Day 12 (I think) in Aix

Not much to say so this will be short.

Whereas in Barcelona it was noticeable that women were in non-traditional occupations in big numbers, here in Aix things look a lot more like at home. Waste collection workers, cabbies etc are all men.

My mother have been a fine French cook after all. The boulongerie where we get our bread has hot dogs (high-end hot dogs but hot dogs nonetheless) rolled-up in croissants. My mother did a version of this when I was a kid with Pillsbury 'crescent roll batter in a tube'. Sometimes with a bit of Velveeta cheese. One or two of those and a beer a nice lunch with a bit of nostalgia thrown-in for good measure.

Photo of such a lunch HERE.

Geri spotted a new kind of Dink yesterday: the Dink Street. Need a photo before we leave. NEED a photo.

Lots of well-heeled (literally as well as figuratively) middle-aged men here and the bikes to see around Aix reflect that. My BSA 441 fantasy is nothing compared to the 50's Guzzis, 60's cafe BMWs you see here. A fair number of them too.

Photos of a demo by a lawyers' union HERE.

The City has a “Mediation/Securitization” service. Kinda like warm and fuzzy police. More info on the service HERE.

Slow day today but very restful. The Granet Museum (so-so). Vietnamese lunch. Nap soon, then dinner. Tomorrow Vicki and Geri amusing themselves here in aix; I'm off to Marseille for a May Day rally. Photos to folow of course.

Day 9 in Aix

1. Les Deux Garcons is a ritzy brasserie on the main drag, Le Cours Mirabeau. You're not supposed to take photos in it as its owned by the local mafia and they get tense around camera but I snuck a couple. Enough to give you a sugar overdose but quite pretty in some weird wiggy historical sense. Look for photos HERE.

2. The bartender/owner at Le Bar PTT, our newly-identified local, is a hoot. He has now identified us as ragulars and Geri gets kissed on both cheeks, I get a handsake. Not long before I get the two kisses the other regulars get I'm sure. Am shying away a bit. He's well-lubricated all the time and his replacement on the night shift gets up to speed on arrival with four quick shots. Both are continually on the edge of disaster wheil pouring or delivering glasses to the table soutside, but somehow seem to manage it.

3. The bar's regulars have loud disagreements over the previous night's tabs with the staf while the bar tender continues to pour us drinks he doesn't charge us for until we force him to.

4. I've settled into a rhythm with the available papers. Even number days are beer and L'Humanite. Odd are rose and Liberation. Seems to be working so far. Liberation I read at home online and is no surprise. L'Humanite a bit dumbed-down. But no where near where The Times (London) has gone. The Guardian sold out this morning so I got one for Geri. My god, it has become just another tab or close to. A pentasyllabic The Mail.

5. 200 neo-Nazis held a celebration on Saturday of the 125^th anniversary of Hitler's spawning. Thankfully outnumbered by 500 protestors.

6. Having a fabulous time.

Random Musings From My Desk in Aix

1. The big news today? I bought a bottle of a local red for less than $4.00 (under E3) and it is (soon was) quite drinakbale. That's as cheap as it gets in our local shop. So I guess it's official: there is no such thing as a bad bottle of wine here.

2. When I retire, if I ever retire, a one bedroom apartment here in the old bit of Aix could be had for about $1300 per month. Less in the newer areas. Not bad for a winter escape.

3. Bar toilets have created some problems for my travelling partners, I now know more than I really need to about the various angles in which female humans may urinate.

4. The shine has definitely faded from the 'new' (20 years now?) public toilets here. I miss the old wrought-iron public pissoirs.

5. A tiny restaurant almost under one of our windows called La Table has great lunch food and is done-up like a 1950's litchen. Chef helps serve. First time in my life I actually enjoyed zuccini.

6. The bartenders here all seem to drink while working.

7. Vicki and Geri scored a round on our bartender yesterday. Sadly, not me.

8. Geri is a garage sale addict. She'll miss much of the best bit of the season but today it came to her as there was a flea market right outside our door. Mostly usual stuff I think, but an awful lot of women's undies. I thought it worth a photo. Got an odd look from the stall operator.

9. We found some high-heeled skis in a small sculpture gallery.

10. Le Woohoo is a great little bar. We're already committed to our local (besides, it is a bit of a walk), but much fun. On the north end of the old city near the wall. Look for it if you're in town. Photos posted today too.

11. Mail delivered 6 days a week. To your home. Horrors.

12. French shoe sales women have scary eyes and sharp teeth.

13. Areas where you can only walk have their disadvantage. You learn more than you really want to about people you've never met when you're minding your own glass of plonk and somebody walks by with their old mattress.

14. Starting to see meaning in scooter model names.  Think I'll give the Dink Theorum a rest.  Though Geri did find me a Big Dink today.  Had to celebrate with some fine Indian food and beer for lunch.

New photos posted.

More Aix Nonsense

Yesterday a rainy day. There are worse things.

We spent an hour or more at the market buying veg and such. Much fun tasting, to the point where I don't think we've bought a lunch here since our arrival.

Or a dinner either, since the market makes cooking took tempting. Four evenings now spent cooking, drinking wine and eating. Then flopping with a glass and a book or catching-up on photos or doing laundry while listening to podcasts. Kinda like having a cottage in southern France rather than on Lake Simcoe. :-)

A great way to spend time on a rainy day is on the little electric buses that work the old part of town. E0.50 means you can get on any bus within an hour. For a day's worth of access to any bus in the regional system you pay E1. What we would consider the regional municipality is well-served by buses.

There are three routes for the electric buses. You can get on and off anywhere, though the connections to the rest of the transit system are fixed stops like what we're used to. We did the last route today. The bus a bit hot (we found it so anyway, though we kept seeing people in jackets and wearing toques) as the day was about perfect but after we got off to stay, around 11, we saw that the sides of the buses had been taken off. Would be fab on a reasonably warm day.

They are a little unpredictable as the route changes now and then if there's a delivery vehicle etc. in the way. Streets not large enough for passing even for this little things and so its not unusual for it to start down a street, come across another vehicle and then back up, go looking for another route. This isn't a tourist bus either, but the way people get around the older bits of the city.

The drivers friendly. Clearly a lot of the passengers are regulars; everyone gets caught up on everyone's news. Waste workers flag the bus over for a quick exchange of news with the driver (I suspect a bit of chatting-up is going on as well :-) ). As with most city workers we have seen, the drivers women. You can ride up front with the driver if you went to school with them or are particularly old it seems. :-)

Geri found us our local. Bar PTT on Place de Richlme. Corsican owner, though he is, as most are here, a support of Marseile Olympique. Tiny, might hold 12, plus four tables out front. Corsican beers. Grossly over-salted heavily roasted yummy peanuts in a bucket on the bar (dip your plate as needed). Floor covered in buts despite the prominent no-smoking sign. Friendly bar tender. Regulars. I could live here. There. I could live there. :-)

New drink, very local and similar to the lemonade-and-beer shandy in Barcelona: a moncaco. 3 parts lemonade, 1 part grenadine, 3 parts blonde (lager) beer. Corsican beers dandy. Pietre Rossa a bit odd. Brewed with cherries added. Surprising pleasant when it's hot out. Surprised I liked it. But then was surprised I liked orange juic and beer in Costa Rica, so I shouldn't be.

The electric bus (Diabloline) took us through an upscale residential bit of the old city. Who-ha. Buried in it was a cafe that uses what is likely a 16^th century fountain to keep a large supply of rose cool and ready to drink. We tried to find it this afternoon. No luck. But the search will continue...

The quality of public services here is quite astounding. Daily garbage pickup in urban areas. Street cleaners (the place is immaculate) all over the place.

Some noticeable investment in same too. Look closely at what seem to be street corner garbage cans and watch a bit and you'll see a city worker come by, bend over, stick a key in the pavement and a 2m by 2.5 m by 2m segment of the pavement with the bins on top rises up. Under those two bins (garbage and recycling) is a huge elevator-like box. It's emptied automatically by the truck the city worker is driving and 2 minutes later it disappears back into the pavement. Very impressive. As are the street cleaning machines of several different sizes that wander the old town and the street cleaners with brooms who work the touristy bits.

The BIG NEWS: Donkey sausages. Lovely. Now we have something to bring home as gifts for all. :-)

Geri found, of all things, a Quebecois bakery. Best bread we've had yet, and that's saying something.

Am a little interested in the erosion of the dividing line between patisseries and boulangeries. Is that a regional thing or something recent that I am just noticing?

Not so great are some of th beers (though not the Corsicans on offer at our local). Seems churlish (not to mention a bit late and useless) to complain when the brewery has been going since 1128, but Grimhagen needs to roast its hops for an additional hour or 2,000.

Brand of scooter I haven't seen before was spotted today. Called a 'Business'. While the Dink and dinkiness generally are a barometer of the ideological struggle, the People's scooter was a direct branded attack on corporate hegemony. This would seem to be a direct response. It may be that as the Dink doesn't disappear but moves to the sidelines of history, the People's versus Business struggle for scooter supremacy will or has become the primary contradiction of our epoch. But the objective reality is such that the supporters of both, the lackies of corporate capitalism and authoritarian capitalism, will, through an upright application of thought reform (perhaps in the form of a Scooter Antis Campaign) and vigorous struggle sessions, be exposed as capitalist roaders. Literally.

On a more mundane level, spring has truely sprung here and pollen is visible everywhere.

New photos posted. Am trying to start new albums (mostly) when posting rather than adding to existing.

A Lazy Monday in Aix

We wandered around most of the morning. Stumbled onto a market that included a stall selling honey and with a glass-sided beehive on display (took one photo and then backed away fast.  Bees making a break for it not something I want to be there for).  

Found the only monument/memorial to the Armenian (there are also a number of Armenian restaurants in the newer bits of town) genocide we've seen I think.  It's location, right on Plaza de la Rotunde (the centre of the town) suggests that there's some conection.

Went by the tourist office for some info, then in search of the morning market. We found it, after making a wide circle, literally a stone's throw from our apartment. The narrow winding streets make it impossible to see any distance or hear anything unless it's happening right beneath your window.

Bunch of rather elderly moss and calcium-covered fountains about the old town which were clearly once intended to provide water. Definitely not decorative. Fed by warmish springs. Supposed to be especially pretty in winter.  Steamy and all that.

Anyway, we got to the market and immediately regretted having stocked-up at the supermarket yesterday even if by 'stocked-up' I mean two days' worth of food. Last time we go there save for milk and wine. I'm already playing, trying to find recipes to match the ingredients we can buy (the massive asparagus aside of course; Geri can do what she will with that, I'll slip off to Marseille for the day).

The market is open daily. Zowee.

We're a bit short on counter space (our only criticism of the apartment) but I think I could easily make some pasta. Just an excuse for the sundried tomatoes and provencal sausage I saw today.  And a chance to play with one or two of the literally hundreds of local olive oils for sale.

On the food and drink side of things we've each discovered some nice wines.  Though they still have sulphites I've now tried a couple of 'biologique' reds and been very happy.  One cheapie that was drinkable, if also forgettable.  Our landlord left us a white Cote du Rhone that Geri wasn't crazy about but that I liked.  And Geri scooped a bottle of a really quite fab white Burgundy that has had the effect of making it hard to convince her to try anything else.  :-)

And the goat cheese...my god the goat cheese... :-)

Cheeses generally. And the hams. Which I guess is to be expected as Provence and Catalunya were once one. Some of the traditions run in parallel. Interesting too the language. Our landlord is Parisien and moved here when he and his partner retired. His French typical of Paris and we can talk and joke casually.  To my ear at least his French is clear and precise and spoken slowly.

Restaurant/bar and tourist office staff have a blunter accent and a different cadence. Didn't think of it until just now but kinda like the difference between Catalan and Castilian. Harsher consonants and fewer vowel sounds???

Anyway, after the market we sat at a cafe overlooking it and worked at convincing ourselves that we didn't need to buy a year's worth of groceries this morning. A beer and some olives and goats cheese were a necessary assist. :-)

Rain threatened after a chapter or two of our shoulder bag books had gone the way of the beer, cheese and olives and we made it to the Monop for some wine and then home. The sun back out so perhaps after bread, cheese, olives, humous and a glass or two we'll head out.

Nap. Did I mention nap? A lot of services, shops etc are closed between 13:00 and 15:0 anyway, so what's a couple of tourists with a drink in them to do while digesting lunch?

There's are two bus routes through the old bit of the city. One runs past our door. Tiny electric buses. Fond memories of the similar electric buses in Florence and Rome, nice way to see the city and with transit tickets priced at E0.50 and each route taking about 40 minutes to do a circuit, a tempting way to find every North African restaurant in the old city. We can expand the search later.

Not just North African either.  I have my eye on a Senegalese place 5 minutes from us (2 if I don't stop to take repetitive photos of squares and street and statues and fountains and...).

Sadly, my Arabic lessons not getting a lot of attention. Another rainy day needed for that I suppose. All I can reliably do at this point is ask people if they speak English and where the train and bus stations are. Remarkably useless given the effort I have put in.  They have no reason to speak English (nor do I) and I don't need to go to a train station for another 3 weeks.  :-)

But you know, a nap might help, might sharpen the mind...  :-)

And it's raining again, so no guilt over lost time.  And after all, almost 3 weeks left, so really, what's a nap in the greater scheme of things vacationish?

Aix Photos Now Appearing

Aix photos, current and future, will be appearing HERE.

Explaining the Whole Dink Thing

The short version?  So long as the brand name 'Dink' is acceptable, can be used with a straight face, then we have not all been blended into one homogeneous whole.

The long:

I found a whole new variety of Dink, the Super Dink. Don't believe me? Photos HERE.

If you haven't read the last and every other Italian travel postcard, the fact that there is a Korean scooter called a Dink is evidence that colloqial English is not yet ubiquitous; therefore globalization is not yet utterly hegemonic. So, each trip to Europe, I measure the progress of capitalist globalization by way of a count of the number of Dinks of various models that I can find.

Their proportion of the entire scooter population has been declining over the past 15 years.  It has been a while since I was able to find a Dink 50, let alone a Dink 150 or a Grand Dink (known to the cognicenti as the 'Big Dink').

Today however, I came across a whole new kind of Dink: a Super Dink.

We can but hope that this signals a whole new resurgence of Dinkdom, and of popular resistance to globalization.

The sighting of a few People's 50s is also potentially heartening, but we'll have to see.  The moniker is being used in China to cover and excuse a multitude of sins.  But, even at it's best, not the barometer that the Dink has been and hopefully will be.

UPDATE October 2017:  One Dink to be seen in 6 weeks in southern France, Hungary and Germany.

Barcelona to Aix-en-Provence Musings

Writing this as we wait for the train to leave Barcelona Sants station. Pretty painless. We splurged on a taxi as neither of us had gotten a great night's sleep. Noted again how the city is dead at 0800 in the morning. No people, hardly any cars etc. Anticipating a bit of a panic (on my part) at Valencia station as we have just an hour to get our tickets printed and figure things out.

One of the new TGV cars, we're in first class (thanks for that WE Travel, we didn't ask for it but much appreciated) on the upper deck and so to the extent that there's anything to see at 285kph we should have a good view, though at the moment we're still in the long, long tunnel out of the city from the station.

Very odd: no wifi on the train.

I never got to have churros and chocolate for breakfast and it was only when we drove past the CCOO office in Barcelona on the way to Estacio Sants that I remembered I had not heard back from them. Guess we're coming back to Spain at some point. Need to take the other Civil War walijng tour anyway. :-)

Train running away from the cars on major highways, but clearly the track isn't up to carrying us at full speed. Ah well, I could use a nap. I have just the thing to put me to sleep too: a lengthy podcast on the work of the economist Minsky. Knew I was saving it for something, this is, apparently, it.

Green right now but very dry-looking landscape. Hilly, churches/convents/monesteries on top of many, plus as we toodle along, mountains in the distance (north of the track) with snow on the tops.

Dozed on and off through the Minsky pod. But it seems to have registered somewhat as I have an idea for a column based on it (I think. I should check and see if I listened to something else right after and owe a credit to someone else. :-)

VIA may have good reason to be ashamed of its limited route structure and slow speeds, but it blows the TGV off the on-board food tracks. The toasted (but then packaged with lots of humidity so that its sogginess could be assured) hard-boiled (yet sludge-like) egg, tomatoes (hard and crunchy) and tastless cheese sandwich I tried to eat made it into the garbage pretty quickly. Good potato chips though.

For that and a diet coke for us both Geri had to walk 3 cars.

Last time I travelled on VIA 1^st class I had a hot meal delivered to my seat, it was something I'd be happy with in a restaurant and came with a slection of wines, was preceeded by my choice of drinks and finished-off with a really nice dessert and a cognac.

I think we'll pack a lunch (like all the other folks in our section) for the trip to Paris next month.

Some compensation in the views (we're right on the Med coast) and the odd castle that I think might date back to when the pre-French were trying to keep the Moors bottled-up in Spain.

And what looks like a kite-flying contest. A tonne of cars parked mebbe 200m from the track with a bunch of kites flying above them. I've stopped trying to take photos at this speed. And the stops we've made so far haven't done much but give us a view of the inside of a tunnel.

Even though we're not anywhere yet, nice to be in France. My French has decayed considerably over the years but is still better than my rudimentary Spanish and my near-non-existent knowledge of the Catalan language. And as we learned once or twice, if I spoke a few words of Spanish (sorry, should be saying 'Castillian') in a spot outside the touristy bits and was taken for a non-Catalan Spaniard (hard to imagine, but if the phrase was simple and one I have used a lot...), what came back was rapid-fire Catalan.

On that point (sort of), the national government has declared the attempt at a referendum on independence illegal, but over 90% of Catalans polled say they are committed to recognizing the result. And about 60% in favour. Especially since the collapse of the Spanish economy and the massive cuts to services in order to bail out the banks (and the accompanying corruption both of which have generated a lot of indignation, hence the huge 'idignado' protests, unlike any other country I can think of, other than Iceland, right now) there's far more of a day-to-day connection to the EU for most Catalans than there is to the Spanish state.

Just grabbed a wifi connection in the station at Nimes. But be that but the place also looks kinda worth a quick visit at some point...

Wish me luck getting our tickets sorted when we change trains in an hour or so... course by the time anyone reads this it will all be done one way or the other.

As it turns out I didn't need luck. What I needed, though I didn't know it, was to have Geri pounced on by one of several station staff here in Valence. One of whom was extremely helpful, better yet, who  complimented my French, and gave me pointers on things in Aiz-en-Provence while printing out out tickets for me.

Right now he is my favourite person in all the world, especially since Geri dumped me and the luggage to slip out for a quic smoke.

There are 15 minutes worth of train departures (just departures) on the board here right now. Showing ten trains. This town about twice the size of Cobourg. The station mebbe ten times the size of ours and I doubt if it sees ten trains pick up passengers in a day. Two people travelling 1600km in first class paid less than $400CAD.

We would have paid over $1,000 had we waived the sandwiches. :-)

There's a sign apologizing for the wifi being down. I'm getting a bit twitchy. Can't recall the last time I was without internet access for this long.

Bit of a mixup when we changed trains and we wound-up having to get onto different cars just to avoid being left behind, but all sorted and we're established in the Aix apartment, a simple dinner under our belts and looking for to a few days of lolling before starting to explore the region.

More photos, though not many, to come tomorrow.

Last Thoughts on Barcelona

I found a whole new varoiety of Dink, the super dink.  Don't believe me?  Photos HERE.

If you haven't read the last and every other Italian travel postcard, the fact that there is a Korean scooter called a Dink is evidence that colloqial English is not yet ubiquitous; therefore globalization is not yet hegemonic.  So, each trip to Europe, I measure the progress of capitalist globalization by way of a count of the number of Dinks of various models that I can find.

It has been a while since I was able to find a Dink 50, let alone a Dink 150 or a Grand Dink (known to the cognicenti as the 'Big Dink'.

Today however, I came across a whole new kind of Dink: a Super Dink.

We can but hope that this signals a whole new resurgence of Dinkdom, and of popular resistance to globalization.

As well, it seems on close observation, that gin is quite popular here.

Finally, nobody told us that today was some kinda Christian holiday.  Parades with Jesus on a stick all about the place.  Bit annoying.  Had they but known we were here this weekend I am certain they would have put it off a few days so as not to interfere with our holiday.  Still, a good day if not a god day.

Fifty Things About Barcelona

Random musings:

1. For breakfast most days we've only had to walk a few metres in any direction to find a pleasant spot. Trouble is, most aren't open until 0800 or later. Which makes sense since (sorry about that) they're open until after midnight.

2. La Rambla is the inspiration for La Prado in Havana, but frankly the latter is a lot more fun. Street food, performers, artisans (not trashy), artists... La Rambla a bunch of regular shops and such.

3. Here and there are beer can crunchers on the streets. Pop your can in, pull down on a largish bar and it gets crushed and then dropped into a bin that gets emptied ever day.

4. No Dinks, let alone Grand Dinks (the legendary Big Dink to us afficionados). But I did see a People's 125 scooter. So there's hope. So long as there are Dinks, Big Dinks or People's scooters for sale anywhere in the world, globalization has not yet sunk its claws into us all.

5. If you're going to take a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city (we always do, it helps get us oriented), (a) take the Barcelona Bus Touristica (run by the city transit system) not one of the private companies' services and (b) line up before you buy a ticket. Saves time since ticket sellers with wireless credit card gizmos will come past you while you are in line and sell you a ticket. Lining up will just add to your wait.

6. And don't be turned-off by the length of the lines, the BBT buses run every 5-10 minutes. The Gray Line not nearly so often. And the weird thing is that the lines are long the buses packed in the morning but by noon they're, respectively, short and empty. You might want to consider waiting until 1100 to grab one and mebbe getting the two-day ticket if you really need to hit al the hot spots.

7. All I can say about the Sagrada Familla church are these two small things: It is one of the top five fab buildings (the Dupmo in Firenze, the Taj Mahal, the Hagia Sofia and Kali Temple being the others I think) I have ever seen and you have to wonder if Gaudi had photos (did they have fast film back then?) of the bishop banging a goat, otherwise how did he get the catholic church to apprve the design and pay for the start of construction 100+ years ago?

8. Park Guell to die for. Why do I not live someplace with an architectural history like this?

9. Notcieably more Chinese tourists than we have seen on prior visits to Europe.

10. Geri thinks the word 'gaudy' has its roots in Gaudi, but apparently not. Plus nothing Gaudi did (and we have seen a lot of his work in the past 5 days) can be described as tasteless. Lovely, spectacular, wonderous, perhaps even luscious, but not tasteless.

11. Very odd how noticeable McDonald's is when the background colour is green rather than red. Almost creepy.

12. Ambulance hooters here kinda restful, unlike sirens at home. Here you can imagine the patient/victim getting some pleasant rest and mebbe downing a cuppa cava on the way to emerg.

13. When ordering beer go for a 'jarrat'. 'Flautas' too small. There's a measure for beer that is even smaler but I didn't bother learning the Catalan word for it. I mean really why bother?

14. Give the harbour centre (the Maremagnum) a miss. Ontario place.

15. Though we did spend an hour or so in the aquarium. Pleasant. Not up to Boston standards but OK.

16. Street food is available with beer. Not a single inebriated person to be seen walking around.

17. The rent-a-bike system everywhere and (likely why) very popular. You not only see empty racks during the Barcelona (deferred) rush hour, you also see see tonnes of them on the street all day.

18. Almost all street vendors are of African descent and spea French.

19. Since Spain's own version of the US mortage fraud unemployment has gone from 5% to 26%.

20. Very clean city. Like Toronto used to be.

21. Street folks mostly active, either as mendicants outside churches or as recyclers. Garbage outside businesses taken apart for the smallest piece of metal. Read Mike Davis' Slums.

22. 20-30% od cab drivers and muni workers women.

23. One cab company entirely women drivers. Apparently very popular after 23:00.

24. Any number of male-only couples walking about holding hands. Don't think and can't find anything suggesting, tht this is a traditional cultural practice here.

25. Also re. Things genderish, have on a couple of occasions been the only man in a bar or restaurant.

26. Even relatevly seedy neighbourhood bars have huge fancy coffee machines.

27. Those same restaurants will serve you a couple of glasses of quite resonable wine for E2,20-E3,00.

28. Having a hell of a time finding some Basque whites. Bizarrely, think there's a place in Paris we've been to before that will have.

29. Lots of Brits here but the younger ones all half a couple. Not like Prague where you want to shoot them all for being drunk and nasty.

30. Though as a firend also travelling in Spain said recently, the place is very child-friendly. Which to me just means next time I bring a stick.

31. I LOVE cockles. Need to find a sourace in or near Cobourg. Yum.

32. A shop near us sells nothing but ham and pork sausages. And the little chunks that are the leavings are scooped (swept?)-up and dropped into paper cones which are then sold as street snacks. Yummy.

33. Ham in not food here, it is a religion. I am a convert.

34. Olives here as ubiquitous as in Turkey and Greece, but different. Not as much variety, but they taste...for lack of a better term, fresher.

35. Every lead cook I have talked to is South Asian. Fun.

36. The Metro is pretty much dead during the time we would consider rush hour. Perks up around 10:00 and really hops around 19:00.

37. I feel obligated to mention that were it not for Geri's ability to read a subway map we would still still, 2 days later, be wandering around the docks.

38. Lunch with CGT comrades didn't come off. But I may have managed to recruit a few folks to LabourStart. Well, one. :-)

39. Bright red hair on women in their 50's would seem to be de rigeur. Most also appear to be suffering from female patern baldness. Which the chicken, which the egg?

40. Did I mention the way fab Civil War tour?

41. I need to get more and bigger memory cards for our camera. Not unrelated to (40) above.

42. Tour had couples from US, Germany, singles from Netherlands, couple from England. Nice bunch. Some sectarian tensions every now and then, but in a joshing fashion. :-)

43. Can't describe the tour without getting excessively detailed and gushy. Take it yourself.

44. Hole in the wall bars here cheap and great once you get out of the touristy bits.

45. Txacoli should be easier to find here. Way easier. Guess will have to head to Bibao, find a bar across the street from the Guggenheim next trip.

46. Placa Reial a real and unexpected treat. Much fun people wtching with a Roman wall on one side, a busy street on the other, and a server who cleans ashtrays by dumping them on the ground next to the table they came from, who serves mebbe 10 beer steins at a time and who thought she'd make friends with me by using my beers to demonstrate sizes to other customers. I'm in love.

47. Parakeets all over the place. Mostly palm trees where they fight and fuck.

48. Hardly any iPhones. BlackBerries and Galaxies.

49. US bus tour groups all over the place. They get off their busses and while waiting for their guide to dismount and take the lead they pull out their copies of Rick Steves' guide to Spain.

50. Barcelona won't be the everlasting draw for us that Vienna and Kolkata are, but this was fun and if we can figure out a way to get back here we will do.

Barcelona Photos

Barcelona photos will be posted HERE as I can find the time.  Geri is pooped today so she's asleep and I was able to get these uploaded to Flickr.  More will be added at the latest on Saturday as I'll have some time and I think an internet connection on the train to France.

Captions being added on the same basis.

Travel Day(s) Part 2

Greetings from the Hotel Raco del Pi in the Gotic area of Barcelona.  Geri out sending a text or two while I update this, both of us with a welcome glass of cava (sparkling wine) in hand.  And her sneaking a cigarette too.  :-)

I had forgotten how little you get for your Euro with Lufthansa's business class.  The food great as always though.  I'll be posting photos later.

I also took a photo of th cover of their inflight magazine.  A canoe on a misty lake.  The story inside was about Montreal and Toronto.  We are being stereotyped.  :-)

Barcelona airport is actually quite nice, but an awful lot of shopping  And no Christ Watches and Jewelry in sight.  :-(

Not much could be seen on the trip into town.  Oddly, McDonald's background colour here seems to be green rather than red.  Shaded parking at Carrefour stores and lots and lots of palm trees.  Hard to tel what the temp is as it is sunny, but it feels like mebbe 20-22.  Beautiful.

We took the bus even though the train would have been free with a transit pass because Geri still feeling a bit off (she suffers from motion sickness and her meds wore off suring the overnight flight from Toronto to Frankfurt).  Her right rotator cuff is also a problem and she has that arm in a sling.  So all-in-all blowing a few and taking the bus, which was right there, rather than walking for another 5 minutes seemed like a good call.

Once we got t Plaza de la Catalunya it was about a 10 minute walk into the Gotic district to get to the hotel.  We couldn't have taken a cab if we wanted to as the whole area is pedestrian-only.  Narrow alleys, lots of little bars and restraurants and shops.  Looking forward to just walking the area within a couple of hunred metres of the hotel. 

But first a shower, a change of clothes and perhaps a short nap.

Travel Day(s) Part 1

A pleasant ride to the train station, courtesy of neighbour Dean, the always nice train into town followed by a bit of fuss as we navigated the construction at Union Station. Quick shuttle bus ride once we got to one of its stops and there we were in the Maple Leaf Lounge at Pearson, stoking-up for the flight with a couple of caesars and some not bad chicken satay. Unfortunately the wifi connection in the lounge was having a bad day and so I was not able to indulge my addictions.

Experiencing a bit of twitchiness regarding my lack of a CrackBerry. Left hand keeps reaching for my belt. First time in some years that I have been on vacation and had a replacement. Am used to a steady stream of calls and e-mails. Not like a work day but pretty steady. Not happening this past week. Usually I have to get on a plane to Cuba to be this cut off. Was back and forth on bringing or leaving for a while but the low volume of calls and e-mails this week sealed the deal.

Impressed with the new gen Open Office: Libre Office. Handles all the latest doc formats, the Pretend Power Point seems to flawlessly read and displays PP decks and the menus are much better – and bigger – than they used to be. Thanks for the tip Bob. I've switched/upgraded on my Mac and would on my laptop but it's a work machine, so...

We're not going to make it to the business class lounge this trip. Geri woke feeling nauseous close to arrival in Frankfurt and we're instead just hanging out near our gate. My reunion with the fancy electro-mechanical self-cleaning toilets will have to wait for another trip.

Other than the nausea, which is fading, all well here. A decision to make on the flight to Barcelona re. Whether to take the train (free with transit passes) or the bus (only a few Euros but it takes us to within walking distance of our hotel. Further problem is whether to walk to the hotel or cab as the only way to get there is down La Rambla. Bit of a tourist way and if we're going to run into pikck-pockets or grab-and-run artists it would likely be there. Not sure we want to be humping two big suitcases and a couple of overnight bags 6 blocks through that. We'd be somehing of a target, even if the stories and warnings about the boulevard are exaggerated.