R is for Raining Champagne

Travel Date: May 14, 2014
Cities: Barcelona, Figueras, and Geneva
Author: James Lloyd


Today started with an early 1.5 hour train ride to Figueras, Spain for me, Luke and Nick. I assume Kelsey did girly things like sleep in, go shopping, and prepare meals barefoot in a kitchen.

The train ride to Figueras was quite nice. Not a ton of stops and some very beautiful landscapes. At one point, we could see the ocean out the right window and snow-capped peaks of the Pyrenees out the left.

We arrived in Figueras around 11 and made our way to the Salvidor Dali museum across town.

In case you're unfamiliar, Dali was a bit of a kook, and while he's most famous for his paintings of drippy clocks and spindly-legged elephants, there were also many sketches, statues, and full-room exhibitions at this museum.

Here are some of the highlights...

After we returned to Barcelona from Figueras, we headed to the airport for our trip to our next destination - Geneva, Switzerland. We're already having problems with people speaking to us in French and us responding in shitty Spanish. I hope we can work though that...

It'll be a bit colder here, though we're all excited for picturesque landscapes, yodeling, playing those big Ricola horns, and observing cuckoo clocks.

The first evening in Geneva was more chaotic than the entire trip combined! We arrived at our hotel to find out that it was already sold out, but they were super helpful and paid for a taxi and arranged another hotel at the same rate. Once we got to our new hotel, Luke, Kelsey and I went out to find a bite to eat. It was about 11:30 pm at this point and everything appeared to be closed until we found a tiny bar that was still open. This is when the real chaos began.

There were two things that were immediately obvious: 1) The bartender/owner was plastered, and 2) the other people at the bar were two prostitutes and an old dude picking one of them up. Clearly we were up for hanging out to see what happened and oh man was it worth it...

To tell the whole story in paragraph form would take up too much of my vacation time, so here's a bulleted list of the events that occurred within the bar this evening:

• Carlos sneakily dropped shots of tequila into our beers
• The old man that was trying to pick up one of the prostitutes was very happy. Too happy in fact for someone who has not yet closed the deal, yet interested in a prostitute...
• A german banker came in and talked to Luke about soccer for quite a while.
• Carlos took a bottle of champagne from behind the bar, uncorked it, then shook it up and sprayed it all around the bar - on the ceiling, on the patrons, everywhere. This is when the german guy left. 
• Throughout the evening it was clear that Carlos was too drunk to care about service, so it turned into a self-serve bar (my favorite kind...)
• Carlos and his friend started playing soccer with a crumpled up napkin behind the bar. Almost certainly due to the previously mentioned champagne event, Carlos fell face first on the ground, and came up holding a bottle of tequila saying "It's OK!"
• Carlos also took quite a liking to Kelsey - she even got a few free roses out of it.

Q is for Quitessential, Quixotic Quonxtruction

Travel date: May 13, 2014
City: Barcelona, Spain
Bottles of wine consumed: no less than four
Author: Nick John

Ok, I made that third word up, but spending this much time around the Catalan language does that to you. Banks dispense caixa and people eat xocolate. You basically just take the spanish words you sort of know, replace any "sh" sound with an "x", and lisp your way through the rest. It's fun.

Today we toured a building constructed by architect Antoni Gaudi (who also designed the massive cathedral Sagrada Familia). This building typifies the modernista movement of architecture. The roof looks like a flowing wave of water and the chimneys are all whimsically twisted and stylized phalluses. The interiors of some of the apartments were on display, and the floor just beneath the rooftop was converted to a museum to show how the building was designed. Like his cathedral, this building is heavily influenced by elements of nature, so the interiors feel very organic and flowing. He used a series of parabolas, hyperbolas, and catenaries to construct the wavy rooftops and support the weight of , leaving the interior of the top floor feeling like the innards of some giant space creature.

Also today we toured the ancient ruins of the city at the Barcelona History Museum. We walked through the excavation of the early settlers and learned about how they made wine and garum (pressed fish entrails, a delicacy of ancient people who had yet to invent A1 to put on everything).

We finished out the night at a killer tapas restaurant called La Pepita. Nick mistranslated the name, but in the end, the little crackers-filled-with-delicious-fillings was pretty damn delightful. We also found a rival for our leading contender of "the world's best olives", and we might have had a glass or six of Rioja to accompany our dinner.

We even got to draw on the walls!

P is for Parabolic Hyperboloids

Travel Day: May 12, 2014
City: Barcelona
Author: James Lloyd

Today was our first full day in Barcelona. We started with a nice walk down La Rambla to the large food market.

Then to continue the theme of me taking pictures of Nick riding lion statues...

We then moved along to have a nice stroll along the beach until we came across a giant rope contraption with 4 sides. Perfect for the 4 of us to race to the top! 

Our walk continued around to the subway station and we got on our way to La Sagrada Familia, an amazing modern cathedral designed by Antonio Gaudi.

The shapes and design were very mathy and they had a section of museum describing the use of conic sections (ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas, etc), and simultaneously inspired by nature such as bee hives, mangrove trees, and leaf patterns. 

Bonus P item: A new discovery in Spain... You've heard of Diet Cola and Cherry Cola, but here they have...

O is for Ode to Barcelona Hipsters

Travel Date: May 11, 2014
Cities: Valencia and Barcelona
Author: Kelsey Allen

Our beach day in Valencia was splendid, starting with runs from Nick and Luke and adventures in coffee making from James and Kelsey. Goat cheese and fig salads on the beach prompted Nick to state, it was the best salad he's ever eaten. Well done Valencia. After beachy time, we drove 3.5 hours to Barcelona, dropped the car, hopped on the subway and explored the city.

Dinner and wine at our first hipster restaurant in Europe. Vegetarian, organic and choose your own alternative bread choice. It was surprisingly outstanding. Wandering around the city finished our day.

N is for New Luggage

Travel Date: May 10, 2014
Cities: Granada and Valencia
Author: Nick John

James, Kelsey and I woke up early today to check out a giant, ancient palace, the Alhambra. Thousand-year-old Moorish palaces are starting to run together, much like giant gothic churches do after visiting every city's oldest cathedral, but I gotta say, the Alhambra is pretty impressive. 

The palace is filled with elaborate geometric tesselating tilework. The ceilings are all intricately designed in seight-pointed star patterns, so many tourists spend the day with their neck craned to check out the detail (Luke was disappointed to learn there were no karate chops to the throat - THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR SLEEPING IN, KIDDO). Babbling streams of water weave their way through courtyards and fountains in marble living quarters for the resident sultans, and eventually through a swath of beautifully kept gardens overlooking all of Grenada, hedge maze and all. 

Following that, James bought a grown up's backpack to replace his 12 euro one he picked up in Lagos and was already falling apart. 

Before we left town we swung through a market and picked up a tub of what can easily be described as the worlds most delicious olives, and then made our way to Valencia. Grenada sits amongst rolling hills and in sight of a panarama of snow-capped mountains. As the terrain flattened into plains, James commented "I think this is where the rain falls mainly, in Spain." Well put. 

Our GPS guide, who we've named Sir Thomas Chesterton, seems to have been day drinking, so his guidance is becoming less reliable. Yet he remains diligent in reminding us to "Keep Left" and offers the occasional "Moo" when we pass schools and places of worship. Despite all this, we made it to our AirBNB apartment in Valencia and were greeted by a very friendly woman Monica with her boyfriend and son. Luke and I crushed some cuttlefish and a massive plate of freshly caught seafood (other people ate other things, as best I recall), and we relaxed for the evening first along the boardwalk by the beach and then in our cosy apartment. 

M is for Massive Thighs

Travel Date: May 9, 2014
Cities: Tarifa and Grenada
Author: James Lloyd

Today we left our beautiful Casa de Marcos in Tarifa, and arrived in Grenada. 

We had a nice dinner of Paella, then a frantic run across the city to a bus to our Flamenco show!

The show was great. Three featured dancers with some massive thighs and fancy footwork, then they brought out the ringer, a girl only about 10 or 12 who was the best of all of them. Music was the traditional Flamenco 6-count rhythm with some Phyrgian scale yodeling.

Afterward, when Kelsey and Nick decided to go to bed, Luke and I snuck out for a proper, euro-style rager. We found a bar around the corner from the hotel, right next an old cathedral that was just really picking up when Luke and I left at 4am...

It was a cool alternative bar scene. There was a live painting taking place when we walked in.

We then met a cool couple - the guy was from northern Wales, and his girlfriend was from Grenada. They graciously invited us to a reggae/dub step party on the other side of town. We didn't go out of interest of being slightly responsible the next day. After them we both split up to meet more locals. Luke met a Columbian Marine Biologist, and a nice gentleman from Senegal named "Bob". Meanwhile I met some French folks that weren't nearly as terrible as most others.

L is for Laroussi

Travel Date: May 8, 2014
Cities: Tarifa, Spain and Tangier, Morocco 
Author: Luke Bonney

L is for Laroussi, our bad ass guide while in Tangier. That's right, we went to Africa bitches. If I had purview to write about M I'd do that too as we were in Morocco. L is also for 'loose pockets' as our tour companion, a fellow and his wife from Ecuador, managed to spend money on some fairly useless items.

You'll notice them to the left of Nick here carrying the large bags...

Our trip started with 35 minutes on a fast fairy from Tarifa to Tangier. Upon arriving in Africa we we're detained for 30 minutes as our passports didn't get stamped. We were well on our way to the Hague in Brussels on charges of international treason before the policeman decided to stamp our way into his country. Phew.

A view from the ferry as we were leaving Tarifa...

Laroussi toured us around the city in a sweet microbus driven by his dear friend mr. Muhammad. We saw golf courses, horse stables and homes belonging to 'really important people.'


We stopped by a Berber market and had a chance to walk through a few open air markets. Both were very cool. Then came the fun.

Laroussi was obviously loved by nearly every person we walked by. I thought he was just a nice guy. Our next stop was a four story store. We we're brought up to the top floor where we met the owner of the place. He talked to us for 30 minutes regaling us the glory of hand made Berber carpets. Upon finishing his tutorial it became obvious we were expected to reward his efforts by purchasing large numbers if expensive carpets. When we didn't he wasn't happy. James quickly escaped down the back stairs to avoid confrontation.

Here's James walking beside Laroussi...

While we steadfastly stood our ground, our Ecuadorean friend didn't fair too well. It was all in Spanish so no one knows what was really said, but it appears his manhood was brought into question. It ended with his wife picking a carpet and him carrying it around for the rest of the day.

Next came lunch, including pretty damn good Moroccan cuisine, serenades from 4 old dudes, and a worn out belly dancer. 

The full crew at lunch...

We finished up and continued touring the old city. Two noteworthy events. One, there was a persistent wallet salesmen. Very good wallets, very good price. He fought a battle of attrition. While we were able to fend him off, Ecuadorean man did not. He's now the owner of a nice red leather wallet. Two, the woman who owned the carpet store where we received our Berber carpet education drove by in her black Porsche Cheyenne. Well done.

Check it off the list. L is for Luke's stellar blog posts.