Paris, France to Brussels, Belgium

We checked out of the hotel and made it to the Metro with all our luggage. Some guy helped me get my suitcase on board, which I thought was nice at the time. (FORESHADOWING!!) Danielle’s train station was the stop before mine, so we hugged goodbye and she went on her way.

When my stop came, that guy from before materialized from out of nowhere. I thought he was just carying on with the Good Samaritan bit, but that is because I am slow to catch on.

He had actually decided to turn stalker, and followed me through my subsequent metro connections all the way into the train station. Since my departure was much later than Danielle’s, I had a little over three hours to kill. When he plopped down on the bench next to me and grinned, I was more than a little creeped out. He wrote down his address and phone number and told me to come over (which was both creepy and bizarre, since clearly I was getting ready to leave on a train) but when he asked if he could take my photograph, I had had enough.

I sprang up and went to the ticket counter and exchanged my ticket for the very next train out of there. They were really nice about it and let me exchange free of charge. I knew Venkat and Anjali weren’t expecting me for another 3 hours, but by this time, I decided I’d rather wait for them in Brussels by myself rather than sit here getting photographed by this weirdo.

So, I make the next train (one leaves every hour for Brussels) and as soon as I land, I call Venkat and Anjali, who luckily were not far away. Boy was I ever glad to see them! They had found a great parking spot on the curb, and we threw my luggage inside, then walked over to the market, where I ate a… well, I forgot what it’s called, but it was surprisingly good, considering it was a naan-like bread filled with feta and honey. (Venkat’s also contained olives.)

We went to their apartment next, which is really nice, with big rooms. Anjali said I could leave my shoes in the hall and I must have made a weird face, because she quickly added, “but you don’t have to.”

“It’s not that,” I was forced to admit. “It’s that I’m wearing the same psychedelic socks I used for my Evil Clown costume last Guavaween and I didn’t want you to see them.”

We snacked on some leftovers (they have the best leftovers in the world. I would eat nothing but leftovers if my leftovers were anything like theirs.) and then set out to walk about town. I saw the Palais de Justice and a WWI/WWII monument. We walked by the atomium, the music conservatory, the Parc du Bruxelles in front of the Royal Palace, and the Eglise Notre Dame du Sablon.

I saw the Museum of Musical instruments, whose building looked so cool that I totally want to go back and explore. The Palais des Congress has a clock tower, which plays a different song every 15 minutes. I saw a lot of Tin-Tin memorabilia and comic books, as well as some for Betty Boop, although I’m not sure why she was so popular.

Brussels is known for more than beer and chocolate (and sprouts)–they are also known for eating fries witih mayo, and mussels in a pot, neither of which I sampled.

I *did* gobble up a waffle, of course, and it was topped with strawberries, bananas, and chocolate. Venkat tells me that’s tourist-style, but all the same, it was delicious.

And, in case you’ve always wondered, Brussels actually has three official city names. Brussel (Flemish), Bruxelles (French), and Brussels (English).

I also felt the golden lady from head to toe, which is supposed to bring good luck. There were a ton of people crowded around the statue, so it must work. I forgot to ask Venkat what the story is behind that, sorry.

I also saw the infamous Mannekin Pis, and Venkat took a classic photo for me. Then we stopped for drinks. Brussels has eating tables and drinking tables. (We sat at drinking tables.) You can tell the difference because drinking tables don’t come with menus. Also–at the drinking tables, at least–you are expected to pay for each round as you go.

Tags: cathedrals, food, museums, trains, travel tips

Versaille, France

I took the Metro to the train station. Here let me briefly describe the Paris Metro system. There are two networks, the numbers and the letters. The alphabet lines are more expensive, and run inter-city. The numeric lines are cheaper, and run intra-city. For some reason, the train station, like the airport, is not “in” city proper, so it took me one of each ticket to get there. (At least it was still in France, seeing how the Cincinnati, OH airport is actually in Kentucky.)

Each Metro stop is not only clearly marked, but also cleverly themed. The stop for the Louvre actually has art in glass cases in the Metro stop. (That would be stolen or spraypainted in about 5 seconds flat in the U.S.)

So, I get to the train station, wander around a bit, and come across the reservations room, where I go to buy my upcoming tickets. I wait in line for the International counter, and when I get there, what do you know–she doesn’t speak a word of English, so I had to explain everything in my pitiful French. She was very patient with me and everything worked out fine until I mentioned Budapest. “Where’s that?” she asks. “Um, Hungary?” I answer cleverly. (I had no idea how to say Hungary in French.) Nope, never heard of it, she says again, and hunts it up in her book. There it is–Budapest, “Hongrie”. “There it is!” I point, excitedly. She shrugs. “I don’t know where Hongrie is. You’ll have to buy that ticket somewhere else.”

Now. First of all, she’s a freaking travel agent for international sales. Secondly, it’s only two countries away, on the same continent. It’s not like I said Mozambique or anything. And lastly, who cares if you can find the place on the map! If it’s in the book, why can’t I get a freaking ticket?!?!

(Unfortunately, my remedial French prevented me from saying a single word of this snappy diatribe, so I smiled, said thanks anyway, and left.)

I hopped on the Metro for Line Yellow C (alphabet=out of city, remember?) and headed for Versaille. It was pretty easy to get there, but the doors to the train opened way before the train actually stopped. I cowered back in horror as people jumped out the doorway anyway, having to hit the ground in a stumble/run so as not to fall face-first to the ground. I was the last person off the train since I (very uncool-ly) waited for it to stop before disembarking. (Years of themeparking has brainwashed me. I cannot exit until the train has come to a full and complete stop.)

Versaille was beautiful, but very expensive. Each room in the palace cost 8-12 Euros to enter, and although there was a day pass I could have purchased, I didn’t, and contented myself with wandering around the outside. The gardens were pay-to-enter, too, although you can walk along the perimeter without a ticket.

The bathrooms, though, were the last straw because they were *also* pay-per-use!

When I left the palace grounds, McDonald’s was a welcome sight for the first time since outgrowing happy meals. No matter where I am in the world, the golden arches only mean one thing to me–public restrooms.

Also, this was the first time I tried to use my cell phone outside of Spain… And calls didn’t go through. I tried Florida, I tried Brussels… nothing.

At this point, it’s safe to say I was less than pleased. The store swore to me it would work in any European country. And sure, it does… if by “work” you mean that the power button turns the screen on.

To save you the suspense, I was only able to use the phone in one other country–Belgium. And that was only for in-country calls to Brussels from Brussels. No, I don’t get it either.

Tags: castles & palaces, technology, trains, travel tips

El Escorial, Spain

This morning after breakfast I boarded the bus for El Escorial. I saw the oldest theater in Spain and the Monasterio de San Lorenzo. Here’s the quick and dirty regarding the monastery. Felipe II married his cousin, his aunt, his son’s girlfriend, and then his niece. (Sequentially, not all at once.) When the last of these died, he decided to build a monastery – a “palace for god and a cottage for me.” It took 21 years to build, which is lightning fast. How did he accomplish such a feat? It’s all about the money. Pay increased or decreased depending on how quickly or how slow construction progressed, and nobody got any money at all until the whole thing was completed. (Talk about your incentive program!)

The monastery has statues of the kings of the Old Testament. It also has a statue of Christ on the cross, which they had to “dress” with a piece of cloth, because he was sculpted naked and apparently women flocked to stare, rather than attend service.

Felipe II had a traveling chair because of his gout. A traveling chair is a contraption where he gets carried by inserting two poles through a set of holes and then hefted up on (someone else’s) shoulders. He could also put up the top and sides if it were cold or sunny.

His son died at age 31 with a record 16 girlfriends. He was the first playboy of Spain, and on whom the infamous Don Juan is probably based. (In case you didn’t know, it was social suicide for a woman to be with don Juan or any man, because the second you were no longer a virgin, you were “ruined” and would never marry.)

The mausoleum is called the Royal Pantheon and has kings on one side and queens on the other, except for one queen on the man side because she was very kingly, and one king on the female side because he was very… queenly.

There are large paintings of bible stories on the walls because most text was written in Latin and the average person could not read.

Next, we visited the Valley of the Fallen, which was very impressive. It is a huge monument carved out of rock by Franco’s prisoners to commemorate all those who died in the fierce, bloody – and recent – civil war.

Tonight I went to the train station and hopped aboard the night train with service to Portugal! Tomorrow is a free day from school, and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to visit Lisbon.

The night train had four bunks, two on each side. I roomed with a grandmother, mother, and daughter from Portugal, all of whom were very nice and full of useful tips.

Tags: cathedrals, random facts & history, theatre & shows, trains

Málaga, Spain & Torremolinos, Spain

My first views of Spain were of deserts and mountains. Málaga is a city on the coast, with desert, mountains, and beach. We are in a hotel (Hotel Parasol) in Torremolinos, on the beach, just outside of Málaga.

Class began today, and the first adventure was the textbook. Apparently, the professor had told Elvira (the coordinator) that we should buy our books ahead of time and bring them with us. She, however, did not tell us the names of them, and said we should just get them when we got to Málaga. Naturally, they did not have them in Málaga. So, we had to make Xerox copies of the entire textbook. This is not only unwieldy, but also super-costly, so we only made two copies and are sharing them between us, which is a hassle, but what do you do.

Before I forget, let me tell you about the elevators in the hotel. Yes! Actual elevators! But before you get too excited, let me clarify. These elevators are phone booth sized, and go in order of which button was pressed first, not in numeric/spatial order. So, if you are on floor one and call the elevator and before you press floor three, someone on floor 10 calls the elevator, guess where you’re going. Yep, from 1 to 10 to 3. (And if he pressed 8, he goes from 10 to 3 to 8.) And so on.

I ended up rooming with Ula, and we got up around 7:15 this morning and headed downstairs for breakfast at 8 before class at 8:30. Unfortunately, the 8:00 breakfast didn’t start until around 8:15 (I guess we’re on Spanish time) and we were worried about being late to class. The professor rolled in to the classroom a good 10 minutes after we did (he’s from Spain, so I guess he’s *really* on Spanish time) so it wasn’t a problem after all.

After class, Ula and I took the cercanías (local metro-style train) to downtown Málaga so I could reserve my train seats for my post-semester travels. As Murphy prophesized, this did not go down as planned.

First of all, I was transferred from cashier to cashier until someone could help at all. Next, they said they could only reserve tickets to/from Spain, so only 3 out of 20 tickets were reserved. Next, the fee for those 3 reservations was $170. Yikes! Finally, after all this, they don’t take credit cards, so I had to dash to the ATM in order to complete the transaction.

After this adventure, we went and got ice cream and cappucinos at an outdoor cafe. Ordering the cappucino was a little bizarre, because the waitress asked, “With or without milk?” Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought a cappucino was an espresso with milk. So if I got it *without* milk, it wouldn’t be a cappucino anymore, it would be an espresso, right? Maybe it’s different here. In any case, I smiled and said, “With, please” and dug into my ice cream, which may very well be the best ice cream I’ve had in my life. I ordered caramel, and it actually came with lots of tiny cubes of real caramel embedded in caramel ice cream! (Not the goopy processed “carmel-flavored syrup” in your average US cone.) Way yum.

After this nutritious and delicious lunch, we wandered around downtown for a bit, then got on the return train. At one stop, a woman got on with her daughter, intending to go to downtown Málaga. I told her that she had gotten on the wrong train, as this one was heading *away* from Málaga. She thanked me profusely and got off at the next stop. It wasn’t until the following stop when we realized that *our* stop was the one where the woman had gotten on, and we missed it because we were being helpful. So, we got off at the *next* stop, only to find out that the return train had just passed, and it would be another half hour until the next one. We decided to hoof it back, which turned out to be an exceptionally bad idea. Our plan was to walk to the beach and follow the coast back to the hotel, but none of the twisty residential streets seemed to lead to the beach, and anyone we asked for directions just said, “Wow! You’re really far away!”

An hour and a half later, (yes, we should have just waited for the next train), we finally catch sight of our hotel, just in time for the last 10 minutes of dinner. I had gazpacho for the first time (cold veggie soup) which turned out to be pretty good!

After dinner, Ula and I went to the beach, where I waded in the water of the Meditteranean Sea and saw lots of breasts. (Yes, breasts.) Spain is apparenttly very clothing-optional, because when we were at the outdoor cafe tables, the woman next to us spontaneously began to breastfeed her baby. As for the hotel pool, all I’ll say is that I saw a man with an extremely sunburned rear end.

Tags: food, lost, lost in translation, trains, travel tips