Sicilia

We arrived in Palermo at 1am this morning and have just enjoyed our first day in Sicilia. The city is wonderful; old, warm, scuffed, and colorful like no other place we've been. The streets are narrow and noisy, the sidewalks and bars are crowded, and everything is a magical mixture of Greek and Arab-influenced architecture against a dramatic backdrop of green mountains falling directly into the ocean, leaving just enough room between them for a cheerily busy city. Today we walked through the biggest street market we've ever seen, complete with leather boots, massive cross-sectioned swordfish, fresh canolis, and table after table of firecrackers. These endearing toys go off, without exaggeration, about once every five minutes throughout the city, bringing to mind mafioso shootouts that could just as easily be happening down the next block.

In short, every aspect of what it means to be "Italian" thrives and jostles around every corner in this city, but with such a relaxed small-community feeling that it is much more enjoyable and memorable (not to say amusing) than anywhere else. It is as if one day thousands of years ago, everything that makes "the Boot" Italian hopped lightly across the water and squeezed onto the tiny island of Sicilia, leaving behind only that charming Roman vanity (apparently couldn't jump in stilettos), and has remained there ever since, joyfully condensed and crowded and blissfully unaware of the existence of any other way of life.

We had delicious pizza for dinner and are back at our lovely hotel for the night, eagerly awaiting tomorrow's New Year's Eve festivities. Thank you again Pete and Drew for the accomodations!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Congratulations to the Hotalings!!!

Congratulations to our wonderful friends Drew and Jess on the birth of Calla!!!!! We are so happy for you and can't wait to meet our little god-daughter!!!!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Merry Christmas!

Reporting live from Starbucks in Barcelona, where we are celebrating our holiday amid mocha praline lattes, familiar red Starbucks holiday cups, and American Christmas music (currently Elvis, Blue Christmas).

Thinking of and missing you all - hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Adios from Barcelona

Lu again. We have just returned from our final dinner here in Spain with Marisa & Ed and we could not bring ourselves to leave the restaurant or return to the hotel because it would be the end of the trip. Obviously, we could not sleep on the street so we did finally come back to the hotel when we realized none of the stores were open so late on a Sunday night. One thing that must be said about my blogs is that I am a person of visual identification. I could get you from your desk chair to the Parc Guell here in Barcelona without missing a turn by describing construction zones, restaurants, buildings, or piles of dog poop you would see on your way and would mark turns. Marisa offered to provide the names of each of the museums/monuments/places we visited and posted about, but this is my blog and I do not function in such a way.

 

So, we left off with our departure to The Four Cats on Friday evening which was another delicious feast. This is the restaurant where Picasso designed the menu and completed many of his works. I ate veal. Veal. The reason is because even the mixed green salad at this restaurant had fish. I ordered the veal and I ate it all, quite a surprise! I really did enjoy it as it was juicy, thick, and melted in my mouth. It may become one of my new favorites, but probably not. I'm just on a food high right now I believe. Dad's fish came on a plate as though they had just taken it from the water and placed it on some rice. He OKed the filet then they removed the scales, eyes, and other parts one would not wish to consume and finally served it rather regularly. We were all a bit worried at first though. This was another 3-4 course meal that was enjoyed by all. A cute old man was playing the a combination of beatles and holiday music on a small piano as entertainment with dinner. The restaurant was beautiful and the front bar was all the original wood. We must admit that this restaurant, although delicious, was a lot of hype and not as good as was expected for the price. We would all suggest that if you plan to visit Barcelona that you definitely go to Le Quatre Gats but go for lunch or for a bar experience.

 

On Saturday, yesterday, we hiked hundreds of miles at about a 90 degree angle up hill. What was at the top? Gaudi. He created a weird park that reminded us of Dr. Suess and is where the famous mosaic spanish lizard lives. Apparently, this park was supposed to be a traditional english garden but we can assure you things went a bit wrong in that plan. Parc Guell is a definite visit though so I am very glad we went. We also bought some souvenirs on the way which made the trip up a bit easier! Instead of walking the hundreds of miles back, we took the metro to Barceloneta where we had been earlier in the week to visit some shops highlighted in our travel guide. Before walking until our legs became jelly, so earlier in the morning, we visited the Barcelona Cathedral and went to the top to take pictures of the city and ourselves. It was a very extravagant and they had a walk-through creche set up in the cloisters which we visited and Marisa used the bathroom which also appeared to be set up during Jesus' birth as well. The creche is very big here and the tree is not. The Christmas trees here are super tiny and skinny but the creches are huge. Almost the entire Christmas bazarre is filled with small and large objects that may be used in one's cresche. The scenes are very detailed including running water fountains, people going to the bathroom, bugs, stars, hay, elderly people in rocking chairs that are motorized, etc. It's very weird, but fun.  After walking around for the entire day we were all exhausted and came back to the hotel for our siesta. My favorite. I napped, of course, and Marisa and Ed made their plans for the following 5 days before they leave for Italy. They have decided to stay here as there is still so much to do and it will be somewhat familiar to them for their holiday. We went to a restaurant in our book but it was really just a bar including rolling papers, so we decided to find somewhere else. After passing on many restaurants and tapas bars, we ended up at this two story restaurant which has become one of our favorites (not surprisingly). We had a waitor from Florida whose Mom is British and his Dad is Cuban so he has all kinds of passports. He has been in Spain for a year and a half but he hopes to return to the states in the next few years. We liked him a lot and he only enhanced our already great experience. We ate LOTS of food and left feeling slightly sick, but it was worth it and I'd do it again.

 

Today, our final day, was very relaxed. We went to a few final landmarks and then spent the rest of the day shopping and buying Christmas gifts for family and friends. Much to our dismay, it was extremely hard to find "spanish" souvenirs or really anything that one would want to own in their life. Finding a simple shirt that says "Barcelona" was one of the toughest jobs all day! It was nice to walk around without a map as we have become very familiar with the city and it was fun to recognize places. We finally found churros which we thought would be easy as they are the "most popular breakfast food", but nobody we have encountered from Barcelona has even heard of them nor sold them. Of course, after we found them we saw them all over the place but ours were probably the best. We ate them by the water/harbor as today was a gorgeous sunny day. After shopping some more and stopping for pints of beer and coca-lights, we returned to the hotel for our shortest siesta by far. It was a mere forty minutes and I was unable to take a nap, how unfortunate. We were very hungry though since we shopped through lunch minus the beer and churros. We returned to Taller de Tapas which is where we ate the first night, but this time we knew how to order. 10 plates. 2 for Dad and Ed and 3 for Maris and I each. The best. If you visit Barcelona  you must visit Taller de Tapas which is a chain but the specific one we went to has the best service in the city, we think. For dessert this evening I had "chocolate sin" and I would never go to confession for it. I would repeat this sin till death without hesitation. We are sad that our trip has come to an end but are fortunate for the experience and look forward to seeing Marisa & Ed back in the States!

 

Some random observations of our trip:

-- When climbing the 3 flights of stairs to our room at least 3 times a day, we all file up in the exact same order. When we realized this about half way through our trip we made a point to climb them in the same manor though it wasn't hard since for some reason it was usually in order anyway! Lauryn, Marisa, Ed, Dad. This is sort of a bad order since Ed and Dad always carry the room keys which leaves Marisa and I waiting at the end of the hall for them to finish the climb.

-- Everyone speaks English if you give them the "I'm dumb" look when they say something in another language. Even when we sort of understood the language we would just sit and stare until they repeated it in English. Sometimes we would just say no or nevermind when ordering something that was not clear instead of going through the process of translation.

-- Spain does not serve Mexican food. Spanish food does not include salsa, burritos, "case-a-dee-as", tacos, or chimichangas.

-- People in Barcelona do not use their cell phones in restaurants or on the streets. We only saw a handfull of people on their cell phones during our trip, remarkable. I really liked that aspect and have actually survived without mine.

-- Americans are the only people who wear jeans and sneakers on a daily basis. Europeans, at least in Spain, get dressed every day.

-- Pattern black stockings are very popular, especially among the short old ladies in the city.

-- If you do not bring your own watch, you will never know the time as there are no clocks to be found in the city. There are over a million watch shops, but no clocks. Not even in our hotel room. Time does not seem to matter in Spain.

-- Even if pastries are on an open platter and are definitely the leftovers of breakfast, THEY ARE NOT FREE. We found this out after having "stolen" many pastries as a light snack and now there is a 24 hour guard in front of the platter. I have to admit that we did continue to take pastries even after being told twice that they are not free, but they are stale and nobody is going to pay for them anyway. They are simply wasting food and we see it as helping them out by eating them, regardless of their price. We made a comment about the pastries at the bar on our comment card, do not worry. If you come here hopefully the pastries will be free!

-- In order to work the lights and other power outlets in your hotel room, you must insert one of your room keys into a little doodle thing which turns on the electricity for your room. This is odd and since our heat does not work very well in this refurbished palace, we do not appreciate the maids taking our card out of the doodle everyday. We made a comment about this too.

 

Well, our cab will be here (it is going to drive right up pedestrian way since there are no "streets" near our hotel) very early in the morning to take us away. If you have the priviledge to visit Barcelona, I am sure you will enjoy it just as much as we have. We have not run out of things to do and are leaving wishing we had many more days to wander and experience the city. This is a city I will be sure to visit again. Be sure to check the pictures because we have now loaded almost all of them.

 

We love you Barcelona!

 

Farewell Spain and Marisa & Ed's blog.

 

Lu

 

 

(and Dad)

Hola from Barcelona!

Lu here reporting from our hotel room in the middle of "pedestrian way" (do not know the spanish/catalonian). Dad and I arrived very early Tuesday (12/18) morning and spent the day wandering the streets near our hotel and adjusting to life 6 hours ahead. We began our journey at 7am when Mom (Cathy) picked us up and brought us to the train station. We took the train to NYC, cab to JFK, and sat in the airport for close to 5 hours. miserable. Just so you know, we took AeroMexico to Spain, why? I am not sure myself. It was through Delta but gave us something to laugh about for our 5 hour wait. The 7+ hour plane ride went fairly well except for a few 50-100ft. turbulance drops in which an announcement was made to "buckle your seatbelts tightly and hold onto/secure all infants". We enjoyed Mr. Bean's Holiday as entertainment along with some movie called StarDust which I do not recommend.

 

Anyway, Marisa & Ed arrived earlier than we expected and surprised us at the hotel! They smell like Europeans and I'm pretty sure the smell of Ivan's house will be with them forever. Upon entering their room here in Barcelona, one is overcome by the smell of smoke/meat/horses. It's really rather remarkable the smell one can contract when spending a week in the woods of France. Marisa would like me to clarify that they do not have the body odor issue many true Europeans seem to encompass, rather smell differently than normal and right now mostly of a wood-burning stove. Just for clarification.

 

When Marisa & Ed arrived we were all tired and hungry from traveling so we walked until we found a place to eat and ended up at one of the best places we've been all week! It is a famous restaurant visited by hollywood megastars and we had our very first tapas! We were not sure how to order them and there was only one english speaking waitress, but we loved them and might even return to this restaurant for a second meal! This concluded our technical day 1 but we were satisfied to be settled and looked forward to our week.

 

Barcelona is an amazing city though not a great place to learn traditional Spanish. The language here is Catalan, from Catalunya which is the northern region of Spain, and is vastly different than traditional Spanish. We have been able to get along fine language wise, but Dad simply pointed to an item on a menu without any clue as to what he was ordering and it ended up being like chicken cordon bleu with fries, great luck! This luck was much appreciated when we realized there was a very large octopus in the front viewing area which could have been his meal. Whew! This was the only restaurant where nobody spoke any english and it was a struggle to make it through the meal. We are trying to speak the language but find ourselves speaking Italian or French more frequently than not, odd.

 

Our first day was cold but beautiful and we spent the day in Barceloneta which is an area of the city surrounded by harbors. You will never imagine the number of boats we saw docked but we have some pictures to give you an idea. After finding the bathroom and looking at lots of jellyfish on the surface of the water under a boardwalk, we moved on to visit a beach and walk through a weird circus I could have lived without. For lunch we ate at the oldest tavern in the city and everyone had a fantastic meal, me especially with a simple green salad without dressing. This was the ONLY item on the menu that did not have seafood or some part of an animal I'd rather never know people actually consume. Dad and Marisa split a paella which is a seafood extravaganza! It was served dramically and enjoyed by all, except me. I should mention that lunch is a big deal here and is eaten around 2-3pm as dinner is 8-11pm. Many restaurants are not open for dinner until after 8pm and most shops are closed from about 2-5pm. After lunch we walked to a large park equipped with it's very own Arc de Triomf. It looks a lot like the original only it's pink! After taking glamour shots, we went to the Picasso museum which was very interesting spanding Picasso's entire life and works. We tried to get into a cathedral and a music hall but both were closed for siestas so after sitting in a cafe and enjoying pastries and warm beverages, we return to our hotel for a few hours to rest. Marisa, Ed, and I watched YouTube videos and Garfield's Christmas to pass the time, very enjoyable. For dinner we walked to a restaurant that was recommended but ended up next door at another fantastic place that is a chain over here. It's called La Quinze Nits and it was one of our favorite meals (you will hear this a lot) in which we enjoyed 3 full courses of somewhat American somewhat Spanish dishes. I had pasta with meat sauce and a chicken and ham plate, but everyone else tried something new! The atmosphere was perfect and we spent a very long time just sitting and talking, a great night!

 

Thursday, or what we liked to call Wednesday due to our lack of ability to retain any sort of time reference, was another great day in the city. I forgot to mention that we have a very large buffet breakfast included in our hotel rate which usually takes us about an hour to consume and is the time we spend planning our day. So as I was saying, we had a great second day taking a gondola up to the highest point in Barcelona which features a large castle. It was fun to take the gondola ride up and Ed commented that it made him want to go skiing and Marisa responded by exclaiming that this ride made her never want to ski again. When we reached the top we took a right which brought us all the way around the castle when we could have gone left and been right at the entrance, silly Americans. It was a nice walk though and we had great views of the city throughout it. When we finally arrived at the front of the castle, we were able to play on some war machines and paid 1 euro each to go up to the roof of the castle for more pictures. It was amazing and we were able to see where we had been and where we wanted to go. After coming back down on the gondola, we walked up another hill to see the Olympic stadium and area that was used during the '92 Olympics. We decided to go to the Olympic museum and were all glad we had. We took pictures inside the stadium then went to find out what this very grand, breathtaking building was that we had seen from the mount. It ended up being an art museum which was not something we were interested in but we took funny pictures infront of the palace and continued on our way. For lunch we ate at the previously described non-english speaking, giant octopus eating cafe/restaurant/bar for lunch. Need not discuss this experience any further. We walked back to the hotel exhausted and got cleaned up for dinner. Once again, we were not able to get into the place we wanted to go but we went to our second choice, LA FONDA, for obvious reasons. For those of us who do not know, "La Fawnda" was the girlfriend of Kipp Dynamite, brother of Napolean Dynamite, of the box office smash hit thriller that bears his name. Many pictures were taken and added to the joyful experience of the night. I should mention that on our way to this restaurant Maris and I found many stores we wanted to shop in but are now unable to retrace our steps down the few of a million tiny streets that graph Barcelona. La Fonda was another hit and 3 course meal.

 

This morning we decided to revisit the music hall we had tried to tour previously and booked ourselves for an English tour at 2pm. This gave us enough time to visit the most repulsive cathedral, if one can even refer to it as such,  built by Gaudi. Gaudi is pronounced "gawdy" which gives you, the reader, a clue to his style. His work decorates the city but this structure is by far the most dynamic to say the least. He died before he finished it so the entire inside is scaffolding, but the 14 spires he wished to have are in the process of being completed. We will upload pictures of this place so all can enjoy its grotesque qualities and frightening expression. George Orwell was quoted saying he wished it had been demolished in the civil war and was astonished to see that nobody had demolished it themself since then. After spending more than half the day walking, we went to our music hall tour which has certainly been my favorite place so far. It seats upwards of 2000 people and is entirely tile and mosaics. We were not allowed to take pictures but will be returning to the shop to buy pictures, that's how incredable the hall was. I cannot describe it's beauty and refuse to try. When a preview of Bach's feud was played it was several notches above that of the glorious organ playing we fondly remember from our youth at St. John's. Similarity though, both scared us greatly but for drastically different reasons. This organ has over 3,000 pipes, I guess that's a bit larger than St. John's as well. We went to a cafe for drinks then a humongous outdoor food market with skin of sheep, body parts that should certainly NEVER be consumed, and other mysterious goods that made me want to vom (as in vomit). This place was on the Travel Channel as a highlight of the city. I was glad to get out of there but everyone else greatly enjoyed the experience, they have much stronger stomaches than I. Marisa and I enjoyed a fantastic experience at a small candy bar called "Happy Pills". You are given a medicine vile to fill with your favorite candies then can pick out your own label. It was cute and we loved it! We are now having our own siesta which typically includes checking emails, watching short videos, reading, showering, running, etc. whatever one desires and is a great part of the day. We are heading the Le Quatre Gats which is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in the city, it sure will be hard to beat our previous places! Picasso frequented this restaurant while living in Barcelona and designed the menu, so maybe it will be better. We are going to do a bit of shopping/wandering since it is still far too early for dinner, 6pm here currently. We had planned to go to the top of the Barcelona cathedral which is practically outside our door, but realize that it will be too dark for pictures and so I guess we'll do that tomorrow.

 

I should say that we had been planning on taking a bus tour every day but decided to wait and today the bus drivers went on strike until after the holiday. Great. Just our luck. We are better on our own anyway.

 

It should be noted that the forecast has been for rain everyday and we have only seen a few drops and the television has never been turned on for there is just far to much else to do!!

 

We shall see what the rest of the trip brings which can only be more great times and amazing places. I would recommend that each of you come to Barcelona at least once in your lifetime, if not for the highly attractive males then for the food/sights/people/culture.

 

Au'revoir, Adios, Ciao.

Lu

more pictures online!

http://www.shutterfly.com

 

login: eddiec1313@gmail.com

password: marisa

 

enjoy!

Grande finale

Tonight we had a "petite fete" in honor of our last night at Cavalus, since tomorrow TS is leaving, too. It's our last night as "Hed" and "Madeesa" - we'll miss the accent. Ivan brought out a lovely bottle of champagne and some local wine. He was cooking some type of fowl for dinner (between a chicken and a duck - any ideas?) and all was well until he threw the entire pan of grease into the fireplace and started a chimney fire that extended into our bedroom, which is directly above the fireplace in the family room.

We threw water on it, of course, and managed to stop the flames within 10 minutes. Ivan said it's good when this happens because it cleans out the chimney for him, though "it is a little dangerous." We had a good laugh over that. It's a little smoky in our room now but luckily no damage done.

We had "French fries" with dinner tonight. Seemed appropriate for celebrating our last night in France.

After dinner, Ivan wanted us to burn our Cavalus pictures onto a CD for him, since we got some nice ones during this weekend's trek. That would have been no problem, except for the fact that we took a few pictures while cleaning the kitchen that we would have preferred Ivan not see. Miss Flora has this wonderfully chocolatey junk food cereal that only she is allowed to eat and we had a picture of Ed pouring the box right into his mouth. So, no problem, we thought. We'll just make sure to load the pictures while Ivan is not around. Unfortunately, Ivan not only wanted to be there while we burned the photos, he wanted to sit and look through 400 of them, starting in Greece, and with himself in control of the mouse - quelle horreur!! We had to grit our teeth during the "Hed is eating ze cornflakes of Flora!" comment but overall, it was fine. Lucky for us, Ivan was a bit tipsy by that time and couldn't be ruffled by much of anything.

So tomorrow morning we are up bright and early for our departure. We're glad that our final evening here remained true to form for Cavalus. We prefer to go out with a bang.


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry