Iceland Day 5

Today being the last full day in Iceland became sort of a universal putz around day rather than anything planned.  I think with the brutalization caused by the two days of tours with no recovery period no one wanted to really do anything killer active. I woke up first pretty much but forced myself to stay in bed from 6 to 8am when I did actually start moving trying not to wake anyone else up. I made what I would eat for breakfast and slowly the rest of the crowd started to rise. We made an easy morning of it and basically just used the day to wander around Reykjavik rather than to do anything totally active.

We visited the culture museum which had a very cool exhibit on the old saga texts of Iceland then headed down  to get lunch at the burger joint on Burgerjoint corner. It was a reasonably good burger. I got mine with bacon and cheese because I just ordered whatever Dee got.  After lunch we sort of split up for a bit and went to see the big church at the top of the hill and go up to the top of the tower.  The view was really nice up there but it was rather windy. After the church Dee and I headed down to the waterfront because I wanted to get pictures of a couple statues we had passed in vehicles that I hadn't yet gotten a chance to photograph but I knew I wanted.  After that it was a double wander through town to pick up a few souvenirs that need to be bought before we get out of town.  Since we were split up we made plans to get back to the house by 5pm for dinner plans. I chose to get back early and have a quiet beer.

After everyone arrived we spent a few minutes deciding where to eat and after looking through a couple pages of a book we chose Hofnin down on the waterfront.  We walked down and got seated right away. We had an appetizer that was basically bread and a few different types of fish and Dee and I shared a bottle of white wine. I ordered the mussels which turned out to be a mistake as they were horribly overcooked.  Everyone else seemed to like their food at least.  I didn't finish the mussels. I had their carrot cake dessert which was really good and accompanied that with a priest's coffee which has brennivin in it. That was actually very tasty.  I hadn't had brennivin before that.  After we finished we sort of just wandered around the city a bit, even ending up back at the viking ship statue on the waterfront for a short while. After wandering about we eventually made it back to the house and finished up the night.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Iceland Day 4

Today started with about an hour turn around from the day before for rest we got assembled and headed over to the Hotel Holt to be picked up for our Vestmannaeyjar trip. The Holt is basically 2 houses away from where we are staying so it wasn't much of a hike to get there. The bus was perhaps a couple minutes late but we made it down and signed in for our trip and then our driver started the two plus hour trek over to the ferry to Vestmannaeyjar which means Westmann Isles. They are a 15 island archipelago of which really one is inhabited. The drive was basically uninteresting and a few of us nodded off during the ride. We did drive out of fog into the ferry port which was out in the sun basically when we got there.

The ferry ride over was quite easy and took about a half an hour or so to get there. From there we were brought into the Cafe Kro and set up for the first part of the trip which was a boat ride around the isles. The boat ride was fun and the sun stayed out but the wind really picked up as we went along. We got to see puffins and other birds as well as a lot of the interesting lava, basalt and other rock formations that made up the isles. We also pretty much passed right by the fish packing plants which smelled significant. As the wind picked up the water got rougher and it basically became impossible to stay topside on the boat without getting soaked. I get seasick on the inside of small boats so I had to stay out there and did literally get soaked top to bottom. Dee remained outside also.  Fortunately some portions of the trip weren't so windy as the islands provided shelter but the final run into the harbor was insane and there were a few moments I felt I could easily get thrown  out of the boat, and I am pretty steady on my feet in the boat.  There was also a short stop into a sea cave where the captain played the saxophone for the excellent acoustics inside it.  Overall the boat trip was fun but I was drenched by the time it was over.

The brought us back into the Cafe Kro where we were fed warm bread and cauliflower soup which was a touch salty.  It was dry inside and Dee got lucky because the place noticed how drenched she was and the provided her some temporary clothes while they sent hers to someone's house to be dried. Some of us found the lone gift shop and bought some dry souvenir clothes which we changed into in the Kro bathrooms. They then took us on a bus tour around the island where we saw Heimaey which erupted in 73 amongst the main highlight.  They also had a small excavation of some of the houses that were buried by the ash.  To put it in perspective as we think about eruptions, this was basically a 4 month pouring of ash more than it was anything like we typically think of volcanoes. Most of the approximately 800 houses lost or damaged were basically buried in the ash.  The other perspective item was realizing that we were standing on land that was younger than us as it was created in 1973. It isn't really something you can say often.  That's kinda cool to think about. During the bus tour the wind really picked up which did help dry out my clothes a little bit but not really enough at least for my pants.

After the bus tour we found dinner at the Cafe Maria at the suggestion of our guide "Willy." Pete and I split a Special pizza which had ham, pepperoni, mushrooms and jalapenos and was really good.  They even presliced it for us so we could eat it like Americans. I had a Tuborg Classic to accompany which is of course a Danish beer but they had the Egils Gull as their Icelandic offering and I had it the night before.  After the pizza I had one of their ice cream dishes which had straciatella, caramel and whipped cream. It was also quite good.  We apparently were a bit long in eating but did manage to get on the ferry before it left. The ferry ride was very rough as the winds were still very high.  We did make it back in one piece however the guide left his keys on the island by accident in the process of loaning Dee his jacket.  This meant a few extra minutes of wait when we boarded a standard bus which got us to a bus stop in Reykjavik where we were picked up by another bus guide from the tour company who got us to the Hotel Holt. He wouldn't listen to us when we asked him to stop in front of our house instead. From there it was basically wind down time. The two days felt like one giant combined day.  It was very exhausting.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Iceland Day 3

I am the first to admit my vacations are forced marches but to call today long is really an understatement. Sure it didn't start out to terribly early by my standards with our guide (Stefan again) picking us up at the house at 8am. We had time for breakfast and a short trip to the bakery beforehand. The ride didn't end until 4:30am the next morning.

We started out by visiting a couple spots in town. The famous house where Gorbachev and Reagan met, stuff like that.  We saw the house of the only Nobel prize winner from Iceland, Halldór Kiljan Laxness (it was for literature). We the started our way through the meat of the tour which was the ring road and gold coast (we then added the glacier lagoon on the fly).  It will take me a while to sort out any names for these places as I don't really have a map to work with, plus they need special characters, plus I am really tired right now.

We visited their national park, Þingvellir, which is basically a representation of the fissure of the two continental plates that Iceland is made up of. Yes, Iceland is part North American and part European. The fissure is very obvious there. We drove up to the overlooking the Parliament Plains (where the ancient parliament used to meet). Fortunately it was early enough before all the big tour buses and were able to get out before they arrived. They had to close off the walking path because a rift formed and part of the path fell away.  We were driven down to the lower area where we saw a couple waterfalls from a distance, walked up to the church and then walked along the river to the van before we drove out.

Our next stop was a geyser field that had a geyser named Strokkur that fired every 3-8 minutes. There were a few others there but none of them erupted at all. Like anything unpredictable and quick it was tough to get good pictures of the of the eruptions but we tried as best we could. This park had a gift shop and snack shop.

The next stop was the very impressive waterfall Gullfoss. I've not been around a waterfall that big (not even Niagra).  All the same we were basically right on top of it so it was made even more impressive. The idea of that much water running through speeds like that is something that can't really be described. I should mention that the weather we had all day was basically perfect. We started with this waterfall up above and then walked down to it then eventually walked back towards the van and headed on to the next stop which was also a waterfall. Named Seljalandsfoss. It is not near as big but is impressive in a different way. It falls over a cliff and you can walk behind the water flow, which we did.  Yes we basically got soaked and there were few spots the camera was in danger but it was very awesome.

The next stop was another waterfall, named Skógafoss which we could not walk behind but was more powerful than Seljalandsfoss but also fell down a cliff in spectacular fashion.  I got thoroughly soaked by walking up to the waterline of the river at the bottom as close as I could get. The spray it was creating was incredible.

After the waterfalls we had a quick stop where we got hot dogs and then we did our glacier hike. This was on the Sólheimajökull Glacier Tongue. We had to strap on crampons and walk around with ice axes and we climbed up and around the glacier. It was definitely an awesome experience. The glacier we walked on can be black or white depending on how much volcanic ash is out at the time so it is kind of an ugly glacier. All the same it was strange getting used to the crampons. It was just as strange getting out of them after it was over. Our guide was apparently named Helgi although that is not what I heard.  I could not hear it properly as it was said quickly and with a strong lilt. He was obviously a very experienced climber and does a lot more than tromping on the nearly flat ice when he isn't working. It was a very cool experience. No pun intended.

After the glacier hike it was a very long ride to the glacial lagoon called Jökulsárlón. It took hours to get there. It was a very incredible area. The small bits of iceberg where breaking up if you watched them long enough. The sun was setting by that point. I think it was around 11pm or so. There are seals in the lagoon. It is the deepest natural lake in the island. It sits right underneath the tallest mountain on the island. The lagoon is a mix of fresh and salt waters as the ocean tide comes in to meet the glacial melt off.  There were seals in the small inlet. Apparently there are some good fish to catch there.

After the lagoon it was a hideously long ride back to the house. I did manage to catch some sleep during the ride but most of us didn't. We got back at 4:30am as I said. The Day 4 stuff set to start at 7am. That meant writing this, posting pictures and maybe a small nap before we had our quick turn around to start out.

The pictures are posted here and it looks like I have to sort out some issues with shutterfly handling the organization of them.

Iceland Day 2

Today started a bit late with the fact that we were really tired from the day before and we had to make sure that Pete got in with us before we chose to do anything. Unfortunately there was a small amount of confusion as to where and when he was going to arrive so he ended up getting to the house a bit later than we intended. It was mostly which bus he was going to take and where to be met. Unfortunately he posted to facebook that he was at the Hotel Holt and Scott saw it, liked it and it didn't register that that was not where Dee was going to pick him up.  In any event, that got sorted out and we started making breakfast which consisted of eggs, bacon (which didn't seem to have enough bacon fat) and toast.

After breakfast we walked around the downtown area for a short while before we were supposed to have our bike ride tour around town with Stefan. We walked downtown and then turned towards the lake and visited what we found out was the town hall then around the lake and back into town where we had a hot dog at the famous hot dog stand by the harbor. After the hot dog we visited the Settlement Museum which has the excavation of the earliest ruins they have found around Iceland, dated by lava ash strata at 871 plus or minus 2 years.  It was a small but pretty neat museum. After that we headed back up to the house and settled for a short half an hour while we waited for our tour guide Stefan to come pick us up for the bike tour.

He drove us down to the harbor in a diesel van where we all got assigned our bikes, I got Skuli, and headed out for our tour of the town. The ride was mostly flat but it was still fun to get out on a bike. We did see a lot of stuff that we had already seen around town but it was still good to get Stefan's take on things. Amongst things we saw the lake and the town hall and then we went on to see a rock that was supposed to be a home for the Hidden Folk and went around to the University and the south side shore of the peninsula (I think) as well as we drove by Bjork's house and visited a catholic church designed by one of their most famous architects.

The bike tour was very fun and informative. Stefan is an excellent guide. Plus it was funny to see Scott riding a bike. After that Stefan was nice enough to drive us up to the Pearl (Perlan) which is a museum, observatory, restaurant on the top of a hill. It is was cool to see a lot of the region from up there but the restaurant looked very expensive and the rest of the stuff closed while we were there. So after we spent a while taking pictures from the observatory deck we decided that we would walk back into town and find a restaurant.

We ended up finding the Gamla Winhus which I think means the Old Wine House or winery.  In any event the menu looked pretty cool and it was sort of tough to decide what to order. I had a couple large Egils Gull beers. We ordered a lamb and blueberry appetizer, carpaccio and garlic bread of which I had the first two. The lamb was interesting. I was intrigued by the blueberry even if I wasn't certain about it before I tasted it.  The carpaccio was very good. I didn't try the garlic bread. Dee and I decided to share dinners. I got the peppered horse steak and she got the peppered minke whale steak. They were both very very good. I liked the whale a touch more. I have had horse before but always raw. It was still very good cooked. The whale was far too good for the ethical issues I had about eating it. They basically can only catch 200 per year here and they do not overstep their catch limits. Stefan claimed there are 50000 or so out there of the minke whale. In any event it was really good. Dee ordered the whale and I the horse which saved me that moral indecision. For dessert I had an apple tart with ice cream and caramel along with a coffee. It was also very tasty. We sort of fell upon the place because folks didn't want to walk anymore but it was an excellent choice and everyone was happy with what they got.

From there we headed back to the hotel.  It was late out but still very light outside. The sun had not set at 11pm.

The pictures from today are posted here.

Iceland Day 1

I headed straight to the airport from work via a ride from my brother. This trip is with 4 other people, 3 of which were flying on the same flight. I was the first to arrive as heading there straight from work meant being very early for a 9:30pm flight.  I managed to get selected for the "random" special screening which took an extra ten minutes on my time through the security line. It was indeed a pain but I didn't give them any hard time at all. After that I headed in to O'Brians and get some food and beer and wait for the rest to arrive. The bartender I always see was there. I ordered a chicken finger platter and had a couple Sam Adams as well. Scott was the second to show up, followed by Dee and Mike. We had a couple drinks and Scott also had a burger then we left the bar and waited a few more minutes to board the plane.

The flight was fairly bumpy but I slept through a fair portion of it and did not even try to watch a movie at all.  The trip took 4 hours 45 minutes. We were able to get our luggage and out of the airport fairly quickly. Edda was there to pick us up. She is the woman we were renting the apartment from. She has a Ford Explorer. The drive took about a half an hour or so from the airport to the house. Apparently the apartment we were supposed to rent was not actually available due to some unfortunate circumstances with the people who are renting it that were already supposed to be out two weeks ago. She instead had us take a house across the street. It is a fairly big house with plenty of room for us and two stories. The main bath even has a hot tub. By the time we got settled in we decided to get some breakfast from the bakery down the street then get cleaned up. It was basically around 8:30 or so when we went to the bakery. After that we trudged out to the shop to get some beer and other booze for the house. We brought that back and then found the market where we bought some food for the next few days.

After we dropped off the groceries we decided to get lunch because it was basically around that time. We walked down the street and ate a small cafe/restaurant down the hill. I will try to find the place's name later on but I forgot to take note of it while we were there. I had the bergburger which was a burger with a yogurt mushroom sauce and fries. The sauce made it necessary to use a knife and fork to eat it. It was quite tasty. I accompanied that with a Viking beer. Scott had the same. Mike had a chicken salad (salad with chicken) and Dee had a chicken sandwich which also looked like a salad with chicken.  The food was very enjoyable.

When we finished that we headed out to walk around a bit and entered the theater to look around a bit then headed over to see the statue of Ingolfur (the first settler of Iceland) and on to the opera house which we went into and explored. From there we walked out to look at the harbor then turned into the town a bit and wandered about for a short while. We stopped for a coffee then walked over to the lake for a quick look before the kids said they were too tired and we headed back to the house. Dee decided to go to a small art museum while we settled in. I started to write this at that point. Scott snored. We basically relaxed until it was time for dinner.

We decided to eat in the house and made sausage sandwiches and salad. I tried the Kaldi dark and later while we watched Eurovision I had the Kaldi lager.  Eurovision is a bizarre process by which horrible pop acts perform and a bunch of countries vote on the acts to determine a winner. The winner country gets to host the next Eurovision. Based on the performances there is no way I could have predicted who would win or even who would do well. The act from Sweden won. I would not even remotely have voted for it.  I really question the taste of Europeans after this. Plus the whole process took forever. We needed to stay up later so it was not a total waste even it if it was at times quite painful.  Most scary was that the act from Albania was in the top 5. It was very scary.

The pictures from today are located now on Shutterfly.  I hope it works out.

Leaving for Iceland Tonight

We depart for Iceland tonight and will arrive in the morning tomorrow. I am trying to get all the stuff I need to get done before I leave today including getting my travel booked for Peru and some other logistics for it figured out.  It appears weather will be like Boston in April based on Weather Underground. Not anything I won't be happy with. Looks to be overcast most days. I didn't choose to go to Iceland for beach weather anyway. I think this will be a fun trip. I have to get re-accustomed to traveling with other folks again. I think I won't be too much of a bear on them. We'll see.

Peru for Work in June

Got the word yesterday that I will be teaching a class in Peru at the end of June . I will be there for a two week duration. It will obviously be my second time to Peru but this time I will be in Lima rather than getting into the mountain country. I did not visit Lima on my last trip. I am sure it will feel very different from Cusco. I expect it will be an interesting experience.

Shutterfly

Kodak Gallery is dying on me in the middle of July and I need to test out Shutterfly where my images will be transferred after Kodak Galleries is gone. I am trying to make sure that I can upload albums and post a reasonable slideshow link in the blog using Shutterfly the same as I used to do in Kodak. That means that when Kodak goes down I will have to wait some amount of time until the pictures are transferred. During that time all my links to albums will be broken. After that I will have to recreate all the album slideshow links.

In the meantime I am going to try to post my cell phone camera pictures of my visit to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.  I did say I was going to post them before but never did.

It does not look near as graceful as the direct link to the slideshow in Kodak but it will have to do.  I am not really crazy about their interface but they do not charge for storage and claim they will never delete images.  I do have over 40 gigs of images out there.

Iceland in One Month

We will be heading to Iceland in one month. I am quite looking forward to it as I have not done any traveling since late October/early November. That feels like a very long time to me. Overall we have the plans set for what we want to do. I think it will be a fun time.

On a separate note I will fairly well state that my trip to the Czech Republic last year was longer by several days and came out to be a similar cost or possibly even cheaper than this trip to Iceland will be. Having done the math it comes out that the flight will wash, the hotel will be cheaper but the tours and food will be more expensive. Food and beer was very cheap in the Czech Republic. Not so much in Iceland. Also the tours were a heck of a lot cheaper each.

All the same my advice is not to travel if you are going to be worried about money. Traveling is an expensive process and if your enjoyment will be hampered by worries of how much you are spending then do not do it. It is not worth it for you.  Sure you can look for cheaper options on things (I do not spend a lot of money on high end hotels but rather search for cheap, safe, clean places to sleep) but going somewhere and then not doing anything because it is all too expensive is a waste. In general it is best to research how expensive a destination is going to be before you travel there. Set the expectations before you arrive. Read travel sites, check the conversion rate for their currency. Look around and see if you can find restaurant websites from the areas you will be staying and check out their prices.  All of this will allow you to estimate how much you can expect to spend. I have not gone in blind to any of the places I have traveled when it comes to understanding how much it will cost. That said I do not worry that I am going to spend too much money. It is mostly for the idea that having the correct expectation will reduce the disappointment or irritation at finding out things were more than you thought.

Anyway, I am really ready for this travel. The time cannot arrive soon enough.

Frog Legs

At the Woodstock Inn last night with a 4 wheeling club get together I had the opportunity to try buffalo frog legs. They didn't put the buffalo sauce on them but rather on the side. I actually liked them a fair bit. They did not taste like chicken.  They were served 2 legs together so that it sort of looked like you were getting frog butts instead.  I'd eat them again.

Iceland Planning

The Iceland trip is being planned as a group thing of course. There are currently 7 expected to be on the trip. In doing so we had to determine what things we wanted to do as a group and perhaps talk about some things we could split up and do on our own.

We all got together to have dinner and discuss some of the ideas on Friday and it seems that though the majority of us like the idea of seeing a glacier that most of us did not feel we could hike for several hours. Having done the Inca trail and to be intending to climb Fuji this summer I am fairly certain I can handle it, however I voted off doing the glacier tour under the expectation few of us would try to do it.

I voted for my top 2 activities as riding Icelandic horses and taking an ATV ride. The former because it seems like a cool idea and I have not ridden a horse in over 20 years and the latter because I would love to do some Jeeping over there but that is not likely to happen and this will be the closest I can get. Having read up a bit the 4 wheeling available there seems really cool.  There was a lot of overlap in what people voted for. We haven't been delivered the official tally. We'll see how things play out.

Both of my votes are half day tours so while they probably couldn't both be done in the same day they do open the doors to doing other activities like museums along with them on the same day.  We have a limited time of 5 days so it seems it would be best to make good use of the time.

Why Japan in the Dead of Summer?

The main motivation I am heading to Tokyo in the dead of summer is to get an opportunity to climb Mt. Fuji to the top. The concept is something that can be done easiest really only in July and August as the majority of the summit will not be cloaked in snow. I will admit it wasn't something I had thought of on my first trip to Japan, but when a coworker's son visited a year later it was something he did and it sounded like a spectacular idea that I knew I was going to have to follow as well. Of course trip number two was dedicated to the cherry blossom season and I am very happy I did that. It was an awesome experience and it was right to do that before the summer trip.

Climbing Mt. Fuji is considered a pilgrimage by many Japanese people but they say that around 30% of the people who do it are foreigners. It is rated at a moderately easy 5-7 hour hike to the top. The distance traveled is less than 4 miles if starting from the 5th station (you may recall we visited that in Japan trip 1). It is however a gain of around a mile of altitude. In truth it should be easier than Dead Woman's Pass on the Inca Trail however I am not going to take it lightly. A major difference is that I won't be at altitude before I start so racing through it could provide altitude sickness. Many folks start very late in the evening and hike through the dark to arrive for the sunrise. I think I will probably start earlier and find someplace to rest for a while, maybe even rent space in one of the huts.  Not sure on that yet. Either way I will see sunrise then hike back down. They use a different route which is supposed to take 2-3 hours and does not have any water stops or the like.

Typically I am bad about hiking and bringing proper supplies. I will try to be good on this one as I am traveling and doing this alone (even though there will be hundreds or thousands of other folks doing it).  

For more information on climbing Mt. Fuji you can look at this page.  It has good information.

Sapporo Hotel Booked

I have booked my stay in Sapporo at the Hotel Sunroute Sapporo through Hotels.com.  I am going on a few reviews and the fact that the place is non-smoking. Always a plus to me.  It also appears to be close to the JR station. Though I am flying in I intend to use the rail system to get out of Sapporo for a couple side trips in Hokkaido which is the northern island of Japan.

I figure as with all my other choices for hotels even if the place is not great I am only there to sleep and shower.  It does seem central to a lot of the metro Sapporo attractions too which is nice.

Japan 2012

I realize the posts about the Iceland trip haven't even gotten stale yet but I have booked flights to Japan for this summer. I will be leaving July 21 and returning August 8. In the time I am there I will be spending the bookends of the trip staying in Tokyo in the Villa Fontaine Hamamatsucho and spending a week in Sapporo.  As of yet I have not booked a hotel in Sapporo as I wanted to check with Marina if she had any suggestions before I made any decisions. The Villa Fontaine was basically what I wanted where I wanted so I didn't feel a need to change.

Sapporo is on Hokkaido which is the northern island of Japan. I am going to take Japan Airlines back and forth. The trip by rail would be about 10+ hours and by plane is only an hour and a half. Even with airport hassles it makes sense.  I purchased the domestic Japan flights through the oneworld Yokoso Japan Fare. Since I booked my flight to Japan via American Airlines this trip I was entitled to this special deal. For the record the fares can be purchased here.  It is a few pages jumps to find this otherwise.  As with the previous Japan trips, I am finding a lot of the helpful stuff like that through Japan Guide.

I am sure I will again purchase a JR pass to get around the country as it is valid everywhere and JR is helpful for getting around Tokyo.  That will be further down the road of course as they want it purchased within 3 months of arrival.

More to come as it happens.  Probably some Iceland stuff soon too.

Iceland Planning Notes

The collective is getting together to figure out what we are going to do while we are there in the near future but we already have our lodging booked by Dee.  We are staying at an apartment rather than hotels. I have to admit it looks quite nice.

Iceland will be a lot about outdoors stuff. I'd love to rent a Rover and do some off-roading but it also states that prior to summer that can be extra dangerous beyond the norm. I am also fairly certain no one else going along is interested in it which puts a damper on the idea.  I will post up what we are pre-planning when it is hashed out. I suspect we'll still have some open slots for random stuff to do.

Spain Slideshow - Sorry

It occurs to me that I never built a slideshow of my Spain trip. Due to being first very busy then  very forgetful it was an oversight. I will rectify the situation soon.

Iceland in Late May

After a couple months of having nothing at all planned (which was extremely painful to me) I can now announce that I am heading to Iceland for the time frame of Memorial Day week.  This trip is being motivated by our friend Dee so I might go a little light on the planning details. For the time being I will state that we have purchased our airline tickets already and are going to be there for around 5 days. It appears that there will be at least 5 of us. Of course we are flying Iceland Air as it is a direct flight and fairly cheap. I have only passed through on my various trips to Scandinavia and have never strayed from the airport (fortunately my layovers there have been short) so I think it will be a fun trip with a lot of outdoorsy activities and some viking heritage hopefully. More details as they are hashed out by the group.

Spain Day 9 - One Week Late

Ok, the last day of my trip to Spain became more of an adventure than it needed to be but not because of anything much from Spain, but what had happened at home.

I had a flight scheduled to take off at 1:55pm Spain time and that meant I was to take the 10am shuttle van from the hotel to the airport because that would only cost me 8Eu rather than the 35 or so it would be for a taxi. I woke up early and decided to eat breakfast at the hotel to kill some time before getting fully packed and heading to the lobby to check out. That was quick but they apparently didn't have a van ready for me for some reason so the hotel paid a cab to drive me to the airport. The driver was a nice guy and I tipped him a couple Eu because I felt generous. Madrid airport apparently separates the US international flights from the rest of the international flights but they won't let you to the gate areas until around an hour before departure. Check in and all that was fairly simple but I had to wander around the airport for a while to kill time before I could get to my gate. For whatever unknown reason though the plane took off at least 45 minutes late even though we started boarding on time. This was the single most disorganized boarding process I've ever seen. It was terrible. So with the late departure the basically uneventful flight arrived in Boston over an hour and a half late. I was seated next to one of the flight attendant's son.

When I got home I got a ride to my house by way of Flightline and found that the snowstorm on Saturday had knocked power out all over the place including my house. It had been out of power since Saturday and it was freezing when I finally got home (aside from being dark and having no water). I unpacked a bit and eventually tried to get to sleep but it was just too cold so I ended up driving to my brother's house to spend the night. And I had to do that all the way until Thursday when we finally got power back. The outage set me back a lot on getting things sorted out.  So that is why this post was late.  Anyway, I enjoyed Spain a lot. I wasn't sure going into it, especially with the lack of prep on my part but things sorted out well and I had a lot of fun. Aside from the bad weather day things were good.

Spain Day 8

So guess what. The time change happened here already. It happened last night at 3am back to 2am. That is good for the fact it was light out much earlier but it is bad for the fact I get to do it twice because the US happens next weekend.  Bleh.  In any event, I woke up and got cleaned up and headed to the Dunkin Coffee (it is not Dunkin Donuts here for some reason) across the street from the tourist place. I had a coffee and a chocolate donut which I forgot to take a picture of then headed over to the office to check in for the tour. Today was the monastery of El Escorial. The tour was actually a combination of 2 tour groups. Those just going to El Escorial like I was an then a lot of people who were going to do a Toledo tour in the second half of the day.

The drive was about 40 minutes out of town back towards the mountains. El Escorial is a 16th century monastery built by Phillip II. The idea was it was going to be a tomb first but I guess he decided along the way it could be more than that and he built up a monastery, cathedral and residence in the location. In its time there was no supporting town because the king wanted his privacy so everyone was kept far away. The theme of the monastery was St Laurent who was tortured by being cooked on a grill as a martyr so the there is a theme of looking like a grill that is present in the monastery. The building is quite large and unfortunately no where in the tour did we get a good place to take a picture of the whole edifice. I would have liked that opportunity. On the outside I suppose it is the size that is really what is impressive about it. It has the look of a very large French style palace but without any adornments or at least very little. In that sense I guess it is not picturesque.

Because it was Sunday the tour started in the Library while they had services in the Cathedral. Apparently it is still an active library for the monastery which is still active with Augustinian brothers. The books are kept spine to the back so that the pages have more ability to breath. They do not get much humidity so the books are well protected. The entirety of the monastery's decorations inside are Italian in style. Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed and I didn't get a chance to find a good book of the site so I will have to go without. The inside did remind me of a lot that I saw in Rome and was very much distant from the dark lesser adorned cathedrals I had seen so far in Spain.

I was apparently the only person in the tour who required English which made things a touch difficult at first because I think the guide wanted to dispense with a bilingual tour but I ended up meeting Inez and Jessie who are both from Florida and they helped translate for me a lot of what he said that he didn't translate himself. Jessie apparently owns her own translation business and Inez works for her. They were very nice and very helpful and I had a lot of fun talking to them for the remainder of the tour. The tour moved on from the library to the cathedral which did remind me of the cathedrals I had seen in Italy and was much more bright and agreeable looking. The residence of Phillip II and his wife were built just off the church and we visited those next. From there we wound our way through their residential and show areas and then finally back out to a small cafeteria for a few minutes where we had coffee then on to the tour bus and back to Madrid by say 1:30. The tour was basically more interesting than this telling but without pictures it is probably not as good a story. I did like the place. Apparently a support town has been built in recent centuries and approximately 10000 or so people live in the vicinity.

After we returned to Madrid I ended up eating lunch with Inez and Jessie and we chatted until they had to move on the second part of their tour in Toledo. I obviously hadn't signed on for that as I had already done the full day tour in Toledo. We ate at a small tapas, cafeteria type place and had their menu of the day. For me I had their black rice (which is black by way of squid ink) and their roasted lamb chops. The rice was excellent and very tasty. The lamb was good but very fatty. They included a bottle of wine for us and we had an inlcuded dessert which I had flan. Inez suggested we have a carajillo which is a coffee with brandy in it and we all had one of those as well. It was interesting and the brandy must have been sweet because the drink was very sweet in flavor. As we finished it was basically time for them to rejoin the tour so I brought them back to the tour office and then headed back to the room for a pit stop.

At that point it was just past 3pm and I decided I would see the bullfighting ring by walking there. I knew that I needed to head up the Gran Via to Calle de Alcala and that the ring was a fair distance down there. I would pass the parks I was in on Saturday along the way so I really was retracing a fair bit. After passing the park I was basically in a not very interesting standard city area. It took me about 50 minutes or so to walk to the ring. It was of course closed probably because it was Sunday. All the same I took some pictures of it and the couple statues around it and then headed back. All in all the process took me just short of two hours and I think it was probably in the 3.5 mile range for distance based on my walking speed which was mainly my get somewhere speed since there was little new to see until I got there. For good or for ill it had gotten very warm out and I was glad I was wearing a short sleeve shirt unlike the majority of people out here. Aside from the rain my first full day in Madrid the weather has been quite nice. At times the breeze had a bit of a chill across it when it happens but I quite like that. I suspect today was in the 25C or so range. Upon returning to the room I basically wrote this then relaxed for a while before heading out to dinner early.

Being that I had to travel back home on Monday I decided to just head back to the Italian restaurant for dinner. I knew it would be a sit down meal and that it would be open early. I also knew it wasn't going to be too expensive so it all worked out for me. I had a more Spanish type lunch anyway so that requirement was fulfilled. At Pizza Marzano I had a beer and their calzone vesuvio which had spiced beef, pepperoni, green peppers, red onions and mozzarella. It was actually quite good though the spicy was on the tamer side. Still I really enjoyed it so I guess that was what mattered. From there I just headed back to the room to start the packing process in order to be on my way home.

Not a lot of pictures for day 8 but they can be found here.

Spain Day 7

Today I planned to visit the Palacio Real de Madrid. I wasn't sure what time it opened but I figured it would be later than I wanted. The night before I had been talked out of taking a walking tour of the city then having a tour of the palace after the walking by the guy at the hotel desk. He said most guests don't find it that good and it is cheaper to do it on your own or to even take the hop on hop off bus of Madrid to get the tour stuff. After I got cleaned up I just headed on down towards where the palace should be. I knew I needed to take a left when I reached the Plaza de Espana but I wasn't totally sure how long it would take to get there. I reached the Plaza de Espana with it still being too dark to take any good pictures of the couple monuments there so I kept on past it and down the hill further. I eventually came to the Jardines de Sabatini which is on one side of the palace. I knew it was still early so I walked through them a bit. They were more in the Italian style as a landscape garden rather than a flower garden type. After that I walked up and around to the side of the palace where I found another park that was completely covered in litter. I suspect it was too early for the city cleaners to have gotten out to have picked up after the messy punk kids and thoughtless tourists. However it go there there was a ton of trash. From there I walked on through to the entrance of the palace to find out that it opened at 10am. It was still before 9am by a good deal at this point. So I basically wandered around for the time to kill. I entered the cathedral and took a couple quick snapshots but they were about to have a service and there were a bunch of nuns there as well as a camera crew that was going to shoot something happening there. From there I found the ruins of a Roman crypt being excavated. After that I wandered around without purpose to kill the time. About 20 minutes before 10 I decided to just get near the entrance and wait. People started to line up so I did as well. When the doors opened I bought the ticket, had to screen security and headed to the royal apartments first. I really must have moved quick. I think the few people ahead of me must have stopped right away in the gift/book shop. I managed to get more than half way through the apartments being the only non-security person I saw. Finally folks moving through at a quicker clip did catch up to me but I was happy to be in a royal palace and mostly uninterrupted for as long as I was. Unfortunately they had a no pictures indoors policy so I had to buy the book for that. They were fairly nice estate rooms most of which had been set up the way they are in the 18th century with some done in the 20th century. In any event I quite enjoyed the royal apartments and moved through them at a reasonably slow pace to look at everything. From there I moved on to the temporary exhibit of their clocks collection. I had noticed that some of the clock pieces referenced were missing and this turned out to be why. Apparently some of the former Spanish royalty had a huge interest in clocks so they collected a lot, especially from England and France.  It was a cool exhibit which might have been nicer if the clocks that had animations were displaying them. There was a movie that did so though. After the clock exhibit I went to the royal pharmacy followed by the royal armory. The armory was mainly a collection of armor owned and possibly worn by the Spanish kings.  It was nice but of course it was small, or smaller than many other collections I've seen. It took more than a couple hours to get through everything.

After the palace I headed up Calle Mayor and found the Plaza Mayor. I ended up eating a quick lunch at the McDonald's there mainly because I couldn't see any lunch places that had seats otherwise. There were a lot of people just sitting and drinking coffee at a lot of the cafes around. In any event I had the McNuggets meal with a coke and was out the door quick. After the plaza I headed up toward the Parque de Madrid and wandered around that. They had a largish boat pond and a couple other things but mainly it was a park that was just filled with people. I got a beer at a stand and watched the boat pond for a while then headed on to see the Palacio de Velazquez which turned out to be nothing but a museum with an exhibition for some awful looking paintings from some artist I haven't heard of. I of course am not good with art and maybe, probably, others think it looks good. In any event, I didn't go in. After that I found the Palacio de Cristal but that was closed for renovations it appeared. There was a lot of heavy machinery inside it anyway. There was a smaller pond outside it though and that had a fountain and a fake waterfall. It also had water fowl of various sorts and a bunch of turtles too which was unexpected. After that I just wandered the perimeter of the park and eventually because I couldn't find public toilets and it was getting urgent I headed in to the hotel, perhaps a bit earlier than I had intended. The weather remained beautiful all day though. I had basically done a giant loop around the older part of the city so far as I can tell. It really wasn't difficult to figure out at all. Since it was early I chose basically to make it just a pit stop and drop off the stuff  I had bought to lighten the load. From there I headed back out to see the Plaza de Espana in better light.

The crowds were already beginning to pick up but I did a quick run down to the Plaza and took a few pictures then headed on to Calle Mayor again. On the way I found a place for helados and had a dulce de leche ice cream which was good. From the plaza I worked my way back towards the hotel and then spent a couple hours watching another Japanese movie called Tajomaru which wasn't quite as interesting as Machine Girl though it was about samurai. After the movie I headed downstairs, booked a tour for El Escorial and then headed back to the Plaza Mayor (or perhaps the Plaza Santa Cruz depending on how bad I read maps) and found dinner sitting outside at a restaurant called Helgar. I had a set menu which started by my choice with a fish and seafood soup that was tasty but most of the fish in it (especially the shellfish) was extremely chewy.  The main course was a grilled Dorada which is a whitefish around here I guess. It was very good and fresh but there were a couple spots that weren't properly cooked. Being a sushi eater it wasn't a big issue for me but I should bring it up. I had two large Cruzcampo beers (it was my birthday after all) and finished with an espresso included in the menu. All in all it was a decent meal. Not bad for a totally tourist place anyway. Maybe a touch more expensive than it need to be. The beers were really too expensive comparatively to what I have been paying. The price of finding a tourist place which is more understandable. From there I headed back into the hotel and crashed for the evening.

The pictures for day 7 are here.