oh, that Jesus! You sly devil, you!!!

San Sebastian does things a little differently than the Spanish. Instead of tapas, they have something called pintxos, where they make up all these plates of tiny sandwiches and food and place them all out on the bar counters for people to come up to and buy. It´s basically the fast-food version of tapas, where instead of waiting for your tiny plates of food to show up, you can just grab your food and pay for it there. All the floors at the pintxo places are littered with wadded napkins and papers. During pintxo hour in the evenings, people all huddle into the bars, drink, chat, eat, then throw their stuff on the ground. Maybe it would help if the Basques actually invested in some garbage cans for their patrons.

And then you have the Euskabi (Basque) language here, which is nothing like all the Latin-based languages you find throughout Europe. It has a lot of consonants, especially C´s, K´s, and X´s, and it makes no utter sense to people not from this region. They all use the same font for anything spelled in Euskabi. It´s a wacky circus-like font, where the A´s look similar to that on the title of a MAD Magazine. It´s not a font that´s easy on the eyes, but I guess it´s their font dating back thousands of years ago. Gotta stick with tradition around here. This area is also very political, with banners and posters plastered around town, speaking of Basque independence and stuff to do with the ETA that I don´t want to even know about.

But it seems to be a very friendly, happy, well-to-do beach town. They have great dining here...San Sebastian has more Michelin-ranked restaurants than any other city in Spain, and it´s right below Paris in the number of rankings. They have goofy celebrations here as well. On Saturday, we watched an event where kids would try to see how far out they could walk on a pole before they slipped and fell into the harbor. This was big stuff here in San Sebastian.

Alright. Back to the camera saga. So after a nice day of hanging out on the beach, relaxing, and swimming out into the Bay of Biscay to some floating docks, then swimming back, it was time for us to head out. So I put my shorts back on, which held my new camera in my pocket. Up ahead by the staircase to get out, the tide had strangely come in, so people now had to walk through a foot of water to get to the stairs. I stood there, analyzing the situation, and didn´t see a problem with walking through it. So I´m midway through it, when suddenly a slight wave comes up, knocks into the wall beside me, comes back at me in a tidal wave and just soaks me to the bone.

Eric is pointing and laughing at me, but I pull out my camera in horror. Eric wasn´t laughing too much after that. I´m now freaking, because I think my camera is ruined. Eric takes the camera, turns it on, and it appears to be fine. I take it from him, turn in on...and it´s dead.

You know, there are moments in my life that I´m not too proud of. This was one of them. I try to take good care of my stuff. But crap happens every now and then, and then you hate yourself for being such an idiot for not taking even better care of your stuff. I´m really surprised, though, that my camera couldn´t handle a light splashing. When I took it out of my pocket, it wasn´t dripping in water. It was actually quite dry. But this Fujifilm camera was made cheaply and not like the battle tank Canons that I´m used to. From here on out, I´m sticking with the Canons. Even though mine crapped out after two years, that thing was pretty rock-solid tough.

So I´m back to the drawing board, looking around town for a camera...again. Hopefully there´s an El Corte Ingles around somewhere. My backpack is now turning into a dead digital camera graveyard. Like I said, I´m not too proud of myself for this. Chalk this one up in the "life´s little lessons learned" category.

The Pamplona Diaries: Day Five---Move 'Em Out, Rawhide!

From Pamplona

All this time in Pamplona, I had been waffling on whether or not I would participate in the "Running of the Bulls." At first, I wasn´t going to do it, because there´s no way you can possibly outrun a bull. Even a fast runner like me knows that. But after being in Pamplona for a few days and seeing how this "Running of the Bulls" actually works, I realized that it wasn´t about how fast you could actually run. It was about where you positioned yourself on the street, and how close you wanted to get to the bulls to "prove" your manhood. And the real danger wasn´t the bulls charging down the streets...it was the big mass of people that were running along. If someone tripped in front of you, it could cause a major pileup of people and create a mob condition where people could get hurt and die.

So I went back and forth on whether or not to include myself in the actual running. The way I saw it, it was like playing Russian Roulette, where chances were that you wouldn´t get hurt if you played your cards right. But there is always that remote chance that you get the bullet in the chamber and get screwed up by either a bull or a pack of humans. If you positioned yourself so close to the barricades and didn´t actually RUN next to the bulls and touch them like a lot of the loonies do, there was a high chance that nothing at all would happen to you, and you could still claim you did it and put it to sleep for good.

If there was going to be a day of me doing the run, it would have been Thursday. I was going to play it by ear and see how I felt. And if it felt right, then I´d do it. However, after getting into camp so late, and not wanting to get out of my sleeping bag at 6:00, I decided to nix my plans of ever running with the bulls. This was my one shot, and I decided against it.

After sleeping in for awhile, we finally packed up our stuff, left Camping Ezcaba and then headed off into Pamplona to catch the next bus to San Sebastian. While standing around, waiting for a bus to arrive, I overheard conversation from a guy who had run with the bulls that morning. He was describing to some fellow travelers the pain and horror of what had ensued in the streets. This seemed rather odd to me. In the previous days, nothing bad had really happened. What had happened this morning that I had missed?

So once we got to San Sebastian, I checked online and watched the "Running of the Bulls" that I had decided to bow out of (you can see it at www.sanfermin.com). Let me just say this: I picked the right day to give up running with the bulls. What I saw in that video was sheer horror as one bull went chaotic and started nailing people left and right. Chances are, I probably would have made it out unscathed, but after watching that video, I´m glad I didn´t take any chances. I did my "Running of the Bulls" with a stuffed cow charging after me down a bus aisle. And that´s good enough for me.

The Pamplona Diaries: Day Four---A Big Bunch of Bull

From Pamplona

I was having the best sleep of my life at Camping Ezcaba, until my watch suddenly awoke me at 3:30 in the morning.

Damn.

Did I really want to get up for this? Was it really worth this much effort to see a bunch of bulls whiz by? Eric seemed to be dragging as well. Our sleeping schedule over the past few days had been chaotic, and we could use a few days or normalcy. But that would have to wait. We were now on Pamplona time, where you were supposed to stay up all night, and spend the morning and afternoon hours recovering.

So we made it to our 4:00 bus, got into Pamplona shortly after, and then wandered the streets to check out the lunacy. The parties were still raging in the streets, and people were looking pretty wasted. By 5:00, the street cleaning crews were starting to make their rounds and spray the layer of human sludge off of the streets to clear the way for the bulls. Eric and I wandered all the way to the start of the running, where the bulls were all housed. They were peacefully looking out of their pens, wondering why the drunk frat boys were yelling "toro" at them at such an early hour of the morning. We then walked down the entire route of the running: up the cattle ramp, over to Dead Man´s Curve, then down the straight-a-way as it curved into the stadium. We saw a free spot on the barricades down near the stadium, so we decided to plop our butts up on it and wait for the big show.

Sitting up on a wooden plank for over 2 hours is literally a pain-in-the-ass. I came up with a great way to make money off this event: design a spectator chair that can rest on top of the plank. I would have paid dearly for a chair like that. So for 2 hours, we stayed up there, occasionally moving around to get the blood flowing to our posterior region. We had two American girls from Texas sitting next to us on our left, so I chatted them up for awhile on all things Dallas since they were from there. They had just graduated from school as well and were doing a whirlwind trip of Europe in a month. They told us they had spent $280 at a hotel in Pamplona, just to get 3 hours of sleep there. We told them that they were crazy. We then mentioned how we had spent the night in the park...and they looked at us like we were crazy. Yep...we probably should have just shut up about the park...they didn´t talk to us much after that. Probably thought we were a bunch of nasty bums. Oh well.

As we waited for the running, all the drunk nutballs were gradually being forced out of the streets by the police. One merrimaker had a giant stuffed soccer ball (or futbol as known here) similar to the crappy large plush animals you get for knocking down milk bottles at carnivals. He started kicking it within the barricades where the bulls would run, and within seconds, an improptu futbol match began in front of us. Drunk fans started cheering and falling on their prats as they tried to kick the ball in the air. Within minutes, the plush futbol became a dirty sangria soaked rag as it rolled about the streets. They kept aiming it towards my head, so I had to deflect it with my fist to avoid getting splattered in the face. The futbol game must have continued for 30 minutes before the ball suddenly deflated and went limp. The fans were devastated and continued trying to kick it, but it was no use. Game over.

About this time, the red berets went through the middle of the barricades, shoulder to shoulder, kicking out anyone still lingering in the streets. Paramedics and camera crews appeared in front of us, taking their positions. Then around 7:40, all the delusional runners came out, yelping and screaming and taking their positions along the street. Most were still looking hammered, but they appeared to be happy.

Finally at 8:00, the first firework went off, and then the second, and within a minute, people once again started running quicker and quicker past us, until suddenly it was an all-out panic as if a tsunami was about to hit the coastline. And then, within a matter of seconds, the mass of bulls went through. It happened so fast that it was hard to get good pictures of it. You just aimed and hoped the shutter on the camera went off at the right time. Then all the runners trailed behind the bulls and entered into the stadium.

After about a minute of the runners disappating, I figured the run was over, so I jumped off the barricade. Then suddenly, more runners started going berzerk, and I realized that ANOTHER bull was still out there roaming the streets, so I jumped back on to see it, but by then it was already in the stadium being penned up.

And that was it. I had finally witness an official "Running of the Bulls." It seemed rather anticlimatic. You expected to see these bulls up close and really doing some damage, but they go by so quick. When Eric and I went to the Plaza del Castillo, they were playing video footage of the whole event on large jumbotrons, and you could really get a sense of what had just happened. In slow motion, we got to see one of the guys get tossed to the ground by a bull, and then stepped on and bit by it. It was much more exciting seeing this on huge video screens than what we had witnessed live.

Eric and I then randomly ran into a guy from Berkeley, CA and a guy from London who were backpacking together. They had just pulled into town and we were giving them advice on where to go in Pamplona. Both of these guys had just recently hiked up to the Base Camp of Mt. Everest, which after reading "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer, is much more insane than doing a running of the bulls. We buddied up with them for an hour, took them to the grocery store to stock up on food, and then went to go find our bus stop to get back to the campground...but got lost. Pamplona is one of those screwy little towns with fountains at every street intersection that all look alike. So it´s easy to get confused and get lost.

So, we ended up missing our bus and had to hang out in Pamplona for another two hours. I had bought some cereal and some cold milk in a bag (not a box, surprisingly) at the store, anticipating that we´d be back at the camp to enjoy some big heaping bowls of cereal. But now we were stuck in Pamploma, and my milk was starting to get warm and needed to be used up. And I was REALLY hungry. So I poured out half the cereal into a grocery bag, then poured the milk into the cereal bag and used that as a poor excuse for a bowl. And since we had no spoon on us (oh, I would have died for a spoon), I had to slurp the cereal up through the bag. People passing by on the street were giving me really strange looks. I felt like such a homeless person, just trying to survive with the minimal stuff I had on me. Eric tried eating cereal out of a grocery bag, but it turned into a disaster when the bag leaked. Oh, the things you do when you´re hungry for a bowl of cereal.

After witnessing the big head parade go through again and whack the kids upside across the head, we finally caught the 12:00 bus to the campground. On the bus, some fellow campers were starting to get goofy. One Spanish guy with a stuffed cow started goosing everyone in the rear with the cow. He then had the cow nibble on Eric´s baguette of bread. Then he motioned me forward and said, "Rrrun! Rrrun!" So not wanting to offend him or his culture, I ran in slow motion through the middle of the bus, while the stuffed cow chased after me, gaining quickly on me. I did a slow motion fall onto the bus aisle, and the stuffed cow went down on me, goring me in the gut with its pillowy soft horns. Everyone in the bus was loving it.

Then the Spanish guy approached Eric and said the same thing: "Rrrun!!! Rrrun!!!" Eric was stubborn and wouldn´t budge with all of his groceries. Then the Spanish guy kept prodding him to run, until Eric finally gave in and ran down the aisle of the bus being chased by the raging stuffed cow. Oh, it was comedy at its finest.

Back at the campsite, I went to the front office to check in for an additional night. A couple of Brits waiting in front of me were playing the ukelele and singing a drinking shanty, until the lady at the desk told them to shut up. Then they turned to me and told me to drink from their sangria bladder (it´s another wacky tradition during San Fermin to drink sangria from a leather bladder that hangs from the side of your hip. You´re supposed to aim the nozzle of the bladder toward your mouth, and then keep pulling it away so a long stream of sangria is pouring into your mouth without spilling on your clothes). At first, I declined. Then they kept egging me on, and I´m not one to offend, so I said "All right already!" and tried my hand at it. Surprisingly, for my first attempt, I had a pretty long stream of sangria pouring into my mouth without any spillage at all. Then all the Brits cheered triumphantly for me. It was quite the cultural exchange.

Eric and I then crashed in our tent for a few hours, ate a bocadilla, stuffed our pockets full of sangria and beer, and then took the bus back to Pamplona to see the bull fight. Our bus was running late, so when we finally made it into the stadium at 18:45, nearly 15 minutes after it started. When we made it into the stands, I could not believe my eyes or ears.

The whole stadium was roaring with cheers. Bands were playing marching tunes. The energy in the stadium felt like a college football game...times 100. I asked the usher where our seats were, and he motioned to the stands, telling me to sit anywhere. I looked up in the stands, and they were already bursting forth with people. If I had seats up there somewhere, they were already long taken. Eric and I made an attempt to find some seats in the stands, but within seconds, an entire cup of sangria flew at me and smashed across the back of my head, dribbling sticky alcohol down my neck. I then realized that I was screwed, so Eric and I went back the way we came in and squatted down near the entrance of the upper deck.

All around us, food was flying everywhere. People were throwing sangria on anything white that just happened to walk by. Everyone was a bullseye just waiting to get pommelled with whatever food item was handy to throw. I had overheard from another traveller that they throw sangria at these bull fights, so I showed up not wearing white, but (lucky me) my sangria-colored maroon shirt. Doing so probably made me even more of a target in the sea of sangria-stained white, but I didn´t care. Whatever they threw at me wouldn´t show. I was ready for the food fight.

Within minutes, the first bull fight began. Even though I´m not a big fan of watching bulls get killed in a ring, I wanted to experience this part of Spanish culture to try to understand a major part of their lives here. In my opinion, it´s not really much of a "fight" going on there in the ring. It´s pretty unevenly matched, if you ask me. You´ve got several people who keep poking the bull with metal spikes attached to poles, so the bulls lose more and more blood until they become weak and disoriented and just follow the matador´s cape on the ground until the matador finally stabs a long sword through its body, thus slicing up the internal organs of the bull as it´s still walking, causing it to fall to the ground and go through death spasms. There´s not much "sport" in that. It would be more of a fight if you put the bull unharmed in the ring with a matador and see if the matador could survive that for at least 5 minutes. Once you start introducing knives and swords, there´s just no challenge anymore. Get Bear Grylls from "Man vs. Wild" in that ring, and I´ll betcha money that crazy Brit will have the bull pinned to the ground within minutes and will be tearing into him with his bare teeth.

So as the bull fights were going on, the spectators were singing bull fighting songs at the top of their lungs. It was loud and intense...probably the same sort of energy that you feel at the futbol games here in Europe. In between each bull fight, the bands would play, and the people would fling more food and go crazy. A lot of the people around me were wearing white lab coats because they knew they would get trashed with sangria. A couple of times, I got beaned in the head with an orange slice or two. Anytime I´d stand up to take a picture, someone in the audience would see that as a target and try to throw sangria on me. So I had to be quick and duck a lot. For the most part, I was out of range and didn´t get clobbered too much by food. One of the pleasant surprises that we noticed at the bull fight was the communal nature of the spectators there. The people around us were sharing all their food that they brought in with them, like this was a giant potluck dinner. We had meatballs, sangria, chocolate and some other edibles that were passed our way. And it was all pretty good stuff, too.

During the third or so bull fight (it´s hard to know for sure with the sangria you´re consuming), we watched the matador get gored by the bull and crumple to the ground while the bull kept pushing on him. They had to bail him out and the matador had to walk away injured. When this happened, the whole audience erupted in cheers and applause with the "Ole! Ole ole ole! Ole! Ole!" song that you always pair at futbol (soccer) matches. I was confused at first, because I thought the people were cheering for the matador. But then this Mexican tourist in front of me explained that the spectators are actually rooting for the BULL, not the matador. I never would have expected that. I guess it´s kind of like watching a car race, where you´re hoping to see a big nasty crash, but with the driver walking away alive.

So the rest of the evening, I was cheering for the bulls, even though I knew full well that they didn´t stand a chance next to a giant sword thrust through their hearts. You feel sorry for those bulls, and there´s a little bit of a suspension of disbelief going on. Immediately after they fall, they´re dragged quickly from the ring by a team of horses, so your mind still thinks that they´re alive, even though they aren´t.

After leaving the stadium soaked and reeking of sangria, we wandered the streets of Pamplona for a few hours checking out the partying going on in the streets. Eric had a little too much to drink, so I served as the designated walker for the evening and made sure we got back safely to the campsite on the right bus. We made it in to the campsite about 2:00 in the morning, and then crashed in our tent, exhausted from exposure to too much bulls for one day.

The Pamplona Diaries: Day Three---The Battle of Bull Run

From Pamplona

Completely drained from the long, bizarre evening in "Park Lucky," we grabbed our packs and around 7:00 and headed over near the bull ring to get our spot to watch the running of the bulls. Our travel books had said to arrive no later that 6:45 to get a spot...and they were correct. Already, spectators were sitting atop the outer wooden barricades that lined the path of the bulls. Down below the outer barricades, people were already lined up to watch it it from ground level. Add to that the paramedic crew found inside the barricades, the photographers and television crews sitting on the inside barricades, and the Pamplona police wandering around inside the barricades with their red berets on, and you pretty much had just a peephole in which to watch the running of the bulls.

So Eric and I held our positions, despite the lack of a decent view. One of the guys standing in front of me didn´t look very well. He looked like death, and when he kept swallowing down whatever was inside of him, I decided that I better move my pack over to the left so I was out of the Gallagher splash zone.

At 8:00, the first firework went off, followed shortly by a second one, thus indicating that all the bulls were out running in the streets. Through all the big asses sitting on the barricade in front of me, I could make out people starting to walk a little faster...and a little faster...until suddenly they were all running in a state of shear panic like Godzilla was suddenly attacking their village. It was a sea of red and white running by, waving their rolled up newspapers around, screaming wildly. Then I saw a blur of black go by really fast, and more runners followed, and then they fired two more fireworks off, and it was over. Within less than two minutes, all the bulls were in their pens in the stadium, and all I had seen was a black smudge of it all. Eric and I decided to get there earlier the next day so we could grab a decent spot.

Feeling drained, we decided to head over to the campsite that we had originally planned for this trip: Camping Ezcaba. We jumped on a bus that we thought would go there, but the bus routes in Pamplona are confusing for the unaccustomed, so we had to jump off the bus in a small town and wait another hour for the correct bus to arrive. While waiting, I was so hungry that I downed the remainder of my Choky Chocs cereal that I had in my backpack. I love reading the names on the cereals here in Spain. They´re all pretty wacky.

The bus finally picked us up, and after jumping off at the correct stop, we had another 15 minute trek to get to the campground. Camping Ezcaba was pretty nice for a low-budget campground. It had a restaurant/bar, small grocery store, and swimming pool. And the vibe there was pretty good as well. Even though we were kilometers away from the craziness of Pamplona, San Fermin carried over into the campground as all the campers sat around drinking and listening to American pop music (Side note: almost everywhere I´ve gone in this country, I´ve heard the radio stations all playing these weird mixtures of American music. You´ll hear a lot of songs from the 80s, then they´ll throw in some oldies, then a current song on the charts. It has no rhyme or reason, but it´s all primarliy American music. Almost makes you feel like the 80s never ended). Eric and I were so tired, we threw up the tent, grabbed some showers and then passed out for 3 straight hours so we could function normally again.

Once we arrived in the land of the living again, we sat around eating hamburguesas, drinking beer and watching Le Tour de France on the flatscreen in the bar. It was paradise to us. After an hour of this, we got ourselves together and then jumped on the bus back into Pamplona to experience some more of the insanity.

After wandering around town some more, we headed over to the bull stadium to see if we could pick up some tickets for the next day´s fight. The line wasn´t too long, so we waited for about an hour and were able to pick up 2 tickets in andanada sol (in the sun section). The sun section is a little bit cheaper than the shaded section. But with the skies being overcast all week, getting sunstroke seemed like a remote possibility.

We hung out in town for a few more hours, witnessing more surprise parades and dancing going on throughout town. Over at Plaza de Santo Domingo, some of the older crowds were dancing to a band performing Spanish music. In the main plaza, Plaza del Castillo, about half of the spectators were involved in a long line dance involving red scarves draped between themselves while a guy played one of those snake-charming flutes. For a foreigner such as myself, it seemed really bizarre, but the Spanish just loved it. It made me jealous how all the Spanish had these great traditions in their culture, while a white American guy such as myself only had the Chicken Dance to fall back upon.

After getting our fill of surprise parades and bands, we finally jumped a bus for the campground and decided to call it a day. Besides, we needed to recoop our energy to be ready for our big day on Wednesday, where we´d witness the two big ones: the running of the bulls, and the bull fight. I couldn´t wait.

The Pamplona Diaries: Day Two---Entering the Red-White District

From Pamplona

Upon leaving the train station in Pamplona, I had expected to see every inch of grass just covered with tents of backpackers such as myself. From what I heard, this whole place was just going to be insane.

I didn´t see a tent in sight. I had to walk for 15 minutes towards town before I finally saw a lone tent down by the river. Where were all the hippie camps like I had expected? And where were all the people? I thought I was coming to Pamplona´s version of a rock concert, but didn´t see hardly a soul. Eric kept urging me to be patient...it would come.

We made it into the heart of Pamplona, which is a tiny little town set up like your typical Spanish village, containing plazas and streets that are laid out in a jumbled mess. At the Plaza de San Francisco, we checked our backpacks into the schoolhouse there and noticed that there was a long line forming of people picking up their stuff. We had just arrived 1 hour after Monday´s running of the bulls, and people were already starting to head home.

While walking around outside, I noticed that my sandals were strangely sticking to the cobblestone streets. It´s that same sensation that you get when you go to a movie theatre and your shoes stick after some idiot spills a Coke on the floor. I also noticed that the streets were just littered in human garbage: cups, beer cans, sangria boxes, lost shoes. It reeked like the morning after a huge frat party. Within minutes, the city´s sanitation department started coming through with their giant street sweepers and started picking up the litter. Workers were out with pressure hoses spraying down the streets, and you could see the stream of alcoholic sewage just running by you.

Eric and I started wandering the streets to get a lay of the land in Pamplona. Right off the bat, we passed by one individual who was crumpled up in the gutter, unconscious, as the water from the sanitation department started pouring over his feet. If this was just a foreshadowing of what was yet to come, then we were in for a big surprise. It was pretty dead throughout the city, and we couldn´t figure out where all the people had disappeared to. We did catch the occasional tourists such as ourselves wandering around, wondering what was going on. But then we started noticing that almost everyone was wearing the same exact thing: white shirt and pants, with a red ascot and red sash around the waist. I felt like I was at a bandito painters convention. With all the red and white, it gave off a weird Christmas vibe to the place. I felt a little out of place coming into town with my blue Sierra Nevada shirt on. I thought that everyone would shun me for being "different," so I promised myself that I´d jump on the red-white bandwagon the next day. I already stood out as a tourist...I didn´t need to stand out any further and get the crap beat out of me.

All around town, images of bulls were plastered everywhere. We also noticed that pretty much, every store had been converted into selling T-shirts for San Fermin, which is the technical name for this week-long celebration. In America, you know it as the "Running of the Bulls," but that´s just a small part of the entire San Fermin celebration as I was soon to find out. San Fermin is the patron saint of this town. You see images of him as well on the red neckerchiefs and on the lights throughout the city. I still don´t know what miracle San Fermin performed to become a saint, and how a week of binge drinking and getting gored by bulls honors him. Maybe he was the saint that chased all the Prohibitionists out of Spain. Now that would make sense.

As the hours wore on, we started noticing that people were beginning to appear again, and the stores and bars were starting to open. By around noontime, everyone was back in the bars, drinking and eating and having casual conversations with friends. Throughout the main plazas, some people were laying down in patches of grass or passed out on benches, trying to get some quick ZZZs before they started partying again. It was quite amusing to see those who were obviously hung over. They looked like the walking dead.

Eric and I located a supermarket in town and loaded up on some cheap sangria, cheap beer and cheap juice to eat with our sandwich fixings. It was overcast in Pamplona, and the temperature was in the 50s the entire time, which seemed rather odd to us considering we were in Spain and everywhere else was blistering hot. As we started to eat, the street cleaning crew came through AGAIN and started blasting water everywhere, so we had to move out of the path of the raging river of garbage. Then it started raining, so we took off and hid in a church to warm up and look at the Gothic architecture. But then we started hearing music, so we dashed outside to see what was going on.

We suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a parade going down the street. It just popped out of nowhere, similar to those "surprise parades" that you find at Disneyland/Disney World that just magically pop out of the ground. And what a crazy parade this was. Big headed characters came running down the street, bopping little kids in the head with balls on sticks. The kids were loving it. I don´t know where this odd tradition came from...maybe it dates back to Franco and his Falange when they´d go out busting Republicans in the head with sticks, and over time it got watered down with big foam balls to make it more kid-friendly. I don´t know. But it was a riot to watch, and these big headed characters definitely whacked the kids hard with them. It was like witnessing a live Punch and Judy show.

And then following directly behind the whack-a-kid characters, a procession of giant human puppets started going by. They had eight of them: 4 kings and 4 queens, each representing one of the four continents of the world that Spain ruled at one time. There was a person operating each giant puppet, and he or she would twirl around and dance to the sound of these odd pipes/recorders being played. I had never seen anything quite like this in my life, and the whole crowd was marching down the street with them, like they were part of the parade as well.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around town and passing out on street benches, as well, to try to catch up on sleep lost the night before. During all this, we happened to talk to a young Brit hanging out on the bench beside us and started asking him for advice on lodging. He had spent the night sleeping in the park, and said that he hadn´t had a problem. We should be able to set up some sleeping bags there and noone would mess with us. So it was decided: we´d give the park a try for the evening and see how that went.

The streets of Pamplona at nighttime were insane. Bodies upon bodies of late night revelers were crammed into rundown hole-in-the-wall storefronts set up as bars and disco clubs. Most of the clubs were set up along the same streets. You walk along one street of Pamplona, and it seemed like a ghost town. Then you turn the corner, and it was Mardi Gras with people singing and dancing in the streets and getting trashed on sangria. Then, every couple of minutes or so, you see another "surprise parade" go through, led by a political activist group. They´d wave their giant bedsheet banner at the front of the parade while a band playing drums and horns followed right behind. These Spanish really knew how to have a good time and celebrate.

After downing our cheap store-bought sangria, we wandered around, looking for a park to spend the night in. Eric suggested one that was near the "midway" section of the festival, where all the chocolaterias, churrorerias, cervecerias, and whatever other "erias" you could think of were stationed. Earlier in the day, it had been a peaceful park. Now, people by the whords were wandering all over the park on their way into the heart of Pamplona. This was not at all what we had pictured as far as park camping, and I was concerned that all the wasted people would keep running into our tent by accident and destroy it within minutes. So I suggested we check out this other park that I had seen earlier over by the bull ring.

Both Eric and I were extremely tired at this point, after sleeping only a couple of hours the night before. As we were making our way across town to the other park, fireworks started exploding overhead in enormous bursts. No matter where you turned in this town, things were going haywire with San Fermin fever. We finally made it to the park over by the bull ring, and there didn´t seem to be hardly anyone there, except for a tent or two. Finally...we had found a nice, quiet park where we could rest easy until the morning.

We found a small little area sheltered by bushes, so we dropped our stuff there to spend the night. We decided to just sleep out in the open in our sleeping bags to avoid being seen with our tent...we didn´t need to draw any more attention than necessary. I noticed that there was someone already sprawled out in a sleeping bag about 30 feet away from us, so it looked like we had picked a good spot.

Within minutes of setting up, the nearby discoteca in town started blasting house music as loud as you can possibly imagine. You could feel the whole ground shake, and the pulsating just made your head start to throb. At this point, I knew I was screwed and would not get any sleep at all, even with earplugs shoved way into my ears. So we decided to move to a spot further back that I had seen earlier. When we arrived, however, a bunch of drunk Spanish guys were already there, smoking and drinking it up.

So, we trudged back to our original spot. Along the way, we accidentally stumbled across a couple making out in the grass. The guy didn´t seem too happy and started yelling something at us in Spanish. We walked away quickly. Inside our bush fortress, I rolled out my sleeping bag and pad, hunkered down for the night and hoped for the best.

Over the next few hours, my park of solitude suddenly turned into the Playboy mansion. Inebriated couples were showing up, hiding in the shadows and "celebrating" San Fermin in their own special way. Outside of our bush fortress, two druggies sat down and started lighting up. Their dog wandered into our fortress and about marked Eric as part of its territory until Eric shooed it away. A group of girls showed up and started using our fortress as a changing room for their sangria-soaked clothes. Another couple moved into our fortress and got their mojo going while their large black dog started tearing into a bag of groceries someone had left. And amidst it all, the techno music kept thumping DOOS, DOOS, DOOS, DOOS, unchanging throughout the night. I just kept climbing deeper and deeper into my sleeping bag, hoping somehow it would all magically go away.

About 4:00, I awoke to hear an announcer at the techno club say that they were soon closing. That was sweet music to my ears. I also noticed that my bag was strangely soaked with water. I had slept through a rain shower during the night and didn´t even realize it. I looked over at Eric, and he had his soaked white sheet wrapped over him like he was a dead body at the morgue. He looked pitiful. I also noticed that a few more people had suddenly appeared and were passed out in our fortress. I just pulled the bag over my head tighter and wished for the morning dawn to arrive.

About 6:30, I awoke again to the sunrise. I looked around me, and all my stuff was still there. Down below our fortress, I could see some drunk couples slow dancing and making out underneath the light of the lamp post...and then they´d swap partners and continue making out. I nudged Eric out of his death slumber and, smiling, congratulated him on successfully surviving the park. He just looked at me, annoyed, and said "We are never, EVER sleeping in a park AGAIN!" I had to laugh. Eric is one of the cheapest people I know (aside from myself) who will do anything to save a Euro. Twenty-four hours earlier, he had been thrilled with the prospect of not having to pay for lodging. Now, he was adamant about staying in a campground, no matter what the cost. And that was fine by me. After a night like that, sleeping in a tent in a 1st, 2nd or whatever class campground seemed like a luxury.

The Pamplona Diaries: Day One---A Long Day´s Journey into Nowhere

From Pamplona

On Sunday, Eric and I set out on our pilgrimage to Pamplona. We arrived at the bus station in Barcelona, excited and ready to jump aboard our autobus that would whisk us away on our journey into Basque country.

However, like morons, we didn´t stop to think that every other backpacker in Europe would have the same idea as us. So when we arrived at the bus station, (surprise!) all the buses were already booked for the entire day.

So we jumped on the underground Metro to try our chances at the train station. Likewise, the same thing was going on there: all the day trains were already filled. HOWEVER, there was a night train leaving at 22:30 that we could take for 45 € each that would take us to Pamplona, with only a small catch: we had to jump off at a small station outside of Madrid at 3:16, and then pick up another train at 7:30 going to Pamplona. Not exactly what we had in mind as far as travel arrangements, but with our given situation, we didn´t have much of a choice.

So we bought the tickets, dropped our backpacks off in some lockers at the train station, and then headed off into Barcelona to waste the day away until our train was ready to depart. It felt like I had been awarded a bonus day in Barcelona, so I was pretty excited to get to see some additional places that I had missed. We started out by going to see the Olympic Stadium from the 1992 Games, but Eric somehow took us on a scenic 2 hour detour of rundown Barcelona that went nowhere even close to the Olympic Stadium.

So, we went to the beach instead. It was a beautiful day there, hanging out amongst all the beautiful people and thinking beautiful thoughts. I´m sure all the buff, tan Spanish were wondering what a pasty stringbean and a hairy ape were doing invading their beautiful beach. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful day there. I jumped into the salty Mediterranean waters and swam out to the bobbing yellow buoys far away, then swam back to shore to relax and look at the beautiful people some more. I was in paradise.

But all good things must come to an end. We grabbed some bocadillas at a sit-down restaurant, jumped on a Metro back to the train station (with 15 minutes to spare) and then boarded our train. Pamplona, here we come!

This was our first train ride in Spain, so we didn´t really know what to expect. They placed us in a coche (train car) that had small little rooms designed for 6 people to sit in. The chairs are all facing each other, so you´re staring at whomever is placed a few feet in front of you, and you feel obliged to talk with them. But when you´re a dumb American who only learned "¿Como se llamas?" in high school Spanish class, you can´t get very far. So, you just give pleasant little smiles to your fellow passengers, even though deep inside you just can´t wait to get the hell out of that tiny, hot little room with the two screaming little kids that the Spanish mother can´t control.

Earlier that night, I remember seeing the father of the little kids, waving happily from outside the train as we pulled away from the station. Now I can understand why he was so happy...he was getting away from those annoying kids for several days and could finally get some sleep. So, it was me, Eric, a couple in their 50s, and a mother with a 4 year-old girl and 2 year-old son crammed into this passenger room. It was so stuffy in there. I don´t know why the Spanish just don´t open the windows in their trains. It´s not even AC technology. I felt like screaming "Abierto las ventanas, por favor" at the top of my lungs.

To my left, the Spanish mother was sitting. She had forgotten to bring toys for the kids to play with, so they were beating each other over the head with the billettes (tickets). Then once that got old, they started slamming the lid on the AC unit that wasn´t working in our room. Over and over. After the first few minutes, it´s like a piledriver being driven through your skull. There was also a small fold-out metal table for placing food and drinks that she had sticking out. After seeing that at the 2 year-olds eye-level, I knew what was about to come. Sure enough, like clockwork every 5 minutes, the toddler would fall headfirst into the table, and cry, the mother would comfort him, and then 5 minutes later, he´d do it again. Wham! Over and over. Obviously, these Spanish have tougher children than back at home in the US. Or their parents just don´t care.

After sitting through the screaming for 2 hours, I had to get away. So I wandered up and down the cars of the train, trying to get my sanity back. I hung out between the cars like many of the other foreign passengers and let the cool outside air bathe over me. After roaming the train for 30 minutes, I finally made it back to my tiny room to find everyone asleep. So I set my watch to go off at 3:00 and took my seat to get some shut-eye.

I woke up about 2:30, with less than 2 hours of sleep. The mother next to me was also up, trying to keep her toddler from blowing up and waking the entire train. I prodded Eric at about 3:10 to get up so we could make a hasty departure once our stop arrived. At about 3:25, we finally pulled into a tiny station, just as the ticket lady had told us would be the case. I saw a few other backpackers jump off, so I safely assumed that this was our stop and jumped off as well.

Off the train, I looked around me, and things didn´t look right. The signage wasn´t quite matching up with what was on my ticket, which is not uncommon in these parts with the switch over to Euskadi (Basque). So I flagged down a nearby conductor and asked him if this was our stop. He shook his head and motioned for us to get back on the train...right as the train was starting to pull away. He yelled at the train to stop, but the conductor on board gave an unsympathetic look that said "Sorry...you´re screwed," slammed the door and the train took off, leaving Eric and me in the cold night air.

So we went inside the station to try to figure out exactly where we were and how we had screwed up. There were two other backpackers from England who had done the exact same thing as us, so that made us feel like only partial dolts. Through a lot of garbled conversations with the Spanish staff at the station and through checking maps and schedules, I figured out that we were stuck in Tudela, which is a tiny hole-in-the-wall town about 15 kilometers or so away from the station we SHOULD have gotten off at. The train had somehow gotten 30 minutes behind schedule, so even though we jumped off at the right time, we picked the wrong piddly town to do it in. Luckily, there was a 7:14 train that we could jump on to get us to the next station to make our connection to Pamplona at 7:30. So all we could do was just sit...and wait.

Tiny cramped train stations in the middle of nowhere are not the greatest places to get some sleep. It doesn´t help, either, when station security tells you that you can´t use the benches as beds to lay on. With all the noise coming from the express trains whizzing by...from the automatic doors opening and closing every few seconds due to security standing in the doorway and laughing...and from the annoying Spanish man with the cane who sighed and said "Aye!" every 40 seconds just to get attention...I knew I was screwed in getting any sleep. I looked over to my left, and Eric was already passed out on top of his backpack. That boy can sleep through a friggin´ tornado. I don´t know how he does it.

So I spent the night planning the French route of the trip and where we would intersect with Le Tour de France in the coming weeks. During all this, I got the honor of watching new weirdos pop in and out of the station. Two guys appeared about 5:00 and were having some fight outside the station. One of them was completely wasted and came in and started yelling in all of our faces, then went to the bathroom and started kicking and beating on things, then came out to yell at us some more. I was looking around for security just in case things got out of control, but of course, they were nowhere to be found. Go figure.

About 7:00, Eric and the Brits finally awoke. I told Eric my scheme of just jumping on the next train without letting the attendants know what we were doing, then hop off at the correct station. I didn´t want to complicate matters and try to explain to the attendants that we had screwed up and needed a new ticket. A ten minute ride wouldn´t hurt anyone, and they wouldn´t ever know. But one of the Brits wasn´t thinking and went up to the ticket counter and, as expected, got chewed out by the attendant. So I distanced myself from the Brits and proceded as planned with my own way of escaping from the station.

At about 7:19, the train finally showed, so we jumped on, with the Brits following in tow, and at the next station, we jumped off and boarded the train to Pamplona. The train was packed with backpackers from all over the world. Most of them appeared to be guys, which didn´t surprise me. Pamplona was the holy mecca for men to prove to the world just how big your cahunas really were, and just how big of an idiot you could really be.

We finally made it into Pamplona about 8:30. The night from hell was finally over, and we had somehow made it to Pamplona. If there was a patron saint of stupid travelers, he/she was definitely looking down on us that day.

Basque-in´ in the Sun

¡Hola, mis amigos! ¿Que pasa? Well, here we are in beautiful San Sebastian, soaking up the sunshine on the crowded beaches. It´s such a lovely day here. The people are all out shopping at the markets, the breeze is blowing off of the Atlantic, and the ETA terrorist organization is exploding a firework over our heads every few minutes. Just a typical day in Basque territory here, and...

What´s that, you say? I didn´t mention anything about Pamplona??? One moment, I was in Barcelona, and now San Sebastian, so what happened to all the booze and bulls that I had talked about?

Are you really sure you want to know? Honestly...there´s some crazy stuff that happened in Pamplona. I don´t know if you can handle it. Besides, today I was going to talk about how the Spanish (and most European countries) put their milk in a box. For those of you who don´t know what I´m talking about, here´s some helpful tips on how to get your milk in a box:

Step One: Go and purchase a box.
Step Two: Cut a hole in the box.
Step Three: Pour your milk from the box.
Oh, it´s your milk in a box!

I was also all prepared today to talk about Basque country. Heck...I even came up with a clever title! I also came up with "Basque-it Case" and "Don´t Basque, Don´t Tell," but "Basque-in in the Sun" seemed most appropriate. Man, these Basques and their wacky Euskaba language are just...

What? Are you still wanting to hear about Pamplona? Dang...aren´t you a persistant little snot. OK, fine. But I´m warning you: the following blogs may contain material not suitable for children. Viewer discretion is suggested.

Nothing But Gaudi

From Barcelona

Hola, amigos. We´re at the easyInternetCafe (brought to you by the same folks that run easyJet. I´m still looking for the buffalo wings) sending out a few missives before we head off, as Joseph Conrad would say, "into the heart of darkness." Next stop: Pamplona. We don´t know what to expect once we get there, except for bulls and booze. Supposedly it´s a one-week long party with tons of people. There´s a campground, Camping Ezcaba, located about 7 kilometers on the outskirts of town that we may be in. However, if this event turns out to be like a Woodstock, we may just pitch our tent with all the other sweaty hippies and see what happens. Bedspace it hard to get around these parts at this time of the year, so most people just sleep in the park or in trees or under cars. Everything is fair game.

Oh, silly me. I haven´t even mentioned anything about Barcelona yet. And I´m about out of time here. I must admit that Barcelona is quite a city. I really loved it. It´s an artsy place where the Modernisma style (similar to Art Nouveau) meets today´s art. Antoni Gaudi´s influence reaches far here. We checked out all his stuff: Parc Guell, his aparmtent complex, and the grand-daddy of them all, the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral he started over a hundred years ago that is still being worked on. The cathedral looks like the typical gothic cathedral combined with an outdoorsy style, where the columns of the church look like trees and the ceiling is like a forest canopy. And his corn cob spires poking out of the cathedral are filled with tiles and animals and so many details. It´s one of those things you just have to experience once in this lifetime, because descriptions or pictures don´t do it justice.

Another must in Barcelona is to walk down La Rambla, which is their main drag here in town. It´s like the Magnificent Mile with a Tim Burton twist to it as street performers start doing really bizarre things. They take the silver people statue poser concept and take it to the next level. Just rambling down La Rambla, I saw an elephant that tells your fortune, a creepy gold dead guy on a bike, a stunning gold angel, an avant-garde piece of artwork where the guy had his legs sticking out in the air, Edward Scissorhands, Jack Skellington, a dead soccer player, cowboy, indian, acrobats, dancers, a guy dressed as a cat and living in a trashcan...whatever you can think of, they were doing it. Also on La Rambla, they had a lot of booths set up to sell pets to tourists...mainly song birds I noticed. But I did see some chickens there as well, and I wasn´t sure if they were supposed to be as pets or for consuming.

There´s also a lot of markets around these parts selling fresh produce, fish, meat, bread, and any other thing you need. Some of the sights you see are rather disturbing...blobs of squid just sitting there, dead goat heads staring at you, crabs still wiggling their appendages. We bought some produce and some chicken from here, but then decided to do the rest of our shopping at the cheapo grocery stores that we trusted. We screwed up yesterday, though. We decided to have fish for dinner. We THOUGHT we had bought fish filets (it´s a little hard to read Catalan), but when we cooked it, it turned out to be squid. It tasted like eating a bicycle tire. Not our best meal here in Spain.

We also managed to make it over to the marina in town, go up the statue of Christopher Columbus, and check out some other sights. It´s a great city, Barcelona.

Five Stars for Tres Estrellas

From Barcelona

Well, we made it to Barcelona. It took a little while actually getting here on July 4th. After about 3 hours of riding our very nice and (ah!) air-conditioned bus, I suddenly awoke to find our bus stuck in traffic. Up ahead, giant dark clouds of smoke were billowing out of the forest. I can only assume that there were terrorists blowing up trees in the national forests of Spain. Damn terrorists. So for two hours, our bus was stationary. I was ready to take matters into my own hands and jump ship if I had to. I´ve watched enough episodes of "Man vs. Wild" and "Survivorman" to bail myself out of this sticky situation. Remember: if your stranded in the middle of nowhere, look for a stream. The stream will lead to a river, then the river will lead to a path, then the path will lead to a road which will take you into civilization.

But then the bus got rerouted by some cops and we were once again on our way to Barcelona, so I had to repress my survival instincts once again. But there will be a time when they come in handy, I tell ya. There will be a time.

Due to the long delays on the bus, we made it into Barcelona rather late. This city is very confusing when you´re plopped right in the middle and all the signage is in Catalan. They made the full conversion up here, unlike that pesky Valencia where they couldn´t make up their minds. After wandering around awhile, we finally found our L95 bus and headed 12 kilometers south of the city where our campground, Tres Estrellas, was awaiting.

Camping Tres Estrellas is a big improvement over that Camping Puçol dump we were at prior. Tres Estrellas is a 1st class campground, and now I think I´m starting to see why. This place actually feels like a campground where people aren´t living like white trash and actually bring in their RVs or their tents. We figured we´d be the only ones bringing in tents like last time, but when we arrived, I felt like I was in a tent city at Bonaroo. Lots of young travelers like ourselves were camping out, and it actually felt like you were in the outdoors...except of course for the airport next door with Aerobus planes zooming over your head and all the cars whizzing by on the interstate highway. But other than that, it was a beach-front paradise.

Our first night at Tres Estrellas, we had the tarp off the tent to let the air get in. Then at 4 in the morning, I awaken to find Eric shoving me, saying that rain is coming through the top (I wear ear plugs anytime I camp, so I´m virtually in my own sensory deprivation tank and unaware of everything going on around me. I could be on fire and probably sleep through it). So we slap on the tarp, go to bed, and in the morning I have to bail water out of the tent out with the only towel I have...some nasty wash rag I picked up from the Netherlands couple who roomed with us back in Madrid. It might be disgusting, but it does the job. We then had to air out everything in the tent so we didn´t die from black mold.

Camping Tres Estrellas has some real character to it. They have activities for the campers to do in the evenings. A few days ago, they had "Movie Night" where they showed that wonderful American classic "Little Man" starring the lovable Wayan Brothers. I didn´t get to see it, but I´m sure it was much better watching it in Spanish than in English. They also have flamenco dancers and karaoke here (my goal here one of these days is to sing "99 Luftballons"...the German version). We haven´t been able to partake in any of that, since we always manage to get back to the campsite at 9 pm or later and then spend the next few hours at the barbecue grill making a feast. Our first night, we had grilled chicken breasts, baked potatoes and tossed salad. Last night, we had German sausages that we somehow fashioned into a Philly cheese steaks. They were dang good. I´m talking tasty sandwiches there. So even though we´re out in the Spanish equivalent of "the sticks," we´re still managing to eat good. We´re also off of our fried breakfast kick from Alicante and actually having heaping bowls of healthy cereal in the morning with chilled milk out of a bottle. I don´t like that milk in a box that they have sitting unchilled on the store shelves. It tastes like someone took a white crayon and melted it in some water.

There´s some odd stuff about this campsite as well. Yesterday while making sandwiches, some floppy eared white rabbit came out of nowhere and started running up towards me. I thought I was hallucinating from the previous night´s Estrella Damm cervezas. The thing came up to my toes and about bit them off, so I kept throwing bread at it to appease the beast. I´ve seen "Monty Python" and I know how these rabbits can get. If that thing goes for my jugular, I´m toast. I then ran away from the wild rabbit. Then when I was trying to leave the campsite, it appeared again! Well, I wasn´t going to let this rabbit push me around, so I started chasing the little vermin around a tree, yelling at it until Eric told me to stop before its owner came and cussed me out. I don´t think it has an owner...I think it´s the campsite mascot. But I still don´t like it. If I see it again, it´s my dinner for the evening.

There´s another unusual thing about this campsite. While we were going out to the bus stop to catch the bus into Barcelona, I noticed this one girl really primped up about 50 meters from the bus stop. It looked like she was ready to party on the town in her little mini skirt and halter top. But she was sticking her leg out, like she needed a ride. I thought, "Boy, what a silly girl. She´s right next to the bus station, and it´s only 1,25 € to ride. She doesn´t have to hitchhike. She must really be bad off." But then I looked at all the other greasy ragamuffins like me from the campground looking like bums, and then I looked back at the little tart who obviously wasn´t a camper. And then after seeing a car pull up, invite her in, and not get back on interstate but instead pull off into the woods, my puny brain finally put two and two together.

We´ve got "highway hookers" outside our campsite! Holy crap! As we rode a few miles down interstate on the bus, you could see dozens of these brazen hussies, lining up along the road for clients. As you got closer to the city, the clothes on these floozies became less and less until they were just wearing bikinis. I´m amazed at how many "painted ladies" are running around this country. The book on Spain that I´m reading right now puts the figure at around 30,000 or so. I guess there must be a lot of love going around this place...and a lot of disease. Take your pick...gonorrhea, syphillis, lupus...we´ve got it all here. All styles, all colors. It´s also interesting to note the differences between the dirty little whores from city to city. In Madrid, they´re very picky about their clients, and they dress very conservatively in jeans and long sleeve shirts. Here in Barcelona, it feels like you´re walking around South Beach, Miami during Spring Break.

The people at Tres Estrellas have been a hoot to watch and interact with. We found a couple of college students from UT-Knoxville (Tennessee) up here. They were the only Americans we found, so we talked and received some good travel advice from them about France. They there´s the fun German enclave right beside our tent. These eight German guys gather around a picnic table every night and drink beer and sing and cheer. Oh, they´re having a grand time! The other day we awoke to find a towering pyramid of San Miguel beer cans on the ground. The next day, we found that the tower had fallen, and several of the Germans were passed out on the ground. All mighty empires must fall one day, I guess. Then there´s the poor Australian girl who was chatting up the two clueless British guys. She was trying to get away from her square parents in the RV and so hooked up with these British blokes, hoping to lose her virginity, and the two Brits didn´t even realize it, started yawning, and said they had to go to bed, leaving the girl with a dumbfounded look on her face. Oh, it´s like a soap opera here at Tres Estrellas, I tell ya.

A Case of Dumb Luck

From Valencia

¡Feliz cuatro de julio, amigos! Hope you´re enjoying your day off of work and able to fire up the Weber grill and take in some fireworks somewhere. Doesn´t look like there will be too many explosions going off here today (and I hope there aren´t...terrorist fireworks are never very pretty to look at). It´s a warm, sticky morning here in Valencia. In a few hours, we´ll be scooting out of here, heading to Barcelona to see what´s shaking in that city. This is a travel day, which I never care for. Six hours stuck on a bus isn´t exactly my idea of celebrating my independence from England.

I´m feeling rather ichy at the moment, mainly because I´m still recovering from the previous two nights. The Red Nest Hostel that we´re at has regular activities in the evenings for the travelers passing through. Eric and I partaked (or is it "partook?" Dang, my English is starting to go to pot.) in them these last two nights. On Monday night, the Red Nest´s sister hostel, the Purple Nest (50 points if you can figure out how they painted the interior of that hostel) had their 1 year anniversary and invited everyone from the Red Nest over for drinks. So we had some Cruzcampo and then followed the rest of the greasy hippie hostel bums to La Claca, which is a night club that seems to play only Brit-pop and American music (as a sidenote, I´m quite pleased with a lot of the bands coming through lately in American and British music. The dark, gloomy era of depressed, angry "I want to kill myself" music is finally over! Huzzah! Long live the new-age happy bands!). I never realized how many friggin´ Brits there are in this town. They just keep coming out of the woodwork everywhere you turn. We were at La Claca until 2 am, watching the granola chicks dance like they were having epileptic seizures. Quite entertaining.

Yesterday was one of those days where I just totally had dumb luck. As I´ve mentioned before, I don´t know how I happen to stumble upon the things I do. It´s like I´m Forrest Gump here, just happening to be in the background when big things are happening. Eric and I decided to stick around Valencia for an extra day yesterday, because we felt like we needed a day of rest before we headed off to Barcelona. We didn´t do too much...paid bills online, checked out some cool castle gates, bought some apples at a market. But then we decided to wander down to the ocean to see Port America´s Cup, which was the site of the 32nd America´s Cup being held this year. All I knew about the America´s Cup was that it had something to do with racing boats, and that the USA had the America Cubed boat that it made such a big deal about back in the 90s. Other than that, I was pretty oblivious to the whole thing.

So after making a 4 mile journey to get to Port America´s Cup (I must be honest...I enjoy seeing the word "America" pop up in a positive context here in Spain. It´s at least something about America that I can hold my head high about while traveling over here), we finally made it to the harbor, filled with lots of schooners and big flags. All the competing countries had their friggin´ huge flags flying overhead. Either it was a conclave of international Wal-Marts, or they just marked the headquarters for each racing team. I went over to see America´s base camp, Team BMW Oracle (isn´t BMW a German company???), but I didn´t see a giant American flag at all. Instead, it was just a friggin´huge BMW Oracle flag. Where´s the American pride? Everyone else was proud...why not us? So Eric and I walked into the base headquarters, competed in some multimedia boating games, such as hoist the flag up the virtual boat, and then saw the BMW Oracle movie in an air-conditioned theatre next door. We were the only people at Team BMW Oracle headquarters...man, talk about feeling like a man without a country.

Then, we started hearing things exploding outside. Terrorism? Is that terrorism I hear outside? Oh no! Could Port America´s Cup be under attack? We go running outside, and see fireworks going off and people starting to go cheer like nutballs. So we hurry over to the Swiss base camp, Team Alinghi. I had read somewhere that they were the winners from the last America´s Cup, so I figured maybe that might shed some light on the sudden pandemonium. Some guy was handing out Alinghi flags left and right, so I picked one up. We then went over to the next base camp, Louis Vetton, because I knew the Tres Estrellas Lounge was located there and I wanted to pick up one of their tasty cold beers (in my opinion, Tres Estrellas leads the pack in Spanish cervezas, followed closely behind by Mahou, then Alhambra, then Cruzcampo and then finally San Miguel, which is probably a grade below a PBR). We get there, and people are just swarming the docks of Louis Vetton, waving their Swiss and Alinghi flags. Then the President of the America´s Cup starts speaking and yelling out "Team Alinghi!" and confetti cannons start exploding in the sky while a Red Hot Chili Peppers song is repeated over and over.

It suddenly dawned on my clueless brain that, hey, I think Team Alinghi won the whole America´s Cup...right now!!! "Woo hoo! Team Alinghi!" So I became an Alinghi fan and started waving my flag, while Eric looked on at me like I was a complete moron. In the harbor, all these Alinghi groupies were jumping on their ship and mobbing the sailors. It looked like a fun booze cruise was going on out there, with a long parade of boats trailing the Alinghi as it docked into its base headquarters. Red fireworks exploding over the Swiss building, and they kept playing that damn Chili Peppers song. Even though I was a new fan of Team Alinghi, I don´t care to buy their soundtrack.

Eric and I then trudged back along Valencia´s city streets to meet up with the hostel´s head hippie granola over at the bull fighting ring, who was leading a tapas tour around Valencia. For only 10 €, we would get to sample various tapas from different tapas bars. Seemed like a great deal. However, once we got sucked in, we realized that the 10 € only gave the whole group about two tiny plates of tapas, and then you had to buy your own drinks to get more tapas. So, once again, we got hosed. We got hosed.

But we enjoyed the night anyway, crawling to 3 different tapas bars and enjoying the company of some other hostel bums. There was the lead greasy hippie girl (with multiple lip piercings) who was from Italy, another hostel worker from Spain, two horn-dog 18 year-olds who were from Italy, one American guy (working in Bahrain for the Navy) and a German girl who was taking piano lessons in Valencia. Eric and I represented Team California. We talked about random things, such as their tomato fight (La Tomatina), Italy´s orange fight, and any other fight in Europe involving food. Great conversation.

We then ended up at Club La Claca (again), had some sangria, and decided to call it a night.