Hello internet! How are things with you? I am doing well, and currently coming at you live from an apartment in Madrid (the Spanish, apparently, are much better at putting internet access in their short-term rental apartments than the Italians – we had it in Barcelona, too). Today, I am going to talk about the last week or so of excitement in my life.
As I mentioned in my last post, Nami came to France to visit me over her reading week. Aside from some issues with her flight (her planes kept getting delayed and she ended up arriving at about 8:40 pm instead of 11:30 am like she was supposed to), the week was just as amazing as I expected. On top of seeing Nami for the first time in seven months, which was lovely and wonderful, it was also nice just to show someone around my city – guiding them through it and letting them see it through my eyes. And Toulouse truly is my city now – the same way Kingston is my town and Ottawa will be my city in the future. Granted, I may not know the streets as well as I know the streets in Kingston, but I know about everything I care about. And I love it so much.
By the time Nami got in on Saturday evening, it was already too late (and she was too tired and hungry) to do anything, so the adventure started the next day when we went out on a little tour of the downtown. I took her to the main points of interest, including the Pont Neuf (the “new” bridge, not the nine bridge), the Daurade (a sort of park/dock on a lower level than the street, on the Garonne), Place du Capitole in front of the city hall, two of the biggest and most famous churches (les Jacobins and St. Sernin), Place Wilson with the merry-go-round, St. Etienne (my favourite church) and les Augustins (the fine arts museum). I also showed her where some of the shops were that I liked, but it was Sunday and everything is closed on Sundays so we couldn’t go shopping. That night we also finalized our plans with my friend Rodrigue and his boyfriend, Stéphane, who was also coming to visit. More on that later.
Monday was shopping day, and it was a very exciting thing. Me being the sort of person who loves to spoil my girlfriend rotten, I had saved a fair bit of money for her visit (most of it for Christmas/birthday gifts, as I wanted to buy her clothes and she needed to try things on). We ran around to all my favourite shops (35eme Rue, Wap Doo Wap, Kara Kool, Kilostock, Groucho Vintage – unfortunately Intrepid was closed) and bought things for her (most of them flouncy and adorable) and ate crepes from the crepe stand and generally had a rather excellent day. Lots of walking, but you get used to that in Europe.
Tuesday was fairly quiet, at least for the morning. But in the late afternoon we got ourselves all fancied up and went out for dinner at a rather fancy restaurant called L’arsenal – they are wonderful, the food is wonderful, the place is wonderful, and if you’re ever in Toulouse with a bit of cash to burn I highly recommend it. Nami discovered tartiflette (potatoes, cheese, lardon), I ate delicious fish appetizers and duck, and we both went crazy over the potato medallions, which was one of my side dishes. And, of course, dinners in France being a long and late sort of affair, we got there around 8:00 and left at about 10:30. It was awesome.
On Wednesday, we went out to the market at Capitole just to wander around for a while, and then came back to the house for a bit to relax. That evening, we went out with Stéphane and Rodrigue – this was the double date we had organized. We ate at the Crêperie St. Georges, and none of us managed to finish our food except Stéphane (to be fair, the salad I ordered was on a plate about ten inches around, spilling to the edges, and piled several inches high, on top of being full of potato chunks and bits of lardon), but we did order two banana splits to share. It was a rather excellent moment, in fact, as Nami and I had been looking at it and debating on whether it was too much when Rodrigue and Stéphane slapped down their menu and declared that they were getting a banana split to share. Grins were exchanged, banana splits were consumed, the bill was paid, and we adventured off towards the Cinéma ABC – Stéphane dancing and mumbling his way through Singing in the Rain – to see Were the World Mine. It is a thoroughly excellent and slightly camp musical comedy, and if you are a fan of Shakespeare or gay films or both, see if you can get your hands on a copy and watch it, because it’s wonderful.
The main event on Thursday was actually not especially French in nature: Nami and I went out to Biotek, which is a piercing and tattoo parlour. She bought a new spiral ring for her upper ear and had her old ring replaced, and I took the jump and shelled out sixty euros for an industrial piercing – for those who are uncertain, this is two holes in the top part of the ear cartilage, with a bar going through both of them and capped on the outside with two balls. This, by the way, is a pretty good price, as the piercing place back home charges $120 – about eighty-five euros. And, if you’re curious, it’s in my left ear.
Friday! The main excitement of Friday was running around the city with Nami’s camera, taking pictures of everything. It was pretty great, and we were out for a couple of hours. Tristan also got a second piercing done (another one in his left lobe) while we were off running around. So now there are two of us with new holes poked in ourselves.
Nami’s last afternoon in Toulouse was spent with a decent-sized crowd at Jules et Julies, the local LGBT group I hang out with every second Saturday. They are pretty awesome and generally rather energetic, and food (mostly cookies, everyone was bringing cookies) and good times were had by all! We drew some of our characters on our fingertips for fun, and then drew another one on someone else when he asked, Nami sketched in my sketchbook, I ate a lot of cookies, and we tried very hard to keep up with all the French (sometimes succeeding). That evening, the whole family (plus Nami) went out to dinner at a little local restaurant called La Gouaille (for my Kingston readers, turn the Jungle into a restaurant and combine it with the Sleepless Goat and Tir Nan Og and you might have a decent idea of what La Gouaille is like). I ate way too much but it was so worth it and also blackberry flavoured Kir is amazing.
Sunday morning involved both Nami and I getting up far earlier than should be allowed in order to get her out to the airport. We rode the shuttle bus (this will become important later) and got her checked in using the automatic machines (after moving to a second one when the first one just sat there not reading her passport). I stuck with her through the start of the security line, then ducked out when I couldn’t go any farther. I don’t really want to talk about that part though because it made me sad. I got on the bus, came home, and holed up in my room for a while.
I hate having to say goodbye.
That afternoon, we were catching a flight from Toulouse to Madrid, so by that afternoon we’d got all packed up and got on the bus again, and headed out to the airport. At this point I was starting to get a little annoyed with the shuttle, but we got off it and all was well – until we walked up to the check-in counter and were informed that our flight was cancelled.
Yep. Just gone. Something to do with crucial crew members being ill and not being able to find replacements. And they had no replacement for us until Wednesday. Brilliant, EasyJet. Seeing as we were supposed to be flying from Madrid to Lisbon on Thursday, this seemed like a particularly stupid idea.
Back on the bus we went. For the fourth time that day.
Our plans derailed somewhat, we scrambled a bit to find a solution. Air Iberia could fly us – at a ridiculously inflated price. Planes were out. At this point we started looking at trains. We couldn’t get an affordable one for an overnight, unfortunately, but we could travel the next day – so, this morning, we got up at 6:00 am, took the metro out to the train station, and got on a train from Toulouse to Narbonne, where we would transfer to a train to Barcelona, and then finally go from there to Madrid. It was time consuming, but oddly relaxing – I am swiftly discovering a pronounced fondness for travelling by train.
So now I am sitting in our rented apartment in Madrid, on the twin bed in the open balcony “room” that looks over the main kitchen and living room, hiding out behind the privacy screens and listening to my parents cook. It’s nice after such a hectic day, and good to smooth away the strain of yesterday. I’m looking forward to exploring the city tomorrow. Spain is gorgeous and exciting.
I had a moment of perfect peace on the train this morning. Thanks to my first trip on a train, where I got to watch the must spectacular sunrise of my life come up over the French countryside, I have already linked trains with a dreamlike surreality and spirituality, but after this trip the two will forever be tangled in my mind.
On the train from Narbonne to Barcelona, I fell asleep for a little while, and dreamed that I was on my next train – from Barcelona to Madrid. I was sitting in a window seat on the left side of the car, looking out over a terrain of flat fields with scrub bushes and grapevines, with reddish-yellow dirt like you see in the Spanish countryside. Nami was sitting in my lap, and it was like we weren’t really there, or no one else could see us. We were in our own little world.
“Hey,” she said, snuggling into me and leaning back. I smiled.
“How are you doing, baby?” I asked, kissing her shoulder.
“Pretty great dream,” she replied.
“Yeah,” I said. And we sat there in silence, watching the Spanish sun spill golden yellow over the landscape as I enjoyed the most physically real dream I’ve ever experienced in my life.
I love trains.
What would a cruise be without the shore excursions? There were a lot of them. I’m going to try to go through them all as best I can, in point form, because it more or less all sticks in my mind as bullet points. You’ll probably see why by the time I’m through with it.
Any day I don’t make mention of was a sea day, and therefore we were on the boat. (It’s worth mentioning that we spent all of Christmas at sea, and on Christmas morning we convened in mom and dad’s room to open presents under the vaguely-tree-shaped-green-Christmas-shirt.)
Also, because we are cheap-asses, we didn’t buy shore excursions anywhere except Egypt (where it’s more or less a necessity) and even when we did, we didn’t get the super expensive packages from the cruise. So most shore days we spent doing our own thing, wherever we ended up.
Shona and Tristan in front of a church in Civitavecchia.
December 22nd: Civitavecchia, Italy
Civitavecchia, aside from being incredibly annoying to spell right, is the port city at the mouth of the Tiber River, and is therefore the gateway to Rome. It was about an hour drive into Rome, so we elected to wander the city we hadn’t been to yet.
It was rainy. That kind of put a damper on things.
Shona seems to be very good at talking Tristan into giving her a piggyback. Occasionally this combines with the rain in undesirable ways (i.e.: he slips on a metal grate and crashes down to one knee, leaving an impressive bruise).
My family really likes markets. “Wandering around in a market for an hour or two” quickly seems to be becoming a theme.
Also, Italians really like their churches.
“Church of the Japanese Martyrs” is perhaps the best name for anything ever. Even if the church itself is just a regular church with some Japanese-style paintings of religious figures.
We didn’t really spend too much time in Civitavecchia. It wasn’t really a great day, and there wasn’t too much we wanted to see (or much to see, to be honest). We wandered around and looked at stuff for a couple hours, then wandered back to the boat.
December 23rd: Naples, Italy
We’ve been here already! It’s almost like coming home. It was even comparable weather to when we were there back in October. Sunny, beautiful, and in the mid teens.
Italians apparently aren’t used to these temperatures, because they keep asking me if I’m cold while I wander around in my sleeveless shirt.
I have discovered the eleventh commandment: “And the LORD said, in Naples, to ensure thy survival, thou shalt form a pack of pedestrians, for together, thou art mighty, and the tide of cars shall part before thee.” We have got this pedestrian-in-Naples business down.
Those guys with the knockoff bags are still everywhere. They’re still ridiculously flirtatious, too. Even with my hair buzzed to an inch long. “Ciao, bella!” starts to lose its impact after the fifth time.
We wandered up through some of the shopping areas to get to this street where they sell nativity scenes and the supplies to make them. These are seriously detailed things, too. Like dollhouse miniatures. They make whole scenes for it.
We visited the castle, too, the one we hadn’t got to last time we were in Naples. Chapel, statues, stateroom, art museum upstairs, fairly standard – except for the Roman crypts that were discovered underneath the castle. Seriously cool stuff. They had glass floors installed and you could look down to see the bones underneath you.
Paintings of pretty girls are made infinitely more awesome when the top layer of paint has peeled off and they seem to have a smooth layer of skin where one of their eyes used to be.
Mom and dad wandered through a bit more of the art museum than I did. I went back to the boat to watch Up. Because Up is awesome.
December 26th and 27th: At port in Alexandria, Egypt. Visiting Cairo.
Egypt is probably the dirtiest, noisiest, smelliest, and most exciting place I’ve ever been to. Also, the most dangerous. Because of Egypt’s history of political terrorism, some of which has been directed against tourists, all tour groups are required by law to have an armed guard with them. Dad said ours had a fully automatic gun. I didn’t see, and wouldn’t have been able to identify it anyway.
So there was us, a couple, and another family with two younger girls, our tour leader, a guide, avery stoic armed guard, and a driver who didn’t speak English, all hangin’ out in this little van-bus for a couple of days. It was hella fun.
Tour got off to a slow start because it was insanely foggy that morning – too dangerous to drive. We were supposed to leave at 8:30, ended up on the road by 11:30. But hey, at least I was awake by then.
There do not seem to be many traffic laws in Egypt. See: family in the flatbed of a pickup on the highway; three men on one motorcycle; camels apparently count as vehicles and can walk around on the roads; ditto for donkeys loaded down with clover; ditto also for horse or donkey pulled buggies. Also, there are guys biking around delivering giant platters of bread, which they get from place to place by tying them to their heads and balancing them there.
Egypt was the first country I’ve ever been to where the majority of women had their hair, and often their whole bodies, covered in the Muslim style. Different, but interesting.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu, as seen from the base.
Most of Cairo has this odd look, like it’s starting to crumble before they’ve even finished the buildings. We discovered that this is because, if a house remains “under construction,” you don’t have to pay tax on it – so Egyptians never seem to both putting roofs on their houses.
If the apocalypse hit now and everything was destroyed, Cairo would be the city and culture that would spring up from the ruins. Amazing, and very lovely, in its own way.
The pyramids are huge. End of discussion. They don’t look that big in photos, and when you compare them to all the taller buildings we’ve made now, they don’t seem so impressive – then you get out of the bus and go stand beside them. Those blocks of stone that look like bricks in the picture? Yeah, they’re the size of a car. These things are massive, solid, enormous piles of stone.
The Sphinx, too, is massive and impressive. There’s a lot of romanticism and mystique attached to it. All those hokey ideas don’t really do it justice. People always try to paint it as the almighty guardian, most trusted of the Pharaohs, the watcher who will remain long after civilization has crumbled – and I guess it is, or was, at least, at one point, but the Pharaohs are gone, there’s nothing left for it to guard anymore, and its civilization has already fallen. It looks more lonely to me.
Camels are ridiculous. Also, I no more trust them than I trust llamas. They’re great to take photos of, though. As long as you avoid stepping in the camel dung.
Guided tours are more or less giant tourist traps, but there isn’t much of another way to get around Egypt (see: laws regarding tourists and armed guards). I did buy a couple of things, but not nearly as much as they tried to foist off on me. And what I did get was entirely worth the money I spent.
This is why I just want to take pictures of camels forever.
The Sound and Light show is not nearly as impressive as it’s billed as. I also didn’t get much out of it, since I pretty much knew every bit of historical and mythological information they supplied. Ditto for what the guide said – but she was more interesting than the show. Her name was Rehab (REH-hab), and she was an absolute sweetheart.
Nile dinner cruise would be more impressive if we could have seen anything outside the windows. The shows were pretty cool, though, even if the bellydancer did have some weird non-authentic moves (according to my mother) and wore a bra top that made her chest look freakishly large. The whirling dervish dancer was amazing, though.
Mom and dad told us it was probably a bad idea to eat anything uncooked while in Egypt, due to the risk of contamination and the fact that the germs there are different. This made buffets difficult. I wanted salad and fruit, but had to content myself with potatoes and cooked carrots.
No pork anything at any of the buffets. Most noticeable at breakfast. Tristan missed the bacon. I, however, was pleased enough with the hibiscus juice that the loss didn’t bother me.
Our hotel was super ritzy, what the heck. Unfortunately we were too tired and out of there too fast to really enjoy it. It was seriously nice, though. Beautiful construction, and a gorgeous courtyard. Also, I think the floors were marble.
A lantern at our fancy hotel in the misty morning.
Morning arrives! It is extremely misty, for the second day in a row. Rehab apologized – she said it was really abnormal weather for Egypt, and she was sorry we had to come on bad days.
By the time we got to the Citadel of Saladin, it was mostly burned off, though. We went inside the Citadel to visit the Alabaster Mosque, which is very pretty – a lot more decorated than is typical for mosques. We took our shoes off. This is the rule in mosques.
There were guys standing outside selling these little plastic bags people could put over their shoes if they didn’t want to take them off. They also had these big draping robes for people (mostly women) not covered up well enough. I saw a woman in high heels, with the shoe-bags on, putting one of the robes over her short, sleeveless sundress. I wanted to laugh at her. Give it up, lady. Stop trying to look glamorous while you’re a tourist, in a Muslim country, no less.
After this we went to the Egyptian Archeological Museum. I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera in, but we ran around looking at things. We saw the mask of King Tutankhamon, and most of the other things that were found in his tomb – beautiful stuff. The room with the mask and the other important artifacts was so crowded. We literally spent five minutes jammed shoulder to shoulder with people trying to inch our way out of the room. Shona didn’t come in, because she was sick. She spent the museum time sleeping on the bus. In the Tutankhamon room, I was grateful. She would have been miserable.
The most amazing moment in the museum, for me, was when I spotted a statue of three gods – Horus, a Pharaoh being crowned, and Set. Set. He’s my favourite of the Egyptian gods, as well as being my star sign and associated god in Egyptian astrology. Because he was painted as the aggressor and the villain in some of the most well-known Egyptian myths, there isn’t much art of him around. But I saw a statue of him. I stood right in front of it. I think this is a moment I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life.
A woman making flatbread. Delicious, delicious flatbread.
After the museum, we went out to Memphis. We saw the giant statue of King Ramses II, the famous one, and we saw the Step Pyramid, which I’ve always loved – more so even than the Great Pyramid and the associated pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure. Picked up a package of postcards, too – I’ll probably save a few to give to people.
I really, really like Egyptian flatbread. It is delicious. We had a bunch of it with our lunch, which we picked up at a restaurant and ate in the bus on the way back to Alexandria. There were musicians playing outside, and mom danced with them for a bit. Also, women at these big stone and clay ovens, cooking the bread for the restaurant. I took a few pictures.
All in all, Egypt was amazing and exciting, and I would love to go back to visit again – but I very much doubt I would ever want to live there.
December 28th: Rhodes, Greece
We were supposed to stop in Rhodes, but it was too windy and the port was closed. We were at sea instead, heading to Izmir. Shona was sick; I don’t remember what I did specifically.
December 29th: Izmir, Turkey
Where do I even start? Izmir is beautiful. Especially after the dirty brokenness of Cairo. The streets are clean, the buildings and architecture are amazing, the port is beautiful, and there’s lots and lots of green. The weather was amazing, too. Not a cloud in the sky.
Remember what I said about markets? Yeah, pretty much the whole time in Izmir was spent in a market. In our defence, the market is enormous and historic. Also, full of shiny things.
We got lost for a while. It was actually ridiculously entertaining. We ended up getting led to the caravanserai, the oldest part of the bazaar, and showed into a shop, which we left almost immediately. We found our own way back to the bit of the market we were interested in.
The Turks (and the Greeks, as well, but especially the Turks), sell all kinds of things with the symbol of the evil eye on it – it’s supposed to protect you from malicious things. It’s normally a round thing, often done in glass. The main body of it is dark blue, with a ring of white, then a smaller ring of light blue, and a dot of black at the centre. Sometimes it has yellow in it, too. They also sell it in loads of other colours, but blue is the most traditional.
I was going crazy for a pomegranate all day. We got one just before getting a taxi back to the port (taxi, in Turkish, is apparently spelled “taksi,” by the way). I ate the whole thing. My hands and my face were absolutely covered in juice. GLORIOUS.
The Turks are apparently very big on rings. Shiny, shiny rings. There were a lot of shiny things there. Pretty much anything you could imagine in a bazaar was there, and many things you couldn’t. I would love to go back to visit again – five hours is not enough.
Pillars on the Acropolis.
December 30th: Athens, Greece
Athens is not as pretty as Izmir, but it is quite nice, and is much cleaner than Cairo. Not to mention safer. So, bonus all around. Even though apparently the taxi drivers are brats. We tried to get a taxi from the port to the train station (five minute drive, half-hour walk), and the taxi driver decided he’d rather keep his place at the port and get a bigger fare – so he told us it was only ten minutes away. We believed him, until we’d been walking twenty minutes and weren’t there yet.
Metro in Athens is crowded! Dad got pickpocketed – bye bye iTouch. Luckily he had his data backed up, along with several spares. Still, not a cool way to start the day. At least it wasn’t his wallet.
We got off downtown and went wandering up towards the Acropolis. It was not very well signed, but we figured it out eventually. They gave us this big long string of tickets to get into a bunch of different things. Ultimately I think we only used two or three.
Fresh-squeezed orange juice is amazing. There is absolutely no contest about this. I don’t much like the stuff from concentrate (i.e.: anything you can buy in a store) but give it to me fresh and I just can’t get enough of it. My. God.
There seems to be a trend of us visiting monuments while things are being restored. The Parthenon is much less impressive when half of it is covered in scaffolding. That’s okay though! It was still really cool. And the view from the Acropolis is astounding.
At the foot of the Acropolis, looking up.
They say of the Acropolis where the Parthenon is… is still the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on Youtube.
After we wandered around a bunch of ruins and saw lots of ancient Greek buildings, we headed up into downtown to do some shopping. Lots of tacky tourist shops but lots of cool things, too. Also, a shirt that says “Oedipus: the ORIGINAL motherfucker.” No way you can lose with this.
Encountered a street vendor selling chocolate and vanilla coconut sticks, coconut juice, and fresh coconut. Fresh coconut is yummy. Om nom nom nom.
Biggest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen: in the square in front of one of the metro stations in Athens, Greece. Who’d have guessed?
Metro still crowded on the way back. Most taxi drivers still jerks. One of them heard where we wanted to go and just drove off with no explanation. We managed to flag down another one and it turned out he was fluent in English – lived in North America for a while. Made it back to the port safely – even though dad decided he was going to walk, while the rest of us drove. Silly man.
The view off the back of the Palace of Knossos.
December 31st: Iraklion, Crete, Greece
It just figures that New Year’s Eve would be the sunniest and most beautiful day on the whole trip. Visiting Iraklion was absolutely lovely that day.
Cheap bus tickets out to historical sites are a win. We went to visit the Palace of Knossos, the ancient palace of Crete, where the legend of the Minotaur supposedly took place. We didn’t get to go into the labyrinth, though. There’s still some debate over whether it even actually exists. Palace was pretty cool, though. A lot of it was reconstructed – apparently the archeologist who worked on it was big on that.
Nice little cafe outside the palace. Delicious baklava and fresh orange juice is a brilliant lunch. Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently.
Saw a cat just wandering around the grounds. There pretty much always seem to be strays at every major historical site we’ve been to. I can’t remember one where I didn’t see at least a stray dog.
Went back into the city via the same bus, but got off before the port to go wandering around downtown and – you guessed it – into a market area. I bought an excellent new messenger bag to replace my somewhat too large one that’s kind of dying anyway. The woman who sold it to me was very careful to stress that it was “original, made in Greece, no imitation.” I guess they have a problem with a lot of people doing knockoffs of big brands.
A reconstructed part of the palace.
Our map was written with Anglicized Greek names on it. The street signs are all in Greek letters. Lucky for us, dad spent some time in Greece before I was born, and knows how to read most Greek letters. Otherwise we would have been hopelessly lost.
The city is nice. Similar atmosphere to Athens, but a bit calmer, less touristy, and smaller. Also, less likely to pick your pockets. It was almost depressing to leave. Our last shore excursion of an amazing trip. Still if things had to end, it was a good way to end them.
Posted by Tchy on Jul 30, 2009 in
Culture,
Observations,
People,
Shopping,
Travel Hello, Canada! I am at last back in Toulouse, and what a crazy week it’s been! There are lots of pictures to see, some of which are already in the gallery, and several adventures to tell. We shall start last Thursday with the ascent to Cordes sur Ciel!
The church in Cordes sur Ciel.
Cordes sur Ciel – roughly translated to Cordes in the sky – is a bastide town (that is, a medieval town build for defence and generally situated on a ridge or a rather large hill) that was built on a small mountain. After the Cathar crusades, ending in 1218, the Comte de Toulouse, who was at that point in control of the entire Languedoc region, made the decision to have Cordes built – partly as a defence against the King of France, who was not, at that point, in control of this area, but largely to help bring economic power back to the region. Cordes was thus originally a merchant town, and that was where it got most of its wealth.
We started our day by parking the car in the lower – more modern – portion of the town and walking up the streets to the centre of the medieval city. It is important to note that this is not a leisurely undertaking; I have dubbed Cordes the city of “Gravity, My Master, Why Must You Be So Cruel?” and rightly so. Not only is the entire city centre paved with rather uneven cobblestones, but it is built on the top of a mountain. Granted, it is not a very high mountain, but it is a mountain nonetheless, and the sort of place you would be ill-advised to drive in, though we did see a few people attempting it. About ninety-five percent of the streets are on an incline, some of them quite steep, and the city as a whole involves a great deal of climbing up and down.
The view off the ramparts down into the surrounding valley.
Most of the day was spent wandering around the medieval city, poking our heads into various shops and occasionally reading from a guidebook with some historical and cultural information on the city. It is important to note that Cordes, while once a major city in the Languedoc region’s trade, now relies almost exclusively on tourism. It also seems to be a popular spot for artists and artisans; the city, overall, has a much more small-town and genuine feel than the obvious tourist lure of Carcassone, and is well worth a visit.
In the evening, after a very nice dinner in one of the town’s two flat plazas, we gathered in front of the church for a torchlit tour of Cordes sur Ciel, to learn more of the town’s history and to watch dramatically costumed figures yell about heretics, plague, lepers, prostitution, and attacking French armies. The tour was finished with a display of fire dancing and a show from some fire breathers, and then we went home, to arrive, very late and very tired, at the house to collapse in our borrowed beds.
On Friday, we were much too tired to go anywhere or do anything; on Saturday, however, we had some errands to do. Packing had to be accomplished for our forthcoming excursion to Barcelona, and then we went downtown to the library. I am now in possession of not just an International Student Card and a Pastel (the Tisseo Toulouse metro cards) but a library card as well, and have already used it to check out the last three Harry Potter books (mercifully, in English). Also while downtown, my siblings and I went to do some shopping; I picked up an excellent shirt, and a very awesome and even more cheap pair of Converse from a second-hand shop. Then we went back home and got a good rest – and the next morning, we were on the road by 10:30, headed for Barcelona.
The Spanish flag, on the left, is accompanied by the Catalonian flag in Barcelona.
So, what to say about Barcelona? Those who were in direct contact with me while I was there know that I initially found the city terrifying. It’s huge. With almost five million residents, the city is incredibly crowded. Add to that the fact that many of the streets I saw initially were large, several lane roads that clearly welcomed cars – and I a perpetual pedestrian – and is it any wonder I was terrified? And on top of that, not only was I the only member of my family who spoke even a little Spanish, and not only was that Spanish horribly out of practice, but Spanish isn’t even the mother tongue of the region. Yes, geographically speaking, Barcelona is in Spain, but the important thing to understand is that culturally, this is Catalonia. The main language is Catalan, and the people are fiercely proud of their heritage. They have a history of being oppressed by the Spanish people, and I found myself more than a little out of my element. Luckily for me, I suppose, Barcelona is very much a tourist city, and most people spoke a little English; if they didn’t, they were at least bilingual and spoke Spanish, so we could cobble together a limited understanding. I remember vividly an attempted conversation with a jewellery store employee where we moved through Spanish, English, and French before finally coming to a satisfactory conclusion and three euros changing hands. Still, I must admit that the city grew on me, despite being noisy and sometimes smelling of pee. I may never go back, but I am looking forward to visiting more of Spain.
On our bike tour, we stop in front of Barcelona's Arc de Triomphe.
We started our stay in Barcelona with a bike tour. It was held in English, and given by the rather wonderfully named Fat Tire Bike Tours company. Our guide was a hilarious British guy in his early twenties named Buster. He took us biking all over the city, showed us many gorgeous buildings, including the Palau de Musica and Gaudi’s last and greatest work, the Sagrada Familia. We also had an excellent snack and drink at a little beachside bar and cafe before returning to the city proper.
The next day, we headed out in the afternoon to take the cable car up Montjuïc to see the old castle on the top. It wasn’t all that impressive, and we didn’t go inside, because it’s been turned into a military museum, but the view was spectacular and the cable car was great fun.
When we returned home, we took a brief break, then my sister and I went out to explore the medieval city. We only made it a few blocks around our apartment, but there was loads to look at and we did a bit of shopping; I bought some buttons and some jewellery, and she finally found a place to buy an old key like she’s been looking for to put on a necklace. While we were out, we realized the great truth to Spain’s new reputation for widespread acceptance of homosexuality; we saw at least three signs for different gay and lesbian events, openly gay couples in the streets, and some gay-themed buttons (which, yes, I will admit, I bought). It was an interesting contrast to France, where being gay seems to be the sort of thing that most people just don’t talk about, and where some people will take it as a reason to target you.
The next day, we went out again, attempting to visit the Picasso museum, but, upon discovering a line-up that stretched down a full block, we decided to give it up and just went wandering around the city, exploring stores, looking at fountains, and heading down La Rambla to look at street performers. Then we headed out to the beach, where we spent a very enjoyable day swimming in the Mediterranean (much better than the last attempt, I can certainly say), where I did not get a sunburn, and from where we proceeded to an excellent seafood restaurant just off the beach which served very good paella and which was probably a bit too classy for us.
Yesterday, we got up, packed up all of our stuff, and headed out to retrieve our poor abandoned car. Then we piled in and came home, after a very long and somewhat irritating four-hour trip. Today is not set to be particularly eventful, but tomorrow we officially move into our new apartment, and as of then I will likely have zero internet access for a couple of weeks. There may be more chaos in there as well, if we decide to rent a car for the day and go out somewhere; or I might just spend those weeks exploring Toulouse on my own and working on my own projects. I don’t know. I’m having a bit of trouble seeing beyond tomorrow, to be honest. It feels like it’s been a lot more than three weeks.
Wish me luck, and I’ll be in touch when I get my internet back! I miss you all dearly, but soon I will be set up in my own room, and from then things should start going more quickly. Until then, my loves!
