Love Your Summer

Napoli, Pompeii and Perugia: Cruisin', Ruins, and Relaxin'

2010-08-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

From Palermo we took the overnight ferry to Napoli. Originally when we boarded the ferry we were pretty excited, given that it was a gigantic cruise ship complete with a bar (with dance floor), several restaurants, arcade, and a cinema. But our excitement quickly dwindled as we realized the dance floor would be occupied by people sleeping on it, the movie had no English subtitles, and while the food was actually quite good in the restaurants, there is only so much pasta one can eat while on an overnight ferry. We tried our best to sleep in our uncomfortable sleeper chairs, wishing we had not paid for the chairs and had simply opted to bed down on one of the (free) lounge couches.

From Napoli, we took a day trip to the Pompeii ruins, which after a summer of visiting ruins in three different countries, were by far the most impressive.

On August 24, 79 AD Mt. Vesuvius erupted and over the next two days began to blanket the city in hot pumice, ash, and volcanic gas, killing 2000 people who had not evacuated at the first troubling signs of the eruption (a giant column of smoke).

In addition to the great structures like teatros and amphitheaters many privates homes of Pompeii residents are well preserved. You can even see the disturbing plaster casts of people and animals in the position they were in at their deaths. These shapes were preserved when their bodies decomposed underneath the volcanic ash, leaving distinctive air pockets.

Homes were often named after things they found inside them, like “House of the Faun” (after a Faun statue) and “House of the Small Fountain” (named for a strikingly obvious reason). It makes me wonder if our apartment was suddenly covered in ash and pumice and then later excavated would it be called “Apartment of the Three Broken Ipods,” or “House of the Overflowing Recycling Bin”?

The ruins with Vesuvius looming in the background.

One of the murals inside the home of Menander.

Mammoth lemons!

The colorful Napoli metro.

Another Napoli highlight was the underground tour. A guided tour beneath the city shows you the aqueducts which were later used as garbage storage, bomb shelters/living quarters during WW II, and until recently, scooter parking. You can also see the underground remains of an old theatre as much of Napoli is actually built on top of old structures due to a law stating no new structures could be built outside the city walls, thus people built up instead of out.

Shane ready to get subterranean.

Ready for the candlelit part of our tour.

A new garden project in the underground.

Shane and I are fans of the small doors we see throughout Italy. Shane and I like to imagine hobbits, elves, or Alice after she was stoned on her shrinking potion using a door like this but moments after we took this photo the door opened to reveal a regular-sized, seemingly normal Italian.

From Napoli we headed north to the Umbria region (known for delicious truffles!) and spent a week outside of Perugia in the country. We booked ourselves into a farmhouse hostel for two nights but within an hour of arriving we extended our stay to a full week. It was here that we did practically nothing. We wedged ourselves into a couple of hammocks and only rolled out for the occasional swim, horseback ride, or bike ride.

The farmhouse.

Our bungalow.

This horse was just as hot and tired on the ride as I was. I think we understood each other's condition quite well but our instructor kept urging "us" to go faster. It took "us" almost a half an hour to convince him that a slow walking pace was all "we" cared to do.

Views of Umbrian countryside.

Diana, the charmingly skiddish farm dog.

It was a wonderful place to rest up and conserve our energy for the hectic pace of Rome, our final destination before returning home to Vancouver.

Sicily: The Harvest and the Homecoming

2010-08-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

Moments after we stepped off the plane in Sicily, we saw this:

Not only is it possible to get reasonable coffee from pods in Italy, but you can also get pizza from a vending machine in the airport. While we didn't actually try this machine out we were impressed with the windows that let you watch your "pizza" being made.

We began our Sicilian adventure in Palermo, and were instantly taken with the gritty beauty of this city.

We spent our first day wandering through the street market. I had been wanting to buy some new sandals and things were cheap. My sandal shopping was prompted by one of Shane's recent comments to me. In Venice one night Shane looked at my "admittedly-dorky- but-totally-comfortable-for-lots-and-lots-of-walking" sandals and said "Are you going to wear those sandals when we get home too?"

It's hard for a backpacker (errr...rolling suitcase/backpacker) to keep up with the fashionable Italians, but a pair of slightly less practical sandals was a good start.

We also happened upon this in an alley after the market closed.

Living in East Van I have seen many different things in alleys, but a severed swordfish head was a first for me.

Shane got practically giddy when we saw this:

We also sampled some amazing Sicilian food. We had Arancini balls (stuffed, fried rice balls), Pane e Panelle (chick pea fritters), and the delicious potato croquettes. What we did not try, but was fascinating to watch being prepared was the street vendor's beef spleen sandwiches.

Watching a vendor make one of these sandwiches was graceful affair - almost like a dance with beef spleen as the partner ( I wouldn't hold my breath for it to appear on Dancing with the Stars any time soon).

Our mission in our first days in Palermo was to secure a rental car as my old friend Jill (world-traveler extraordinaire) would be meeting up with us for the first week of our Sicilian travels and we had big plans to drive around the island.

Finding a car was hard. Most companies were completely sold out, or if they had any cars left they were horrendously expensive and/or the business itself seemed sketchy according to travel site reviews.

Luckily, when Shane went exploring he happened upon a independent car rental agency that was able to provide us with a car for a reasonable price. It took a few days longer than we had planned on to actually receive the car and the car rental agency tried to explain things to us via Google Translate. When you see the words "big MISHAP" show up in the translation you know things just aren't going smoothly.

But at last, we were off. Because we had a car we were able to drive around the countryside looking for B&Bs and farmstays to bed down in for the night.

The first night we stayed in a wonderful house on a olive/fig farm.

Beautiful pomegranates were also growing on the farm.

We also encountered this fantastic gas station created roadside attraction. Celebrity statues in plexiglass!

View from castle town Erice.

We visited the ruins of Selinunte.

I was nearly ready to rip up all the hardwood floor in our apartment and put down mosaics after we visited Villa Romana del Casale which features 3500 square metres of illustrative mosaics that were buried under mud for 700 years. The most famous mosaic features these ten bikini- clad babes.

Views from Mt. Etna, Europe's largest active Volcano.

And it was always time for a swim when you saw a beach like this.

Yet another beautiful farmstay.

And the highlight of our Sicilian trip was a town not found in any Lonely Planet or Rick Steve's Italian guidebook - a town called Marianopoli. Marianopoli is the hometown of my grandfather, and the location of my Sicilian family we were meeting for the first time.

We stayed with our hosts Rose and Rosario. They took us out to visit the historic churches, the local archaeological museum, and a cave that was lived in in prehistoric times. But the best part was visiting their farm. Here we saw almonds, figs, olives, tomatoes, pine nuts, and my personal favourite, prickly pears.

Almonds ready to harvest.

Rosario using a hammer to open the almond shells.

Picking figs.

Saying goodbye to everyone at the end of our visit was hard, but they sent us on our way with a huge care package of fresh almonds, figs, prickly pears, biscotti, and a new collection of family memories.

Venice: Look Ma! No Cars!

2010-08-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

The moment you step out of the train station in Venice, you feel like you just stepped onto a movie set. Colorful, artfully decaying buildings, canals of murky water, and of course, gondolas and their gondoliers wearing classic striped shirts. It's all true. It's not just some fanciful fabrication as I had suspected. It's a city straight out of a coffee table photo book. And in August, high-season for vacationers, it was pure madness.

Instead of traffic jams, there were gondola jams. Instead of packed city buses, there were packed Vaporettis (the poor-man's gondola), and the narrow streets of Venice were engorged with camera-laden, guidebook-carrying tourists, just like us.

Vaporetti in the canals.

Navigating the streets of Venice to find our B&B was particularly hard. I had been forewarned about the difficulties of finding - well, just about anything - in Venice due to the bizarre street numbering style.

Venice is split into six districts, and each district contains the street numbers one through several thousand. However, numbers start at one end of the district and are assigned along streets and alleys as they are encountered. So it's a guessing game as to where your street number is on specific street, and you better make sure you're in the correct district or you could find yourself up a canal without a gondola oar. It's a baffling Venetian system designed to confound and confuse tourists who are endlessly lugging their suitcases up one crowded staircase and down another in the humid, hot conditions.

However, all the major attractions are well-signed throughout the city which means if you learn to navigate by landmarks instead of streets, you'll be much better off.

Did I mention it was pretty? Like really, really pretty? This is how pretty it was.

And while it was packed during the day, during the evening, after the mass exodus of day-trippers, it became even more picturesque.

There is very little green-space in Venice but we managed to find a small patch of it and met this local resident.

We spent a few days cruising around in the Vaporettis and took a trip over to Murano, the island known for (expensive, very, very expensive) hand-blown glass.

The Venetian equivalent of "Buck or Two" dollar stores.

The weird thing about Venice, I mean outside of the "no-cars-just-boats" thing is that there is a no-picnicing rule. There are signs everywhere reminding you of this. Want to sit down for moment while you're eating your pizza slice? Illegal. Want to sip your cappuccino while sitting on the steps at St. Mark's Plaza? Illegal. Even the locals seem to be in on the whole thing because we saw many handmade "NO PICNIC" signs alongside the official city ones. The fine for getting caught seated, mid-sandwich? 50 euros.

At first I thought it was something pushed by all the over-priced restaurants in Venice (which is most of them) in order to get people sitting down, paying the cover charge, service charge, and their inflated meal prices. But I read later that it might have something to do with tourist litter.

They say that on any given day the local population of historic Venice is outnumbered by the 12 million tourists that visit yearly. If they are in fact littering (bad, bad, tourists!), I can begin to see the point of the no-littering bylaw, as strange and cruel as it seemed at the outset of our visit.

The mailbox at Doge's Palace, where citizens of Venice could anonymously accuse their peers of wrongdoing. I'm reporting some people for picnicking, or better yet, just turning in the litter-ers.

Venice is an expensive city for tourists, but imagine living there. You pay more for most things, it's hard to get around, due to the heritage status of most buildings it's nearly to impossible to renovate your house if you can afford one, and to top it all off, there is that slow, sinking feeling you get because your city is actually, slowly sinking. Despite the city's efforts to bribe residents into staying with housing incentives, the population of Venice is declining as more and more people flee to cheaper, easier places to live on the mainland. For all these reasons, Venice left me feeling a bit melancholy.

Just after dawn on the morning of our departure. Our last views of Venice.

Cinque Terre: Italia! Italia!

2010-08-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

Ahh….Italy. My homeland. Well, sort of. Even though I’m only a quarter Italian, it’s always been the most prominent part of my heritage, (even if the prominence is only established by the non-existence of any other cultural presence within my family).

Surely, visiting Italy would be like a homecoming. My somewhat thin Italian bloodlines would come rushing to the surface and I would be recognized and embraced by my fellow Italians as they cried out “Mamma Mia! What took you so long! Welcome home!”

You see, I was no longer the blonde, fair-skinned woman that left Canada in June.

I was now a blonde, olive-skinned woman. The kind of woman whose hair is naturally brunette and dyed blonde for reasons of fashion. The kind of woman who slathers on olive oil in the sun and has spent the last three decades eating pasta and swimming in the Mediterranean. I looked Italian. As Italian as antipasto, artigiano gelato, or one-year-old Pecorino cheese.

This may be a bit of an exaggeration.

In reality, I looked about as Italian as vegetarian prosciutto. But for the first time in my life, I HAD A TAN. Despite slathering on 30+ sunblock everyday my skin had darkened. In the past, I had only ever burned. It doesn’t take more than morning sunlight reflecting off a stainless steel kitchen sink to turn me a lobster shade of red. But finally, after a month and a half in Spain and Turkey, I had a tan.

We excitedly met up with my sister Suzy in Milan (despite my tan, she was still able to recognize me) and we took a train to Cinque Terre on the West coast. The five villages of Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore are all connected by walking trails... and, they are beautiful. Postcard-pretty towns with colorful houses lining steep inclines, perched on top of rocky seaside cliffs, or overlooking terraced vineyards and lemon groves.

Vernazza

Corniglia

Manarola
View from the walk between Riomaggiore and Manarola.

Riomaggiore

This cart is what farmers use to lug stuff up and down the tracks that run along the terraced hillside farms.

One day we rented a boat and Shane, now fully recovered from our last boat experience ferried us up and down the coastline. We took breaks to swim in the open water (which was weirdly terrifying for all of us) and tested out the underwater features of Suzy’s camera.

Each night at sunset we would walk down to the water and Shane and Suzy would share a bottle of red wine and I would nurse a hot chocolate (hey, it cools down at night!)

The crowd at sunset.

Our accommodations were spotless and we loved our terrace looking over the quaint main drag of Riomaggiore. We looked out over the produce markets and restaurants and watched the fat cats about town sleeping in the shade.

Yes, we enjoyed all the romantic elements of Riomaggiore. But we also enjoyed less romantic things…like the pod-coffee machine in our room. We had heard from fellow travelers that they were all the rage in Europe but had yet to experience one. And now here we were left unattended with one in our room!

We felt like we were eight years old and had just unwrapped an Easy Bake oven. Except “You can bake a cake with a lightbulb?” was now “You can make coffee with a pod?”

And the verdict from Shane and Suzy (the only coffee drinkers in the trio) is, “better than drip, worse than hand-pulled.”

The Duomo in Milan.

Marizpan "seafood" in Milan. We saw this right after we visited a deli with 3200 kinds of Parmigiano.

Final days: Saying goodbye to Turkey

2010-08-04T10:23:00.001-07:00

There is no host like a Turkish host.

After spending time with our new friends Serkan and Kamal and their families in Bursa, I can happily declare that I have more Turkish friends than I can count (but my difficulty with the Turkish language may have something to do with it).

We were guests in their homes, but they made us feel like family. They fed us, served us copious amounts of tea, and gave us many gifts. We were overwhelmed with Turkish generosity and hospitality.

Here I am with Kamal's sister and mother eating fresh chickpeas right off the pod.

While no one around could speak much English, both parties knew enough language basics that most of the time we understood each other, although occasionally we did resort to Google Translate, drawings or wild gesturing to get our point across.

On the second day we got to see a lot of Bursa, the old silkworm market where years ago you could witness fierce bargaining over the valuable silk cocoons, a famous museum of Ottoman shadow puppets, an old Ottoman village, and even a house where a well-known Turkish soap opera is filmed.

Famous Ottoman shadow puppets.

Our hosts would proudly announce that we were visiting from Canada to just about everyone we encountered. The person at the ticket office, the waiter at the restaurant, and even the man singing the call to prayer in the Mosque.

Our hosts wouldn’t let us pay for anything. One time when Shane tried to reach for the hesap (bill) and our hosts whisked it away, our new friend Penar summed it up by saying “In Turkey, everyone is a gentlemen.”

The highlight of the day was a trip up a nearby mountain where we stopped for lunch. Fresh from the oven sesame bread was served with honey, cheeses, a red pepper spread, butter, salad, olives, cheese-filled mushrooms caps, fruit, tea, and cold water from a nearby mountain spring.

Beautiful 600-year-old tree.

Exchanging flags.

After Bursa we hopped a ferry back to Istanbul and took in a few more sights.

Beautiful patterns in the Blue Mosque.

Aya Sofia showing its age.

The "weeping column" in Aya Sofia. Supposedly if you stick your finger in the hole and it comes out wet you will be healed of whatever ails you.

In Istanbul we met up with more friends we had met in Olympos, Umut and Emre. We spent a night with them exploring the lively İstiklal Avenue.

Emre's family hails from the Black Sea region so he stopped to dance with some people that were playing Karadeniz (Black Sea) music.

Emre (in blue). Emre also has a wonderful singing voice and serenaded us a few times.

The whole crew hanging out at Taksim Square.

Hanging out with our new Turkish friends and their families was the perfect way to wind down our trip to Turkey. Truly unforgettable Turkish times.

While I will miss our friends the most, there are other things I will miss about Turkey.

Baklava.

Delicious frothy Ayran. A slightly salted yogurt drink.

All our sleeping critter friends. This one was catching some Zs in the Ankara bus station.

This one is a modern day resident of Ephesus.

Backgammon. Shane and I played at least four games a day. This was a particularly good game for me.

Hoşçakalın Türkiye!

Blue Cruise: Highlights & Lowlights

2010-07-29T04:55:00.001-07:00

While we were in Olympos we booked a 3 night/4 day cruise to Fethiye, a town about 5 hours or so up the coast. These "blue cruises" are a popular way to explore the Mediterranean coastline and there are many cruise companies to choose from.

We had done some research and picked one of the companies that the Lonely Planet guidebook recommends. We felt pretty confident about our decision when we parted with a good chunk of lira for this excursion.

But that's pretty much where our confidence ended and the red flags started to pop up.

The bus transfer that took us to the dock (about an hour and a half away from Olympos) was disorganized. We made stops for no apparent reason, we backtracked, and the driver gave the impression he was improvising the whole affair. First red flag.

During the ride we were told that we now had to buy our own drinks to bring on the boat AND we had to pay an extra 20 TL each for ice to keep our drinks cold. We exchanged disgruntled looks with the other passengers and I told Shane that I think this is what is meant by the term"fleecing." Shane joked that with the driver collecting the equivalent of 160 Euros for 4 days worth of cubes the boat darn well better be carved out of ice. Second red flag.

Next we were dropped off at a dock and abandoned for 45 mins. Eventually someone came and picked us up in a dingy and brought out to the yacht we would be sharing with 14 other passengers. Our yacht was blaring obnoxious techno music and a young shirtless crew member with his underwear half out of his shorts asked if any of us in the group were the passenger names scrawled on a ripped looseleaf piece of paper he was holding. Nope. We weren't. Third red flag.

At this point, I stopped counting.

He went down into the galley for a bit and left us all on the deck with our luggage. A young Russian man in the group remarked the whole thing was like the beginning of an Agatha Christie novel.

Eventually shirtless underwear guy came back and showed us to our cabin.

I would like to tell you that this is the part of the story were everything started to go smoothly, but unfortunately, things were just getting worse.

Firstly, our room smelled. If you mixed one part moldy, one part musty and one part sewage-y, you'd get the idea.

Secondly, it was dirty. The whole boat had a shoes-off rule so I was not too excited about walking barefoot into our dirty room for four days. Parts of the floor were rotting away and the bathroom was in bad need of repair and some serious scrubbing.

Thirdly, it leaked. Every time the boat traveled our room would fill up with 2 inches of water and we would have to wade shoeless through the stagnant water and some unidentifiable floaties to navigate the cabin.

At this point we realized the boat may actually be sinking faster than our hearts.

No one on the boat ever wanted to go down to the cabins therefore we spent as much time as possible on the top deck, even at night. Everyone slept on the sunbeds, which is customary on this type of cruise anyway. But in our case, it was kind of a necessity. One of the other passengers on the boat took the sheet off their bed to use on the sunbed and revealed a black mold-covered mattress.

But we could still enjoy a nice ice cold beverage in the sun right? Nope. As it turns out, there was no ice on the boat. There was freezer for drinks but it was only turned on once a day so that the drinks were warm or lukewarm most of the time.

The cruise turned out to be more green than blue for poor Shane. Shane experienced the ultimate in unfortunate trifectas when he had food-poisoning, sunstroke, and motion sickness for 2 days. He was in a terrible state and I even considered hiring another boat to take us back to the mainland to see a doctor.

But there were highlights too. The water was amazing. It was wonderful to be able to jump off the side of the boat anytime for a swim and a snorkle. We enjoyed being free of the beach crowds.

The idea for the people on this yellow-banana thing is to hang on.

The idea for the people driving the boat is to try and knock off the people on the banana thing.

As it turns out, we were in good company on the boat. Shane played chess with the Russian and we bonded with our fellow Canadians on board. I talked design with an Industrial Designer from Spain and we had many late night chats with Efe from Izmir who had a strong interest in paranormal and occult topics. We discussed everything from ghosts and reincarnation to astral projection.

Efe also had a background in Marine biology and assuaged one of the Canadian's fear of shark attacks in the surrounding waters. Sharks were around in these waters but they were quite small and fearful of humans. He said that his diving friends told him that if you stick your nose in the water and it smells like watermelon, that means there are sharks nearby. Apparently shark oil smells like watermelon, but I couldn't get past the whole smelling underwater thing.

While we adored the swimming and the sun, we were more than happy when our boat finally docked in Fethiye. The cruise was actually cut a few hours short because the boat was taking on too much water - in our room - so it had to go in for repairs.

Shane was still sick and we were both feeling grubby. A Turkish bath was actually sounding like a really good idea...

Olympos: Night Swimming and Turkish Friends

2010-07-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

Onward to the coast. The Mediterranean coast that is!

We took an overnight bus from Göreme to Olympos. We stepped off the coach and waved a weary, squinty, hello to the blazing hot sun of the south coast.

Olympos is a beach town. Well, not really a town per se. It's really just a single dirt road lined with budget pensions, bungalows and treehouse accommodations.

The beach in Olympos was beautiful, but very, very crowded during our peak season visit. We rented a scooter and explored the beaches a few towns over and found this piece of heaven.

The water was bathwater warm and so salty there was no need to even swim. Just float in the water so blue it looks like someone was waaaay overzealous in Photoshop. But they weren't. It really just is THAT blue.

Scooting around Olympus from katie lapi on Vimeo.

We stumbled through the overgrown ancient ruins nestled in among the forested valley leading to the Olympos beach.

At night we explored Chimera, a geological phenomena where fires are scattered across rocky terrain. An unknown mixture of gases is emitted from rocky crevices that burns and will apparently reignite if you try and extinguish the flames.

But the best thing about Olympos was none of the above. The best thing about Olympos was the friends we made. The chilled out common area at our pension, filled with comfy sitting lofts and hammocks was the perfect place to meet people. It was here that we met Umut and Emre from Istanbul and Kamal, Serkan, and Furkan from Bursa.

We had two wonderful nights of moonlit swimming, fires, dancing, and singing. Lots of singing. Each night the ring of people around our beach fire would grow bigger and bigger as people joined the group. Our new Turkish friends passionately sang traditional songs about Turkey with a level of patriotism I have never seen before. Everyone seemed to know all the words to every song.

Turkish people LOVE Turkey. And it's infectious. Shane and I hummed along and tried our best to mimic the word sounds so we could be a part of the gigantic sing-a-long.

Olympos Sing-a-Long from katie lapi on Vimeo.

At one point Shane and I were asked to sing a Canadian song. Like a traditional one. Like one that every Canadian would know. Hmmmmm.....

Knowing that there was no way I could get through the entire national anthem (yah, I don't watch hockey, okay?) I quickly struggled to remember all the words to the land-of-the-silver-birch-home-of-the-beaver song but Shane had never even heard of it. I joked that we both knew the chorus to Crash Test Dummies "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" but we knew that wasn't a strong pick. We both felt a bit - I don't know - culture-less. We weren't able to represent our country as tunefully as our Turkish friends.

Luckily, by night two, a large British contingent joined the group so together we were able to think of some English songs to sing. We contributed stirring renditions of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall to the evening's entertainment.

Olympus Fire Dancing from katie lapi on Vimeo.

Göreme: Land of the Fairy Chimneys

2010-07-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

The bus ride to Göreme was remarkable for two reasons.

Reason 1: I had a breakthrough with my Turkish. I had been trying to use simple phrases from our Turkish language book but had been failing miserably. Single words were no problem but every time I tried to speak like an adult in full sentences my attempt at communication was met with a blank stare. I had to resort to phrasebook pointing, my least favorite and most shameful form of communication.

But at a stopover in Ankara I met a young Turkish man with great English so I got him to repeat a few of the phrases I had been trying to say and realized my problem. I was speaking waaaay too slowly. The secret seems to be slurring all those syllables that are so clearly delineated in the phrasebook together into a nice mush. The first time I tried it and was understood (meaning someone responded back to me in Turkish with three sentences that I didn't understand) I was giddy. Giddy with language power (well, just a little bit of power). It felt good and I was encouraged to lean farther outside the safety net of the English language that so many Turks use to speak to us.

Reason 2: This baby.

A mother was traveling alone with her wee babe. To my surprise, the mother happily passed off the baby to be entertained by fellow passengers on the bus, including us, the foreigners. We played with the baby for at least 2 hours of the 5 hour bus trip before the little one fell asleep on our laps. It was nice to see that kind of trust and it's fair to say it made an impression on me.

I would be remiss if I didn't spend at least one paragraph describing the comfort and near luxury of Turkish buses. Turkish buses have the conveniences of modern commercial airplanes, just with pit stops along the way. Most of the better buses have Wifi and personal screens with radio, movies, and TV. There is a bow-tied attendant who patrols the aisle with ice cream, pastries, and drinks. He even doles out lemon cologne to keep us all smelling like a refreshing citrus breeze. It's all very civilized and lovely!

And just where did we end up after this journey?

Göreme! Göreme is in the Cappadocia region, known widely for its rock formations known as "fairy chimneys." This strange other-worldly landscape is the result of erosion and volcanic ash. Inside these "chimneys" are centuries old rock-cut houses, churches, monasteries, and - wait for it - pigeon lofts. Pigeon excrement was once a valuable fertilizer so the lofts were built so it could be easily collected.

It's a fascinating landscape that we found was best explored via scooter. We were able to explore many of the amazing valleys of these formations and the surrounding historical sites and towns on our own.

Now for the dramatic introduction of the video portion of this blog: flying high in a hot air balloon over Cappadocia!

It really just looks like I'm doing a slow pan over a still photo but I assure you, we are balloon cruisin' at sunrise.

Göreme Balloon Ride 1 from katie lapi on Vimeo.

Göreme Balloon 2 from katie lapi on Vimeo.

One of the most memorable experiences we had in Cappadocia was meeting this family.

We were on the outskirts of a small town and saw two ladies making something on a rug outside of tents. We pulled over on our scooter to see what they were doing and were invited for tea. We had many, many cups of tea with this family (who spoke no English) and Shane and I exhausted our Turkish vocabulary visiting with the mother, grandmother, and three children.

A few locals we met along the way.

New contender for cuteoverload.com found napping in Göreme.

Safranbolu Bonus: The Haman Bath Experience

2010-07-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

One of the things we were excited about experiencing in Turkey was the Haman baths.

In Safranbolu they recently restored the 300-year-old Cinci Haman so we decided it was the opportune time to take a dip in a Turkish bath.

The Haman had separate sections for men and women so Shane and I entered our respective sides and that is where the adventure began.

My host led me to a change room and gave me a cloth to wrap myself in. Next she led me though a series of double doors, down a steamy corridor, and into a main room with several rooms shooting off its perimeter. The room we entered had many sinks atop of low marble benches. In the centre of the room was a large table. Looking up I could see the afternoon light streaming in the high windows in the ceiling dome.

She escorted me to a sink and handed me a small plastic basin, indicating I was to start dousing myself in the warm water that was slowly filling the basin.

Then she left. I was alone in the echoey chamber.

I started to timidly rinse myself. Attempting to be a tidy bather I tried to get all the water back in the basin. Now thoroughly rinsed and starting to sweat in the hot room I peeked my head out the entrance. One of the rooms was a sauna and there were a few other small rooms with sinks, just like the one I was in. All of them were empty.

I had read the Haman bath section of the Lonely Planet guidebook several times but I had been hoping someone else would be in the bathhouse so I could see exactly what I should be doing.

Unsure of what to do, I sat. And sat. Was I supposed to go into the other rooms? Was I supposed to go get my host to tell her I was sufficiently rinsed? And wait, was I supposed to keep my cloth thingy dry for after my bath? Hmmmmmmmm.

20 minutes later my host returned, no longer clothed but instead wrapped in a cloth and with her hair pulled back. At this point I could see her strong stout build and her arms, so very thick with muscles.

She gestured for me to lie on the table and then started to rinse me again. At this point I realized there had been no point to me trying to contain all the water in the basin. Water was being flung around the room until the marble floor was awash in a warm sea.

Next, she donned a rough mitt and began to scrub. She scrubbed with an even pressure over my whole body, being no less gentle on the tender area around my eyes than on the rough soles of my feet.

These were not cursory scrubs. She scrubbed me harder than I scrubbed my beautiful Le Creuset pot that I boiled dry once (okay, maybe twice). She scrubbed so hard I could see bits of the mitt crumbling off all over my skin. She scrubbed so hard it hurt.

I braced myself because I thought for sure my ribcage was about to collapse from the pressure. I could almost hear the slow hiss of air escaping my punctured lungs and the snap of my collarbone shattering like peanut brittle all over the table.

I was reminded of the time I once helped Shane refinish a 50-year-old hardwood floor. But this time, instead of yielding the sander, I was the hardwood floor. Once worn, scratched, and marred with age, she was shearing off my dull layers and the dirty crust of daily life to return my dermis to its former glory. She scrubbed away so many layers that I wondered if I would have any skin left at all and if I would end up looking like one of those preserved skinless humans in the Bodyworlds exhibit.

Next came the soap. Frothy mountains of suds became the sea foam floating on the warm marble-lined sea.

This woman was strong. Strong as an ox. Between the powerful scrubs and suds I felt like I might slide right off the platform and tried desperately to get a hold on the slippery soapy edges of the table. Perhaps there was someone else I could be paired with, someone with a similar body type to mine. I mean really, would you send Muhammad Ali into the ring against a boxer with the build of Woody Allen?

And then there was more pain. The pain of the mitt was one thing, but along with the sudsing process came a new battery of pain affliction. When she cleaned each hand she weaved her fingers into mine right at the base, squeezed them hard together and then pulled her way up to my fingertips. Bone against bone. I can only compare the experience to stripping an electrical wire with the inner blade on a pair of needle nose pliers. I tried to open my mouth to call out in pain, but no sound came out. Who knew handwashing could be a such a taxing experience? This was some serious clean.

When the whole affair was over we were both hot and exhausted. She retreated back to the main area to smoke a cigarette and I went back to my room to get dressed.

Shane and I both felt like we had never been so clean in our lives. We looked red and felt raw but inside we were renewed and with baby soft skin to boot. When the sun beat down on us I was sure people were blinded by the glare of our freshly burnished epidermises, shining like diamonds all the way back to the pension.

Safranbolu: Town with a Sweet Tooth

2010-07-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

Safranbolu is known for its fine collection of Ottoman houses, many of which have been lovingly restored.

We stayed in the nicest pension yet! Bastoncu Pension is in a 300-year-old Ottoman house. The owner is a woodworker who did the restoration himself. He showed us his tools and he and Shane "talked shop." His wife cooked us amazing home-cooked dinners.

Our room. We slept like sultans for 3 nights.

Self-portrait.

The owners' son was a musician and we were lucky enough to be in town for one of his concerts.

Shane even got to try his hand at the bağlama.

We went to another small town near Safranbolu and met this lady. Apparently she is quite a famous town character. People come from Istanbul just to meet her. She teases all the tourists. She tried unsuccessfully to arrange a trade for our new friend Jeremy's Ray-Bans.

Old Ottoman-era aqueduct that you can walk across. Look Ma! No handrails! The experience was dizzying.

More caving in Safranbolu at Bulak Menciris Cave. This giant cave is the 4th largest in Turkey and runs 6.5 km in length. However, after only 400 m I became claustrophobic and anxious about how far I had to walk to see sunlight again.

I think it's time to mention a few more Turkish food highlights.

Gözleme: Gözleme has become a close personal friend of Shane and mine. Kind of like a quesadilla made with two thin rotis, but filled with potato, cheese or spinach. Perfect afternoon snack.

Notice the shout-out to St. Louis on the napkin holder!

Salep: We hit a few rainy days in Safranbolu where the temperature dropped. This meant we got to sample a hot drink that is usually only served in the winter. It's made with milk and crushed tapioca with lots of spice.

Not salep but a beautiful tea and coffee service.

Turkish delight and halva: My sweet tooth has been in decline for the last 6 months so Safranbolu was a great place to nurse it back to health. The town takes its name from saffron and on every corner there is a sweetshop welcoming you to sample their wares, including saffron flavoured Turkish delight. We also ate a gigantic puck of the creamiest halva I've ever had in my life.

It's been at least a entry or so since we've had an animal shot so let's end this post with one.
I like to call it, "the pup with intoxicating eyes."

Amasra: Rockstars and Flaming Hair Cuts

2010-07-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

After 3 nights in Istanbul we headed to Amasra (population 7,000) on the Black Sea coast.

We knew we were in for an adventure when we told one of the hotel staff at our pension in Istanbul where we were going and she said "Amasra? Why? (long pause)... No tourists go there."

What I think she meant to say was no English tourists go there, because when we rolled into town it was chock full of Turkish tourists.

We arrived on the last day of a festival. There was a Ferris wheel set up and a band was playing on a giant stage (complete with video screen and dry ice). Everyone in the crowd was singing along to the music and waving giant black and white posters of a young man.

What we managed to piece together after a few hours of walking around is that the man on the posters was Baris Akarsu, a famous Turkish rockstar/actor who grew up in Amasra. Sadly, Baris died of complications from a car crash when he was only 28.

Every year Amasra holds a music festival in his honour.

Along the harbour there is a giant statue of him and his beloved motorbike is encased in glass along with portraits of him. Night and day, tourists flock to this shrine to have their photo taken.

While in Amasra we hired a boat to take us out to some of the local beaches outside of town. This was a fabulous idea. While the guidebook warned about the cold ocean temperature of the Black Sea, I am happy to report that they meant "Turkey-in-July-cold" not "Vancouver-in-December-cold."

Shane takes a plunge.

Before we left for our trip I made sure to get my hair cut. I figure only the truly adventurous would try and get their haircut in a country where they don't speak the language. Women I know seem to have a hard enough time getting a haircut they like when both parties speak the same language, so why complicate it further when all you have to work with is phrasebook Turkish?

However, my husband, being much more adventurous than I, decided it was time to have his locks chopped. After a brief exchange of gesturing (on the barber's part) and poorly pronounced Turkish (on Shane's part) the young man started cutting Shane's hair. Shane got all relaxed and started to fall asleep.

When the haircut was complete, the barber started working on Shane's "other" hair. Apparently, Turkish haircuts include cutting all the hair above your neck (read: nose and ear hair trim with electric clippers). I found this portion of the procedure interesting enough, but it wasn't until the barber dipped an oversized q-tip in a pink liquid and lit it on fire that things really got interesting.

I started to laugh nervously and Shane sprung into a fully alert state as the barber started wafting the giant flame in and out of Shane's ears! A complimentary ear-hair singe! Vancouver salons better be steppin' it up!

Pretty, pretty Amasra.

Lunch from the market.

Ataturk sculpture competes with Shane's bulging biceps.

Istanbul: The Megacity is Mega-pretty

2010-07-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

Istanbul is a city with roots that unfurl deep into history. The city's long and varied history simmers just below the surface, causing the ripples in its cobblestone paving and the twists and turns in its labyrinth of winding streets.

The only city in the world to straddle two continents has been home to Roman, Eastern Roman, Latin, and Ottoman Empires.

Dusk in the city.

A dear friend of mine, Jenn, put us in touch with a friend of hers, Kate - a British ex-pat who has been living in Istanbul for three years. Kate and her boyfriend (Shane and I shamefully admit we have forgotten his name - eek!), our kind and patient hosts, showed us a great night out and gave us their own personal edit of this epic city.

After they picked us up, they treated us to a mini-boat tour of the Bosphorus and then we rode on the oldest subway in the world (the original carts were pulled by horses).

Sunset cruise!

Next, a dinner so delicious it is going down as one of my top 5 dinners of all time.

Artichokes, I love 'em. Apparently Turks don't eat the "meat" off the leaves of the artichoke, which I've always done by scraping my teeth on the inner side. Fully embracing my inner tourist I chowed down on juicy roasted leaves of a stuffed artichoke first, before digging into the innards.

Other dinner highlights include: artichoke bottom with some kind of light cream sauce and veggies, red peppers stuffed with a spicy rice mixture, a red pepper/walnut paste (about the consistency of hummus), a variety of salads and roasted vegetables. I can't tell you the name of any of these dishes but I know they are all pronounced the same way "Mmmmmmmmmm."

During dinner, Shane underwent Raki initiation. Raki is a traditional Turkish alcohol (45%) flavoured with anise. Turks seems to be as particular about their Raki ritual as the British are about their tea.

First get a narrow glass and put ice in it. Then, pour in the clear Raki. Next, add water, which turns the clear alcohol a milky white.

Take a drink of the Raki and chase it with a mixer of your choice, which can include Salgam Suyu, a non-alcoholic fermented purple carrot drink that's quite salty, and tasted to me like juice from a pickle jar. I couldn't handle more then a few sips, but then again, I wasn't drinking the Raki.

Then came desert. Our hosts ordered three dishes and had us try and guess what they were. In North America this would have been no more difficult than determining cheesecake from pie, but in Turkey, it was a different story.

All the deserts were semi-translucent and sat in small pool of syrup. After many incorrect answer the truth was revealed.

They were: (drumroll please!) walnut (shell and all), tomato, and pumpkin. All three had been soaked at length in some kind of sweet honey-like syrup which disguised their taste and altered their texture. Delicious! I don't think Turks have a hard time getting their kids to eat their veggies if they taste like that (alright, alright, I know technically those are all fruits but you know what I mean)

Whooping it up in the big city after our walk through the bar-district.

Our pension in Istanbul was fabulous. We were in the Sultanahmet district, very close to the Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, and Blue Mosque. Our room had a great terrace overlooking the Marmara Sea, and we enjoyed a great introduction to Turkish breakfast. A big spread of cheeses, yogurt, veggies, fruit, breads, and olives. The olives make me think of my Mom every morning. No one would have loved these salty treasures at breakfast time (or really anytime) more than my Mom.

At night we walked along the seawall of the Marmara sea. People were fishing, picnicking on the rocks (imagine a nice big flat rock set up with a tablecloth, beer, and dinner - it was hard not to invite ourselves to the table).

Didn't pack a picnic? No problem.

Vendors were constantly roaming the seawall with corn on the cob, nuts, and watermelon.

Catch a fish? There are also makeshift restaurants set up to cook it for you. A simple grill, some prepared toppings, and a few plastic tables and stools.

Seawall at night. You can pay to shoot at the balloons.

Olives in the Bazaar.

Spicy times.

Chora Church/Kariye Müzesi was built by the Byzantines in the 4th century, then converted into a mosque by the Ottomans, and then finally in 1948 it became a museum. The church/mosque/museum is filled with frescoes and mosaics in various states of decay due to earthquakes and age.

Shane was particularly moved by the piece below. I don't know that I've ever seen him tear up in a church before.

Some figures had their eyes scratched out during the Iconoclast period.

View from Pierre Loti Cafe:

One of Istanbul's many street kitties - perhaps the sweetest one!

Hotsprings, Caves and Islamic Grandeur: Exploring the Giant Pomegrante

2010-07-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

From Tarifa we headed to Granada, our last destination in Spain.

After returning the car we headed to the hostel and checked in.

We immediately signed up for the nightly excursion to a local hot spring. That night the driver picked us up along with our new friends, Linette from Langley (Holla BC!) and Beth from Ontario. Luckily, Beth studied in Costa Rica and had excellent Spanish speaking abilities. The driver talked non-stop as he drove us out of the city and down some dirt roads in his hatchback. Beth was able to translate for us as he told her all about the hot springs.

It was a natural hot spring pool, out in the bush. Popular with the locals, but essentially deserted whenever there was a football game on. Some hippy-types even had a quasi-café on one side of the hot springs constructed from salvaged siding and tarps. He told us older people come in the day and coat themselves in the mud from the hot springs because it's good for your skin.

When we arrived at the hot spring it was a lively place (meaning there was no World Cup game on that night). It felt amazing to be out of the city and see the stars while soaking in the hot pool.

The next three days were spent exploring Granada (translation: Pomegrante). There is a lot to love about this place.

The Albaicin is the old Islamic neighbourhood. The neighbourhood itself is a UNESCO world heritage site and contains well-preserved medieval Moorish architecture that was spared during the Reconquista.

Cars are heavily restricted in the Albaicin. Which is no small wonder considering there are more staircases here than roads. If you live there and want a car your name is put on a waiting list. Also, the roads vary in width from end to end. What starts as a wide road (and wide in Europe means a one lane North American road used as a two lane European road) can get narrower and narrower as you go along until finally you'd be stuck between two buildings.

Beautiful terrace in the Albaicin.

Kitties napping by the river.

Sacramonte is the gypsy cave neighbourhood, also home to many Flamenco clubs. Our guide told us it's the neighbourhood for people who want to live a rent free "alternative lifestyle." Built way up on the hillside, along the city walls, it offers great views of the city below and has many curious caves dwellings in various states of development. Shane and I spent an afternoon exploring up there.

Cave terrace:

Granada is known for free tapas when you order a drink. You could subsist solely on tapas in this town and forgo full meals altogether. However, this tapas led to some awkwardness on our part when we received tapas containing meat or fish and then had to tell the waiter that although we like free food, we don't like meat or fish. We decided to address this issue prior to ordering our drinks but that's really just as awkward. "Hey, hypothetically speaking, if you were to bring us some free tapas, can you make sure it's not fish or meat?" It felt as if we were ruining the unobligatory generousity of the bars/restaurants with our preemptive discussion regarding our vegetarian diet.

We took a long hot walk up to the Alhambre (mid-14th century Moorish palace), which was maybe not the best idea at two in the afternoon on a hot day. We had not heeded advice to make sure we had a bottle of water before we attempted the climb so we were unreasonably hot and absurdly parched upon arrival.

Shane says he's ready to move in.

Other highlights from Granada? A World Cup donut diorama!

Finally, on July 1st we said goodbye to Granada, tapas, and the now pseudo-comfort of our Spanish speaking skills, ready to start phase two of our journey.

Cracking the spine on another language book and Lonely Planet guide, we were ready for Turkey, and more specifically, Istanbul.

Medetereano and Atlantico or Tarifa, Tarifa, so glad I got to meet 'cha

2010-07-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

Early the next morning we left Ronda and headed south. Destination: Tarifa.

On the way, we stopped at Cueva de la Pileta and had our minds blown. For real. It's a cave that was discovered in 1905 containing drawings that date back 30,000 years ago. Let me say that again. 30,000 years ago. That's an unfathomable amount of time. Investigators posit the cave was inhabited from 30,000 years - 4000 years ago, which makes it significant within the canon of really, really, old things.

Our guide (who was the great granddaughter of the man who discovered the cave) led the group through via kerosene lamp, showing us the living quarters, fresh water supply, and cave art along the way, and even a 70 m drop where human and animal remains were found (investigators speculate they may have been sacrificed). It was absolutely incredible. Again, I say, mind-blowing. Seriously.

You can't take pictures in the cave (because the flash would damage the drawings) so this was taken in the entrance.

After that, we headed onto Tarifa, but with a few kinks along the way. Val (again, Val was the name we christened our GPS navigator) had been acting strangely all day. Taking us on unnecessary loops back and forth across the highway, inviting us to turn onto roads that didn't exist, etc. At first we were sympathetic. After all, there are a lot of roads in the world and surely new ones are being built and old ones are being destroyed at a rate that even a computer cannot keep up with.

But our sympathy for Val disappeared entirely when we arrived in Tarifa.

Admittedly Tarifa was different than we imagined. For one, this "seaside" town was in fact, way, way up on a hillside. I had a hard time imagining anyone describing this as the place where people take the ferry over to Morocco and wondered why anyone would even associate those far off beaches in the distance with this town. Yet Val insisted that we had in fact "arrived at our destination." Usually I like to verify the street signs with Val's screen but in this town, I had trouble finding any street signs, like anywhere. Weird.

It was Sunday. Sundays are notoriously sleepy in Spain meaning most of the town is closed, so I had trouble finding someplace open to ask about directions. Eventually we caught up with someone walking their dog and when we asked for directions and pointed to our Lonely Planet map he informed us that we were in Facina, not Tarifa. Ohhhhhh...

Val was still insisting that we were in front of our hotel (in someways I have to admit I admire her steadfast conviction in the face of utter global positioning failure), but Shane and I were both angry at her. No more excuses for Val. We were 15 km away from Tarifa and she had misled us.

I punished Val by putting her on "mute" (read: GPS strangulation) and kicking her down by my feet where my stinky socks were that I had peeled off after caving earlier that day.

We drove on to Tarifa the old fashioned way after that - following road signs - and arrived grumpy, tired, and about an hour later than scheduled.

Eventually after convalescing briefly in our room, we headed out to the beach (the real Tarifa is actually seaside and we did see the ferry to Morocco).

We swam in Mediterranean side and the Atlantic side, enjoyed the breathtaking views of North Africa a scant 14 km away, and wandered through the old Islamic town.

Regrettably, we did not venture over to Morocco because the schedule didn't allow, but it's now on the "to do" list for future travels.

Tarifa, is the wind capital of Europe.

Me on the Atlantic side.

Shane on the Mediterranean side, (excuse the big water spot on the lens).

Climbing up a ruin.
Relaxing, mid-climb.

View of Morroco.

I love the idea of being at a junction. Where Atlantic meets Mediterranean, where Europe meets Africa.

Ronda: Gorge-ous!

2010-07-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

Next on the agenda was Ronda, a town in the Malaga Province. Ronda is known for its dramatic location. The town is perched on either side of the 100 metre El Tajo river gorge.

The gorge divides the city in a stunning fashion but one that had my thoughts alternating between "Is this really safe? Is there such a thing as a town-sized handrail that could be installed here?" and "A precipice is such a pretty place to build a town. Shane and I are for sure going to live on a cliff."

Pure genius or pure insanity. View the pictures and decide for yourself.

The view you are rewarded with should you choose to live on this cliff.

We made the trek down (and I mean DOWN) la Mina. La Mina is an Islamic-era hidden stairway of over 300 steps. The steps take you down to the bottom of the gorge via a very steep, very damp, and very dark stairwell. The staircase allowed the people of Ronda to supply water in times of siege. I pity the person whose job it was to haul endless buckets of water up those stairs as I was barely capable of getting myself and my camera bag back up those stairs much less a heavy bucket of water.

Sidenote: Shane had the camera doing double-duty operating it as a makeshift flashlight in the particularly dark areas - yeah, he totally Macgyver-ed the camera.

The river as seen from the bottom of the steps.

We walked around town and saw the historic bull fighting arena - which is said to be the oldest bullring in Spain. Apparently Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles both spent many a summer in Ronda because of their interest in this bullring, and Orson Welles' ashes were spread there.

The bullring at night.

More nighttime Ronda.

Pretty sunflowers on the way to Ronda.

Kick-Ass walnut, goatcheese & mango salad, courtesy of Ronda.

Puppies! Yet another reason to move to Ronda.

Baza: Caveman and Cavewoman

2010-06-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Shane and I stayed one night at Al Jatib's Cave hotel. The hotel is located in a rural area outside Baza which is northeast of Granada in the Andalucia region.

By rural, I mean like really rural. Like the kind of rural that doesn't have a street address. Or at least not the kind of address that Val (the name I have nicknamed our GPS system in honour of one of the charming barkeeps we met in the only English-speaking bar in Baza) could understand. The website just listed a number, and then the town, but no street.

I assumed that the town had one main drag, and obviously the hotel was on it.

Nope, not the case. The hotel was about 15 minutes out of town, down a dirt road, that is literally unnamed. There are actually quite a few cave hotels around this area. I know this because I got all excited about the first sign I saw that said "Cueva" and so we wound up 10 minutes down another dirt road at another cave hotel. When we were "off-roading" on the dirt road I was feeling quite pleased with myself for coughing up the extra dough for the no-deductible insurance on the rental car.

Eventually we made it our cave hotel. Beautiful white caves built into the hillside. Complete with a pool and a beautiful patio for viewing the rolling Andalucian hills and fields.

It was hot, hot, hot outside. But our cave stayed cool all day. Our cave was fully equipped with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom - and even a washing machine. All the appliances were "hidden" behind textiles so I actually didn't even know we had a washing machine until after I had hand washed most of our clothes in the bathroom sink. It even had 2 fireplaces - outdoor and indoor, but when we asked about the free firewood they mentioned on the website they said no fires. I guess most people don't want to light fires when it's been 30-ish degrees that day. Imagine that.

This cave hotel is also known for its Haman Bath. The bath is in a pair of caves (duh). One of them is hot and one is ice cold. The cave bath rooms have holes punched through them forming a crude lattice that allows the sun to stream in a way that almost made want to risk bringing our camera into a steamy water-filled room to capture it.

Cave Sweet Cave:

Shane is actually sitting in the fireplace in the above photo.

Alicante: Light my Fire

2010-06-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

When we left Valencia, we decided to rent a car. Over the last few days the conversation about renting a car had gone like this. Shane would suggest we rent a car. I would refuse. Shane would suggest it again. I would try and talk him out of it. Then Shane suggested it again, and finally, I agreed. I knew it would give us more freedom and allow us to visit some more rural locations. But that’s not to say I wasn’t nervous about driving in Spain.

I was nervous for two reasons.

First reason: Driving. Seeing the way the Spanish navigate the four lane roundabouts and streets so narrow that you have to turn in your side mirrors is enough to make my whole body cringe and tense muscles I didn’t even know I had.

Second reason: Parking. Cars are crammed in blocks like sardines. People tend to do things like this:

My informal poll found the percentage of cars with bangs and dents on them was about 60%. We’re talking some serious scrapes. If we were renting a car, we were definitely buying all the insurance we could get.

We headed south down the coast. We decided to bed down for the night in Alicante, and as we rolled into town we realized we had hit another festival. We saw temporary food stands set up, road blockades, and many people milling about.

Great! Our uniformed traveller’s luck had struck again and we learned we had arrived for Hogueras de San Juan. During the festival various artists are commissioned to build giant paper mache statues, one for each of Alicante’s 86 barrios (neighbourhoods). We strolled through the streets, eating churros, and looking at the different colorful statues. The statues are massive. Shane wondered aloud where they could be kept all year round.

Since we were bagged from the previous night’s excursion we decided to head to bed early. We were cosy in bed and flipping through the various channels on the tv when we caught a news station. The station was showing footage of one of the statues we had seen earlier…in flames! The news broadcaster didn’t seem shocked by the flames at all, instead, the whole thing seemed planned, the flames joyous, and the party seemed far from over.

A quick google search revealed that starting at midnight the organizers begin to burn down the statues as firemen move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood to orchestrate the blaze.

We could see a statue from our hotel room and decided we needed to see the burning for ourselves.

I think it was around 2am when a crowd started to form around the statue. The firemen arrived and set up all the firehoses so they could control the burning.

We could see the statue was wrapped with strings of firecrackers. Suddenly, the street lights were turned off, and the crowd began to cheer. The firecrackers (loudly) started to ignite the statue, and when the smoke dissipated enough, you could see the flames begin to engulf it.

Finally, when the flames were low enough, the fireman extinguished them. You’d think that would be enough excitement for the day, but not for the Spanish!

At this point, as is customary, the crowd began to shout insults at the firemen, taunting them and provoking them until finally they turned the hose on the crowd. And we’re not talking a light sprinkling here folks, we’re talking full super soaker action!

As the spray began to near us Shane covered our camera with a scarf hoping to shield it from errant droplets and shouted “RUN”!.

And run we did, back to our hotel, exhausted from another night of fire.

Valencia: Beach Party Madness

2010-06-26T02:29:00.000-07:00

After Figueres we took the train further down the coast to Valencia.

We spent a few nights in an apartment we rented in the lively Barrio del Carmen district and then spent our last night in a cute hostel we found on one of our evening strolls.

Thank goodness for the Germans staying a few doors down from us at this hostel because they told us that June 23, was the infamous Festival de San Juan, a festival to celebrate the coming of summer, and also a crazy night time beach party!

We made fast friends with a charming couple from Montreal in our dorm room and we all headed down to Malvarrosa - the city's most popular beach around 12:30 am.

The place was nuts. The streets surrounding it and the beach itself was thick with 140,000 people. The kind of thick where you need to hold hands with everyone in your party so you don't lose each other (think kindergarten field-trip).

There was a huge stage with dancers(speedo-clad men and women or possibly drag queens? in elaborate costumes). They were blasting some kind of techno/house music and the back drop of the stage was a giant set of inflatable lips with two fishnetted legs protruding out of it. Kind of like those giant gorillas they have on the top of used car lots back home but way kinkier.

Eventually we made our way down to a part of the beach that was slightly (I use that turn loosely) less crowded and we were able to actually get to the water.

The massive beach was filled with bonfires. People go swimming and then huddle around the bonfires drinking and then drinking some more.

We settled in and went for a quick swim. After, while shivering, we started to edge our way closer and closer to a nearby bonfire. One of the bonfire "owners" kept jumping over the tall flames. I read later that if you jump over the flames it is supposed to make your wish come true.

We made our way back to the hostel around 5am-ish. Happy, damp and dusted with sand.

Unfortunately we didn't take our camera to the beach that night but here are a few highlights of some of the amazing street art we've seen so far on our trip and few others from our time in Valencia.

The Hemispheric at the Arts and Science Centre. Much to our dismay, all that blue water around this building is not a swimming pool.

Below is Shane is doing his Spiderman imitation at the superheroes exhibit at the Valencia Science Centre.

Don't Dilly Dali or Surrealist Arcade!

2010-06-25T13:22:00.001-07:00

When we were in Figueres, I visited the most popular attraction, the Salvador Dali Museum. Figueres is the birthplace of Dali and where he bought an old theatre and turned it into a museum - about himself (not many people have the gumption to build their own museum, do they? And if they do, all the power to you if you can get lineups as long as the ones at this one).

The building itself is amazing. Figueres looks like any other small town until you turn a corner and all of sudden you are standing in front of a pink building with eggs on the roof.

The museum is 20-odd rooms and you're told at the beginning to go through the rooms in any order you want, treating the entire museum as a surrealist object.

Wandering from room to room there are many well known (and also lesser known) Dali works, and then a bathtub on the ceiling over here, a giant mural over there, artwork installed in the stairwells, stereoscopic images, red velvet walls, and work by other surrealists artists. A really surrealist mish-mash which I enjoyed.

A handful of the works have arcade-like coin slots. If you drop in a Euro the sculpture comes to life.

Like this one:

This sculpture is based on a dream Dali had about his wife. She was driving in a car and it was raining inside the car. Drop in a coin and it starts "raining" inside the car (where a mannequin of his wife Gala is). The passenger window of the car has an artfully smashed hole in it so you can view this. There are plants growing inside the car as well. At the top of the tower (higher than the photo shows) is an umbrella that starts opening and closing.

More art:

They also had a large collection of Dali jewellery (I had no idea he did jewellery) which includes a stunning bedazzled heart pin with a crown AND the pin is animated so that the heart is always “beating.”

Let me tell you…that piece was a real gem. Har-Har.

Love from Espana.

p.s. A special shout out to Nina-bean who is one today!

Adventures in Train Station Sitting

2010-06-24T02:22:00.000-07:00

“Arrivals” in Spanish is “Llegadas.”

“Departures” in Spanish is “Salidas.”

These are two very different words. With two very different meanings. Being able to recognize the difference between these two words, and of course, their English translations is key. Some of us, however, have come to realize the importance difference between these two words when it was too late.

Take this example. Imagine a sunny day in northern Spain. Pretty much as north as you can get without being in France. You and your husband are waiting at the train station in Figueres, and you have bought a ticket for Barcelona.

So, here you are, ready to catch your train. You dutifully looked it up in the website the night before and know that it will be leaving the station “around 9:45.” Of course you didn’t write the exact information down last night. Pfft….Details, Schm-etails.

You still need to figure out what platform your train leaves from. Easy smeezy right? Just look on the LCD screen. It’s a small station so there is only one screen. And golly-gee, it’s flipping back and forth between screens of information. Those numbers flicker by so quickly…but you catch “BARCELONA-SANTS” and “ 9:48” and proudly announce to your husband that you should be on platform 3. All set!

You head to platform 3 and sit, basking in the Catalonian sun, waiting for your train.

Time passes slowly, and then you hear an announcement in Castillan/Spanish that sounds like this (at least this is what it sounds like if you don’t understand the majority of Castillan/Spanish. “Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, BARCELONA-SANTS, Blah, Blah, Blah, Platform 1.”

“Hmmm,” you think to yourself, “That train must be ARRIVING from BARCELONA-SANTS. I will continue to wait at Platform 3.”

People are getting off the train now.

You exchange nervous looks with your husband.

People are getting on the train now.

You both open your mouths about to say something. …then “WHOOOOOOSH,” the train is gone.

Simultaneously, you both wonder aloud if that was indeed your train, and upon further investigation, you discover that yes, it was your train, and that the screen with the flickering information? The screen you had been looking at was for arrivals, and the screen you should have been looking at was for departures. Those flickering screens of numbers and letters at train stations are important - get to know them. And if not?

Be prepared to spend an extra couple hours at a sunny train station.

Oh my Gaudi, we're in Barcelona!

2010-06-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

Highlights from our first three days in Barcelona:

Fantastically rich drinking chocolate at the Museu De La Xocolata. So thick it's served with a spoon. This isn't your Carnation-brand hot chocolate!

Getting goosebumps at La Sagrada Família, which our generation, the next generation, and the generation after that will never see completed. It is estimated that it will take 500 years total to complete the project. Which makes me think they are little premature in laying some of the floor tile already.

The terrace at our hotel. This city is filled with beautiful terraces. We are constantly using ours, but we seem to be the only ones. Sure, people hang their laundry out there, but do they ever hang out there for leisure time? *Note we did see one tourist on his terrace today in his bath towel filing his nails - but household chores and personal grooming aside...

Rock and Roll at the Sidecar Bar. Shane, being his usually observant self, figured out that one of the buildings next to our hotel is a jam space. A few times as we happened pass he'd stop someone coming out and get the names of some bars where we might be able to catch some music. Last night we went to one such bar, the Sidecar, and caught two bands. The second of which were called the Born Losers, a local surf/garage band. Before they took the stage the lights dimmed and the DJ cranked the theme song from Star Wars while the band entered. Each of them wearing a crisp black turtleneck, jean jacket, and black skinny jeans. These boys sounded as slick as they looked!

We stumbled into a square today that had an orchestra playing on the steps of a cathedral. Large groups of people were dancing to the music in circles. It was beautiful in a way this picture does not quite capture.

Not sure if this a highlight or a lowlight (only because I am fascinated and repulsed at the same time,) but everyone over here is wearing these weird dropped crotch hammer pants. Today, I even saw a 5-year old wearing them. I once saw Heidi Klum kick a contestant off Project Runway for making pants like these. Here is the shorts version of the dropped crotch pants.

T-2 days

2010-06-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

We're almost ready to leave. Bags are packed (okay, not quite). Hotels are booked (well, only in a few places). Our apartment has been left in a reasonable condition for our subleters (not yet, but I have high hopes for the next 48 hours) and we have successfully learned Spanish, Italian and Turkish (I have not even cracked the spine on our phrasebooks yet, but that's what an 11 hour overseas plane ride is for right?).