You guessed it: I'm off to Austria this weekend. I'm going on the work-sponsored ski trip again--the same one I went on last year at this time, on my second weekend after moving to Germany. I can't believe it's been a year already. Crazy. I'm actually going to try skiing this year, for the first time ever. I'll be driving down tomorrow, skiing Sunday (with a lesson in the morning), and then going to Salzburg on Monday. Salzburg is where the events of the story of The Sound of Music took place, and I'm actually going on a tour of the filming locations. It should be a good time. I plan on taking lots of pictures, so stay tuned for an update later next week.
Happy New Year! Yes, I know it's a couple days late. I'm back from California, and mostly recovered from my jet lag. (I think...) On my first night back, which was New Year's Eve, I went over to a friend's place to set off some fireworks. And by "some," I mean a whole helluva lot. I believe the number that was quoted was ~380 bottle rockets, with ~5000 explosions total, based on reading the packaging material and totaling everything up. Here are a few pictures of the preparations.
Fireworks ready to go:
That's a lot of rockets:
Damian preparing some awesomeness:
Shane by bottle rockets:
Me by bottle rockets:
And now for a brand new feature for jasonineurope.com: streaming video! Here's the first rocket we let go:
And finally, here's a video of the first few minutes of us launching our fireworks spectacular. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery power so I wasn't able to record the whole thing. :( We went for about 40 minutes total.
Well, I hope you enjoyed the fireworks. I can't wait for next year's celebration! Getting the videos to work took a little longer than I expected, so that's all for now. See ya!
I'm back from the UK, and gone to California! I got back to Germany on Tuesday the 9th, worked for 2.5 days, and left for California on Saturday the 13th. I'll be in California for 2.5 weeks, flying back to Germany on New Year's Eve. (Just in time to set off a whole lot of fireworks at Damian's house.)
But... back to the United Kingdom. (Not physically. Just topically.) I had a very good time on our trip to England and Wales, despite the fact that it got off to a bit of a rough start. Let's just say that things didn't quite go as planned.
After we landed in Bristol and got our rental car, we told the GPS to take us to a Barclays ATM. (Barclays is part of the Global ATM Alliance, which means Bank of America customers don't get charged ATM fees or international transaction fees at their ATMs.) We grabbed some cash, and headed for Bath. Unfortunately, Bath's Christmas market had just started, and all the downtown parking garages were full, so we basically just drove through the town and then found a restaurant on the outskirts of the town to grab some lunch. I had fish and chips. (I think that's a law in England--you're first meal after arrival must be fish and chips.)
After lunch, we got back on the road headed for Cardiff, which is the capital of Wales. The main event we were in the country for, the Wales Rally GB, had it's "main event" at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff, and our hotel was right across the street from it. We thought this would be awesome. Turns out... not so much. More on that in a minute.
We got checked in and settled into our hotel room. Ben hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, and basically went to bed at 6:00 pm. (And didn't wake up until 8:00 am.) Adam and I headed out in search of food a few minutes after Ben went to bed. We were also in search of plug adapters, because neither of us had been to the UK before, and neither of were able to plug our laptops in to charge. We ended up finding a little pub to eat dinner at, and then found a pharmacy to buy plug adapters at. Then we went back to the hotel and went to bed.
We only had tickets for the rally on Saturday and Sunday, so Friday was a free day. We decided to putz around Wales for the day and go find some castles. After breakfast, we walked across the street to the stadium to pick up our tickets, then loaded up into the car and headed for Caerphilly Castle. We bought the "Three Castle Ticket" so that we could also visit Castle Coch and Cardiff Castle. Caerphilly Castle is basically in ruins. One of the towers has actually cracked in half, and is partially leaning over, a la the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We took a group photo underneath the leaning wall:
I also took a panorama at one of the entrances to the castle:
England - Me at Caerphilly Castle
Who is that guy in the picture? It's me! I've decided to try and take a few more panoramas with me in them (when feasible) to give me some more "souvenirs" and to prove that I actually did visit all of these places. I know some of you (Mom: this means you) would rather have more pictures of me up on the site, so I'll try and do better at that.
After we finished our wanderings, we went across the street to a restaurant named Granmor's for some lunch. I had a toasted sandwich, a cup of tea, and a blackberry and apple crumble with cream to pour over it. The crumble was by far the best part of the meal. It was awesome! So awesome in fact, that when we were at another restaurant on Sunday I had another one. After we finished lunch, we headed for Castle Coch.
Now, "coch" could be pronounced a couple of different ways in the English language. One of them sounds like "coke." The other one does not. Since we all have the minds of 12-year-old boys, we went with the latter, and it made for a very entertaining and potty humour humor filled afternoon. I didn't take any spectacular pictures of the castle, because it wasn't very panoramable, and was pretty much surrounded by trees. It was definitely a cool little castle, though.
After Castle Coch, we drove to Swansea to check out the town and figure out where the service park for the rally was. We found parking, walked around the downtown area a bit, and ended up eating at an Australasian bar. I had a burger with a falafel patty instead of beef. It was quite tasty. I'm not really sure if that qualifies as "Australasian" food, but it sounded good at the time. After dinner, we walked around for a bit, and then headed for the car and drove back to Cardiff.
The big day had finally arrived! We were going to go watch cars drive a couple of rally stages out in the countryside, visit the service park to see some pit action, and end up at the stadium for a car stunt show, concert, and another stage of the rally. Or at least, that was the plan...
We woke up at 6:30 am, got ready, ate breakfast, and left the hotel around 8:00. As we were driving in to the parking area, we saw signs saying that we weren't going to be able to exit the area until noon. That fouled up our plans, because we had been planning to leave at 11:00 to drive to the service area. We decided "oh well" and started the mile-or-so walk to the race area. We watched most of the cars go by (probably about 30 or 40 of them), and then decided to try and leave "early" from the parking area. We started trying to drive out at 11:30 or so, and had no trouble whatsoever leaving early. It seems that in England, signs like that are only suggestions as opposed to actual rules.
By the time we made it to the service park, all of the main drivers had already left to go to the next stage. We saw a couple of no-name drivers pull in to the service area, and walked around looking at some of the various booths that they had setup to sell merchandise and food. I ate some fish and chips (again), and we wandered around a little more before leaving to drive back to the hotel to get ready for the evening's festivities.
Along the way, we stopped at a rally gear store so that Ben could look for some equipment for his rally car. He wanted to buy some safety equipment (helmets, earplugs, etc.) to outfit his car, and figured this was as good a place as any to get the gear. Unfortunately, it being Saturday, the store was closed. Also unfortunately, this little stop put a real kink in our plans.
When we got to the street that our hotel was on, around 4:05 pm, we discovered that the street was closed. Our hotel was right across the street from the Millenium Stadium, and the gates opened at 4:00, so they closed the street to allow people to walk to the stadium more easily. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but we had been using the hotel's parking lot for the car, and didn't know where another parking garage was nearby that we could park in. The GPS was a little less than useful because there were a few other streets that were closed, so we weren't really able to follow it's directions to parking garages. We eventually found a parking garage that was about a 15 minute walk from the hotel, and hoofed it back as quickly as we could.
By the time we made it to the stadium, we were already about 15 minutes late for the start of the events. And then we realized that our tickets were for Gate 1, and we were trying to go in Gate 2. This didn't work out well. In trying to find Gate 1, we ended up walking through the small stadium next door, and eventually found a back entrance to the Millenium Stadium, and ended up making it inside without having our tickets torn! This seemed to be another one of those "you are expected to follow the rules" situations.
We found our seats, and sat down to watch the show. There was a stunt driver that drove almost all the way around the stadium with the car leaning over on two wheels, and then he proceeded to spin some pretty impressive donuts at various parts of the track around the stadium. Then a drifting team came out and went around the track a few times. Then some motorcycle riders did some tricks off of a jump. Then everybody combined together for a big finale. It was pretty cool. After the driving show was over, The Saturdays came out and sang three songs. They're a fairly new group, and the performance was kinda blah. A couple of the songs were catchy, but it wasn't really my type of music. Too poppy. The girls were cute, though. :) After the "concert," the top 20 or so drivers took their turns going around the track. It was only semi-exciting, but the announcers seemed to think it was the most exciting thing in a decade, so at least that was amusing.
Adam declared partway through the drivers that he was tired, and headed back to the hotel. Ben and I stuck it out until the end of the show, then swung back by the hotel to see if Adam wanted to go to dinner. He didn't want to, so Ben and I struck off in search of food. It took us quite a while, because Saturday night seems to be a party night in Cardiff, and lots of restaurants were filled to capacity and had a 30-minute (or more) wait. We finally found a little Italian place not too far from the hotel. We split a bruschetta appetizer, and I had spinach ravioli and a chocolate tort for dessert. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and got to bed around 11:00 pm.
Sunday the plan was to check out, get the car, and head for the service park. Ben really wanted to see some of the top rally drivers in the service area, to see how efficiently the teams worked on the cars. We woke up at 6:30 am again, and got to breakfast around 7:40. And that's when we found out that on Sundays the hotel's breakfast area doesn't open until 8:00. So, Ben decided to go and get the car instead of sitting around and waiting. He got back around 8:10, and informed us that the parking garage didn't open until 11:00. Crap. There went the plan. We regrouped and decided to visit Cardiff Castle when it opened at 9:30, then check out and head for the car so that we could leave right at 11:00 and try to make it to one of the rally stages instead of going to the service area.
We only spent about an hour and 15 minutes at Cardiff Castle, but it was pretty interesting. I snapped one set of pictures for a panorama right before the guided tour started:
England - Cardiff Castle
As soon as the guided tour finished, we headed for the hotel, checked out, and walked to our car. We planned on heading to the final stage of the rally, and set the GPS accordingly. We got to the parking gate area about 20 minutes before the first driver of the stage was scheduled to start. We were about four hours too late. The attendant told us that the car park was full, and that we would have to park outside the gate and walk to the stage. Sure. No problem. So we parked, and started walking. There were lots of people milling about, heading both towards and away from the stage. As we were walking, a couple of people who were walking the other way (back towards the cars) told us that it was a five mile walk to get to where the stage was. We kept walking towards the stage in shock, while that little tidbit sank in. In the space of about 50 feet, two or three more people warned us that it was a five mile walk to get to the stage. At that point, we basically hung our heads in shame, tucked our tails between our legs, and headed back to the car. And that's how our experience with the rally ended. I think if we were to try again another year, we would rent a van and camp out in one of the car park areas overnight, and not try and drive between stages during the day. At least we learned our lesson.
With the rally portion of the trip done with, we were on to the "wing it" portion of the trip. Adam had picked up a pamphlet for a distillery in the hotel lobby. We plugged the address into the GPS and started driving. We decided to call the phone number on the pamphlet to make sure that they were open, it being the tourism off-season and all. We couldn't get an answer. We ended up stopping to eat at "Ye Olde Wine House," where I had roast beef and (another) blackberry and apple crumble. After lunch, we got on the road headed for Stonehenge.
While Whilst we were driving, we saw a sign for the "American Museum of Britain," and decided to stop for a few minutes to check it out. The story of our lives--it was just about to close. We chatted with one of the tour guides for a few minutes about what kind of exhibits they had in the museum, and then walked around the corner to the cafe and had tea and snacks. After getting re-energized by the tea, we jumped back into the car and continued our journey.
We pulled up to Stonehenge around 5:30 pm. It was closed. I know what you're thinking: "How does a pile of rocks close, exactly?" It turns out that every evening, the staff at the facility move all the stones into big shipping containers that are located behind the visitor's center, and then reassemble them every morning. No. Not really. It was just the parking lot that was closed. It was also extremely foggy, so even though we comprehended "breaking in" just to see Stonehenge at night, we decided against it, and headed off in search of a hotel.
We finally found a cute little bed and breakfast in the town of Amesbury, right around the corner from Stonehenge. (Holy crap--did I really just describe a bed and breakfast as cute?) The owner/proprietor pointed us down the street to an Indian food restaurant, which is where we went for dinner. I've been on a bit of an Indian food kick lately, and have made some chicken tikka masala at home. So, I was glad to go to a "real" Indian restaurant to have some chicken tikka masala and see how mine compared. I think I actually liked mine better than this place, which is not a knock on the restaurant at all. It was very good. I just liked mine better. After dinner, we went back to the hotel, which had a small bar just off of the lobby. We sat in there for a few minutes and watched people put up Christmas decorations, and then headed to bed.
On Monday morning we woke up at 8:00 am, and headed downstairs for breakfast. I had a "full English breakfast," which included sausages (I got the vegetarian ones), eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, and toast. After we finished breakfast and checked out, we headed for Stonehenge.
Stonehenge was pretty dang cool. Considering it's just a fancy pile of rocks, it's still quite fascinating. The thing that I find most interesting about it is that we're still not really sure exactly what it was for. You'd think that with all the people we have studying history, sciences, anthropology, etc., one of them would be able to unearth exactly what Stonehenge was used for when it was made, but no one really knows. We got there just a little after they opened the gates, so I was able to take pictures from several different angles before any crowds showed up:
England - Stonehenge 1
England - Stonehenge 2
England - Stonehenge 3
Unfortunately, because a few people were in the way, I waited between shots on the first one, and that's why there's a bit of a line down the middle of the picture. The clouds moved a little too much between shots. :( Due to the angle of the sun, I think the second one came out the best. Here's a picture of me with all my camera gear (and cold weather gear):
We also took a group picture with the rocks in the background:
Once we finished browsing in the gift shop, we got on the road headed for Land's End, which is the far south-western tip of the island of Britain. We stopped along the way in a town called Bodmin for a late afternoon lunch. We ate at the Folly Tea Room, and had lunch with a cat. While we waited for our Cornish pasties to come out (we all got the same thing because it sounded good), a cat wandered in from a back room, so I started petting it. It eventually hopped up onto the fourth chair at our table and laid down on a newspaper, and spent the rest of our meal sitting there. When the restaurant owner's daughter got home from school, the owner said to her "Did you see your cat?" The little girl came back out to the restaurant area, saw the cat sitting on the newspapers getting it's ears scratched, and had a good laugh. We got back on the road around 4:00 pm.
By the time we made it to Land's End, the sun had already gone down, and there was pretty much no light left. So, we turned around and started looking for a hotel. We stopped at "The First (And Last) Inn In England" hoping to find a room, but they didn't have any. It's not that they didn't have any available... they literally didn't rent rooms out. Apparently "inn" doesn't mean the same thing in England as it does in America, because the next place we tried, The Pirate Inn, also didn't have any rooms. But, the owner there told us how to get to a few of his friend's hotels just down the street.
Now, The Pirate Inn deserves some more attention, because of it's location. It's in the town of Penzance. Ever since being in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta "The Pirates of Penzance", it has held a very special place in my heart. I'm not really sure why I like it so much... it just really entertains me for some reason. So, it was extra special for me to actually visit the town of Penzance, despite the fact that at the time the libretto for the operetta was written, the town wasn't known for having any piracy problems. Oh well. It was still cool to be in Penzance!
We checked into our hotel, and asked the manager for a restaurant recommendation. He pulled out a map and showed us how to get to a pub called the Admiral Benbow. He said it had a lot of neat shipwreck memorabilia. And boy was he right. Dinner at that pub was by far our coolest experience on the whole trip. When we walked in, it was to the sounds of barbershop music. Live barbershop music. There were three guys who had just finished a gig in a nearby town, and stopped by to say hi to the pub owner, who was a friend of theirs. He convinced them to sing a few songs. They were actually quite good. The pub owner was a real "salty dog," full of all kinds of stories and jokes. There was a pub dog named Seamus who watched us eat our dinner. And boy was there shipwreck memorabilia! They had basically reconstructed a ship inside of the pub, complete with wheel.
There was also a neat old jukebox filled with some great classic rock. It was set to free play mode, so we dialed in a bunch of songs (once the barbershop concert was done) and had some great tunes the rest of the evening. All in all, it was a great experience.
Unfortunately for Ben, the experience came back to haunt him around 3:30 am, when I woke up to the sound of him throwing up in the bathroom. :( He wasn't feeling quite right the rest of the trip, and ended up calling in sick the day we were supposed to be back at work. He was a trooper though, and still drove most of the day. After I took a shower, I headed down to the water to try and catch something interesting with the sunrise as a back drop. Unfortunately it was quite overcast, so instead I just snapped some pictures of the nearby village of Newlyn:
 - Small.jpg)
England - Newlyn (viewed from Penzance)
After breakfast in the morning we headed to Land's End again, this time with daylight. Land's End was the last point of land that any ships leaving from the southern coast of Britain would see as they sailed west to the new world. There's not really a big town there, but there are a couple of restaurants and shops, and the coast is very scenic. We didn't spend too long there, because we had to get on the road to get back to the airport to catch our flight, but I managed to snap a couple of quick panoramas with my little point-and-shoot camera:
England - Land's End 1
England - Land's End 2
About an hour or so from the airport on the way back, Ben decided he had had enough driving, and asked me to drive for a while. Fortunately for all of us, I really only had to drive on the motorway, because I think I probably would have gotten us killed if I had to do much driving on city streets. Sitting on the right side of the car to drive and driving on the left side of the road was really weird. The gears for the stick shift were in the same order as a left-hand drive car, but I had to shift them with my left hand. (I reached for the gear shift at least once with my right hand out of habit, and smacked the car door.) Thank goodness the pedals were in the same order! It was a little weird to have my body lined up with the right side of the lane instead of the left side of the lane going down the highway, too. After getting off the motorway at the airport exit, I pulled into a gas station so we could gas the car up before returning it, and Ben drove the rest of the way to the airport. We made it there with plenty of time to get checked in and get through security, and the flight back was fairly uneventful. Overall, this was one of the better trips I've been on. I really like England, and can't wait to go back. I think I'll end up taking separate trips to London, Scotland, and Ireland, so that I can have enough time to experience each of them more fully.
After returning from vacation, I had two and a half days of work (we had our holiday party the afternoon of my first day back), and then left again for California. I landed in California on the 13th, and I don't fly back to Germany until the 30th. It will be a nice long vacation. I've been enjoying California. Before I even made it home from the airport I had already eaten at Chipotle. :) I've been to see the house that my dad is working on a couple times, seen my nephew three times, seen my nieces four times (and got to watch Wall-E with them), gone to a choir concert and a Canadian Brass concert, done some shopping, seen a bunch of friends, and still managed to find a few spare moments (mostly while riding in the car) to get this post typed up. Whew! Still on the agenda for the trip is a party at my oldest niece's school, lunch with a couple of friends, and a trip to Disneyland. This vacation will be over before I know it. :( I might not have a chance to post again until I get back to Germany, so if I don't see you while I'm in California, stay tuned!
Alright! Round two! On Sunday morning, we woke up, got ready to go, and went downstairs for breakfast at the hotel. It was all you can eat for 9 euro. And we ate all we could. We were all stuffed. We had decided to go to the Royal Palace, and lumbered off in that direction.
While looking at the map on the way there, something caught my eye. Casa de Cisneros! My house!! Fortunately it was pretty close to the palace, and after a little wandering around trying to find it (the map really wasn't that great), we finally found it. Apparently, it is now where the mayor of Madrid lives. And yes, of course, I took a picture in front of it:
After tracking down my house, it was on to the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace of Madrid is the largest royal palace in Western Europe at 1.45 million square feet. (That's 33 acres!) After waiting in line and buying our tickets, we had to go through security. As I went past the security screener with my backpack on the way to the x-ray machine, he put a sticker through the handle that said "Check in coatroom." Harumph. I asked at the information desk if the backpack was only disallowed in the palace, or if the ban included the courtyard as well. The lady told me I just needed to put it in a locker before going inside the palace. Thank goodness. Without being able to take the backpack outside, I couldn't have taken this panorama:
Madrid - Royal Palace
This was the first time I've done a 360° panorama with my tilt-shift lens. I was able to do three rows of pictures using shift. So, you can not only move this image left and right, you can move it up and down, too! Click and drag on the picture to look around.
The palace was pretty amazing. Painted ceilings, beautiful tapestries, chairs that are probably worth more than everything I own, and it's own private armory and pharmacy! We walked through the room where the paperwork was signed that admitted Spain to the European Union in 1986, which happened to be the same room that housed the Madrid Conference in 1991. Pretty cool.
After touring the main palace, we toured the armory and the pharmacy. While walking through the armory, one of the guards (named Carlos) asked me where I was from, in very good English. I told him I was from America, and we spent the next 20-30 minutes talking about sports. He ended up giving Ben a pin for the Atlético Madrid soccer team. He said he had been a guard at the palace for 19 years, and had studied English in school but picked up a lot more from talking to people over the years. His accent was great--I had no trouble understanding him. We ended up talking with him for so long that we almost missed out on the rest of the armory and pharmacy.
The armory was cool. Lots of armor (for full grown adults, children, and even horses) and weapons, including some rifles that were about 12 feet long. The pharmacy was slightly less cool. It was essentially just a few rooms filled with old jars. Nothing terribly exciting. After finishing up at the pharmacy, we went back and got our stuff out of the locker, and headed back to the hotel to rest.
Part way back to the hotel, we decided to find a place that had "chocolate con churros" for a little pick me up. We stopped a little cafe in Plaza Mayor, and got our super-thick hot chocolate and freshly made churros. Yummy. :) Best hot chocolate ever.
We ended up staying at the hotel for a while, because we were so tired from all of the walking of the previous three days. (It ended up being a good thing that we rested for so long, because we walked a lot in Toledo...) We read about the palace that we had just visited (I know... cart before the horse), and settled up on some "bets" we had placed.
A brief aside... During our discussions while walking around in all of these places we visit, we talk. A lot. About all kinds of things. And every once in a while (or every 5 minutes or so) somebody says something that someone else takes some sort of issue with. For instance, when our tour guide told us that the Royal Palace of Madrid was the biggest palace in Western Europe, Ben thought he was completely wrong, citing Versailles and the Louvre as examples of palaces that he thought were much bigger than the one we were looking at. While resting in the hotel, we took advantage of the free wireless Internet to discover that, indeed, the Royal Palace of Madrid is bigger than both Versailles and the Louvre. Another example of one of our "bets" was whether the phrase was "The Rain In Spain Stays Mainly In The Plain" or "The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On The Plain." (The correct version is the former, for those who are interested.) Anywho... Back to our story.
Once we had rested a while, we headed out for dinner. We finally found a little hole-in-the-wall place with some nice pictures of their food in the window. The key to us going in there was that they had paella. Adam and Ben ended up splitting a huge order of paella, and I got a steak. I had ordered in Spanish, and I guess it was pretty convincing, because after taking our orders the waiter rambled off a whole bunch of words and then looked at me like I was supposed to respond. I kind of chuckled and said "Con mas despacio, por favor." (Basically "please speak slowly.") Then he kind of chuckled and said "How would you like your steak cooked?" Haha. It's been a while since high school Spanish class. It was English from him the rest of the night. He even explained all the various dessert options to us. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and went to bed.
On Monday, we got up around 7:30 am, got ready, and started walking towards the train station. We caught the 9:20 am train to Toledo. Toledo is basically built on a hill, with a big wall around it. Sort of a medieval fortress. The city is famous for making swords, and you could tell that shopkeepers knew that. I have never seen more swords in a single day in my life. I don't even think the armory at the Royal Palace in Madrid had this many swords. Swords everywhere! This was also the day that we did the most walking. By far.
The first major thing we did was find a store where some local artisans were hammering out designs for jewelry using gold leaf. It was fascinating to watch the detailed work that they were doing. Some of the designs we saw throughout the rest of the day at various shops were magnificent, and must have taken quite some time to hammer out.
Our next major stop was at the Iglesia de San Ildefenso. The inside of the church was quite church-like. I really don't know what else to say. Just kinda average. However, the view from the top of the church tower was quite amazing:
Toledo - View from Iglesia de San Ildefonso.jpg
Breathtaking. At least the climb up the stairs was. ;) From the church we walked westish (a grammar rule I just made up--anything with more than 10,000 hits on Google can count as a word), and found this view:
Toledo - San Juan de los Reyes
I'd write more about that church, but we didn't go inside, and I don't really know any more about it. Sorry. See that reddish building just to the right of the church, way off in the distance? Further back. Further. There you go. That one. That's where we walked to next. (I told you we did a lot of walking.) The trip over there ended up being a bit of a waste, as the view of Toledo from there was not the greatest. And we were tired. And hungry. So we walked back to town to find food.
Unfortunately, we were hungry right during siesta time. (That happened to us a lot on this trip, actually. We found a place that was open, and as soon as we walked in, the host greeted us with us "You guys want to eat?" He was from New Jersey. It's a small world.
After dinner, we started our walk back to the train staion. Along the way, we came up to the edge of town, and were greeted with this view of the valley and the Academia de Infanteria de Toledo (the link is to the Spanish Wikipedia page):
Toledo - Military Academy and valley
We got back to the train station in time to catch the 7:30 pm train back to Madrid. Unfortunately for us, we didn't get back to the train station in time to catch tickets for the 7:30 pm train. So, we got tickets on the next train, at 9:30 pm. :( Apparently we are gluttons for punishment, because we left the train station and walked around a little more. Then we said "Why are we still walking?" and went back to the train station and sat around for the last hour or so of our wait. We took the Metro from the train station back to the hotel, because we were tired of walking.
We didn't do anything on Tuesday except wake up, check out of the hotel, and head to the airport to catch our flight back to Germany. Yet another fun but exhausting trip. (What would that acronym be? YAFBET.)
So what's next on the horizon? I work tomorrow, then on Thursday (Thanksgiving) I will eat my fourth and fifth of five Thanksgiving meals. Friday will be another work day (the first Black Friday I will have ever worked on, I think). So will Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Why am I working on Sunday, you ask? Because Thursday the 4th of December we leave for Bristol, England! We're gone the 4th through the 9th. I'll get back, work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then hop on a plane bound for California on the 13th, never to return. Just kidding. But it will feel like it. I'll be in California for two and a half weeks, getting back to Germany around 8:00 pm on New Year's Eve. Just in time to party.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself. England will get a post or two to itself, and I'm sure I'll squeeze out a couple posts while I'm in California. Although they really have no place on a site called "Jason In Europe." Oh well.
Hello! Sorry to go so long without posting. It's been a busy couple of weeks since I got back from Madrid. In the last week alone, I went to see Quantum of Solace (the new James Bond movie) right after watching Casino Royale, cooked homemade pizzas with a couple friends, who then stayed around to watch WALL-E, ate some KFC and played darts at a friend's house, had a friend over for dinner (I cooked chicken tikka masala) and some Call of Duty 5, and had a few friends over to watch UFC 91 that I recorded this past Saturday night. Whew!
Somewhere in there, I also got a chance to stitch the panoramas that I took on the Madrid trip, which was Friday November 7 to Tuesday November 11. Here's a brief rundown of what we did on the trip.
We landed on Friday afternoon, figured out the subway system, and rode it to our hotel. At one of the transfers, we had to climb nearly a million stairs to get to our train. Ok, so it was probably closer to 200, but it sure felt like a million. I was out of breath by the time we made it to our platform. Once we got to our destination station, we wandered around for a few minutes to get our bearings, and then finally found our hotel and got checked in. We didn't do much on Friday night. We had dinner, and then found a little cafe where I got choco caliente, which is the Spanish version of hot chocolate that is so thick you can lay a spoon on top of it and it won't sink! It's yummy.
On Saturday, we headed for the Puerta del Sol, which is where the "free" tour was set to depart from. One of the promoters from the tour company was out there, and we asked him if there was a good place to get breakfast nearby. He pointed us in the direction of a little cafe where we got sandwiches and coffee.
After breakfast, we headed out on the walking tour, starting at 11:00 am. The tour covered the following (from their web site):
Please don't ask me questions about most of that stuff, because I've already forgotten it. ;) One of the interesting things we saw on the tour was the Guinness record holder for the world's oldest restaurant. The restaurant is the Sobrino de Botin. It was established in 1725! Here's a picture of it, with a few people from our tour group:
Madrid - Oldest restaurant in the world
After the tour was over, we decided to find the museum where Guernica by Pablo Picasso is on display. That museum is the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. We lucked out, because after 2:30 pm on Saturdays admission is free to the museum. We went in, found Guernica, stared at it in confusion for several minutes, wandered around the rest of the museum for a bit, and then left.
On the way to the Sofia, we had stopped by the Prado to see how much it was, and discovered that after 6:00 pm on Saturday it had free admission. We had about an hour to kill before then, so we walked over to the Parque del Buen Retiro, found a cafe, and got some coffee. The cafe was right on Estanque del Retiro (Retiro's Pond), where I took this panorama of the Monumento a Alfonso XII:
Madrid - Monumento a Alfonso XII
After the coffee pick-me-up, we headed to the Prado. I enjoyed the Prado, but didn't really see any paintings that I remembered from my History of Western Art class, or anything that I would consider to be really famous. (Ok... so I only remember two paintings from my Western Art class. But neither of them were therd! ;) ) We definitely saw some works by famous artists, but I didn't remember seeing any of them before. I guess I should have paid more attention in class.
We stopped at a pasta place on the way back to the hotel after the Prado closed at 8:00 pm. After 30 euros worth of food, I was stuffed. We waddled the rest of the way to the hotel and went to sleep.
Ok... So I started typing this post on Saturday afternoon, and then stopped to play some video games. And then never started again. It's now Sunday night, and I'm tired. So, I'm going to go ahead and post this, and finish up writing about the Madrid trip later. See ya soon!