El Camino

If anyone is still reading, I'm still alive. (Well, I'm still alive even if you're not reading. Whatever.) It's Day 8 of my walk across Spain--we've come almost 200k so far and have about 550 to go. My feet are sore and a little blistered but they haven't mutinied yet.

Today we stopped after only about 20k because it was starting to rain. That makes us sound horribly wimpy--we can walk in the rain. Stopping was really more about doing laundry, which maybe makes us sound wimpier, I dunno. Bad pilgrims. Anyway, I'm writing this from a laundromat/internet cafe and listening to some Brazilian pilgrims trying to figure out the washing machines.

Here's what it's like. All the towns on the route have albergues, which are like hostels only with even fewer comforts. Some have all the beds in one room, other have a few different rooms. Bunk beds, most have sheets and pillows but no blankets. You're supposed to bring a sleeping bag but my friend and I, the most half-assed pilgrims ever, decided sleeping bags were too heavy so we have to scrounge. We at least haven't had to sleep in a chicken coop yet, like the two slightly hapless Brazilians we met the first night did. Anyway, you usually have to be in by 10pm. This may well be my least favorite part of the camino--it doesn't matter how tired I am, I pretty much can't go to sleep at 10pm. Whatever. I wake up between 6 and 7 because by then other people are up and being loud. Change clothes, brush teeth, find coffee and protein. Finding coffee and protein that early in Spain is hard but we've done okay so far. Walk. Walk. Fruit break. Walk. Walk. Lunch. Walk. Coffee. Walk. Find albergue, shower, sit, eat. Drink. Drink. Drink. (Not really, but there is this crazy old Italian guy who calls me (in Italian) the old drunk.) Sleep. Repeat.

We started in Roncesvalles, in Navarra just on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. Went all the way through Navarra and are now going through La Rioja. Lots of grapes. Lots of big dramatic scenery--mountains, big fields, open blue sky. Lots of interesting people. Names seem sort of irrelevant and I'm bad with them anyway, so people have names like the Italian, the chicos, old and young Bob Marley, the guys who like churches, the bus drivers. Lots of languages--most people speak English but not everyone. I've managed to have a few broken conversations in both Italian and Portuguese, and am getting lots of Spanish practice as well. I've already had three arguments in Spanish about the fact that Catalan is a separate language and not a dialect of Spanish--the conversation is frustrating as hell but I also kinda like it because I'm getting good at having it in Spanish.

Last night the bus drivers gave me a forty (yeah, as in forty ounces of bad beer) and I sat on a curb drinking it and smoking. How is this purifying me again? Wherever I go, there I am....

What the fuck was I thinking?

Tomorrow I'm gonna wake up at 6am to take a bus to Pamplona. Then I'm gonna take another bus to Roncesvalles, just on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. And then I'm gonna walk to Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia. That's 750km. It's a religious pilgrimage called the Camino de Santiago. I'm not looking for god, just adventures and cheap travel and muscle tone. We'll see what I find. It seemed like a good idea back when it wasn't gonna happen for a few months.

I dunno what's gonna become of the blog, exactly. I'll try to at least make occasional "I'm still alive" posts. Wish me luck!

I am the eggplant

Okay. This afternoon it finally stopped raining and the sun came out. I take back the mean things said to myself about Santander. I do think the people here are particularly unfriendly, but whatever. (Dear waiter from this morning: Yeah, I ordered a second piece of toast and a cup of coffee. It was pouring rain and there was nothing else to do but eat more. Fuck you and your raised eyebrow.)

Santander is mostly on the bottom of this peninsula that's surrounded by a bay to the south and the ocean to the north. On a map it looks like a short walk to the ocean part of the peninsula. It's not. Its a very long walk. But it was exactly what I felt like doing today. The sun came out just in time. I threw away my umbrella. (I imagined myself very dramatically throwing it into the ocean, but that would be littering.) It was beautiful. Part cliffs, part beach, waves, surfers. At the end of the peninsula is a little pool with walruses, of all things.

So. This is it for this part of the trip--nine hours on a bus tomorrow and I'm back in Barcelona. No real deep reflections on the trip, at least not yet. They'll go in the book. (Promise you'll read the book if I ever write it, even though you'll already know what happens. I'll add some new stuff. Or I'll just make shit up.)

Sixty feet under

Fucking hell I had forgotten how much I hate rain. It's been raining for days but I mostly managed to stay out of it. In Cangas de Onís it thunderstormed, which was at least interesting. This morning there was a rainbow. I'm trying to be positive. But then my feet got soaked and my umbrella inverted and that sucks so fucking bad. Grrr.

Anyway. There are these caves with prehistoric paintings outside of Santander. Seemed like a good thing to do on a rainy day, since caves have rooves. But the caves are 1.5k from the bus stop, uphill, in the rain. Stop whining.

The cave (there are allegedly four, but you could only visit one) was very impressive. They let you go about 20m down and it's all dark and spooky and puddle-y and full of stalacmites and stalactites. And the oldest of the paintings is thirty thousand years old. Wow. Painting is kind of a strong word; it's an outline made by blowing crushed oxidated iron against a hand placed flat on the wall. So the ancients found a use for rust. You know the turkeys that kids draw by outlining their hands? It looked like that, but with no beak. The "newer" ones (only fifteen thousand years old) were actually paintings, of horses and deer and bison, and better than anything I could paint. Excavation of the cave started in the early 1900's and was originally funded by the prince of Monaco.

Thirty thousand years; that kinda makes my head spin. I'm not sure how they date things made of iron, and my Spanish skills don't really support that kind of conversation. Maybe the rust had some carbon in it, I dunno.

I meant to wear sneakers to the cave, but then I forgot and showed up in my flip-flops, which are on their very last legs and have no traction. Not exactly caveworthy, and there was even a warning at the entrance about wearing appropriate shoes. So I was a little worried. But fear not, this is Spain, where even my most ridiculous shoes are borderline practical. The flip-flops were fine.

The best train ride ever

I'm sure that's not really true. It wasn't even a nice train, and it was all rattle-y and stopped about every three minutes and kept blowing its horn really loudly. But it was beautiful. Heading east, mostly through the mountains following a little river and sometimes cutting north to the coast. They call the north coast of Spain the costa verde (green coast) and it is so pretty. I won't bore you with ramble-y landscape descriptions, but I'm a sucker for ocean and mountains together and, if not the best ever, it was the best train ride I've ever been on.

The train stopped in Santander, the last stop on this leg of wandering around Iberia. On Sunday I'm back to Barcelona and then off to start the Camino de Santiago. All I really wanted to do today was walk on the beach, but it rained. Again. I think I've seen more rain in the past three days than I had in the previous three months. So I went to the art museum. Free museums are so great.

I'm not sick of art museums yet, but I don't always have much left to say about them. But this one did have this weird abstract piece, this amorphous sculpture (I think it was called The Blob) with a face projected onto it, repeating a very muffled monologue. But it wasn't really a face because it had no nose and the eyes slanted up at 45-degree angles. It was strange looking. The fun part was that almost the whole time I was there, the museum employees were laughing uncontrollably at it. Nice change from the typical stern, bored, frowning museum guards.

My name is Samantha, and I'm not an alcoholic

The Picos de Europa are a little mountain range in eastern Asturias (pico means beak, and also peak) that I would like to be hiking through but I don't really have time and I'll be doing plenty of hiking very soon. I'm pretty sure Congas de Onís is not one of the highlights of the Picos, but it worked for me because it's easy to get to. It feels touristy even in September and you need a car to get to the good hikes. But still, it's in the mountains and I took a nice long walk by the Rio Sellas, passing little farms with cute houses and horses and cows and sheep.

So, cider (sidra, en español). The restraint that Spanish people show towards alcohol amazes me. A Spanish person will go into a bar, order a beer, drink half of it, and then leave. It's partly a cost thing, I guess: Alcohol is cheap here. (Beer is often cheaper than water or soda.) But it's also a cultural thing. I really don't think I have a drinking problem. But where I come from, if you've paid for alcohol, you drink it. If you're given alcohol you pretty much drink it. To do otherwise is alcohol abuse. I don't even think that's funny, but it's ingrained.

One of my favorite memories from living in Spain was going to a Basque cider house outside of San Sebastián back in April. My current trip through Asturias has been almost nothing like that Basque adventure, but I have drunk a lot of cider. They make it here (there are apple trees all over Asturias), it's really popular, it's really good, and I've had it for lunch and dinner every day that I've been here in Asturias. Which is where the restraint thing comes in (or doesn't, I guess). When you order cider here they bring you a whole big bottle, about the size of a bottle of wine. Cider has less alcohol than wine, but more than beer, and a whole big bottle is more than I need, especially in the middle of the afternoon. But once they put the open bottle on the table, well... I've been drinking a lot of cider. Is it possible that it's good for me? It is made with apples....

Oh, and I'm on a quest. It's good to have goals, and one of my current ones is to like blue cheese. People who like blue cheese really like blue cheese. It brings them joy, and I feel a little left out. I wanna feel the joy, too. But it's not working. When I eat blue cheese it still tastes like feet.

I'm sorry, what was your name again?

The Oviedo art museum has a room full of El Grecos. Twelve, to be exact--the twelve apostles. Each has the apostle's name painted on top, but I guess the Greek was confused or something, because next to the painting labeled San Mateo is a sign saying the painting was mislabeled and it's really San Felipe. And the one labeled San Felipe is really San Mateo. San Bartolomeo and someone else are similarly mislabeled, but there was no more information than that given. Seems like a strange mistake to have made, and I wonder how anyone noticed it; the paintings didn't seem to include a lot of identifying features. Maybe if I knew my apostles better it would be obvious.

I was a little skeptical about Oviedo. For no good reason whatsoever, but doesn't Oviedo just sound like someplace that might not be nice? Turns out it's lovely, and Asturian boy (his name might have been Jordi, but then maybe that was his friend's name) is two-for-two.

It's not that different from most other medium-sized Spanish cities, really, but it's nice. It seems exceptionally clean, and the little Spanish balconies that cover the buildings are filled with plants and flowers. There are lots of cute little squares and nice cafes. And the bus station bathrooms are well-stocked with toilet paper; that almost never happens in Spain. Very likeable.

So real

People from Asturias love Asturias. (Asturias is a little autonomous region on the north coast, just east of Galicia.) I met an Asturian guy a while back and he made me a whole list of places here that I have to see; I'm trying to get to as many as I can in a few days. Stop number one was Luarca, a little fishing village that speaks directly to my obsession with authenticity. The port is tiny and filled with little brightly-colored fishing boats and a tired-looking orange tugboat. Old men fish off rocks and there are signs all over saying (more or less) "Be careful because we don't respond to accidents."

The land sweeps up into cliffs on both sides of the bay, making for nice views and lots of little hidden rocky cove-y beaches. On the bigger beach were a few families left over from tourist season; kids playing futbol, dads fishing, grandmotherly types sunbathing even though there was no sun. A few rogue raindrops, but mostly it was just cloudy all day, which seemed fitting.

I'm sure I'm not the only tourist here, but I like to think I am. I feel like a fly on the wall in someplace real, that's not trying to sell itself or be anything other than what it is. Thank you, Asturian guy whose name I can't remember.

Volver

Picasso really got around, including geographically. He was born in Málaga, and before Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, the south of France, and I forget where else, he lived in Galicia in A Coruña. I didn't really mean to come to A Coruña; I didn't want to come to Galicia at all until I walk here next month on the Camino de Santiago. But to get from northern Portugal to Spain by bus or train, the options are Galicia or Madrid. I sure as hell wasn't going to Madrid, so I opted for A Coruña because it's on the water and you'd think there would be Picasso stuff here since he lived here. There is a little museum in the house where his family lived, but visits are by appointment only and never on Sunday. Joder. But it was okay. A Coruña juts into the water in all directions and it was warm and sunny so I walked and walked and walked.

I like ports; I think they're beautiful and romantic in a way that most other industrial sites can't pull off. After the boats and cranes and containers, the Coruñan coast gets all rugged and rocky and green and kinda looks like Ireland, except for the naked guy sunning himself on a rock and the fact that the sun was even shining. Then it gets beachy. It's not the nicest beach, but there are pieces of something in the sand that make it look full of diamonds the way some sidewalks do, and sun shinking on water always looks nice. Walking on the beach I accidentally went too deep and got my pants all wet, but it was okay. I have to be pretty content to not mind wearing wet jeans.

It's nice to feel like I (kind of) speak the right language again, although I accidentally asked for cerveja (Portuguese) instead of cerveza (Spanish) when ordering a beer, and I keep catching myself wanting to say obrigada instead of gracias for thank you. I learned the important Portuguese words, anyway. And Galicia is in Spain, so they speak another language in addition to Castilian Spanish. Gallego is a lot like Portuguese, so maybe my mistakes will just make me blend in.

Think crazy thoughts

My last full day in Portugal didn't go exactly as planned. Patricio said I should go to Braga and Guimarães, and that I could see them both in a single day. So I got up earlyand was gonna do that, but when I got to the station the next train to Guimarães wasn't leaving for two hours, which wouldn't leave me much time there and at that point I didn't really even know where I was sleeping tonight but was planning on Braga, so I blew off Guimarães. Blew it off entirely, because I already bought a bus ticket to go back to Spain tomorrow. So I'll just have to come back to Portugal.

In Braga I met Armando, Ricardo, and Paula. I usually like the people I meet when I travel, but I really liked thse guys. They're fun and goofy and argue about stupid shit just for the hell of it; they reminded me of my friends back home. They taught me some Portuguese (I've already forgotten it all, of course, but one way of referring to partying in Portuguese translates to "banging your helmet") and introduced me to some really good Portuguese beer. Good times.

The sight to see in Braga is Bom Jesus (Good Jesus): a complex of god, gardens, and fountains built into the side of a hill with a lot of steps. It's apparently a pilgrimmage site and the Lonely Planet says some people climb the steps on their knees. (I only saw people on foot.) I went to Bom Jesus with Armando, who is a semi-professional photographer. He generously brought his camera to take pictures for me, and then very nicely told me that I suck at modeling. So there goes that life backup plan.

O Porto

In Porto, I'm staying with Patricio, the most metrosexual straight man ever (and in Europe that's saying a lot). In his bathroom are no fewer than five different kinds of hair product. He has really nice crystal. He cleans. I've somehow found the only vegetarian in Portugal, but he cooks. Really well. He might be perfect, except that it's hard not to get a little self-conscious. He dresses better than I do, and smells better than I do, and has better hair than I do and, well, he's just prettier than I am. All this recent ego-bruising has to be good for me. I'm just gonna keep telling myself that.

Anyway, Porto. Northern Portugal, on the Duoro river (Duero en español, as in ribera del duero), home of Port wine. Well, not exactly--the grapes are grown farther east in the Duoro valley and the wine is aged just across the river from Porto in Gaia. Porto has a port wine museum, but there's no port wine at the port wine museum. I felt robbed. But, most of the wine caves in Gaia have free tours and tastings. And it tastes really good. I love port wine. They stop the fermentation process early by adding brandy, which makes it both sweeter and more alcoholic than regular wine. Port wine production got big in the late 1700's, and a lot of the companies were started by British people, so the wineries have names like Croft, Sandeman, Offley. Blah, blah blah.

The riverfront in Porto is touristy, but walk away from the river and it gets authentic and gritty pretty quickly. Lots of clotheslines, lots of cats and dogs, old ladies in housecoats, barely dressed little kids running around.

I've been kind of a bad tourist in Porto. I've been sleeping in and having long lunches and not seeing all the sights. I went to the contemporary art museum, which is nice in that scratch-your-head kind of way and has a really nice garden. And there's a photography museum, housed in the former appeals court/jail. Portuguese criminals used to be sent to Africa, but the ones with money could pay to stay in Portuguese jails. Those payments helped fund the construction of the jail/court, and now that it's a museum one of the main exhibitions is of photographs of Africa. It all comes together.

And they eat these awful sandwiches here. They don't taste bad, they just are bad. They couldn't be more debaucherous even if they were covered in chocolate. Take a hamburger, and then add ham, salami, and sausage. Then cover the whole thing in melted cheese--a lot of melted cheese--and then cover all that in hot sauce. It's called a francesinha, which I think technically means "little French girl." Whatever. Maybe the single unhealthiest thing I've ever eaten but, fear not, I had it with a Coca Cola Light.

Out of the woods

It was Sunday afternoon and I was sitting in one of those white plastic chairs outside at a bar drinking a Coke (Coca-Cola Light, whatever) from a glass bottle. The radio was playing. It felt very 1950's. Then a group of maybe 30 people started doing this traditional-looking dance in a little gazebo next door. While Coldplay and then Queen on the radio mixed with the traditional-sounding music from the gazebo, I was having all these thoughts about American culture taking over and wondering what Portuguese pop music would sound like if not for American influence. Then I remembered that Coldplay and Queen are both British. Nevermind.

Luso is on the edge of the Buçaco Forest, and I came here to go hiking. But the forest is a lot smaller than I was expecting. I was able to see most of it in about three hours, which left a lot of time for sitting in plastic chairs drinking Coca-Cola Light, which was okay with me. Luso only has about 2000 people, so there's not a lot to do outside the forest. I went to the community pool, and ate grilled cuttlefish (I love cuttlefish), and read the Economist. It was nice. While I was sitting in the plastic chair with the Coca-Cola Light I met his old guy who, when he realized I don't speak Portuguese, decided I was French. He kept calling me Madamoiselle. Aside from the typical ?How old are you? and ?Are you married?, I couldn't understand most of what he was saying. His nephew, who kept apologizing, spoke some Spanish and was kind of translating. The old guy wanted to know where my parents were, and where was I staying, and he knows the woman who runs my hotel. He bought me a Coke. It was very cute. And when I left, he made me say good-bye in French.

Old Europe

Sometimes I pretend I'm a photographer. I go around getting excited about light and finding random things beautiful. Pretend jobs are fun like that. And I really think the sun is brighter here in Portugal. Is that possible? It shines every day and turns everything it touches beautiful. Really.

Coimbra (smallish city in central Portugal) is a pretty good representation of my idealized Europe. It has the narrow streets and the cobblestone and the churches and the cafes, but it's not all overdone and touristy like so many quaint European cities are. Maybe it's because I arrived in the evening, with the sky glowing and the moon just out, and wandered aimlessly for a while. The old stone buildings look really nice in that kind of light and the streets were full of people. Outdoor cafes and people calling down from balconies to people on the streets. It's just so charming.

There are big open squares here and old stately buildings, slightly obscured by tangles of wires (bus, train, electric, I dunno). And it's just a little bit gritty. The streets are so narrow and winding that some feel more like dark alleys and you wonder who might be lurking around the corner. The buildings are old and a lot aren't in great shape. They look old, but in a Clint Eastwood kind of way: They're experienced; they have character. It's just perfect.

My first full day in Coimbra started out cold and cloudy, but with this fog that made everything look like an impressionist painting. There were people pushing old rickety carts of fruit through the streets to sell outside. How can you not be a sucker for shit like that? And then the sun came out.

Coimbra is home to one of the oldest universities in Europe--it dates back to the twelfth century I think and, in addition to being a university, is also a tourist attraction that you can pay to visit. "Fuck that," I thought, "I've seen European universities--I even worked in one." Then I remembered that the university where I worked is all of about twenty years old and decided this one might be worth shelling out a few euros for. And it was. There's this preserved fifteenth century library with Oriental rugs and beautiful wood furniture and old books stacked up to the ceiling. I've gotten nothing done in some pretty nice libraries in my time, but nothing like this. (I bet it doesn't have wireless, though.) And the university used to have a prison, so that university-related convicts didn't have to live with the common criminals.

And I saw more fado, in a dark smoky bar where old guys were passing guitars around and taking beer breaks. And I had dinner outside in the most tucked-away square ever. And when I left it was on a train, not a bus. Perfect.

Lost in a forest

Sintra is must-see. It really is. But it pissed me off. First things first: former royal family retreat, an hour away from Lisbon, mountains, castles, palaces.

The Palacio Pena, the really big one, is inside the Parque Pena. I.e., it's in the middle of the woods. The guy at the tourist office told me to go there first because it gets crowded. He told me exactly how to get there and it sounded easy but, with my bad memory and one of the worst tourist maps ever, I went right when I should have gone left and walked waaaay out of the way, finally entering the park through a back entrance. Which should have been fine. The park isn't that big and I had a map. The worst map ever. Most of what was on the map didn't seem to exist in the park, and most of the landmarks in the park weren't on the map. And there was no scale or compass (trust me, north is not always at the top of southern European tourist maps). I thought I was okay because there were signs pointing to the palace. But then the third sign was in between two paths and the pointy part of the arrow had worn off so you couldn't tell which way to go. I ended up trying both (both uphill of course, because that's where castles are--on top of hills) and neither worked.

This story is getting way too long. It was infuriating. I was lost in the woods. I was talking to myself to remain calm. I finally found someone to ask for directions, understood when they were given in Portuguese, found the palace, and calmed down. The views were slightly hidden by the first real clouds I've seen in Portugal, but the whole thing was still pretty impressive. Nice art, nice Portuguese tiles in most of the rooms, even nice bathrooms. And it is pretty cool that it's hidden in the middle of the woods (now that I've stopped hating the woods). Like an enchanted forest. Back in the center of Sintra is the National Palace. Also very nice with more Portuguese tiles, which are one of my new favorite things.

But the real highlight of Sintra was this cat I met. In Spain and Portugal both, you see cats everywhere; you'd think they'd be used to people, but they're usually really skittish. Which is why I was so excited for this little white cat with one blue eye and one green eye. He was so friendly. He rubbed up against my foot and when I pet him he fell down and he was purring and he was playing.... It really doesn't take much with me.