Last Days In Spain

You are looking at the accomplishment of a man who is confined to his beach house during a two day STORM. It may not look like a major work to you, but to him, it is a highlight of the day! We also put some miles on the cards with ¨Poorman´s Crib¨, which I´m sure you´ll love.

After cards, there´s supper and a movie. Yes, I know, our adventures are crrrrazy! For supper, we (and when I say ´we´, I mean ´mostly Kelsey´) managed to make a delicious lasagna in our propane horno (Spanish for oven). My contribution was the garlic toast, which was also quite tasty, if I do say so myself.




After supper, we often have been watching movies on our little portable dvd player, which we love. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to pack sometimes, especially when we are packing MINIMAL underwear, but we´re pretty sure that stinky gitch is a worthy price to pay for having the comfort of an English language movie to sooth a travel worn mind. We should really have a picture of the movie player. PS, we´ve been either very fortunate or resourceful when it comes to laundry, and our gitch do not stink, badly.

Last night after the movie (Cinderella Man and all the special features) we walked back to the beach to see what the storm was conjuring in the surf:


Today, however, the storm has cleared, and so we went up on to the roof terrace of our house to warm up and air out. The beach, unfortunately, is covered in washed up garbage and debris from the storm.



2 days till we leave for France. Stay tuned.

Ty

Wavy day on the Mediterranian

Here is our Thanksgiving dinner. It was as close to turkey with all the trimmings as we could find and afford. It was delicious and soothed our need, slightly, for good Canadian Thanksgiving with all the trimmings.



Yesterday was another gorgeous day by the beach and Ty and I are trying to soak up as much sun and sand as we can before we head to France on Monday.


Today is a different story. Last night around 1:30am our entire house shook and our windows were flapping in the wind, our patio furniture was blowing around, and our door chains were smashing against the door. (Our door chains are these long decorative chainlinks that hang in the doorways of our little house like hippie beads.) So, we sprang into action and brought in the clothes off the line and the chairs off the roof terrace, so they weren´t launched at the restaurant across the street. Needless to say, a storm blew in. This morning in our attempt to continue soaking up the beach we headed straight for the water. This is what we found:


The sea seems so powerful to me. It always seems like it is secretly churning ready to release its´energy at any moment, quietly waiting. Then one day it attacks! The waves are HUGE, the spray is refreshing and cutting at the same time. As we walked out onto the marina and the waves reached for the rocks crushing everything in its´path, we felt small and wet! It was wonderful! Tyrn wants to go wake boarding and still holds to the dream that Kelsey will let him, but the water seems too powerful to take on today.
We are in our little beach house for another 4 days and then we head to France.

This is a picture of Tyrn winning the game of Solitaire called 4 Kings. But it is blog worthy because Ty wanted to tell everyone that once we are tired of watching Spanish T.V. and talking to each other, we have been trying to create new card games. He has created a game called ¨Poorman´s Crib¨. It is a travellers version of crib without having to carry the board around with you. He is very excited and can´t wait to see each one of you to teach you his new ingenious game!

K

French Rail and a Funny Story

We just got news that rail workers in France are set to go on strike on Oct. 18, which is right around the time we planned to arrive. I read that it´s a kind of a test of Sarkovsky´s government from the French labour force. It also has some history/politics to do with government controlled pensions. This could cause us some inconvenience.

So, on another note, here´s a funny story. I´m sorry we don´t have any photos to go along with it, so use your imagination:

First, before we begin, let us remind you that almost nobody speaks English in Spain. Kelsey and I have begun speaking in pre-toddler phrases, usually accompanied with some charades type acting. We say things like ¨How many coins¨? and rub our thumbs against our fingers in the international gesture for money, because ¨How much does this cost?¨is just out of the question.
So, we found a largish bookstore downtown Madrid, where we were checking for a travel book with some info on other parts of Spain, when an English woman next to us approaches the sales clerk.
English Woman: Excuse me Miss. Have you any titles regarding live theatre?
Clerk: (looks confused)
EW: THEATRE? CINEMA?
Clerk: (holding hands up and shaking her head) No comprende Inglesia
EW: SURREALISM OF THE THIRTIES (Speaking loud now, clearly exasperated at the obtuseness of the sales clerk)
Clerk: (repeats motions, and says apologetically:) No habla Inglesia
EW: Grassy Ass! (and storms off)

Seeing things like this make us feel like very wisened young travellers.

Wish us luck with the French rail situation!

Ty

A new home in Oliva

After 5 fun filled nights at the youth hostel in Piles, we decided to find slightly better digs. The youth hostel was great, especially the price, but it was noisy and it was difficult to get to a grocery store or internet from there, so we walked half an hour down the beach to Oliva, where we are renting a house for 8 nights. Here´s us moving, sans U-Haul!



Once set up in Oliva, we walked the long 30 seconds to the beach so that we could do things like this:
Kelsey, ¨Reaching for the sky¨

Tyrn, attacking the waves. These boards were in the house.


We´ll tell you all about our house and some funny stories next time.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Beach Combing

One day as we were winding our way between the crowd in Madrid, nourishing our tired legs and backs from moving places again we had an EPIPHANY! We decided that traveling from place to place was wearing us thin and so we aren´t enjoying places as much as we should. So we decided that staying in one place for 2 weeks or so is much more our style. Once we had this revelation our lives seemed so wonderful and simple. So, here we are on a search for a beach paradise on the Eastern coast of Spain looking for a spot to settle for awhile. We were headed to Sevilla, Granada, Malaga, Gibraltar, etc on our way up to Barcelona. But we cut all that out and have set our sights on the Balearian Islands in the Mediterranian.
Getting here was a challenge. First, we aren´t sure if we need to make a reservation for the train, after waiting in lines and customer services we finally have a reservation. BUT, our 1st class railpasses that we were recommended were the best, can´t be used because of the reservation cost and so we end up in 2nd class seats. We literally had the WORST seats on the train! There was a school group, about grade 5ish, seating right in front of us. 3.5 hours of non-stop yelling, kicking seats, putting seats up and down, throwing things with a teacher that sat and listened to his MP3 and would shhhh them once every hour. Tyrn and my teacher heads were about to explode (especially Ty´s). Then they show a movie, but turn OFF the english subtitles, and it is an interesting looking movie to us, but not the kids, they didn´t even notice and continued to terrorize our car. FINALLY, we reach Valencia, where we jump on another train, not really sure where we will end up. But it was wonderful, we had the smell of oranges in the car from the fields of orange trees lining the track, Beethoven was playing on the trains system and mountains were lining our view. Peace at last! Then came the tricky part, going ONLY on information we saw in a bookstore in Madrid we had a name of a hostel, a bus company name and a direction- but that was IT! No address, phone number, or anything else. Somehow we were able to get on the right bus and were practically dropped on the door step of this wonderful hostel. Of absolute no cleverness of our own we somehow managed to find the right place with beds available!
Right now we are in a place called Gandia, just south of Valencia, and it is so fantastic that we are devoting the rest of this blog to bragging about the place we are in right now.
First our very cheap room, low season price, has AN OCEAN VIEW!! Our hostel is right on the beach, literally!
So this morning, we ate breakfast beside the water as the waves crashed in. Last night we walked home from the great pizzaria around the corner in a light warm rain and fell asleep to the sound of waves lapping the shore. Today we are on bicycles, that our hostel provided us for free, and we are cruising around the area. Later today we will go to the local fiesta, check out their medieval market and then take a dip in the sea.




We are hoping to either ride a ferry to Ibiza or Palma de Mallorca to spent our two weeks, OR find a nice place around here. Apparently you can rent apartments or bungalows for awhile, so we are hoping that something works out.

K & T

Ola from Espana!

This is exactly how Ty felt when we got to Madrid:

So, now that we´ve recovered from the train ride, we´ve had a chance to explore some of Madrid (aka, Mars). We´re very surprised at how few people speak any English here. Even at the international youth hostels, they speak no English. In all the countries we´ve visited in Europe and Asia, this is the hardest place to get by in without speaking the local language. And this is Madrid! We can´t imagine how it´ll be when we head out into the smaller towns. Oh well, we´re soaking up as much Spanish as we can.

We´re staying in a hostel tonight in Madrid for, get this, SEVENTEEN EUROS FOR BOTH OF US! Our cheapest room yet. We have our own room, but Ty has to go up a floor to the boys bathroom. Our room is actually on the all girls floor, but it´s not very busy so they put us together in a double room.



We bought a pirated copy of Hairspray on the street, but unfortunately it turned out to be a rip off. It was pirated from a spanish theatre, so even though the package said it was in English or Spanish, that apparently means that the songs are in English, and the rest was overdubbed in Spanish. Also, since it was just camcorded in the theatre, the sound was like a nail in our eardrums.

Some quirky things we´ve found in Madrid so far:
This translates to ¨Ham Museum¨


Mmm Mmm, Love them Doner Kebabs! Just don´t ask what they´re made of..


Pharmacies are EVERYWHERE! Like 3 on a block, and every one has a neon sign. This one has a promotion going on for ¨Lipo Panty¨. Again, afraid to ask.

This band was rockin´!

Fully recovered Kelsey:

Fully recovered Tyrn:


We plan to stay in Madrid for 2 more days and then head down south, somewhere beachy.

stay tuned,
K & T

Safe and Sound, with a little help from our friend, Gravol

We´re finally in Madrid. We took a 4 hr train ride on a high speed train from our beach paradise to Lisbon, and then a 10 hour overnight train to Madrid. We couldn´t both get reservations for the sleeper car, so Kelsey took the sleeper and Ty took the coach seat in the back. Boooo to that! It´s ok though. Yesterday Kelsey got very motion sick on the high speed train and had an episode in the bathroom sink. Nothing a couple gravol couldn´t cure. We´ve discovered that she must sit in a seat facing the direction of travel to keep from vomiting. Ty was a bit woozy too, but held down his lunch. Ty was thoughtful enough to take some pictures for prosperity:



So far we don´t have a lot to say about Madrid. We spent most of the morning looking for the best place to stay. The city centre is very nice. Ty finds Spanish easier so far than Portuguese, and already is speaking some. The weather is shockingly cooler, especially in the morning. Ty put on his touque.

Ok. Just a quicky to say we´re here and well.