travel.buriedrail.com

I doubt any of you read this on a regular basis, but the blog was down for a while because I changed hosts. Now it’s back up and available. Thanks for being patient.

-steve

Well, we’re about 99% packed up with the exception of what we’re wearing right now. In about 6 hours we’ll be waking up and heading to the subway and then the commuter trains to the airport. We’ll see everyone shortly!! Don’t stop reading the blog, we still have lots of photos and stories to share with you guys! See you soon!!

<3
-steve and nichole

1993g / 5.3 lb… of chocolate. MMMMM

-nichole

It looks like this is going to be another large entry. Steve seems to make me post all of the long entries, and then he gets to post smaller entries with photos. Ha!

Today’s been… interesting. I’m going to tell you the end, and then we’re going to “Tarantino” it and see how we got there:

Steve & I decide to head over to the neighborhood’s park and rest on a bench for a while. We sit down and start chatting. We see a gray VW van come driving up near the park. We hear a *CRUNCH*

We woke up “early” - 11am. To try to keep ourselves awake, we went out for a walk and picked up some groceries. After returning, we started doing some dishes. Then Dani & Vero woke up and I was instructed to “drop it and get away from that sink right now!” hahaha

Steve and I wandered out on our own so Dani & Vero could take their time getting ready, and so we could have some time to ourselves and do the “tourist” thing and look for some souvenirs. So far it’s been a success - we did find a few things, though not everything that I wanted to pick up.

While out on our own, we were on a quest to find Suchard. Our British coworker Angela has been raving about how wonderful this hot chocolate is for months. The grocery store this morning didn’t have any, so we figured their ginormous (HUGE - as in, 7 or more stories and takes up an entire city block) super-store “El Corte Inglés” would have it. We found our way to the grocery area inside and wandered around and got lost a bit in the confusing isle setup. We found an isle of candy bars, but didn’t see any Suchard and figured it would probably be with the coffees or teas. We found the coffee & tea isle, but alas, no Suchard. So we wandered around like lost puppies and eventually decided to ask for help.

A simple “Do you have Suchard?” (Tiene Suchard… xocolate?) did the trick. “Ah! Si! blahblahblawordblahblah xocolate blabla.” Sounded like she was pointing us near the chocolate / candy bar isle. “Oh! Si! Ok. Gracies!” And with that we wandered right back to the candy bars. Still no Suchard. So we look in the surrounding isles. None found - just some sardines and pasta sauces or something…

We found another person and asked the same question - same response. They pointed us back to the area of the candy bar isle. So we walk back to the candy bar isle and stand there and say “Ok. What the heck? We’re missing something. It’s gotta be here.” We scanned the isle and continue to look for it and then - BAM! - right there in front of us! A whole section of Suchard. We must have been blind to miss it. But in our defense, we were looking for a jar or box of powdered hot cocoa mix or something, and instead we found bars of it (which is apparently even better).

When we were about finished with our shopping and just about starving, we called Dani to meet up for lunch (around 5pm). I apparently have Dani listed in my phone twice - and I opted for the wrong number. When whoever-it-was answered the phone, I exclaimed “Hola!!” and started talking. Then the man started talking in Spanish. I replied “… Dani?” And got more Spanish that I didn’t understand. Then I replied again with “I’m… sorry. I think I dialed the wrong number…” Response “Yes.”

I found out later that it was Dani’s father! Hahahahaha Apparently that’s the number that he gave before he came out to the States to visit me several years back. I had completely forgotten. Oops. Now Dani can tell his father the other side of the story of the crazy American who called and probably confused him.

We had time to kill before Dani would arrive with Vero and Mireia, so we decided to look for an awesome little xocoa (chocolate - MMM) shop that we had found by accident last week. I had my doubts, but somehow Steve found it. I don’t know how. Trial by error / process of elimination? Or has he developed a chocolate sense? We did find lots of other chocolate shops in the process… No matter how he did it, we made it there, and then back to where we were to meet Dani with another mission accomplished. You can never have too much chocolate, right? I should really take a photo of all of it. Seriously.

We had lunch and people-watched from the restaurant. Apparently there’s a new fashon craze out here. Women in their 20’s wear those low, or super-low cut jeans - not too surprising. Then they take their underwear and hike them up so you can see anywhere from an inch, to… 4 inches above their pants on all sides. ?!?!?? Who thought that was a good idea? Unfortunately (?) I didn’t get any photos of that…

Afterwards we wandered out on a quest to find a special-request (and very difficult to find) gift. VICTORY! We found it (after a bit of confusion with what it was that we wanted) - and it was a bit less expensive than we had thought it would be. Double-victory.

Mission accomplished, so we then wandered some more to check out a comic book store and the Arc de Triomf (since they were right near to each other). We found an awesome blue Hello Kitty mug that I’ll definitely be using for some of that Suchard. The Arc is gorgeous, but it was too dark to take photos (8pm). I took some anyway but they didn’t come out.

Nifty fact: It’s this enormous Arc that was meant to be temporary during an exposition in the 1880’s. People loved it so much that they disassembled it, built a proper foundation, then rebuilt it with all the original pieces. Neat stuff!

While being tourists and trying to take photos of the Arc, another young-ish couple approached us and asked if we were locals - HAHA! Apparently they were from Guatamala and just arrived this evening and were only staying for a couple of days. They wanted to see the Sea (I keep wanting to say “ocean”) and seemed to hope that we would take them. They settled for directions, but since Steve and I hadn’t a clue where we were, we called Dani over so he could play tour guide some more - he seems to love that

So Dani and the couple start talking in English until the husband asks if he was a local (he probably noticed the accent). When they realized that he was, they start talking in Spanish. HAhaHAHAh That just killed me. Steve and I just busted out laughing at the situation. But, I guess you had to be there to appreciate it.

Dani wanted to meet up with a friend who does English to Spanish (or was it Catalan?) translations for his company (Games Workshop). They all wanted to wander around for a couple of hours and get a drink while waiting for this friend to get out of work, then have dinner and head back home “early” (around 11pm / midnight). The upside is that his friend’s English is apparently very good - so we could hold a conversation with him instead of sitting out of the majority of them as we have lately. But Steve and I had been up and about for the entire day now, and we were tired and hadn’t really planned on staying out very late. We had thought we might already have returned to Dani’s place by then. Dani convinced us to at least have a drink with them, and if we were still tired, we could head back to his apartment.

Now, we have developed a little joke since arriving. We, as Americans, are not used to even 1/2 this much walking. I swear, we walk 4+ miles each day. We’ve been walking up hills, through the city, around stores and various monuments, museums, and the aquarium. Each time we start walking somewhere and Steve or I ask Dani “How far is it?” Dani replies with “Oh, it’s just around the corner.”

…

And normally it’s 1+ miles. Tonight, when looking for the place that we stopped at for drinks - “around the corner” meant a 45 minute walk. Granted, it was more of a “stroll” and we just kind of meandering and had to keep stopping to cross streets. But still. My feet are rebelling and don’t want to let me stand on them anymore. Steve’s stomach wasn’t doing so great. “Just around the corner” wasn’t as amusing this time. We just wanted to head back. But when we realized how long the walk had been and we still hadn’t arrived, we figured that we would need to sit for a while before we could make our way to the subway anyway, so might as well just keep going, right?

We have our drink and relax for a few minutes, then decide that we just want to go back to Dani’s apartment and relax. Dani says OK and helps us find the right subway and gives us directions. We say our see-you-laters, and head towards our destination. After a couple of stops, we switch to the yellow line as instructed and make our way out of the subway at Dani’s neighborhood. Steve reaches into his pocket… and realizes that we never asked Dani for keys… D’oh!

Thankfully I brought my cell phone with me - and it works out here. I can only imagine what my bill will end up being this month… But it has come in very handy. I called Dani and he tells us that he will hop on the subway and will meet us in his doorway. Ugh. I felt horrible that he had to leave his friends and come all the way back to let us into his apartment. But what are you gonna do?

Steve & I decide to head over to the neighborhood’s park and rest on a bench for a while, while waiting for Dani. We sit down and start chatting. We see a gray VW van come driving up near the park. We hear a *CRUNCH*

Car accident. Minor - no one’s hurt. A small red VW Golf was pulling out of a parking garage and hit the tail end of the van. Nothing major - just some cracked headlights on the Golf and tail light on the van. Both guys get out of their cars and seem to start resolving the problem. Then they start motioning and arguing and yelling. We think the Golf driver was telling the van driver that it was his fault - and the van driver didn’t agree. We should have taken photos. Why? Because the van driver got back in his car - assumingly to get his papers or something. Instead, he put his van in reverse and sped backwards the way he came - and almost caused another accident on his way to flee the scene.

*sigh* After that, we headed back to Dani’s place, waited a few minutes for Dani to arrive, went inside, made dinner, watched Part 1 of the Lost pilot (admittedly, not the best thing to watch < 2 days before getting on a plane to come home) and here I am now. Typing up yet another huge novel.

To make a long story short, we’ve been running around all day, we’re tired and sore, we ran into a friendly couple from Guatamala, we found ourselves locked out of Dani’s apartment, and we’ve witnessed a car accident. Give or take a few details.

-nichole

Not as in “not working”, but just not really being posted in the order that things have been happening.

The first weekend we were here, we experienced La Mercè - the dragons, the correfocs, the fireworks (twice), the castellers, and ending with the pyromusical. We’ve only just started to finish posting the photos from those events - and that was only the first weekend!

We’ve walked around the local neighborhood and the city center a couple of times. We’ve wandered around La Ramblas looking for souveniers (but they’re horrible quality and too expensive, so we need to shop elsewhere) and hung out with Dani & friends several times at their apartments, bars/pubs, restaurants, and a tea house. We’ve visited La Cathedral, the Roman ruins beneath the city, L’aquarium, the Monestary at Monserrat, and an entire day o’ Gaudi (Park Guell & Sagrada Familia). We almost spent today looking at castles a couple hours away, but decided to take a day off and actually relax on our vacation. Besides, Steve’s been having sinus issues for the past couple of days, but he seems to be doing better now.

Tomorrow we’re going to head back out to the city for some shopping and I’m not sure what else. Tuesday we might do something in the morning, and then come back to Dani’s and start packing. It’ll be an early morning on Wednesday so we can catch the train to the airport. Then it’s right back to work on Thursday! whee~ I wonder how the jetlag’s going to be…

We’re hoping to have more photos resized and uploaded before we go back home. Perhaps we will - Steve found a batch photo resize utility that will help speed things along. Keep checking the journal after we’ve returned. I’m sure we’ll still be trying to finish submitting stories and photos for several days.

-nichole

Nichole is indeed here with me on the trip, but why would you believe me? Here’s photo proof:

Taken on the beach just before the fireworks, and just before is started raining really hard:

These two were taken at Montserrat (which we have yet to upload photos from):

This one was taken by me at Gaudi’s Park Guell (also no pics uploaded yet):

That’s all for now.

-steve

Nichole has uploaded her pictures, now it’s my turn.

Here they are, I’m going to try and explain them so they are hopefully more than just pictures.

These two are just showing the people climbing up, and how they get settled, also in the second photo, you can see the enxaneta (the little girl in the helmet on the left side) starting her way up to the top. The last photo is the completed tower, 7 “floors.”

This photo has been cropped to show that the first floor that we see in all these floors in most of the photos is either the second floor, or even the third. Looks comfy, huh?

Here are more photos of another tower. The enxaneta has to raise her hand at the top and start to climb to the other side for the tower to be considered a success. Illustrated below:

This next set shows how they build the base. This is the tower that took the fall, as shown in the video. In the second photo, you see the second and third floors being built. Keep in mind, all those people are already standing on other people that are the ground floor! The third photo is showing the 4th floor. The 4th photo shows the anxaneta climbing up to the top, to make it a total of 9 floors. Then a photo of the completed tower, considered a success because she did start to climb down, and then the last photo shows the ‘post fall tower.’

Amazing stuff…Here’s a shot of part of the crowd that turned out for this event:

And last but not least, I have uploaded a full sized photo of a completed tower. Again, it’s full sized but it shows the details of the enxaneta (the top) and the aixecador (eye-sheck-a-door) (under the enxaneta) forming the top two floors, and eveyone else. You can see as you go up in height, the people get smaller and younger.

I am really glad to got to witness this tradition. We almost didn’t, but I asked Dani at dinner one night, and it turns out they were performing the next day! This goes on for hours. We stayed for a little while and saw the single column walking towers, a few successful towers and the one fall. There was also a tower they decided not to complete. At any time, anyone of the team members can call it off, ultimately the enxaneta has the final say. We decided to leave after a while, and we watched a few on TV once we got home with a new apperication for what we were seeing. This was definitely one of the many highlights of our trip. Much much more to come!

- steve

Ok! For all you pyros out there… You should like this entry. These are just the photos - the videos are even better!

Below you will see a photo of the street before that evening’s festivities - but if you look closely at the ground you can see the remnants of the previous night’s festivities (which were cleaned up once the festival was over). You will also see that we were standing in the middle of a major intersection (note the stoplight was still functioning…), people prepping for the correfocs, Steve & Dani chatting in the crowd - their hats sparkling from the light rain, and lots of photos of fire (and various people with umbrellas for the same reason).

And now for the fire…

I’ll let Steve resize and upload his own photos so he can pick and choose which ones he wants to upload. Keep an eye out for those. He may start doing that tomorrow if we decide to take tomorrow “off” and opt not to wake up at 8am to travel 3 hrs in each direction to go look at castles…

I think that’s all I have the motivation for tonight. G’night.

-nichole

Ok. I only have a few photos of the castellers, so it didn’t require much motivation to resize them. Steve’s photos are better because he was able to zoom in more - and I spent most of my time recording the videos. Mostly for your viewing pleasure, but also so that I could see what was going on because I couldn’t see over most of the crowd

Here’s the square - one side has the Catalan government building shown below, the other side has the city hall. Also, note the giants being paraded around, and a shot of a kid having a cape tied around his neck. hehehhe

hehehehe… Couldn’t resist…

The stage where some performers would play during that weekend’s festivities, two of the castellers “teams” (?) and the Catalan flag.

More to come!

-nichole

I know we keep saying that we’re going to post pictures of things we have seen/done, but we keep doing new things and there are more new pictures that need sorting and stuff before we get a chance to post them. I’m going to attempt to cover some of the other stuff here (as much as I want to show you pictures of Montserrat, our trip yesterday). Between the two of us we have 1,580 “files,” and 5.3GB, mostly pictures and a couple of videos. Ok…onward!

Nichole mentioned in her novel of a post, the castellers or castle builders. These are some links to videos of them (sorry, they’re in WMV format.  That’s all I have access to using Microsoft Movie Maker.) :
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3 (There is a fall in this video, so don’t watch if you’re squeamish)

Ok, sorry, I really under delivered on this post. I’ve been feeling under the weather for the last two days, and I’m headed off to bed now. Nichole will take over for me.

-Steve