just in time...

for the trip home, i caught a cold. i'll be sniffling all the way across the atlantic. poo. garrett has a scratchy throat too.

back to paris today

hello folks,
garrett and i are getting one last communication in with the outside world before we shove off back to paris. actually, our train doesn´t leave for another 5 hours, so we´re going to a park here in s.s. that has a lot of chillida sculpture to stare at. chillida´s work is actually scattered all over this amazing city and the park just has a nice little collection. it is yet another gorgeous day - sunny, hot, breezy. i walked by a dude yesterday who just about summed it up. he said "san sebastián es paradiso."
but alas, today is our last day here and tomorrow, we leave europe all together. maybe we´ll be able to check out fauré's grave before we leave. i wanted to see it when we were in paris before but the cemetary was closed.
this may be our last post of this trip. never fear - more posts and pictures to come after we get back!! check back on sunday, as i will no doubt be sitting in my kitchen back in portland, wearing my tracksuit, drinking coff-ay, and posting some last thoughts about europe. garrett suggests that we write about our top 5 dining experiences here. (most of them would be in s.s. actually.)
we wish we could stay in s.s. longer... maybe next time.
see you all back state-side,
kathy + garrett

garrett's bay of biscay surf report

or more accurately, surf misadventure report, for all you surf-happy blog readers out there.

well here i am in san sebastian and i pretty much got my ass handed to me yesterday. actually let's rewind a few days. we met up with my old archi-school buddy hayden here in san seb and drove up across theborder to this tinly little town called bidart on the cote de basque. stayed the night in a SA-WEET little b&b, rented a bic-ish board (called 'surf betty' YES!) in guethary, and drove a few miles up the coast to biarritz. gorgeous little town with this cinderella cove (chateau on the point, the whole deal), and paddled out. the surf? a big frothy stormy rainy mess. huge, double-overhead sets, a mean current and very few people making it to the outside. luckily there was a decent channel. but it was one of those bigdrop-to-closeout-to prone it in, then walk down the beach and do battle again kind of days. i think i got 3 waves in an hour and a half. go surf betty. of course there were the 3 or 4 shortboarders who were absolutely tearing it up. fuckers.

now we´ve settled in san sebastian for a few days and this place is absolute paradise. amazing culture, picturesque, tons of unreal tapasbars (truly UNREAL food. even I was saying things like 'that was the best 'X' i've ever had'. steak, mussels, fish, mushrooms, etc. jeez, i just ate and i'm starting to get hungry again just thinking about it), and yes,surf. because we're without a car i'm confined to the main beach called 'zurriola' (or 'gros' if you're basque), and renting from a shop right across the street. the beach is pretty much one big closeout with about six thousand of my new spanish friends out in the lineup. actually there is a decent right at one end, but each wave has easily eight guys going for it and they're all amazingly good. like pro-good. i tried that one for about a half-hour on this rented 7-6 egg, finally got some table-scraps, then got just PINNED on the inside by the shoredump and was unable to make it back out. such defeat! the other end of the beach had this huge mysto mushy left breaking at low tide (like those really bigdays at seaside cove for the oregonians reading this) that i just about got wired until a huge herd of local longboarders just emerged from nowhere and had it all to themselves. so at first my board is too long, then it's not long enough. hm. they say the only time to avoid crowds is before 10 am, but the board rental shack doesn't open until 9:30. see how that works?

anyway, i'm not complaining, no no no. this place is truly amazing. did i say that already? we'll get some photographic evidence up here soon as proof. anyway, there's another cove in this city that is more flat-water, due to an island blocking out all the swell. the water looks a lot cleaner, so i think i'll just hang out there this afternoon and go for a long swim to the island and back, then go for a morning surf tomorrow. they say the swell's going down and the wind's turning offshore, so maybe that shorepound might be a little more, eh, simpático.

well that's your donostia surf report for tuesday, 19 september. so what do you surfers out there think about a month-long september surfari in these parts at some point in the future? not right away, of course but at some point before we die. just let me know. i'll be waiting, planning, saving my appetite.

random things i´ve noticed

i´ve been keeping a list of all the weird things i´ve noticed while over here. here are a few:

so we landed in paris what seems like forever ago, but really it has only been about 2 weeks. when we got there, i had all sorts of pre-conceived ideas of what paris and parisians would be like. garrett gave me the idea that we would be living on baguettes, cheese, and olives the whole time. while we did have an awful lot of those delectable food items, i have to say that the overwhelming food item in paris is the turkish meat cone. as we were wandering the streets of paris, i kept wondering, wtf is that meat cone thing? a quick google of "turkish meat cone" and there you have it.

also, my ideas that parisian women would be very thin and very beautiful was completely verified and then some. although? the women there didn´t seem to be thin by any healthy means as every single gaunt woman we passed on the street had the ever-present cigarette dangling from her fingers. speaking of thin beautiful parisian women, just about the STRANGEST thing i saw was these totally put-together turned-out women put on motorcycle helmets and throw their dainty right foot over the seat of a motorcycle and motor off to their destination. yes, motorcycles are riden in paris by everyone. not just a "type" of person - everyone. even women who look like they could be fashion models.

the women in barcelona are pretty different from the women in paris. they are WAY edgier. every girl younger than 25 seems to have their upper lip pierced, i think to give the appearance of having a marilyn monroe mole.

also, their hairstyles are out there. the fashion mullet is in barcelona with a VENGENCE.

spanish people really do have later hours. this is also no exaggeration. it was not at all uncommon for garrett and i to be having dinner at 11:30pm and the dining area would be filled with spaniards of all ages - yes even children - happily chattering away over their dinner and a glass (or four) of wine. the ramblas in barcelona was always so crowded that would have to dodge, weave, and manuever our way through even at 2am. men would stand around on the ramblas offering to sell a can of beer.

finally, this trip has made me realize how much all of my various anxieties are probably based on nothing real. i have anxiety about: flying, crowds, people bumping me, walking on sidewalk grates, using public restrooms. as we have been over here, i´ve had to fly over a giant ocean (i didn´t die), elbowed my way through crowds (without losing my cool), walked on sidewalk grates (without falling into a hole in the ground), used a very large number of public restrooms (without catching any discernible communicative disease).

bidart/san sebastian pics

if scott and christine are reading this...scott, this is for you. a plaque in memorium of the man you wanted to name your children after: charles mingus.


the kursaal building all lit up at night. this building is a huge deal here in san sebastian. hayden and edgar´s boss was the architect on this project.


here garrett and i are in bidart just over the border in france. we crossed the border BOTH times with absolutely no border control - we just had to pay a road toll. considering the ridiculous amount of border control happening right now in the states, this was pretty wild.

and finally, here are hayden and edgar, our fabulous companions from madrid. these guys both were incredibly charming, warm, and they easily won me over. when they dropped us off in san sebastian to head back home, i admit, i teared up a little. i loved hayden´s hybrid california-spanish-isms "it is heavy, no?"

we´re in san sebastian

after a minor snafu* at the barcelona train station, garrett and i are in san sebastian. we met up with his friend hayden and hayden´s friend edgar last night and had an awesome dinner with them in the parte vieja (the old part) quarter of s.s. we returned with them to france (yes, it is that close) and stayed the night there in a super nice brand new hotel. the guys went surfing today at some little beach town while i read a book and then took a nap in hayden´s van.
we´ll be here in s.s. until the 20th. i´ll blog more later...garrett´s waiting for me at our hotel.

* so our eurail printouts have so far been super accurate letting us know things like reservation necessary, first class, sleeping cars, etc. the train from bcn to ss didn´t have any special notation so despite garrett´s paranoia that we might need a reservation, we didn´t bother getting one. our 12:30pm train arrived at 12:20pm and we joined the crush of people rushing to the train and when we asked one of the train personnel which car was first class, she said we needed a reservation and could not purchase one on the train, as the eurail book indicated we might be able to. and? our train was leaving in 5 minutes. garrett got extremely upset. as distressed as i´ve ever seen him. he told me to wait and he would run up and try to get us tickets in time. but those lines for tickets were extremely long and i knew there was no way we were getting tickets in 5 minutes so i went upstairs, found garrett sweating and chewing on his fingernails in the ticket line, and told him we should just rent a car. so...that was the automobile portion of our planes, trains, and automobiles adventure. we drove 5 hours through the spanish countryside. the last 40 minutes from pamlona to san sebastian was BREATHTAKING. almost like the swiss alps.

did you know?

there´s a feral cat village in a park near where the olympics were held. who knew? we saw these cats and kittens littered all over the park. we think they must live off the rodents living in the underbrush.

we were are in a picture taken this morning at an open market in the heart of barcelona. they have everything you can possibly stick in your mouth and call food there. i saw some truly disgusting things that i won´t write about in sensitivity to the vegetarians reading this, but trust me...some of the food here is pretty out there.

no, i´m not posting this just to show you butts. look past the butt statues and you´ll see a panoramic view of barcelona from mont juic.

barcelona time

hola folks, garrett here. i thought i'd give kathy the night off and take the helm for a moment. it's our last night in this city, and as happens everywhere, we've seemed to have developed something of a routine. it's a bizarre routine to say the least, but a routine nonetheless.

every morning begins extremely early--usually before sunrise--with what sounds like the gods throwing buildings down the street. we've been visited with the loudest, most bombastic thunderstorms, and they've been happening mostly in the morning and late at night. this startles us--and i imagine every other resident, recently passed out on cheap local plonk or not--out of sleep for a couple of hours, as we watch the flashes, count down to the explosions, and listen to rivers of rain pelt the streets. after passing back out we wake up as though drugged at 10 or 11 (hey, we're on vacation here!) only to find everything has dried out and the sun is back.

after the requisite morning cafe con leche (cappucino--no drip coffee in these parts) and ham/croissant, the days are passed with me leading kathy on a death-march around various buildings, parks, neighborhoods, tree-lined streets, museums, etc.. although there is no way to completly 'do' any city this size in the short time we've been here, we've made a valiant attempt. kathy's patience with my curiosity has been notihing short of saintly, as i think we've both identified some sort of disfunction in my mental state that makes me think that, like sharks, if i stop i'll die. i'll keep to the general in this note and let the specific sights and places be represented by the photos we include, if you don't mind.

we collapse back in the hotel room at around 7, take a few hours to recoup, then head back out among the throngs in search of sustenance on the spanish clock. creatures of habit that we always are, we've discovered a tiny little corner of narrow blind alleys in the gothic quarter and keep coming back to two restaurants hidden there. one seems to be in all the guidebooks as i coudn't spot a spanish speaker who didn't work there. no matter. it's called the cafe academia and they have this calamari dish that is unreal. the menu said it came with rice, so i questioned its appearance when i was given what i thought was a bowl of flat pasta. that actually wasn't a pile of noodles but a pile of calamari COVERING a small mound of rice, infused in squid ink. yes, perfectly cooked and tender, yes full of flavor, yes yes yes! the other is a slick little restaurant called 'que bec' where they will give you a three course meal of incredible creative and flavorful dishes plus 2 glasses of wine for about $13. this meal is easily big enough for two, and both times we went, they seemed to have forgotten to charge for the extra glasses of wine. when queried in broken spanish why their food is so good and so cheap, the waitress/owner said (at least i think) she believes that food isn't a commodity but a necessity, and that it isn't any more difficult or expensive to make it so good. i don't know the economics of restaurants, but after such an amazing meal and deal, i was ready to believe anything this woman told me.

ah yes, back to the routine: the night usually wraps up with a walk from one of these two restaurants back up the ramblas to our hostal/hotel. this ramblas is barcelona's most famous street, and at 1am is doing it's best impression of the vegas strip for all the drunken youth of the european continent and beyond. needless to say this walk becomes a slalom around swaying knots of kids looking much less cool and tidy than they think they do. ah, youth. of course kathy and i are the very picture of sobriety and decorum, so we have no idea why all these people are having such a time of it, yes. this walk is of course also puncutated by the surreal sky, bruise-colored, and periodically flashing lightning, gearing up for the next morning's big bangs. i just wonder about all those kids passed out on the beach...

so our plans have changed and we're accelerating our move to san sebastian by 3 days. it's not because we really WANT to leave this fantastic city; it just turns out that my old archi-school pal hayden is going up there from madrid this weekend with a friend, and it's our only feasible chance to meet up with him. and why is hayden going to san sebastian this weekend? because of course the surf is up. very up. and we'll just leave it at that, shall we? ok back to you, kathy.

barcelona, day 2, day of gaudi

our first whole day in barcelona, we decided to do a start of checking out some of gaudi´s works. we went to one of his famous works first, right on the passeig de gracia. i already forget the name of it, garrett would know but he´s across the room right now. anyway, it is this crazy place with an amazing attic and rooftop. the rooftop has these little helmeted dudes that show up in a lot of gaudi´s work.

then we made the pilgrimage to la sagrada familia. when we were on the rooftop of the previous building, garrett pointed out the pointy towers of it and even from far away, it looked stunning. from up close? no words. it is SO DENSE. there is so much. every square inch of that place is something to stare at. really incredible. we went upstairs to the roof and noted signs at the lift that said - you go up using the lift and down using the stairs. WARNING - very narrow spiral staircase going down - if you have vertigo, claustrophobia, asthma, or are old, do not go up. i looked at garrett and said - i have 3 out of four of those but figured it would be ok. um...i whimpered/screamed the whole way down that staircase. by the time i finally reached the end, i couldn´t really feel my legs.

last night, after a full day of wandering around this amazing city, we struck out to forage for food. garrett thought we should get some tapas and then a full plato at this place in the gothic quarter. we went to a tapas joint close to our hostel, had a glass of rioja, a few little yummy things. as we walked outside, i looked to my right and saw a WALL of water and people running. my first thought was - wha??? the next second, the storm reached me and i was getting drenched. i have never stood in a dry spot and seen the rain coming at me. it was crazy!! eventually the skies kind of dried out but it still was raining on us as we made our damp way to the gothic quarter. we had a bit of a wait to get a table at the restaurant but it was well worth it. garrett said it was one of the best meals of his life and well...i had a lot of wine and port so i was pretty happy myself. but as we´re in this groovy little place, the skies open again and our soundtrack to that dinner was thunder and lightning.

we went to park guell today and got DRENCHED again by a sudden thunderstorm. here´s a picture of garrett in the little grotto we hid in while it rained cats and dogs

ok, off to dinner

ok, enough time sitting in front of this machine with all of barcelona right outside. we are here at this hostel for a week so i´ll be posting a lot!
i´m having a great time here but i do miss everyone back home. give oregon a hug for me.
we´re off to our first spanish culinary experience! catalan food tonight, i think!

photos of nimes

this is what a street in nimes looks like. this picture looks out on the arena.




for some reason, nimes really likes crocodiles and they are featured everywhere in scupture, engravings, and even as stuffed animals in their gift shops.




oregon big foot lands in the nimes arena. this is really high up in the arena - very challenging to my fear of heights and my horrible clumsiness. garrett climbed up to the top of the arena and got the view from up there while i clung to a railing below.




a hallway in the arena. they still have shows here - from bullfighting to classical music. the animal smell permeates this while place.




here we are in an arch entryway - yes yes, i know, i´ll try to get some variation in our pictures together.

vals revisited

here are the warning bells at the ilanz train station. they look like little helmets!


this is the incredibly quaint town of vals. it´s like the fantasy you had as a child of a town in the swiss alps - only real. you can totally imagine people yodeling here.



here are the neat little graves of some locals behind the church in town.

boom! huge mountain right outside our hotel.

what is there to say about vals? just that it was just about the most perfect place on the planet to unwind, relax, and feel about a million times more healthy. just breathing the swiss mountain air is enough to make you feel like a million bucks. add the baths? forget about it. i have nothing to compare it to but the therme baths are incredible. first, go to the 42 degree centigrade pool and really get warm. get all pruny and sweaty. then move from there to the cold plunge 17 degree pool. squeal a little because it is really cold and shocking. then go back to the 42 degree pool and feel yourself turn into a noodle. go back and forth a few times until you feel the need for some lukewarm temps. hang out in the one of the 30, 33, or 35 degree pools just waiting for you. or, if you feel like communing a little with the swiss mountain air, go to the outdoor pool and float around on your back, staring at the fluffy little clouds. and i can´t forget to mention the steam rooms. or how about the 2 hour massages we got?

garrett and i have decided that we are definitely going back to vals and this time for a longer time. i wish we could have stayed longer...

in barcelona! and paris revisited

we just got into barcelona an hour ago and YAY there´s a place with windows, a usb card reader, AND a normal keyboard. it is about time!

so since i didn´t post any pictures from paris, i´ll do that now.




here we are at the pompadu center. it was a seriously roasting start to the day.

here´s a picture of park andre citroen (the modern park).

the eiffel tower...of course.


my surrogate thomas chilling on the terrace of our paris hotel room.

in nimes

unfortunately, this cyber cafe is running a very strange gaming operating system that requires a cd to read my camera so i cannot post pictures. also? this keyboard makes the one in vals seem simple. so this will be brief but i wanted to write a little something...
yesterday was all about trains. 4 in all and we had to sprint for a few of them. we didn't get to nimes until pretty late and finished the night off watching the tennis us open LIVE - sweet!!!
today we're just cruising around nimes, which on a sunday is a slight bummer since everything is closed. BUT the cyber cafe is open, of course. we had brunch on the rooftop of this modern art museum with a killer view of a roman temple. seriously!! then we wandered through the town and stopped at the roman arena. very old, very profound to be in there thinking of all the people who have wandered through there over the past 2000 years. now we are heading to a huge garden. ok, enough of this keyboard - it is very frustrating for my usual speed demon typing.
tomorrow will be another long train day. we may stop in an internet cafe on tuesday.
we're having a great time!!!
thanks again to everyone reading and posting comments!
garrett is waiting for me on a park bench...

we're in vals

hello everyone,
i'm not going to write much since there's a line for the only public computer here and this is some strange german keyboard with the letters in weird places. but quickly, we're in vals!! we had one last amazing day in paris walking around, seeing a few famous biblioteques, a few famous parks (the luxemborg and some new modern slightly controversial one that i forget the name of), saw an awesome unexpected mongolian throat singing show in front of the pompadu (i probably just butchered the spelling of that) center while eating awesome baguettes we got at a random patisserie. in all, our last full day in paris was wonderful.
we spent most of yesterday on the train. from paris to basel, to chur, to illanz. then we took a 30 minute bus from illanz to vals. talk about a sketchy mountain road. on a few turns, the bus driver had to honk its horn because it was a completely blind turn and down to only one lane. but hello! it's the swiss alps!!! we have one insane view from our hotel room of a huge towering mountain. last night, we used the baths here for the first time. it was amazing. too much to say with this german guy glaring at me to hurry up.
i promise to write more when we get to nimes. and i'll post pics too since we've taken a TON already. i only have 200 pics left on my gig!!
we just finished our morning session at the baths and i'm a limp noodle.
thanks for reading and posting comments!!
love, kathy + garrett (who is still bathing downstairs)

we're here!

after two red eyes, we've arrived in paris! on the first red eye to jfk, neither of us slept a wink on the plane and so hanging out in jfk for EIGHT hours was even more uncomfortable than we thought it would be. we had a few camp-outs in the airport.




we got to our hotel this morning and after washing the plane off us, we immediately went exploring. we saw so much today - the sacre coeur, the paris opera house, the grande palace jardins, we also walked down a great street with lots of cool markets called the rue de martyrs. we're planning on going to the notre dame tomorrow and some famous cemetaries. here are some cool pics from today:









garrett would add some words but he's brain dead. it is 9:45am in our heads and almost dinner time here. we have a rad dinner planned on our hotel room's terrace.

completely unexpected bonus

when garrett and i were first getting our airline tickets for our return leg to portland, i argued that we should get back to portland as soon as possible and said we should take some ridiculously early flight back. we tossed around a few travel scenarios and agreed on the later flight time out of jfk (2:30pm flight out).
fast forward about two months:
we are 10 days out from leaving on our big trip and i am talking to my mom. she says she just got an email from my big sister karen asking about some social security thing. apparently, my mom is eligible to get my dad's social security benefits since even though they were divorced at the time of his death, they were married at least 15 years. but she has to go to the social security office in new york to "interview" for the benefits. since karen is the executor of my dad's estate, she got the letter confirming the interview with social security. anyhoo... as my mom is talking about this, a big huge glaring light bulb starts to flash on top of my head. and i start jumping up and down, asking her when she's going to be in new york. well, as you have probably guessed by the title of this post (i.e. bonus), she and i are going to be in new york at the same time!!!! yes, completely unexpectedly, i get to see my mom on september 23 for a nice breakfast where i get to meet her beau (the elusive dr. chen) and she gets to meet garrett. what a total bonus!
and i owe garrett a big huge helping of gratitude for talking me out of that early flight. it would have been one of the biggest bummers of all time if we didn't have time to see my mom while we were so close to each other in nyc. i haven't seen my mom for a happy occasion in over a year. i'd love to see her when we're both our usual smiling-selves.

reminder list

things remaining to do/buy before we leave:
1. i need one giant backpack
2. good earplugs
3. a bigger memory card for my camera
4. i need to send a toiletry kit to paris
5. a d/c adapter
6. some sort of travel wallet
7. make train reservations

flights 'n hostels

03/09/06 (better get used to this date format)

UA Flight #228 PDX -> IAD (Dulles) 10:35pm - 6:29am
UA Flight #7302 IAD -> JFK 8:15am - 9:39am
AA Flight #44 JFK -> CDG 5:55pm - 7:25am

Arrive in Paris 05/09/06, stay at the Little Palace Hotel.

07/09/06
Take the train to the Therme Vals.

09/09/06
Take the train to Nimes, France. Stay at the Nimotel.

11/09/06
Take the train to Barcelona, Spain. Stay at the Hostal Central.

19/09/06
Take the train to San Sebastian, Spain. Stay at the Adore Plaza.

21/09/06
Take the train back to Paris. Stay at the Le Montclair Montmartre.

22/09/06

AA Flight #121 CDG -> JFK 5:50pm - 8:00pm

23/09/06

UA Flight #7310 JFK -> IAD 2:30pm - 3:58pm
UA Flight #251 IAD -> PDX 5:45pm - 8:15pm

leaving in less than two weeks

garrett and i are leaving for europe in less than two weeks! check out our itinerary here.