Lisbon at Sunset

Lisbon at sunset is a beautiful thing.

Jessica and I spent the weekend in Lisbon, Portugal, exploring what the Portuguese have to offer. And believe me, they offer some good stuff.


We landed in Lisbon at 4 PM and ran to catch the sunset from St. George's castle at the top of the Alfama district. It was absolutely beautiful and the perfect way to start off the trip. We had a view of the whole city from the turrets of the old castle. As you can see from the pictures, the city is very San Francisco-esque with a big bridge and a bay and (unfortunately) equally as windy.


We learned a lesson at our first Portuguese dinner that I would like to recount so that those after me do not make that same mistake. When you sit down and order at a Portuguese restaurant, they set out bread, butter, cheese, etc for you to pick at while your food comes. This seemed relatively normal to me given that it's kind of a European thing. Little did we know, they charge you for each little thing that you eat, right down to the packet of butter which costs about $1. So if you eat the two small loaves of bread, two things of butter, 1 thing of tuna pate, and the cheese, they tack on a hefty 7 euros of extra expenses to your bill. Not a fortune by any means but still a sizeable amount considering that a dinner only cost 6 euros. So be careful, and eat wisely...

We spent our first whole day in Portugal in a town called Sintra, about 40 minutes outside of Lisbon. The town is famous for its many palaces set high in the forrests of the surrounding hills. It was an absolutely picturesque place and not that expensive. We spent some time in the moorish castle which had awesome views of the valley below. It was pretty crazy to imagine trying to attack such a castle from below and to picture how totally fucked you would be if you did.

We also explored the Pena Palace, a very lavish mansion that served as the summer residence of the Portuguese royal family. It had some pretty awesome gargoyles and sculptures and was definitely worth seeing.

After eating some of the typical pastries from Sintra, we headed back to Lisbon and explored some more of the city. Some time around now, my camera ran out of batteries so I have no pictures of the nights shenanigans. However, I have words...

We ate dinner at a random place we found that looked quite good. This time, veterans of the trade, we avoided the butter and tuna spread and came out on top. Portugal 1, Jessica and Ryan 1. I ordered Bacalao which is a very typical fish served in Portugal. I'm pretty sure its Cod in English. It was amazing. We also orderd a half bottle of Port and then a pitcher of house wine, leaving dinner around 11:00 with a firm buzz. We wandered around the streets looking for something good and eventually found the local hot spots. We started buying 3 euro drinks at a bar next to some live music so we could sit outside and drink cheaper drinks. After the third drink, we realized the name of the bar was "Chueca". Chueca, oddly enough is also the name of the gay district of Madrid. "That's funny" we thought to ourselves as we looked around and found ourselves in the middle of a whole lot of homosexual women and men. Needless to say we continued to order drinks there for some time and left home with happy tastebuds, jolly spirits, and exercised livers.

We woke up a little too early the next day to try and pack some last bits of sightseeing in before our flight that night. We headed to the very well visited Belem district where the top sights to see are the Jeronimos Monastery, the place where Vasco de Gama and his crew prayed before setting sail for India, and the Belem tower, the former watchpoint that guarded the entrace to the bay of Lisbon. The monastery was definitely worth seeing and was very intricately detailed but there wasnt too much of mention.


What does deserve mention is the McDonalds right next to the Jeronimos Monastry that, I swear, has invented a cure for the hangover and is currently including it in their dollar menu cheeseburgers. Plus it had a pretty sweet modern interior.

We finished our stay in Lisbon at the Oceanarium, an interesting Aquarium type deal that has one very large central tank surrounded by different exhibits. The main attraction for us was a Sunfish which we promptly named "Gregory". I had never seen one in real life and they are seriously bizarre animals. One funny thing about them is that they are also known as "Mola molas". In spanish "mola" is a way of saying that something is cool. So these fish are pretty much the shit. The aquarium also had some Magellanic penguins which are always close to my heart (because I adopted one last year, his name is / was Jonathan).


Lisbon is an awesome city and I would highly recommend it for anyone who travels through Spain.

Las Fallas de Valencia

Otra vez voy a intentar a escribir esto en español y en inglés. como siempre, primero en inglés.

We didn't have school this past Thursday and since we never work on Friday, this meant a 4 day weekend. We took advantage of this and an amazing offer from one of our Aunts in Spain to spend the weekend in Valencia during the festival of Las Fallas. We stayed with one of our "cousins", Cristina, who is really I guess a second cousin but we had fun like we were first cousins. We hadnt seen Cristina for 10 years so we didn't know what to expect but she was so awesome and it was so great to spend time with her.


I guess I need to first explain the premise behind Las Fallas. Its still up in the air how the tradition originated. One theory is that the tradition originated from artisans throwing out their broken or useless works and burning them in the street to celebrate the spring equinox. Whatever the origin, Las Fallas is now a week long festival that culminates in some big fires. Every year, organizations and communities do fundraisers and host banquets to raise money to construct a Falla which is a very large sculpture made out of some sort of wood/cardboard ornately decorated. They can cost as much as 1 million euros and take over a year to construct. After a week of showing them off, they burn them in about 30 minutes. Badass.


We arrived by bus on Wednesday night at 1 AM. There was a big fireworks show that was scheduled to go off at 1:30 AM and we (unfortunately) missed a lot of it because it was impossible to catch a cab. But, we got over it and had ourselves a good time. We set out to see some of the Fallas and meet up with some of Cristina's friends. Jessica and I had brought the bottom half of a bottle of bad rum and manage to suck it up and drink it as we walked through the extremely well illuminated streets of Valencia. The amount of people out and about was impressive and the plazas around each Falla were totally filled with people dancing and drinking. Another popular thing to do was to throw fireworks that, when they explode, move in unpredictable directions like a deflating balloon. If they hit you, they can burn holes in your clothes or burn your skin so they are obviously a little dangerous. At around 4:30, the party ended and we had to head home but not without stopping and buying some buñuelos to snack on.


After getting back to Cristina's at 6:30 AM, we set the alarms for 11:00 AM so that we could get up and go to the Mascletá, a huge display of firecrackers that make an impressive amount of noise. You can't quite appreciate a description but after watching the following two videos, I think you can see that it sounds like a war has broken out and the city is being bombed repeatedly.

(The Beginning of the Mascletá)

(The End of the Mascletá...Impressive)

After an afternoon siesta, we headed back out to the city to see the top rated Fallas before they got burned at night. Some of the Fallas are absolutely astonishing. So intricate and so detailed that it seems crazy to burn them. Its like burning a work of art the size of a normal house. Which, in reality, would be pretty sick.


After dinner we watched the burning of the winning Falla and went home to go to bed. We watched the burning from a nearby rooftop. It was impressive and also strikingly serene to watch it all burn.

(The Winning Falla - Before and After)

On the following day, we rented bikes and rode them through this awesome park. The space was once a river but, after drying up, the river was turned into a park. So now, there is a narrow park that cuts through the middle of the city and goes all the way to the beach. You can see the park in green on this map.


Jessica and I decided to rent a tandem bike which ended up being one of the best ideas we have had yet. We rode the bikes all afternoon, all the way to the beach and back. Valencia is such a pretty city and it was so amazing to get out and see it...on a tandem.


All in all, we only had one slip up on the tandem which involved Jessica falling on her butt when she got her foot caught on the back handle bar trying to get off. I didn't get a picture of it for you guys but I did manage to commit it to memory as one of the funnier things on the trip.

The only thing funnier thing was when Jessica and I encouraged Chris to ride his bike through a seemingly shallow fountain / water reservoir and he ended up going in up to the gears and almost falling in. Ah peer pressure.


As you can see, I now have a digital camera again to replace the one I dropped and ruined the lens. This one is pretty badass and the pictures come out de puta madre.


If you read my blog, shoot me an update. I havent heard from some of you in far too long.

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La version en espanol viene un poco mas tarde...si viene...

A relaxing spring weekend

I would say that sums up pretty well this past weekend. Fun. Relaxing. Tranquil. And other positive descriptive words.

As per usual, the weekend started on Thursday afternoon. After giving a private English lesson, I met up with Manuel to play "Padel" with him and two other friends from our soccer team (Sergio and Ruben). I had never played and had never even seen it played. I was just told it was similar to tennis, which I haven't played in about 17 years. Needless to say, there was a learning curve and it took me a while to pick up the rules and the strategies. A quick youtube search brought up this video which gives you a feeling for how the game should be played. It was not played quite so well. It's a lot like ping pong with a really big table that you stand on. Sort of. Either way, it was fun.

Over the course of the last week, Jessica and I watched the movie Happy Go Lucky. I had never heard of it over here but im sure some of you stateside folks have seen it. It was nominated for an Oscar and won a bunch of random ass international awards. Either way, I thought it was pretty funny and definitely worth seeing. As a movie it's really not much but there are some pretty hilarious parts and is somewhat true-to-life.

Friday was occupied by searching for a place to cut my hair (unseuccessful), a trip to the park, and a trip to the library to return my well overdue books. It's worth mentioning the system of penalties for overdue books in Spain because I find it to be very Spanish. Instead of making you pay a fee and then regain your library priviledges, they suspend your library card for an inordinate amount of time. For books just a month overdue, my card has been suspended until August...nearly 6 months. I find this quirckily Spanish because it makes less work for the library workers and is a much softer punisment than a fine. I guess it's better than Princeton's Public Library policy where they fine you and dont actually make you pay the fine before renting a new book or DVD.

Chris was gone at a frisbee tournament all weekend so Jessica and I prowled the the streets looking for things to do. We found two new bars that were really awesome with a good atmosphere and cheap drinks.

However, the highlight of the weekend was a picnic that Jessica and I organized for my uncle Jorge on Sunday. My aunt Maria Jose and my uncle Jorge both live with my Grandmother. My Grandmother and my aunt went on a cruise with my parents this past weekend so Jorge was left alone to live the life of ease. We hadn't seen him in a while so we siezed the moment and organized a stellar picnic with Spanish tortilla, wine, cheese, strawberries, and more. It was a perfect day and super relaxing.


I appologize for the lack of photos but I am still waiting for my new digital camera to arrive. It's coming over with my aunt and Grandmother tomorrow. In the meantime, we have been using a sketchy disposable camera so get excited for those pics to get developed.

Ya soy casi español

Finally, after 6 trips to the Registro Civil in Madrid, Chris and I have successfully turned in the paperwork to solicit our Spanish nationality. Now we just have to wait about two months for them to process everything. Hopefully, if everything goes as planned, I'll be Spanish in no time.

Por fin, después de la sexta vez que estuvimos en el Registro Civil, ya Chris y yo hemos entregado los solicitudes para coger la nacionalidad española. A ver si en dos meses han arreglado todo y ya somos españoles de verdad. Era un coñazo pero te digo que merece la pena.

Another Day in Paradise

Phil Collins style. Sort of. Except way less depressing than Phil Collins style. This past weekend Chris, Jessica, and I spent 3 days in the beautiful, sunny, warm, precious, Canary Islands. A quick glance at a map makes you think, "huh, the Canary Islands really aren't anywhere near Spain. Weird..." Well, no, they aren't. But they are amazing.


The reason for the vacation was the 10th annual Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Hat Tournament. 3 days playing frisbee on the beach in perfect weather with people from all over Europe, drinking "Tropical" one of the beers made in the Canary Islands. Life is tough eh? The tournament was outstanding. Really well organized and very well run. For those of you that dont understand the concept of a "Hat tournament", it's as if they draw names out of a hat to form teams. So you play with randos.

To top off all of these good things about the tournament, it also took place during Carnaval, a festival similar to Mardi Gras minus the boobs and the beads and plus a lot of this.


The Canary Islands are one of the premier destinations for Carnaval, second only to Rio de Janeiro. Everyone dresses up in costume and heads out to a big park and drinks and has a good time. The Canary Islands (Gran Canaria in particular) are really famous for being gay friendly and Carnaval has morphed into a bit of a drag ball.


Needless to say, Jessica and I partook heavily in the festivities. I dressed up as Peter Pan while Jessica walked the streets as TinkerBell. It was a bit of burning the candle at both ends, staying out until 4ish and then playing frisbee all day. But it was totally worth it.

We saw some very interesting people. Including an older woman dancing at the concert with a water bottle balancing on her head. And an Arab man who got in our face asking us (his words not mine!) why the United States was allowed to take people to Guantanamo and analy violate them. Hand and full-body motions were included.

In terms of frisbee, it was a lot of fun. My team ended up getting third out of nine but thats not really important. I made a bunch of new friends and the tournament was (miraculously) able to bring back my love for ultimate after so many moths of playing sub-par/boring frisbee in Madrid.


After 3 days of ultimate and a weekend in paradise, we arrived in Madrid at 6:30 AM Monday morning, in no way prepared to work through the week. But so it goes.