manunderstress.com

Woke early Monday, showered and hit the road as soon as possible after complementary Irish breakfast number 2. It’s nice that this place has their own parking…this will be my hotel in Dublin from now on. Head out for Glendalough and immediately get lost trying to get out of town, but recover without having to stop. I realize that if you look at the cars in front of you with one person driving and no one in the passenger seat they look like they are driving themselves, from our conditioned point of view. This amuzes me for the entire trip to Belfast later. The highway is boring but the road that cuts inland to Glendalough is magic; mountains, yellow flower shrub in bloom everywhere, and lush green, rolling, sheepish hills (pun intended, sheep are ubiquitous in Ireland.) The ruins are how they look in the pictures; the place though is what makes it worth it…an uber-refreshing dose of mountainous nature. Long overdue. I take one of the mild hikes in to the miners village and back, past both the two lakes. It is alternately sunny and sprinkly and cloudy, with a lot of wind. I get back and thankfully there is a refreshments stand because I am starved and thirsty. Grab a dog n’ chips and water and hit the road. Glendalough is swamped now with families. Not a single parking space available. It’s time to hit the road. Even though Belfast is barely over 100 miles away, it feels like I’ll never get there for some reason.

But I do, and without even getting lost and with no map of the city, I pull into town and there’s my hotel, the Jury Inn. Nice. No parking though, and I have to park 6 blocks away because the parking decks are closed for the holiday. Not much doing in Belfast. It is cold with drizzle-drear and it looks like the city has gone on summer vacation. I wander through all parts of town that look worth it, but not much is open except for the occasional pub and restaurant. I settle on Indian food at Gingeroot, and it is truly awesome. Expensive though. Everything in “pound” land is pricey. I watch Bollywood music videos and drink some green tea. Later I have a guiness that is perhaps the best I have had, not for any reason other than that it was earned. Covered a lot of ground.

Rise early even though I didn’t sleep enough as this was the last full day. Had another very similar Irish breakfast at the hotel, not as good as Dublin though, with black pudding this time. I do have to say I like the idea of the beans with breakfast. Head out on the black cab tour of the war murals, with my guide Robert, a typical 60 something Irishman. Robert was great, but was missing some teeth and had a severely thick accent so I couldn’t understand all of what he said. Got the basics though. First we hit Shankill rd. and the Protestant neighborhoods. Amazing to be seeing all this and imagining what life here was like during “the troubles.” Robert says no one would have even driven through where we were during the troubles. Then up to Falls Rd. and the police station, where he pointed out the bomb scars on the front door that were there from an attack as recent as 7 months ago. Seems “the troubles” aren’t quite over… Indeed, evidence of political unrest is everywhere in N. Ireland. I asked how the people could even live in the same city and Robert said people just go about their business during the day, but you’d never find a Protestant getting a beer in Catholic territory and vice-versa.

After the tour I drove back up to Falls Rd. and was going to spend some time trying to get some better pictures on Falls and Shankill with people in them, but alas, I had to see other places and be back in Dublin by night. At the recommendation of Robert, and the hotel lady, I decide on the Antrim coast and Giant’s Causeway instead of Armagh, where the Jail I wanted to visit is definitely closed and inaccessible according to Robert. Driving there I got lost a few times, I swear the signs sometimes don’t list the highway number, just the next town. Finally get to the coast and have a half hour or so of coastal drive before Giant’s Causeway. There are various scenic viewpoints that make for, well, great views? I’m glad I came up here though…without it, I wouldn’t have got my coast on, and as a bonus, Dunlace castle, which came up right before the Causeway, was a nicely preserved and accessible ruin. Giant’s Causeway proved to be over-hyped, but still interesting, from a geological perspective at least, but way too many kids and tourists. God does that just kill it for me.

Head back to Dublin and actually make good time, and make it to the hotel without a map even thought I was good and lost in the city for 40 minutes (there was also ridiculous traffic once I found the Liffey and figured out where I was.) Sometimes I just refuse to be prepared…

After a couple of busy weeks, including but not limited to, a car window busted out, L5 (one of my bands) calling it quits, and a full on spring pollen beat down (alas, the real-time corporeal counterpart to existential sufferings), I make it to the airport in plenty of time despite having to cab it after a feeble announcement through the body-humid subbteranean atmosphere of marta that the soutbound train would be experiencing “delays” due to “mechanical failures.”

Next up, Dublin.

This guy is out around Leidseplein in Amsterdam all the time. Last time we were there I’d pass him almost everyday walking around, and always pause for a few moments to check it out. Freaky talent.

I’m researching a spring mini-trip right now, in the days preceding the magnapop spring tour, and am absolutely stunned at the prices you can get from RyanAir. 0.79 GBP to fly from London to Dublin! Say what? That’s cheaper than Taco Bell. A few years ago, we got RyanAir flights from Milan to Girona (Barcelona) for 40 EUR, which is obscene to begin with. I’m thinking now that this has got to have changed the way people travel Europe. Don’t get me wrong, crappy train rides are always a bohemian blast, but…

Let’s do an experiment. If I had to spend say a month there, starting in April, hmmm…let’s see:

London -> Girona (near Barcelona) = 1.79 GBP
Girona -> Rome = 29.99 EUR
Rome -> Brussels = 42.99 EUR
Brussels -> Dublin = 3.49 EUR
Dublin -> Glasgow = 0.99 EUR (!)
Glasgow -> Krakow = 19.99 EUR
Krakow -> London = 59.00 PLN (about 18.70 USD)

So in a month, you can hit all over Europe, 7 countries, for about 140 USD. There is tax on every ticket of about 15 USD, but still, that’s fucking amazing.

Georgia:Atlanta:the confederacy

i guess i need to say that i am home for people who still may be reading this, home being atlanta GA at the moment, and i am currently unemployed if anyone knows of a good job that doesn’t involve answering the telephone at obscene hours. check back for pictures which will be up soon and stay tuned for more travel postings in the near future, a USA road trip, Mexico and Cuba are all on my mind…

Spain:Madrid:Plaza Mayor

…for those of you who saw the webcam. it is pretty tiny resolution.

well, its the last night in spain for us both, off to taberna celta for guinness 2 for 1 night…

viva espana!

Spain:Madrid:Plaza Mayor

arriving at pamplona was no biggie, just an early 7am train ride through some nice Catalunya and Navarra countryside, and we get there early afternoon, surprisingly there are soliciters for rooms to rent, but we had the fortune of getting reservations by calling back in toledo, where my suffering spanish worked some magic. first impressions were that it was a much bigger and more modern city than imagined, seems always to be the case with my imagination at least, and the crowd volume wasn´t so shoulder to shoulder as one also might have imagined. it was obvious that there was a festival going on, the key indication simply being the all white with red sash and necktie costumes visible on most everyone underneath the sun. so we cab it to the pension pamplona since we were supposed to have arrived by then and meet the same confused guy at the door that i spoke with on the phone. he looked just like i imagined. he seemed confused or distraught that we had reservations, but led us to a room with 3 beds all the same. being more hungry than exhausted for the time being we made it to the plaza del castillo for some average greasy tapas and bocadillo, skirted some of the main “fiesta” looking streets and saw that there was quite a party going on, blurry red and white everywhere, people sleeping all over the plaza and surrounding benches and not just because it was siesta time, but even more people drinking and dancing it up inside and out of the sundry narrow cafes that populate the city. after a good rest we came back out, got some better food and hit the streets for orientation. good solid partying, and everywhere. typical spanish hole in the wall bar/restarauntes had been converted on the fly to swingin discos. impromtu clanging and banging street parades came out of nowhere and stopped when it came time for the members to get another beer. t-shirt kiosks and shopping carts full of iced san miguel and cruz campo. games like “peg the wooden effigy with an egg” drew large numbers of participants and spectators, ironically taking place in front of a bank so that “misses” splattered the black metal gate. punks and dogs and kids and moms and many many drunk men of all ages eat tapas and drink sangria, but mostly there is dancing everywhere to all of the current “summer hits” like “yo quiero bailar” (i want to dance), and of course many other hilarious brands of techno like my favorite, marriachi house, or better yet, the recurring pamplona theme/hit “who let the dogs out?” which surprisingly wasn´t modified to “who let the toros out?”. rise at 7am for uneventful bulls running, we didn´t get good enough places and didn´t want to climb anything all that high, even though many others were climbing street signs, traffic lights, and even on to empty balconies. whole thing lasts like two minutes and i saw one bull trot by at a relatively slow speed. later we get tickets for the bullfight from a scalper and at 6:30 head in for the show. this is where things got interesting… apparently one ought not be late to a corrida if sitting in the “sol” section vs. the much more civilised “sombra”. of course we had no idea and coming in after the first bull had been dropped we were immediately doused in sangria, first in worrying little splatters but ultimately in giant cupfuls, fruits and all, and even in those old fashioned spray bottles, i retaliated, quite confused mind you, by pouring my beer over a dude that dumped his cup on me at point blank range, only to meet his confused expression afterwards…you see, everyone gets this and for a variety of reasons, none of which are extremely evident, and all of which bend to the whims of the mob. speculations: not in the white and red costume, entering late, standing up while those behind you sit, and just being a girl… and wow did morgan get it bad…nevertheless we made it to the utmost of upper bleachers, where pitying souls made room for us, and the brass band honked and clanged at the end of matches. once the sangria shock wore off and the fiesta took hold, it was quite an event. the bullfight itself, take it or leave it, is quite a gruesome execution and much gorier in real life than you can imagine. however, the party was in the bleachers, singing and sharing sangria and bocadillos and ole’s! the rest of the night brought us back to the streets for more serious drinking and impromptu parade participating, a highlight being a heavy metal guitar/drums duo that played selections from master of puppets, while a quite normal but quite drunken old eggshaped spanish guy danced a bizarre discoish number. waking at 6:30 the next morning was barely doable but we managed, besides i had decided to run, hangover and all. got down there on calle estafeta about 7am, which was plenty early enough, in fact you can enter up till 5 minutes or so before. but once those side barricades are closed…you be runnin…not that its really a dangerous affair at all if you play it safe, the bulls pretty much mind there own and only go nuts if they are seperated from the herd or provoked, which happens by the spaniards who run along side them swatting away at their backsides with rolled up newspapers…caramba…

Spain:San sebastian:Plaza Mayor

great place to relax this san sebastian, with its better boobie beaches than the rest of spain…oh yeah, this is pais vasco, not espana, don’t make that mistake…

Spain:Barcelona:easyeverything.com

arrived in barcelona yesterday, on the late afternoon train from valencia, which was a very hip and punky place with many stylin cafes and bars, no more early moring travel, i will not do it here, its simply not natural and against spainish party ethic to wake up so early. we didn´t figure there would be a problem since in most cities we have visited we´ve basically had our choice rooms and pensions. barcelona was another story though. right off we found a tiny room with a small bed and cot and perhaps should have taken it, for the next 4hrs of alley scouring and attempts at being that 1 in a million that can get a call through the saturated phone lines (serious problem) left us with absolutely nothing. apparently there is some dell-microsoft thing here, and indeed the streets are packed with not only the usual freaks but geek-freaks in dell complementary yellow backpacks, so the usual hotel population is doubled or thereabouts. so we had given up, tried to go back to the train station and go to tarragona or anywhere else, but we missed the last train. dejected and not being able to sleep in the train station we checked the bags and took a cab back to la rambla where we were to dispirited and dog tired to even drink beer. sitting in plaza reial i decided to check the remaining few hostels we hadn´t checked in the square and found something at the last minute, actually the place i stayed in 6yrs ago. que buena suerte!! so today was much better and we got a new place and went out in search of Gaudi stuff down the main drag and visited his hallmark modernista piece that is like a disneyland for adults.

out of internet time, more tomorrow perhaps…

Spain:Granada:Informatica Gano

another great train ride brought us here from antequerra, more olive pasted brown mountains and, good lord, sunflowers i do say, and plenty of them…antequerra, which was a picturesque enough town but with nothing really going on. plus the megalithic dolmens (rock tombs built by neolithic magdelenians in 2000bc) were somewhat of a let down being quite “mini-lithic”, and i didn�t like the little guy at the entrance of this “free” site shaking change while we looked around…but on the upside we had a great room with MtV and air con and a nice landlord who gave us free anchovy tapas before we left.

granada is happenin, with a 50th annual music and dance festival going on, but you couldn�t really tell, despite the lighted decorations above the streets, everything taking place indoors and you got to buy tickets and all that…but granada is all hippies and cats, handmade guitars, bars with free tapas, and a slice of the muslim world, evident in the arab alley all the way up to albayzin, with its moroccan tourist trinkets and tea salons and bickering arabs. the alahambra was great by moonlight although you miss much of the stuff thats up there, but the muslim palace is the best anyway, truly amazing and almost dizzying stucco ceilings and tile geometries, archways and little silent courtyards with fountains, etc. nothing like it even in morocco, cause all that shit is closed in morocco.

the albayzin is the old muslim town across from the alahambra, nice with views of the alhambra and snowy sierra nevada peaks in the distance. pleasant narrow streets with small cobblestones overgrown with short bunches of grass here and there. we saw some colorful specks twirling around in the sky that looked like balloons in the distance but upon investigation with borrowed binoculars from an irish dude it turned out to be about a 100 paragliders, somewhere between granada and the mountains, gettin their mad airs on…