London

London is alright. I arrived early Saturday morning to Heathrow Airport. Upon arriving I remembered that Heathrow probably has the least amount of security out of any airport. And by that I mean the most security. We waited in line for about 20 minutes as people checked our passports. Everyone had to fill out these little sheets stating their purpose and where they would be staying while in London. I filled in every blank expect for occupation which was about the the same size as the space for 'middle initial.' I thought, whose occupation is only one letter?

I gave the lady the slip and she asked me the usually questions. Then she said, "What do you do? You've left occupation blank." This is where I say, "Um, well it's complicated, it's like computers, but I work with the automotive compa......" and just as I was uselessly explaining myself she writes, 'IT.' Yup, IT. It's over, I am now an IT consultant. How did this happen? All of the sudden my job has broken down to being IT? Well I guess if I end up missing or become suspected of plotting some sort of terror threat, the men in charge of the case will say, "Well of course, look, this guy knows computers, let's get em boys." Of course I know nothing about computers, except how to run the programs at work.


So off into London. Our hotel was located in a nice area just north of Covent Park and Soho off Googe Street. The room wasn't ready until after 2 so I had about 3 or so hours to kill until I met up with Jake. Jake had been traveling the week past from Rome, to Barcelona and now London. His trip is pretty monstrous to say the least. I was hoping we could cool off with a couple pints in the old country eh.


Although it is true they speak English in London, the customs are still European. I went into a coffee shop in an area off Oxford Street and found myself asking for a tall coffee with my hands and pointing to cakes while speaking very basic English. It was strange because I could understand everything everyone was saying, but I have been so used to not understanding everyone's conversations that I forgot all people talk about is pretty much crap. I began to be thankful that I didn't understand everyone in all the other countries I'd been to. Sometimes I don't want to hear about what your girlfriend did at your other girlfriend's house and how you can't believe it.

So now I'm responsible for every homeless guy and lost tourist. No more looking dumbfounded when some one asked me for change.

'At's right mate, you know wat I said, don't look me like that, and ova a quid,' the bum thought.

'Damn understanding English,' I thought to myself.



So I meet up with Jake at the hotel and we walk down to the Thames. Apparently it was Veteran's Day in England and there was a fireworks ceremony over the river. We took it in. After that, we were close to the London Eye and I like to go up high in big cities and look at all there is to see. It was a slow nice ride and I took 64 pictures of Big Ben.







We walked some more across the river and into China Town and Soho. Somehow we miraculously found a restaurant off a side street that had a hip flare and healthy menu. I didn't expect to find anything in a huge city I knew nothing about and I was pleasantly surprised by this place. I had a vegetarian burrito with plenty of beans and Jake had some super duper healthy burger. The table next to us reminded me that all the other people that got drunk in other countries probably sounded like idiots too. We paid a million us dollars for our food and left.


The next morning we got up and took the bus all over the place. London was quite easy to get around and the bus went everywhere. We never waited longer than 5 minutes and the bus routes were posted clearly everywhere. It was well good. After riding around we ended up at the Tate Modern Art Museum. There are some famous pieces here and I remembered that I went to Art School.



After that I found some stairs that went into the water next to a life preserver with no intention of ever being untied from a post in an area where there were no attempt to stop anyone from falling in. We moved on from here to the Design Museum. This was falsely named as it should have been called the Zaha Hadid Museum. I liked seeing all her work, but it was only two rooms and only her work. I then remembered I went to Design School.



Later that night we got some pints and headed in early. The next morning was short but I saw what was close to the fifth or sixth MK V R32. London pretty much has the mk V r32 thing locked in. Everywhere you turn there is another super expensive GTI and alot of them 4 door.



Overall I liked London compared to the other big cities I've been to in Europe. It wasn't crazy hectic and it was easy to get around. Besides the fact that everything is way too expensive, it's a nice place. People are friendly and they have an Apple store. There's quite a bit of diversity and the NHS will take care of you if you get hurt! Cigarettes are $14, there's a lot of Indian food, they like cars and I like the rain. So this is what i learned in 2.5 days in one of the biggest cities in the world. Cheers!

When in Rome...

My lovely girlfriend Jin decided to visit me for a couple weeks. It had been 2 and half months since I'd seen her. More than enough time had gone by. We planned to go to Paris for 3 days and then spend the rest in Spain and Barcelona. So here we are getting ready to go to Paris.


When we arrived in Paris there was nobody checking passports. We just walked outside and got a taxi. I actually printed my ticket from a kiosk in Germany and never once did I even remove my passport. We took the taxi to our hotel near the red light district. Jin found the hotel. It was a nice classic Parisian joint with all the fixins. It was the Eldorado hotel.



There was a cute little garden outside and a restaurant attached. We had to walk through the kitchen to get to our ground level floor just outside the garden. We decided to have dinner at the restaurant. It turned out to be the best food we had the whole time in Paris. We got in late and decided to tuck in early for the big day ahead.


In the morning we decided to have the "breakfast," which was included. What they meant to say was a baugette with assorted marmalades. I mean just a baugette. Nothing toasted, no eggs, just the bread. I saw people walking around Paris with just a baugette under their arms tearing off a piece here and there. Straight up. Just eating a baugette. The stereotype is true. Tell your friends.



The trains were on strike so we decided to take the walking tour of Paris. Our first stop was the Arc de triomphe. We walked down champs elysees for awhile and had a 6 euro shitty coffee. While we were in the cafe we watched to labor workers on their break smoke about 6 cigarettes or so and just put them out and the bottom of their shoe and drop it on the ground. Apparently that's how Paris rolls.


So just to make sure if you're going to Paris bring a baugette and put your cigarettes out on the floor no matter where you are.


From there we deiced to see what the Eiffel Tower looked like. We walked up the steps of a museum/theatre/university thing to get a better look at it.


We walked through the park and waited for a bus that went towards Notre Dame. Most of the buses weren't running either so we caught which ever one was. Notre Dame was beautiful and probably the most excellent 'site' we saw in Paris. Inside the cathedrale was even more breathtaking. I had seen pictures in art history class with the flying buttresses and what not, but it was truly magnificent in person.


From here we stopped off at the Lourve. We decided we didn't really care much to walk through it though. I did although want to see where Tom Hanks had stolen the secret treasure or whatever happened in there!




So it had been a long day and we went down to the metro to see how bad it was. We waited about 10 minutes for a train to come by. Sure enough the train came rolling in with people smushed up against the windows. The doors opened. No one got off. Some people pushed their way on. I looked at Jin and we both thought, I don't want to do that. The doors closed and I swear there was one guy essentially horizontal to the ground with his ipod in one hand and face pressed firmly against the glass.

We walked some more and got a cab back to the hotel. Later that night we went to the Bastille to check out some French Hipster bars. They were pretty cool, but Paris doesn't apparently drink like Germany. The places were fairly empty and they closed at 2. I know you can find clubs and what not open later and it was a Wednesday, but so far Germany doesn't really care what time or what day of the week it is to drink.


The next day we moved our luggage to a hotel in the Bastille. This hotel was more of the 'let's just get it over with' types. Luckily it was located next to all the cool bars and shops. We took it easy that day just walking around seeing what there was to see.


Around our hotel were many little cafes with happy hour special. I had found a few I wanted to go back to and they ended up being quite fun. I remember the bartender at one bar was really happy it was Friday. I ordered mojitos for me and Jin and watched all the Parisians mingle. Across the street from that place was another place going off.

I don't really remember much of what it looked like, but I do remember going downstairs to find a bathroom and instead finding a basement with a 60s style French Mod band playing. It was like a train tunnel with a bar one end and the stage on the other. I think the place was called "Pink's" or at least there was a flyer there that said so and I wanted it to be called Pink's.


The next morning we headed out of Paris to catch our flight to Barcelona. I don't remember when it became hard for my to fly. You would think things would get easier as you get older. I had never had a problem with flying, but now days I just always wonder. Maybe it's just the cheap Euro hopper flights I've been taking lately.


Barcelona is nice. We rented a 3 room apartment for 3 days in the old fisherman's quarters. The place was nice and cozy. Perfect for a little get away. We were just meters from the ocean and the weather couldn't have been better for late October. Reminded me of LA.




We rented a scooter and took that thing all over the place. From Montjuic to eixample to where ever. That was probably the most fun part of the trip. Having my girl behind me on top of 125-cc's of pleasure. Oh yeah. But for real, scooters are really fun and I think I'm going to buy one when I get back to LA. They're nice for just around town stuff and they get a million miles to the gallon.



We took it relatively easy in Barcelona. With the beach and the palm trees, the ambience just told us to relax. So we did. We didn't quite find the night life until later that week, but that was ok. I was just happy to ride around on a moped and have a place to call our own. It was nice just going home to an apartment and imagining what life in BCN would be like.



It's a young crowd with lots of cool ideas. There was a start up innovative idea everywhere you turned. And things were cheap! On the beach were these train car like containers that opened up onto the boardwalk as a little bar. It looked simpler than anything to make and run. Inside the scooter store were these over sized bean bag pillows you could just hang out on. Every building had some crazy architecture to it and some law of industrial design had been implied. Pretty much if you want a business that has men riding around on unicycles on the beach selling ice cream cones, then you should do it in Barcelona.


We had 3 days in the apartment and then 3 more days of doing whatever we wanted. We hadn't got any hotels and I wanted to rent a car and drive up to the Pyrenees Mountains to see the beautiful foliage of the season. I knew it was the off season, but nonetheless the mountains are forever calling me.


Driving through Spain was quite a trip. From Barcelona we drove up North toward the French border about 500km. Along the way we stopped off in some small Spanish towns just to see what they were like. Nothing could prepare me for what I even think I was supposed to see. I mean a small Spanish town in the middle of no where. Go ahead imagine it.



What really got me were all the ruins. You would see the skeleton of an old town on the side of a mountain. Maybe a river had dried up. Maybe the leader was really stubborn and didn't settle his town by the river at all and everyone was like, well whatever let's just stop traveling. Who knows.

We ended up driving all the way up to a ski town called Formigal. It was getting late and I didn't know what to do, but I just wanted to keep driving for some reason. Jin thought otherwise and I probably should have listened to her, but I just wanted to get to my preordained destination in my head. Guy style. Once we got up to Formigal, of course it was a ski town, but a ski town in late October. There was no body there and it was kinda spooky. I mean what's going on Big Bear in October? Not a whole lot I imagine. So we went back down to Sabinanago and got a pretty decent hotel.

The next morning we were greeted with the sun and the vibrant colors of the trees. Luckily the only station that we could get throughout the whole trek was classical and it fit with the changing scenery.


How were the roads you ask? Amazing, especially in a 1.2L 60hp Polo. Oh yeah. Straight sex that thing.


We found the Ordesa National Park just outside a small city Torla. Jin mentioned an old man walking in every little city we passed through. There would maybe be some cows or sheep and and old man. No one else but the old man. It's like he came with the city.


At the national park we walked along a trail for awhile, but being unsure of our next move we didn't stay long. I wish we would've stayed longer now, but it just wasn't as easy as driving up to Yosemite and getting a cabin or something. Most places were closed and there was absolutely nobody in any city. I know this might sound exciting and just what a secluded adventure should be. But after 3 months of living outside of the US and not being able to speak Spanish or any other language for that matter, and not really having any means of reading anything to figure out where to go or what to do, can make it a little hard to have a preemptive spontaneous vacation.




Visit the Flickr Site
for more pictures of Ordesa, there are too many.

Nevertheless we saw some beautiful country side. Based on my fear of not knowing where to stay and not having the proper equipment to have a mountainy adventure we decided to head back in towards the Mediterranean. The drive back down wasn't so bad, but it was getting dark and we didn't have any reservations so we decided to stop in Taragonna just outside BCN to see what was going on there.


The city had some of the world's most well preserved artifacts of the Roman Empire. It was crazy to see some things that had lasted for over 2000 years. And to imagine inhumane structure of the empire. We didn't stay long and headed up the coast to BCN.

Luckily on our drive up the coast we decided to stop off at a random beach area called Sitges. It turned out to be the location of St. Sebation Beaches. We had some of the best food, I thought, in Spain here and the waiter was funny and knew I was from LA. I was like, huh? But anyway I thought the little town was really pretty and this was one of my favorite places throughout the trip. I don't know what it was, but I remember it just happened. Jin and I were hungry, she looked at the map and said ok here's an average sized dot. I looked up and the exit was there and said ok.


It had been hard for me to let go and just experience things. I had been planning everything. From the hotels to the sites to everything, and I had forgotten how to just let the journey lead you. I finally reached this realization as I started to not care what Sitges had at all and just give it a chance. Of course maybe it was beautiful but it was also because I let go.

We arrived at our super posh hotel that I had reserved for the last two nights in BCN. Not only was it brand new and designery, but it was affordable too! In this regard, I like to plan things like this. It was called the Prestige Congressional and they have different hotels in a couple cities around Spain. The had taken the approach of Blue Ocean Strategy and made everything user friendly. They even had a Segway in the lobby you could take with you or rent.



From here we took it pretty easy. We found a fun little Japanese Udon restaurant playing a funny Japanese movie about cooking noodles. I forget the name but Jin knows it.


The next days I got a little sick from all the traveling and just watched Premier league soccer at the Hotel. We went out for one last stint in the Born area. On our last day we finally found some cool bars and restaurants. The other places we found were cool too, but I guess the 'area' in born is the place to be. We ate at a little diner that was trying to emulate itself around a classic American Diner. I didn't realize this until I read the walls and thought it just looked like it would be a cool restaurant in Silverlake. The food was excellent and it made Jin and I want our own little cafe. So in effect we would model our diner after the one we found in Spain. Which was inspired from something the owner saw in America. So it would be the American diner translated through Spain and then back to America. No one would ever know.