Words I know in Spanish (Alternate title: "Opinión hola a mi pequeño amigo")

Hi everyone ... it´s been an amazingly action packed last few days, but we´re also wrapping up Spain, so I´m not sure whether to go with the ´detailed exploits´ or ´sweeping vista´ blog post. So maybe a little bit of both ...

From the details category, in the last 5 days I have done the following things:
- seen Picasso´s Guernica
- gone to a Real Madrid game
- visited Gehry´s unreal Guggenheim museum in Bilbao
- partied at an 8-floor superclub in Madrid where drinks were €10 (!!!)
- found out that I have been saying the same phrase wrong repeatedly for 3 weeks..

that last point segues perfectly into the next area I want to cover: words I know in Spanish ... hopefully this will give you an idea of what I´ve been up to.
- 100, or 200, grams - when ordering meat or cheese ... this is what I´ve been saying totally wrong on a pretty much daily basis for 3 weeks, I found out from a helpful bilingual bystander a couple of days ago
- ham
- cheese
- apple
- orange
- banana (sort of)
- bread
- sorry - I use this the most often
- excuse me - second most often
- hello - (hint: the ´h´ in ´hola´ is silent)
- thank you ... although pronoucing graçias is harder than you might think
- and
- or
- beer
- red wine

so, as you can see, aside from eating I am basically toast ... haha, toast, get it? ah...

So today, we took the bus from Bilbao to Madrid ... now these bus rides are cheaper, usually faster, and more luxurious than the train, and they always show a movie. It´s usually some random 80s movie dubbed into Spanish that we´ve never heard of (for instance, some great classic starring Ted Danson, and a pre-CSI William Peterson a couple of days ago), but today it was ... get this ... Scarface. Yep, the all-time violence and swearing kingpin is the in-bus movie - this is classic Spain. Anyways, as you´ll notice in the headline, some of the classic Pacino lines were pretty solid translated into Spanish.

Okay, that´s what I´ve got. Tomorrow we fly to Athens via London, and begin a new chapter in the trip ...

stay classy everyone
Dane

P.S. If you want to check out a video message Hil and I recorded at the Guggenheim and sent to our parents, click here.

On Ham and Cheese

Hey Everyone,

Hil and I are in Madrid, we arrived this afternoon, it's about 11:00 at night. Took a nice 5 hour bus ride in from Cordoba - helped along by our palmtop DVD player and a couple episodes of The West Wing Season 1 (damn those comebacks are snappy!).

A couple of comments on Spain -

1) I love the schedule - We've adjusted pretty well to the idea of taking a long nap in the afternoon, thinking about dinner at around 10 at night and then going out for some tapas and a couple drinks. Now we're in Madrid, where late has a whole new meaning. The clubs open at 2am, and no one thinks about going out before 1. A big night out means home at 6am, and I've been told the streets are more crowded then than they are in the middle of the day. Since we're here for thurs, fri, sat we should get a good taste of that.

2) There is SO MUCH HAM - Here in Madrid there is a chain of restaurants called "Museo de Jamon", literally The Museum of Ham. I have never eaten, and enjoyed, so much jamon y queso (ham and cheese, you get the idea, I'll stick to english) in my life. Ham is in every meal, every tapas, and every window. Hil has had a little trouble getting used to the rack of pig haunches in grocery stores where they shave the ham directly off (some going for as much as 100 euros a kg), but I am DOWN.

3) The Christians won, and they want you to know about it - In Cordoba there is a beautiful 9th century mosque called the Mezquita, built on the site of an old Visigoth temple. In the 16th century, they knocked the middle out of this building and literally stuck a cathedral directly in the middle of it ... so you're walking around and it's all mosque, mosque, mosque, CATHEDRAL, mosque. It's pretty interesting let me tell you ... Anyways, you see this sort of thing a lot, and it makes for some very unique, very cool buildings.

So we've got a couple nights here in Madrid, then we're jaunting up to see Bilbao (scheduling prowess in action: the only full day we are there is Monday, the one day of the week the Guggenheim is closed ... sweet.), then we come back to Madrid to fly to Athens via London ... and a full quarter of our trip will be done.

Okee dokee! Hope all is well with everyone - just wanted to send a bit of a heads up update. If you're interested in seeing pictures, and reading little missives about what we're up to, you can head over to http://daneineurope.blogspot.com ... love to hear back from people, and brighten my daily internet stop.

I've posted this on the blog as well . .. just, well, because.

Alright, it's 11:30, so it's time to head out and find a nice cerveza somewhere - and probably a solid helping of ham.

peace
Dane

Seville: Where Hilary made me change the original heading of this post

Hey Team,

Well originally this post was titled "Seville: Better than Bad" in a hilarious homage to the Ren and Stimpy "Log" song ... you know ... "log, log, it´s better than bad it´s good" ... but anyways, apparently that was a "terrible" title, so there we have it.

But seriously, Seville has been awesome. Take a look at the shots below for some examples of what I mean - uploading and blogging those photos took about an hour so I have very little time to write this ... but suffice it to say Seville has been incredible: great parks, great cathedral, a festival of Catelonian culture that ran all week-end while we were here, and a 9th century Islamic fortress all combine for a great experience .. moving on tomorrow to Cordoba!

Peace!
Dane

Alcazar gardens

alcazargardens
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

This was taken in the gardens of the Alcazar, which in itself was a very cool building. The gardens were really amazing - the parks in Seville in general have a ton of interesting flowers, trees, etc. Yum.

Cathedral Gardens

catedralgardens
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

Climbing up the bell-tower on the Cathedral (the old Minaret on the mosque that they converted to a Cathedral) gives a solid view of the gardens (which again used to be the gardens of the mosque) - theyre planted with over 60 orange trees.

Catalan Dancers

catedraldance
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

Heres a shot of the Catalan dancers in front of the Cathedral ... a little grainy because I shot it at night, but still a very cool backdrop.

Placa Del Toros

sevillebullring
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

Here is the bullring in Seville ... we didnt make it to a fight, but the tour was very interesting, its where bullfighting first started in the 18th century. Amazingly, in the beginning the horses wore no protection and 20-25 horses would die PER BULL FIGHT. Man that is wild.

Pics of the Alhambra

So below are 3 pics of the Alhambra ... It blew my mind as I´ve said previously. There´s a couple of interior shots, and one great view taken by Hil ... the Alhambra has a hard time competing with my amazing hairdo however.

alhambra2

alhambra2
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

A wall in the Alhambra ... I stood in this room for a solid 10 minutes, its just mind-blowing ... I have some good video of this (I promised Id only video-tape dynamic things, but the 10x zoom was necessary for all of the intricate stuff on the walls, and actually its surprisingly interesting)

alhambra1

alhambra1
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

a courtyard in the Alhambra ... just unbelieveable detail in the carving on the walls.

alhambraview

alhambraview
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

this is a great view of my hair, and the Alhambra, taken by Hil from a lookout point in Granada ... that is half of the complex, you cant fit the whole thing in one shot.

artscience

artscience
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

Here´s a pic of the Arts and Sciences center for anyone who didn´t click the link in the last post ... that´s one of three bulidings .. nuts.

Alhambra, a nice place to ruin many photographs

Hey team,

I´m writing to you from Seville, where we arrived this afternoon after seeing the Alhambra yesterday.

The Alhambra was incredible - just a beautiful, beautiful palace full of unbelieveable detail, stone-work, waterfalls, etc. Click here for a random selection of pictures from Google Image Search. Hopefully they will do it some justice ... I went through a ton of pictures and a bunch of video to bore you all with when I get back. The place is just incredibly crowded - they limit the tourists per day to 6,600. When you buy your ticket they give you a 1/2 hour slot to enter the palace, we bought ours at 1:30pm and our time was at 5:30, so there is no shortage of people, all of whom are taking pictures of every conceivable inch.

2nd piece of news is a big bummer - Hil´s mom just got a call from their travel agent and there aren´t enough people signed up to run the scandanavia/russia tour we were going on that starts on July 6th. So now we´ve got a big problem ... three weeks with nothing planned, and flights to and from Copenhagen already booked - as well as a Russian visa purchased for very specific dates.

A´right, that´s all I´ve got for now - we´ll see what Seville is up to over the next 3 days and let you know ..

peace
Dane

Another Gaudi building

IMG_2528
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

This one was one of my favourites (aside from Sagrada Familia which is unbelieveable but I don´t have a pic uploaded yet) - the building is built around the motiff of St. George slaying the dragon. Check out the roof which is the dragon´s back with the spear in it.

Gaudi building in Barcelona

IMG_2529
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

Another crazy Gaudi building - this one is mostly offices and condos apparently.

Park Guell

IMG_2531
Originally uploaded by djsquared.

This is a park designed by Gaudi in Barcelona - it was going to be the common space for some sort of rich suberb. Weird but beuatiful

Hey team,

Well we are here in beautiful Granada at a fantastic hostel that has free internet. So I´ve got a little time here to give an update on life in Spain. Also, a few pictures that I managed to upload (only 4) are coming in a couple of minutes in the next post.

So ... when I last left you we were in Valencia. We caught the second half of the virgin mary festival the next day, and it was great - orchestra, choir, etc. in the main city square. Also we visited this massive art and science center, which houses Europe´s largest aquarium. It was very cool - looked like something out of star trek. Here´s the site, click on photo gallery, it will blow you away.

So next we had a one-night stopover in Alicante, basically a resort town, a lot of hotels on a beach. It was a really nice break, had a night in a real hotel, layed on the beach ... good times.

Now we´re in Granada, so far it´s amazing ... the hostel is called Oasis and it is. Great people, good times. We went on a tapas tour last night which was great .. in these tapas bars you buy a drink for €1.50 and you get an appatezier included with it ... quite the deal.

We´re about to head to Alhambra, so I´ll sign off - the pictures that are coming are mostly from Barcelona, so are a bit old - hopefully I´ll be at an internet cafe with a compact flash card reader again at some point ...

Hope everyone´s doing well ... let me know what you´re up to. Hil will post soon she says.

cheers
Dane

Oh and ...

Happy mother´s day mom!

Quickly from Spain

Hey team,

We´re in Valencia enjoying the beautiful weather, amazing city, and other good stuff that comes with being in ancient city in Southern Spain in May. Life is good.

We had an unbelievable time in Barcelona, where Wachsmuth and Talia (high school friend and his girlfriend) were the ultimate hosts, showing us a ton and cooking great food.

Had a great 5 hour train ride today with the loudest child on Earth providing a soudtrack for the first hour or so - but steeping off the train (albeit with my contacts in the wrong eyes) made it all worth it. We´re at a good hostel, and we saw this traditional Virgin Mary festival today that was boring as hell, but at least made me feel somewhat cultural.

Okay, I am severely running out of time - love to hear from people, you can respond to these messages by hitting the little piece of mail with the arrow below ´comments´underneath the message.

Hope all is well ...
Dane

84 .. 82 ... what's the difference?

Hi team ...

Well, I arrived in London yesterday morning at 8:30am (it's 11:30am local time on Wed. here) after a pretty decent flight. Eager to get to Taper's place and crash I tubed in to the city and set off from the station by his flat to find his place.

Fast-forward 3/4 hour later, and I am still wandering around the back patio of 82 Aberdeen Park looking through flower pots searching for the key to his 'garden flat'.

Fast-forward 1/2 hour, and 3 broken payphones, 1 directory assisstence, 2 blisters, and 3 pounds later I am talking to the man himself at work. Apparently, contrary to his initial e-mail, it's 84 Aberdeen Park ... and I have been wandering around searching the flower pots of some random person's house for a half hour ... ah.

Anyways, around noon or so I finally managed to get in to his place - much relieved, and very tired.

We hit up a local pub for the champions league semi between Liverpool and Chelsea last night, which was fun times - and today I am off to buy new shoes that hopefully won't be as merciless with my tender feet ...

Oh, and I finally saw the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum after somehow missing their most famous artifact the last time I was there ...

cheers
Dane