Joe Cool

Encountered on a trip to "The Orchard" (down in Grantchester) during Rustin and Michele's visit:



Apparently it's hip to scope out the tea garden scene on Saturday afternoons...

Kiel

On Friday, we headed off to the Amsterdam train station for the ride to Germany to visit our friends Reinhard & Hildegard (from Rice grad school days). We had no trouble finding our train, and the first part of our ride went ok, but we wound up hitting a delay in Osnabruck of 30 minutes, which meant that we missed our connection in Hamburg. We were able to get on the next train to Kiel in fairly short order, but in the intervening time I discovered that I had failed to write down any of the important info for my friend (no phone number, no address). Yikes. When we arrived, we hunted around for a phone book (they weren't listed) and tromped around the station looking for one of them, with no success. I finally had to run down the street to an internet cafe, rent a few minutes on a PC (for 50 euro cents, not bad) and bring up Google mail so that I could copy down the info. Sure enough, when we got back to the station it turned out that Hildegard had been there waiting for us all along-- somehow we had managed to walk right by each other in the hustle and bustle. This once again proves my total incompetence when it comes to matters of travel arrangements: the one thing that Amy leaves me to do (write down the address & phone) and I blow it. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Reinhard & Hildegard have a really nice house in the Kronshagen neighborhood of Kiel, about a 10 minute bike ride from the university and from the city center. Lovely back garden, with lots of nice trees and plenty of space for the kids to run around.




They've recently redone their kitchen (much envy on the part of Amy and myself). Hildegard cooked us a nice dinner and we had an enjoyable evening getting caught up with them while the kids played around together. Their kids are slightly older than ours; Julia is maybe a year or two older than Ethan and I think Nora is a year ahead of Lydia.

On Saturday after a nice breakfast, we hopped in the car (along with a few of us on bikes) and drove down to the central station to pick up a ferryboat. The local ferry makes stops along both sides of the "fjord" (this is what they call it) that Kiel is part of, so it's a pleasant way to see the area waterways. We took it as far as Laboue, a sort of beach resort town located on the east side of the fjord a bit to the north. We had lunch, and the kids had a lot of fun running around and playing on the beach.



The weather was actually quite nice-- still rather cool and windy, but with warm sun, so if you could find a sheltered spot it was quite pleasant. We also walked up the beach a ways to where they had an old WW-2 era U-Boat, which you could pay a couple of Euros to go inside and clamber around. I had never seen one before up close, so that was interesting. They packed an astonishing number of people into those things (crew of 56 in an absolutely tiny space).

The harbor area and the fjord is very active, with lots of shipping, sailboats, ferries, even kayaks.

Sunday we had another very lazy day-- Amy and I went running in the morning, then we took off to see Reinhard's office at the university (his computer lab has a pinball machine of all things, so the kids had some fun with that). We had lunch at a big beer-garden / restaurant in the middle of one of the city parks; very pleasant. After that we headed home, packed up, and Reinhard very kindly drove us to the airport in Hamburg, about an hour away.

An excellent trip-- I think everyone feels very much recharged.

Amsterdam

More ramblings from our recent Easter holiday in Europe...

Up very early Tuesday morning to head to the airport... goodbye Barcelona!

Airline was "Transavia", a tiny Dutch outfit that I'd never heard of. As with the other smallish short-haul European airlines, it was decent and no-frills. We arrived in Amsterdam at around 12 noon after taking the shuttle van.

At the hotel: horror upon horrors! There was a sign on the beloved hot chocolate machine explaining that it was "out of service". The kids were somewhat mollified after some fast talking on the part of the desk clerk, who assured us that there would be some form of hot chocolate at the breakfast the next day.

We headed into town for a walk, since the weather was really nice and we want to get out and about. Quick lunch from the bakery; pizza rolls for the kids and felafel for the adults, followed by a long wandering walk around the city looking for "interesting stuff".



Amsterdam is an amazingly easy city to get around when it comes to language issues-- people around the city will speak Dutch to you first, but will instantly switch to English when they figure out that you are from abroad. Literally everyone speaks English as far as I can tell-- it's sort of creepy in a way.

Our meandering walk took us eventually to Westerkerk, one of the big churches, but our plan to climb the towers was foiled (they wanted us to come back in 2 hours). Everyone was getting tired, so we headed back to the hotel to relax for a while. Dinner: we trolled for restaurants, since we wanted to try something interesting. Amsterdam is really expensive compared to Barcelona-- the meal prices were way, way higher. We finally settled on a small Indonesian restaurant, where we ordered rijsttafel, something that both Amy and I wanted to try. Lydia went the egg roll route. Very tasty, although not cheap.

Back at the hotel after dinner I was very surprised when I turned on the tube and discovered two English teams playing soccer: Liverpool and Chelsea, in a Champions league game. English soccer seems to be everywhere! We only watched a little of the play, since everyone was tired and wanted to go to sleep.

On Wednesday we breakfasted at the hotel, then took off to the Anne Frank house for the tour. We took our first shot at riding the streetcars, which turn out to be quite easy to use. When we got there, I was very glad that Amy signed us up in advance, since the lines were enormous. The house was interesting and very well put-together; I thought they did a nice job arranging it so that you still get a sense for what the place might have been like during the war. The small video exhibits (mostly clips from a family friend "Miep") were fascinating. Also one very short interview with Otto Frank himself, in which he basically said he had no idea that his daughter had such a side to her (his quote: "I have concluded that it is impossible for parents to ever truly know their children" -- yikes).

Afterwards another long walk back to the center of town, where we decided to rent bikes.



Hurray-- much speedier and easier to get around after that (although maybe a little less relaxing; you really have to stay alert when biking around this town).



The kids (particularly Ethan) were very happy to be on bikes again-- much easier on the feet compared to walking.



We made our first ride to a pancake house and had an early lunch. Dutch pancakes turn out to be vaguely crepe-like, sort of half crepe and half American pancake. After that we biked over to the Rijksmuseum plaza, where they had a large outdoor sculpture thing. The kids (and some adults) had fun clambering around on top of it for a while.



Then we had a very nice ride to Vondelpark, and the kids spent some time playing around while Amy and I turned our brains off and relaxed for a while.

On Thursday we hopped on our bikes and rode off to the central station where we met up with our bus tour group, and then it was off to Keukenhof, the huge flower garden outside of the city.



The bus ride was a little late in getting going, but it didn't take took long to get there. Amazing to see the fields on the way-- outrageous bands of color popping up at odd intervals. The garden itself was a little crowded by still very beautiful.



It's an enormous place, so it can accommodate quite a bit in the way of visitors. We stayed for a couple of hours, had a nice lunch, then hopped on the bus back to town.

In the afternoon we spent time getting caught up on our shopping. Bought some presents for our German friends, and went to the grocery store to buy "Stroopwaffeln" cookies-- these things are incredibly good (Lucy and Scott brought some back for us the last time we were there). Kind of like a sandwich with crisp wafflish layers on the outside and caramel on the inside. Visited the ATM, the bookstore, and so on. For dinner we made an attempt to visit "The Pantry" (billed as a spot where we could get "typical dutch" cuisine), but we chickened out after taking a look (not enough on the menu for Lydia) and wound up instead at Wagamama, a noodle chain (generic, but decent).

Barecelona (part 5)

Monday: happy birthday, Amy!

Up early, had a quick breakfast, packed sandwiches for lunch, then then zoomed off on the metro to Placa De Espanya to find the train to Monserrat. We had no trouble locating the correct platform (in spite of dire warnings in the guidebook); had to dash to make the train, since it was leaving earlier than we thought. Quite a lot of hikers already on the train even at 8:36am. Uneventful but lengthy (1 hr) ride to the Monserrat stop, where we disembarked and hopped onto the cable car for the ride up to the Monastery.



Breathtakingly nice weather-- warm sun, cool breezes, clear skies. Once up to the monastery, we took another cog railway up to the top of the trailhead, then did big circular hike that lasted around 4 and a half hours (10:30am to 3pm). The views of the surrounding hills were spectacular. Here is a representative shot. Note the tiny red dot on the side of the rock:



And here is a closeup of the red dot-- looks like it's not a dot after all:



Here is a shot from a distance of some sunbathers. Initially I thought they might be mountain goats (I've seen them before in the Alps) but the color is all wrong (mountain goats have very light fur) and the horns were the wrong shape. After quite a bit of googling I was able to identify them: ibex. Kind of cool-- first time I have seen them.



The rock that makes up the mountains here is very interesting stuff-- a sort of matrix of hard pebbles within a softer rock substrate, which makes very very interestingly swoopy "half-melted" shapes when the weather wears it down. Lots of people still hiking up as we were making our way back down, and tons of people at the monastery itself once we got in (very glad we went early). The monastery itself is nice but not especially noteworthy-- I think the really old buildings all burned down in the 19th century and were subsequently rebuilt. Here is a shot from above, taken from the hiking trail:



After getting back to the apartment to get showered and cleaned up, we headed to dinner at "Seven Doors", a local traditional Catalan food place not too far from the water. Very formal; decent food, although oddly vegetable-free (Amy & Ethan & I had paella; Lydia had fried calamari). Afterwards we walked down to the beach to wander around for a while-- pleasant street scene, with lots of people enjoying the good weather. Early bed; we were all exhausted.

Barcelona (part 4)

Sunday: late start, since everyone was still tired from the footbal game the night before. We finally headed out and took the subway to Park Guell, up on the northern part of the city up in the hills. From the metro stop there is a long series of outdoor escalators, since the hill leading up to the park is extremely steep.



Weather was cool, but still reasonably pleasant.



The park was nice, but unfortunately they had a very large section of it closed off, so there were a lot of things we were unable to see. We did do a loop walk outside the edge of the park, which was quite pleasant (especially the views from the top):



Headed home after that. Lunch at "Milk", a local restaurant that had gotten rave reviews in the rental place binder. It was decent, buta little too Americanized for our tastes. At that point: rain! We did quiet stuff in the apartment for the first bit of the afternoon, then got our raincoats and umbrella and headed out for a walk in spite of the precipitation. By retracing our steps from the previous day, we were able to locate a cafe that sold cups of hot chocolate "Suisse", a local speciality.



In Barcelona, "Suisse" means a cup of very thick (almost pudding-like), very dark hot chocolate topped with a huge mound of whipped cream. Major indulgence! It was amazingly good. We also had some churros (donut-like snacks) to go along with:



After that we walked around the old city again for a while. Lots of nice window shopping; we saw any number of interesting things that we would have liked to buy (had the shops been open). Back to the apartment after that, since people were getting wet. Dinner: roast chicken, salad, rice & pasta, accompanied by a very tasty bottle of white wine ("Castillo Perelada Blanc Pescador"). We skipped dessert (in spite of howling protests from the kids) as a result of our previous chocolate orgy at the cafe.

Barcelona (part 3)

Saturday was our big "touring and shopping" day. After breakfast we walked up to Placa de Catalunya and met up with our tour group, a very large and boisterous gang. The tours are very high-tech; each person gets a small radio-like device with headphones, then you get to listen to the guide via short-range radio transmissions. Once we got over the hurdle of getting the little boxes working (they were somewhat flaky) this system actually worked out very well, since you don't have to crane your neck & crowd around to hear the commentary. The guide was quite good; lots of interesting material (although I think she had something of a chocolate fixation-- we kept on veering off from various other aspects of Spanish cuisine to return to chocolate in one for or another). The tour started out with a walk from Placa Catalunya down to the Boqueria, the biggest/best open market in the city, which is locate off Las Ramblas.



It was pretty amazing-- jammed with people (both tourists / gawkers and determined-looking food shoppers). You had to step carefully in order to avoid the grim-looking ladies trundling their wheeled baskets around. Food: heavy emphasis on fruit, vegetables, ham/sausage/charcuterie, nuts, beans, and flowers.



Here is a shot of the opera house in central Barcelona. According to the guide, the spot that they picked to build it on had an old convent there, and when they went to tear it down, one of the nuns made a pronouncement that the new opera house would suffer three disasters-- it would be destroyed by fire, that there would be a bomb blast in it, and that the roof would fall in. Sure enough, all three predictions have come to pass (it burned down twice, in fact, in addition to being bombed during he civil war and having its roof fall in during a renovation).



Here we are inspecting one of the many chocolate and sweet shops that our guide led us to (this one specialized in nougat, if my memory serves).



After the market we wound our way back into the center of the old quarter, past a bunch of the old Roman areas and the central (gothic) cathedral. On the way, we bumped into this guy:



You can't see it from the photo, but the side car actually contains his dog (heh).

The guide was full of interesting anecdotes about the buildings. At one point we stopped near the cathedral so that she could point out an extremely dull and boxy-looking high rise; she announced that it housed offices of the Barcelona Architectural Society (heh). Off to the side she showed us the side of a building that had been painted with drawings by Picasso (reproductions, "blown up" from the originals). Picasso apparently did not get along well with Franco (Franco referred to him as "The Devil"); as a result, Picasso stayed totally away from Spain from 1936 until the point when Franco was deposed, which when you think about it is a huge stretch of time. The tour finished in the Mercat de Santa Caterina, another big market in the eastern section of the Barri Gotic.

We were presented with a ticket that we could exchange in one of the bars for a plate of tapas and a drink. The kids chose "Xocolat", the local chocolate milk drink. The stuff looked like it would be lousy (very "1950s" label), but in fact it was absolutely delicious when we tried it (not too sweet/cloying).

After the tour wrapped up, Amy and I got down to shopping in earnest, mainly trying to buy enough food to sustain us for the next few days. We suspected that visiting on Easter weekend we would run the risk of having things closed for the holiday, and this in fact was the case: we were told that all of the markets and grocery stores would be closed Sunday and Monday. As a result, we did our best to cram all of our food buying in during the afternoon; we bought fresh peppers, bread, croquettes, onions, tomatoes, strawberries, fish, and a whole collection of other items. For lunch we stopped at a crepe place (yum) and also grabbed a chocolate cake from a bakery on the way home, for a certain important person's birthday. Amy and the kids rested back at the apartment and I took off back to Carrefour to buy more supplies, also went back to the Bocqueria to buy a roast chicken and other things. Amazingly, Carrefour actually had a cheap pair of pliers, so I bought it so as to have a way to turn on the three other burners on the stove; this made cooking a bit easier.

Dinner was green beans, salad, fish with pesto sauce, rice, and croquettes. The fish turned out to be a bit of a dud, unfortunately (the Spanish fish names are all different, of course, so we were not entirely sure what we were buying). The chocolate cake put everyone back in a good mood, however.

After dinner we headed off to the soccer stadium to see Barcelona play Reactivo (not an especially strong team-- they had a sort of "sacrificial lamb" quality to them). Transportation logistic were tricky-- the local subway at Drassaines was so mobbed we couldn't get anywhere near it. We decided to walk up Avenida de Parallel to see if we could do any better farther up. This turned out to be a good move-- the Parallel station (5 minutes walk) was nowhere near as crowded. We jammed ourselves onto the next train for a sardine-like ride up to Le Cortes, where we got out and joined the rest of the throngs on the march to the stadium. We soon found out that getting off at Le Cortes was a strategic mistake, however, since we had to walk all the way around the outside of the stadium to get to the correct ticket office ("Camp Nou" is enormous, so this took a while). Then more waiting in the lengthy queue-- we finally grabbed our tickets and headed in, only to be stopped again: the guards didn't want me to bring in my pocket knife. Grumble. By the time we finally got our our seats, it was 15 minutes into the game, and we had missed the first goal.



In spite of all the struggles to get there, the game was actually a lot of fun. The seats were right down close to the field, near the goal line. It was cool but not terribly cold, and it didn't rain, thank goodness. I brought hats and mittens for everyone, but in fact we didn't really need them. Here is a shot of Lionel Messi, one of the top players in the world:



The crowd was very noisy and rowdy, with songs and chants of one sort or another ("Barca", "Barca", ...). The stadium there is truly immense-- even bigger than where the Patriots play (Gillette), and most of the seats were filled. A bit smoky (blech).

Barcelona dominated the match; it was pretty clear they were the better team. It was interesting to see both Thierry Henri and Lionel Messi play; Henry is much taller in real life than he looks on the tube. Messi is short but very fast; he was fun to watch. Reactivo didn't do themselves any favors; one of their defensemen scored an "own goal", and they also had a foul in the box that resulted in a penalty (taken by Messi, who fired it into the goalkeeper unfortunately). Subway home was uneventful; we chatted briefly with another American family who had been there watching the game. They had been up in the stratospheric seats, and had been rather cold as a result.

Barcelona (part 2)

We slept very soundly in our "cave" on Thursday night; everyone got up late (around 8am). Nasty surprise-- no hot water; Amy and Ethan and I had to take cold showers. No better way to wake up in a hurry, to be sure. We had a tasty breakfast, though: strawberries, toast, jam, yoghurt, and pastries from the local grocery ("Bonpreu"). Strangely, both of the major grocery chains in Barcelona have vaguely French names ("Bonpreu" and "Carrefour"). The food is very Spanish, however, in spite of the names.

We headed over to the tourist info office at Placa De Catalunya to meet up with our walking tour, only to discover that the internet outfit that sold us the tickets messed up-- they had scheduled us for a day when the markets would be closed. Very annoying; we put our names on the list for the next day (Sat) and headed our for greener pastures.

We decided to head to the Picasso Museum, which was about a 10 minute walk or so. Very crowded-- huge line coming out the door. We decided almost reflexively to get in the queue (how British!) while deciding what to do next. While looking at the maps and the guide book, we discovered that the line was actually moving at a decent pace, so we decided to stick with it.

It's a very odd museum in terms of the collection, since it has pieces primarily from the beginning of Picasso's career around the turn of the century (when his works were very traditional in style) and then from the very end, in the late 50's and 60's (very avante garde), but virtually nothing in between. At one point during the walk through the museum I was convinced that we must have missed an entire building or wing, but in fact this is how they have it set up. It was an interesting visit; I'm glad we went. It was especially astonishing to see the sort of works that Picasso was turning out when only 14 or 15 years of age.

Here is a shot that gives you a sense for what the back alleys are like in Barcelona-- tiny passageway with buildings on either side that are 3, 4, 5 stories tall:


Lunch at a local noodle restaurant, then a walk back home. At the apartment we were greeted by a note saying that they would have to move us (they had shut off the water to the place completely at this point). Grumbling, we got everything packed up to relocate.

Before doing the move we walked over to the Palau De Musica to take a tour. Quite an extraordinary place, inside and out. No picture-taking allowed, so I don't have any photos, but it was very interesting to tour it and learn a little bit about the history. The most amazing thing for me was the fact that architect did all of the designs for the decorating, as well, including very elaborate indoor sculpture, paintings, mosaics, and a fabulous stained-glass "dome" creation that hangs from the center of the roof. Astonishing.

After that, off by cab to the new place, located off Placa Merce just up from the main drag that goes along the water, the Paseo de Colom. Here is a shot from the doorway of the building looking into the Placa:



After getting settled in we almost immediately discovered that the stove in the kitchen was almost non-functional-- oven busted, three of the burner control knobs gone. How annoying! Anyhow, we were able to cook a small pot of pasta and a few other things for dinner.

After dinner we headed over for an excursion to "Poble Espanyol" for a flamenco dancing performance that Amy arranged. Poble Espanyol is a rather odd place-- it's a sort of artificial "tourist village" that was built over on Montjuic for an international exposition of some sort. After the expo they decided not to tear it down after all; it has various shops, restaurants, etc, all with a sort of weird "Disneyworld" quality to them.



The flamenco dance performance was fun, though; enjoyed by both kids and adults. The dancers (at least for this performance) had a very severe look to them-- hair tightly pulled back, very serious expressions, complemented by similarly serious singers and a guitar player (I think he did actually crack a smile at one point).


Cabbed it back afterwards, had a quick dessert, and headed for bed-- everyone was tired.

Spanish has been a bit of a struggle so far. To my chagrin, I keep on breaking into French ("oui" instead of "si", for example); this mortifies Ethan no end. Luckily I haven't had to make any serious attempts at Catalan, which I think is totally beyond my abilities.

Barcelona (part 1)

Well, we're back from our Easter holiday ramblings, and in spite of the fact that the kids have been in school for a couple of days already, I am still trying to get myself organized. Here are a few notes about our travels.

Getting to Barcelona we flew "EasyJet", one of the low-cost carriers that serves the UK. Not especially luxurious/pleasant flying experience (bears a very strong resemblance to Southwest airlines), but they do (usually) get you there in one piece in approximately the right about of time. Also, they fly from Stanstead, which is by far the most convenient airport for Cambridge; very easy to get in and out on the train.

The outfit that we found to rent us an apartment is located on "Passatge de Sert", a tiny alleyway connecting "Carrer de Trafalgar" with "Carrer de Sant Pere Mes Alt" in the Barri Gotic, the old Quarter. This part of Barcelona is absolutely riddled with tiny streets, some of them just large enough for small autos but even more that are too small for anything but people and bikes.

Here is a link that shows a google "street view" of the entrance to the alley. The web page takes a while to load, but it is actually a decent shot.

Passatge Sert is only about 70 or 80 meters long, with metal gates at each end that get closed at night. Our apartment was in one of the buildings along the alleyway; nice although somewhat cave-like and poorly lit (clearly designed with an eye to keeping it cool during a hot summer).

After stowing our gear and making a quick trip to the grocery store, we went to explore a little, walking over to "Las Ramblas", one of the biggest and most famous pedestrian/shopping areas in the older part of city. The nice weather had brought out the crowds, so there were lots of other people strolling and taking in the sights. Here is a picture of Las Ramblas:


After we had had our fill of Las Ramblas, we hopped on the metro and headed out for La Sagrada Familia, the enormous Gaudi-designed church, a bit to the north of the old town. Here we discovered that the Barcelona metro works a little differently from the ones in other cities-- if the subway map shows a connection between one line and another at a given stop, it doesn't always mean that you can transfer easily-- sometimes you actually have to leave the station, walk up to street level, and then hunt around for the station on the "connecting" line (as I recall we ran into this same problem in Italy once). Anyhow, after lots of muddle we made it to the Gaudi church -- it was extraordinary. What a mind that guy must have had.





Fantastic weather-- warm but not hot, clear skies, cool breezes. Lovely stuff. For dinner (after we got back from La Sagrada Familia) we wandered over to one of the side streets off Las Ramblas and had a meal at a tapas restaurant ("Taller", I think? can't quite recall the name). Good food; it was a treat. Fresh bread (not sure what kind, but it was vaguely foccacia-like) with crushed tomato on top (this is apparently a Catalan staple), tortilla (potato omelette), "shaved artichoke (artichoke cut into very thin slices and then fried crispy-- yum), chicken grilled on skewers (for Ethan), a chickpeas & spinach dish, sauteed mushrooms, fried calamari (for Lydia), and a plate of grilled vegetables, plus a pitcher of sangria with Cava for Amy and I.

Ethan and I stayed up afterwards to watch a little football: UEFA cup coverage of Manchester City vs Hamburg. Decent game, but it was somewhat disheartening to see Man City doing poorly, since I know they are capable of a much higher level of play. All their top players (including Robinho, the Brazilian) are all in a "slump" these days.