Well, we're back home now, safe, sound and only mildly jetlagged. We may update this at some point when we have photos to illustrate things.

We do realize that this log has gotten a wee bit self-indulgent. At some point we admitted that we were doing the updates as much to keep a travel journal for ourselves as we were actually trying to write something that someone else would actually care about.

posted by Ezra at 7:24 PM

¡Hola!

We're pretty exhausted after our last full day in Barcelona.

We got up early, had breakfast at the hotel (which we found out isn't included in our room price. It's not a bad breakfast, but it would have been nice if someone had pointed it out earlier, because we might have explored other interesting breakfast joints), and went to the very nearby History of the Museum of the City. It was amazing! There is a major excavation of Roman ruins under the city. I've been to Rome and have seen other Roman ruins here and there in my travels, but this was by far the most intact and well-presented. Barcelona was founded by the Romans in 10 BC or so as an outpost, and it became a fairly important military and economic center. It was fairly prosperous but somehow escaped a lot of the destruction and looting that happened to a lot of Roman cities when things went downhill from the Barbarian invasions. Anyway, there were intact outlines of dyeing facilities, wine-making 'factories', a garum production center (if you don't know what garum is, ask the font of arcana, Stephen Mewborn), a crypt, several houses with intact mosaics, mostly-intact fresco paintings on several walls, and lots of domestic artifacts like glasswork (!), lamps, pottery, toga clips, a wheel, barrettes, coins, sewing/leatherworking needles, wool carding implements, decorative mother-of-pearl bottles, etc. Good stuff! There were also various early Christian churches and early cathedrals. It was very expansive, and they had the museum laid out so that you were walking on a raised platform on the actual streets of Barcino (with metal gridwork or glass so that you could see the stuff below). Very well done. They were mostly out of English guide-papers, though, so my Spanish got a workout.

We spent a bit longer there than we had intended, but both agreed that it was well worth it.

After that, we went to the big Gothic cathedral here and walked around a little. It is a very active working church. Lots of people were there praying and leaving candles to the various saints. I voted with my pesetas for the Virgin of Electricity and Light, because I think it's an admirable thing for her to patronize.

After that, we took the metro to a different kind of cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, which is the big Gaudi cathedral that's been under construction since the 1880's and still is not quite halfway done (we were estimating). It is really something else, but too much to explain, and nothing that you can't read (and see) for yourself when you come to Barcelona, which we encourage each and every one of you to do. Checking on the progress of the cathedral is yet another fine excuse for us to come back.

Another good excuse for us to come back is that we were somewhat thwarted in several of our other activities for the day. We were hungry, and we managed to find ourselves a fabulous vegetarian restaurant in the L'Eixample part of town. This was something of a feat (well, we got some help from the trusty Time Out city guide) considering these wacky carnivorous Catalans. No thwarting there. But from there we headed off to Tibidabo which is a big mountain north of the city overlooking everything all the way down to the sea. Tibidabo is also Latin for 'I give to you': legend has it that this is the site where the devil tempted Jesus (saying 'all of this I give to you, blah blah blah'. Barcino wasn't much at that point, so I wouldn't have taken him up on it either.)

Anyway, we figured out the train system and made it to where we were supposed to get a tram or bus to Tibidabo, but the bus came only to have a big xeroxed sign on the door that said that Tibidabo was closed, so don't even bother going on the bus because you'll only be disappointed. Where was the sign at the train station!? Too late for no disappointment!

We decided instead to head over to the foot of Montjuic, the big mountain on the west side of the city (which I think we mentioned earlier), and visit the Mies van der Rohe pavillion and drown our Tibidabo disappointment in a cervesa at the cafe at the Joan Miró Parc. Unfortunately, the Mies van der Rohe pavillion had some kind of crazy movie or TV show being filmed there and we couldn't get into the inside or even really get an uncluttered view of the outside. In the height of my Bauhaus obsession, I would have been a lot more annoyed. At least the sun was setting and the big palace/museum at the top of that hill was very beautiful in the light.

We headed over the the Joan Miro Parc to find the cafe closed. Alas! Terri's feet were hurting, so she weaseled a foot massage out of me. ("You offered!!!" she is protesting now... Okay, okay, I offered. I'll give her a break because her feet still hurt.)

On our way back to the metro, we saw 5 cats rooting through the litter in front of the apparently closed-for-the-season (or maybe for good? We couldn't tell) bullfighting arena. Very cute but sad. There are lots of strays here. They seem to live in more squalor than the strays we saw in Italy. If we ever move to Barcelona we're going to found a program to spay and neuter the wild cats of Barcelona.

We took the train back to La Rambla, had a quick bite in a cafe (the vegetarian restaurant earlier being a lavish enough multi-course extravaganza that we didn't need another full meal), and came here.

T. Rex is on EasyEverything radio...

Well, we are exhausted, so the many (what is it now? 17 rolls?) photos we've been taking will have to tell the rest of the story.

So..... we depart tomorrow on a Meridiana flight to Frankfurt and then head back to Boston on Lufthansa flight 420, leaving at 5:40pm, it arrives in Boston sometime between 8&9 pm Boston time.

Talk to everybody then!
posted by Ezra at 1:27 PM

We stopped off for lunch on the way back to the hotel from yesterday's update. The guidebooks aren't kidding when they warn you that the vegetarian sandwiches here often have ham on them.

We continued yesterday's low-key vibe by taking a big nap in the afternoon.

We woke up to the sound of music and people cheering in the street. We went out and there was an actual parade of the Gegantes. It was quite something and lasted until it was just starting to get dark and street lights were coming on. It was a very family-oriented kind of thing with lots of kids having a very ebullient kind of fun. They were throwing confetti at the marching musicians and gegantes. One older guy with kids smiled and threw some confetti at Terri; it was kind of a "everybody's included in the fun" kind of thing.

After that we roamed around a section of town we hadn't been to yet, and then walked around toward a restaurant we had been meaning to try. Unfortunately it wasn't open, but we found a Venetian restaurant that looked pretty good and was really very good for how cheap it was.

We turned in early and sort of mapped out what we wanted to do during our dwindling days here in BCN. Things quieted down early last night in Barcelona. During the festival, people were crowding the streets well into the night; things were considerably slower at 3:00 am or so, but people were still out and bars and sandwich shops and cafes were still open. But last night, it was getting quiet by 11:00 or so, and it was absolutely silent outside when I poked outside onto our room's terrace at about midnight.

[There is some awful Neil Diamond song that just came on EasyEverything Radio. They have this bizarre mix of American hits from the 50's - 90's. Oh dear god: It's Not Unusual just came on.]

Today we woke up a bit earlier and again made it to the Hotel's breakfast. It was a bit better when it was less crowded. We sort of got our act together as far as figuring out what we still wanted to do while we were here and mapping out what was realistic.

We hit the Picasso museum after breakfast. I am still sort of undecided about Picasso. Some of his stuff is kind of impressive, but I think he was kind of an idiot and really most of his art is overrated and kind of sucks. I'll elaborate sometime and form a more articulate aesthetic argument someday if the mood strikes me. Terri and I discussed it as sat afterwards and I think we were sort of on the same wavelength about it.

After that, we headed to an older park-- not one of the splashy modern Barcelona parks, though there was some modern sculpture in it. We bought some bread, cheese, and wine on the way. After we sat in front of the big fabulous fountain in the sun with a couple of beers, we had a happy little picnic.

After that we just walked in the sun by the ocean, and Terri got a little red. I climbed some nifty artsy jungle gym made out of really taut strong cables. We bought some of the After Sun sunburn stuff that Terri has sworn by since her first trip to Barcelona as soon as we found a pharmacy. We weren´t entirely sure where we were at that point, but we saw the big Teleferic thing, which is a big cable car that goes up to Montjuic from the water. We didn't take it all the way up to the mountain, just over the bit of water that took us close enough to downtown that we could get off and come and find a place to get coffee. We came upon the Internet place before we hit coffee, so I think we're on our way to get some coffee to pep ourselves up after we sign off here, which is right about now.

Adios until tomorrow!
posted by Ezra at 9:39 AM

Hello, all. We've been offline for a couple of days because EasyEverything, our allied internet access place (which is really massive and orange; it appears to be a European chain; Terri is reading the mousepad and it looks like there's also one in Nueva York. :) ), has had some kind of server problem and has been closed.

Anyway, this is going to be a long post, and we're going to be switching off typing/writing duties (so don't be too confused if it sounds like it's Ezra one minute and Terri the next).

Soooo... where to begin? There is much to report.

Saturday morning we woke up a bit late (10 am -ish) and missed breakfast at our hotel, so we went to the Bocatta (which appears to be a fast food sandwich chain) near our hotel. Our hotel turns out to be in a really super location. It's right near Plaça Sant Jaume which is a major square where many events associated with Feste de la Merce (the big festival that's going on this weekend) are happening. And it's reasonably close to two different Metro stops, and La Rambla, which is a major pedestrian-oriented road through the center of the whole downtown area.

It was probably a bad choice to eat there, but we were very hungry and we wanted to get the day started to make up for sleeping late. It turns out that there are lots of better sandwich/bar places nearby, but whatever. Now we know what Spanish fast food is like.

Then we trekked up to Montjuic. It's a big park area up on a very high hill; the Olympic stadium and lots of museums are up there. Walking up the hill we saw more cats that just seem to live in the area. We went to the Joan Miró Museum. It was really great! Very well put together, good collection, and the presentation was very well done. They did a good editing job: the museum as a whole sort of told the story of his development as an artist in addition to just presenting everything well.

After that, we took the funicular (sort of like the inclines in Pittsburgh, except they aren't quite so vertical) down Montjuic back into town. We picked up some fruit at the big market in town. Our long-thwarted attempt to get a schedule/guide to La Merce was finally achieved; we found an info booth at the cultural center on La Rambla near Liceu.

After that we headed back to our hotel, and on the way stopped in the Plaça Sant Jaume to watch a group of men performing some kind of traditional Spanish formations and tricks with big flags. (It's very hard to describe, but we have pictures!) We've been running into things like that all the time over the past few days.

Our big plan was to try to go to La Pedrera at Night, catch as much of the Correfoc as possible, and then hit the Stereolab concert. We ended up doing none of those things quite the way we were expecting. We got back to the hotel room, and looking through our new La Merce schedule realized that the Stereolab concert wasn't until Sunday night. We also realized that this was probably a good thing, because we would have more time at the other two things.

We ate dinner early at a hole-in-the-wall Pakistani restaurant recommended in Time Out. We headed there early (for here, early is any time before 9:00; this was about 6:00), and on the way it started to rain. This was the first place we've been in Barcelona where they've been playing CNN in English. Let me tell you, given the circumstances, it was sort of a weird experience being an American in Spain at a Pakistani restaurant. We sort of avoided talking about the whole subject while we were there.

So we trekked up to La Pedrera on the Metro. La Pedrera is one of the big Gaudi buildings here; it was built in the 1900/1910's era; it looks like a big bubbly dripping unreal version of the other buildings built around there around then. In the summer on Fridays and Saturdays, they open up the wacky roof area at night and have it all lit up and play music and serve drinks, and that's what we were trying to do. Unfortunately, it started to rain in small showers before we got there, and they cancelled it for that night. This unfortunately means that we're not going to be able to do it, because we're not going to be here next Friday or Saturday. :(

So we went back on the Metro and headed to where the Correfoc was supposed to start, near the gothic cathedral not far from our hotel. The Correfoc is the Catalán word for 'firerun'. Basically it's a big parade where little bands of people banging on drums lead everyone through the streets. The idea seems to be to psych up everyone, especially these groups of people dressed up in devil-ish garb carrying funky home-made pitchfork-type things and running with fire through the streets. At the end of it there's supposed to be this thing called 'The door to the inferno' where people actually run through fire. Terri bought a Correfoc long-sleeved T-shirt, and we learned from the woman selling shirts that the Correfoc had not been cancelled because of the rain. While we were standing in the square we heard the sound of drumming, and started to head towards it, but as we came to this alley-way, we realized that a parade of drummer-type people and little devils was coming directly at us! So we sort of moved out of the way and joined the people listening to them. It was very funky and people were dancing. In our quest to see people running through the fire, we wandered over toward another square and encountered yet another similar band of drummers and frenetic people.

We decided to stop into a place for a beer before the big event at the end. On the way to the bar/restaurant by the water, we saw some fireworks. While we were sitting drinking our beers, it started pouring. I mean, pouring. We left the bar (luckily, we both packed umbrellas and had them with us) right at the time when the night's finale was supposed to have happened. We were among many people who were hopping from doorway to doorway. It was a funny end to the evening, if not the one we'd originally had in mind. It's not supposed to rain again anytime soon!

Yesterday was a super busy day. We ended up getting up in time to have breakfast in the hotel. It's a massive hectic buffet. After breakfast, we headed back over to La Pedrera to check out the museum and the building. We took lots of pictures on the roof. There were lots of festival activities for children on the street just outside La Pedrera.

After visiting La Pedrera, we got back on the metro and headed up to Parc Guell, a planned community started by Gaudi that was never fully realized but that has now been turned into a big surreal park. We stopped in at one of the park cafes for a beer and a sandwich and just to rest our feet. A girl there was wearing a tank top that said 'gambling' over and over again in different colors, which made us chuckle. Then we wandered the park and took pictures and just soaked it in. Gaudi lived in a house in the park for 15 years or so, and his house is now a small museum. We checked that out as well. It was a little crowded, so after that we just sat on a bench for a bit.

Once again, we made friends with a cat who was just wandering the park. He and I had a nice rub.

Then we were starting to get pooped, so we headed back to our hotel. On the way we had a snack to tide us over 'til dinner.

We took a late afternoon siesta, knowing that we'd never make it through the Stereolab concert that night without one.

After our nap we dined outside in the Plaça Reial at a restaurant called Taxidermista (no longer bears any resemblance to a taxidermists, but that's what was once there). Dinner was really good and relaxing. And we were entertained by a wide array of weird street performers as well. Several people came by the table selling cigarettes and flowers.

After dinner we returned to our hotel to shed some excess baggage and then trekked over to the Stereolab show, which was actually very close to our hotel. They played as a part of the BAM music festival (Ezra wants me to note here that it is not related to Brooklyn Academy of Music) which is associated with the Feste de la Merçe. They played at a big stage in the middle of Estaçio Franca, one of the city's two major train stations. It was fun to see them after not having seen them -- or having gone to any shows really -- in a while. It seems Laetitia has learned to play the trombone...

Sidenote: At all of the different Feste de la Merçe performance stages they have up banners that say "NY MORE THAN EVER." The sentiment seems genuine. It's a nice gesture. I've also seen people walking around wearing New York t-shirts. I guess I might have seen that in the past and not thought anything of it, but now it seems like there's some show of solidarity behind it.

By the time the show was over it was 3 AM and time for Ezra and Terri to hit the sack.

And if I'm not forgetting anything, that brings us to today. This morning we slept in a bit, but pulled ourselves from bed in time to catch the Matí Gegants in the Plaça Sant Jaume, a daytime display of the giant street puppets that parade at various points during the festival. There are probably 20-25 of them, plus a bunch of smaller monsters and "big heads".

After that we grabbed some pastry for breakfast and then checked back in here. But our update was interrupted when I saw a little parade going on outside. Smaller versions of the giants, all depicting figures from Picasso paintings, along with a puppet of Picasso himself, were parading down the street -- accompanied by drum and whistle music as many of the events here have been. Again, we took pictures.

We've been saying ever since we got here that we wish we had a tape recorder as well as the cameras. So much of what makes up the atmosphere of the festival is the music, the sounds of people cheering, people singing, etc...

After the little Picasso parade, we headed back to the Plaça Sant Jaume to see what was going on over there. We caught a bit of a little parade of a few of the giants and some smaller monsters resembling different visions of dragons -- some with light-up eyes and one that squirted out water. We purchased a Miro poster in a nifty cramped little bookshop and on our way back to the hotel to put it with our stuff we encountered the Castellers in the Plaça Sant Jaume. Different groups of the Castellers make elaborate, very tall, human towers. It's quite impressive, with what looks like sometimes 40 or so people involved in making up a tower. Men, women, and tiny children all participate (the little children are the ones who climb ALL the way up to the top and wave or blow a kiss when they get there). I think some of the densest crowds we've seen were gathered to watch the Castellers.

We managed to squeeze through the crowds to get to some back streets, made it back to the hotel, dropped off the poster tube, and came back here to continue the update.

Today's plan is mostly to relax and enjoy ourselves. We may go to the Picasso museum, which is also very near our hotel. If not today, sometime before we leave.

We are having a great time! :)
posted by Ezra at 3:17 AM

Hi,all--

We madeit to Barcelona just fine except that I left the dramamine in the bag that I checked. Oops. No consequences more dire than a bit of queasiness on landing.

They moved all the keys around me on this wacky Spanish/Catalan keyboard. At least it is easy to type a ñ.

Over to Terri.
posted by Ezra at 3:14 PM

Greetings.

We spent much of today trying to get to San Gimignano, a small town about 40min away from Florence. By the time we got to the bus station, the next bus wasn't until 11:40, so we killed some time shoe shopping (Ms. Wise did, at least -- no success yet), and going to the Duomo, the big central cathedral.

The bus ride was uneventful, until it was about 1:00 and we realized that we were not in San Gimignano, we were in Siena. Apparently, the guy that sold us the tickets had neglected to tell us that we needed to get off and change busses in Poggibonsi. Alas.

So we were hungry, had to go to the bathroom, and a weeeee bit grumpy in Siena, but we managed to figure out where we had gone wrong (which wasn't really obvious to us at first), buy tickets to San Gimi, and grab a slice of pizza before the 2:10 bus left.

San Gimignano was sort of amazing, but crawling with tourists of every denomination and nationality. But it is a sort of honest kind of tourism that is like "we have a weird but beautiful little medieval town, so to afford to keep things the way we like them, we'll open it up with tourism". It just rises up out of the valley, and it is basically built like a castle with high walls and insanely tall towers. It looks like this magical little town glistening in the distance as you approach.

We had minor distress getting back to Florence, but ended up making it on time, and eating at this really great restaurant. I'm still cooing and gooing over the steak, (FORGET THE STEAK -- THE PENNE WAS THE STORY OF THE NIGHT -- Terri), well, my salmon penne was good too.

Anyway, it was fabulous, and here we are, with only 3:00 of time left on this card here at Internet Train internet access land.

We don't know what we'll find Internet-access-wise in Barcelona, where we're heading tomorrow, so don't panic if we don't get to update this right away.

We love you all! Ciao!

posted by Ezra at 2:49 PM

Poor Cosimo de Medici. You run Florence for years during its zenith in the Renaissance, and what do you get for it? You get a measly statue that's basically just a pigeon rest in the middle of town.
posted by Ezra at 12:20 PM

Greetings from Florence! We actually made it! We're waiting to get into a restaurant for dinner, and happened upon this internet place, and decided to make our first entry from abroad.

We made it onto our Lufthansa flight yesterday, no delays, it arrived on time in Frankfurt (did you know the German word for "casino" is "Spielbank"?), and we connected to another Lufthansa flight to Florence. We made it here at about 8:30am, took a bus to the city center (or "Florence Town" as the English version of the sign said) from the airport, and then took a cab to our hotel, the Classic Hotel on Viale Niccolo Machiavelli (I feel all Princely).

We took a quick (ok, 3 hour) nap, got up, showered, and walked around Florence all day. It's beautiful here. Very chilly. We hit a bunch of major walking attractions like the Ponte Vecchio, the outside of the Duomo and the Baptistry, had a bite to eat at a little cafe called Pino's Cafe, got some Gelati (yuuuuuuuummmmy), walked through the Piazza della Republica. We went into the main floor of the Pallazzo Vecchio. We are taking lots of pictures.

It's dark now , and as we're writing this we're right near the river and we can hear a drum beating, which is the way the coxswains (sp.?) seem to keep the rowers in line here (instead of the megaphones they use on the Charles River back home).

Well, it's been good to be here even as briefly as we have, but more adventures await! We should go get some food in us now.

posted by Ezra at 11:21 AM

Hi. This is the first entry in our honeymoon log. I'm creating this, still unsure even of where our honeymoon is going to be. We're not sure if we are 1) going to be able to travel to Europe by Mondy 2) want to go even if we're able to.

If we do go, my thinking is that this log will allow us to post daily updates to let all the friends and family who want to keep tabs on our safety and our adventures will have a place to do so.

If we don't end up going to Europe, this might still be a fun thing to do as part of our journey on this continent.

--Ezra.
posted by Ezra at 12:12 PM