Espinho, Porto, Santiago, FUTBOOOOOL

This past weekend, Evan, Dave, Big Tall Jon, and I piled into a rented Seat Ibiza and drove to Portugal. We had several goals in mind: to climb around on rocks on the coast, to see some fado music (my personal goal), to see Spain´s biggest pilgrimage cathedral (because Evan loves cathedrals), and to end up on Saturday night in La Coruña, northern Galicia ('A Coruña' in Gallego) to see FC Barcelona, my futbol team, play against Deportivo in their stadium.

Here´s Big Tall Jon, cheesing after we took an early wrong turn and ended up on a muddy donkey cart road.



After another detour, we ended up in Espinho, a little beach suburb south of Porto with lots of sweet fishing boats and concrete bulwarks to climb around on...



This boat, in particular, the Vamos Andando, was very pretty...



Our next stop was Porto (or Oporto in Portuguese), the second biggest city in Portugal and the capital of the North. It is traditionally the aristocratic capital of Portugal, made rich by the Port wine that they export to England so that frail little old British ladies can keep up tacit alcoholism disguised as 'just a bit of port with me tea...'

Marvel in the fruits of the Port treasure!





And when night descended...



...we went lurking the riverside taverns in search of fado, the eerie, incredibly sad folk music that originated in Lisbon and moved north, soaking up the melancholy of Portugal and translating it into beautiful music. It´s normally played with a twelve string portuguese guitar, which is similar to an octave mandolin, and a classical guitar, which play intricate melody lines that ricochet off eachother to make a spindly, baroque-sounding accompaniment. I digress... If you really want to know more, read my article on fado in the December issue of urbanite.

So we sat and enjoyed a glass of port and watched several gorgeous fadistas sing for a touristy dinner crowd. We weren´t technically allowed to take snapshots, but I managed to get this one... which is blurry but almost discernable...



(you get the idea of the ambience...)

Here´s Big Tall Jon with the two port varieties, Seco and Dulco...



In search of more info on Port, the next morning we went to the South Side of the river Doura, which creates the valley where all the Port grapes in the world are grown, to see a Port wine cellar (a 'wine cave' in Portuguese). The city was beautiful down there by the water...





And here are all the wine company flags. There are also big neon signs with the names of the companies, and from the other side of the river they looked marquees for casinos or movie theatres...



The cellars were not yet open, so we decided to go to get some breakfast. We saw a sign at a breakfast place advertising 'francesinhas', which we were told were very typical of Porto. Also, the ad had a clipart picture of pancakes, so we got psyched... 'Pancakes, dude, Paaaaancakes!'

Instead, what we got was this...



So we were like, 'Whatever... It´s actually a grilled cheese sandwich floating in gravy! That sounds good, I guess...' But then we looked inside...



Aaaaaaahhhhh!!!!

This is what I looked like after about 3 bites (near suicide)...



Moving on, our tour of the Sandeman wine cellars was SWEET. (Everybody get the pun??)



The logo for Sandeman is a dude who looks like Zorro, and the poor guy who gave us the tour had to dress up like him...



They had port vintages from as far back as 1904... which cost about €20,000 a bottle...



My favorite type of port, idealistically, was the Tawny port, because it has a funny name...



Included in the €3 entrance fee was a wine tasting, given by the mysterious Sandeman Don...



From Porto we headed up the Galician coast past Vigo and stopped for a picnic lunch of bread, cheese, salami, and wine in this pretty little spot...



And ended up in Santiago de Compostela, the site of the world´s biggest pilgimage church and the supposed site of the bones of St. James (Santiago Director of Homeland Security). There were a lot of pilgrims walking around covered in Conch Shells, which are the symbols of Santiago, and here are some shots of the cathedral...





And the altar...



...which had some arcangels who looked to me very eastern, like dancing Shivas. Anybody else see that?



And the NEXT stop on our trip was La Coruña, where we met up with our boy Migual and camped out outseide the hotel where the FC Barcelona team was staying. Here´s my chameleon shot with the bus...



And here´s my PRIZE ACCOMPLISHMENT of the weekend... this shot, from five feet away, of Ronaldinho, voted last year as the BEST SOCCER PLAYER IN THE WORLD, as he got on his bus...



And me by the beach, across from the stadium, sporting the jersey, OWNING La Coruña...




And me in front of a sweet surfer statue. Imagine me saying 'Ooooouuuuuaaaaaugghhhh!!'. Johnny B, you know what I´m talking about.



And finally, a shot from the game, where we almost got killed, futbol fan style, for doing this... but that´s a whole nother story...



but more about that, and more photos of it, later...



And the ride home.






Whew. That was a long one. I need a nap.

Love,
Robbie

Nerja and Granada

Hola Queridos,

Two weeks ago (god, I´m so behind the blog) I went to visit Kat in Granada, where she is studying. We took our first day to go to Nerja, a nice little village on the Costa del Sol, just south of Granada.

Here´s a beautiful Kat with the coast...



And the coast again...



And me bringing french fries to Kat...



Some grizzled old dudes pulling their boats up to dry land on the beach...



The caves at Nerja... (I expected to be able to ride a donkey up to them, but we had to settle for a bus...)



Kat contemplating the next move of a chess game in a tea house in Granada, where we drank tea and green mint lemonade...



And me contemplating one of the moves that will lose me 3 games straight...







...just kidding. I won.

San Sebastian

A few weeks back me and the crew (Dave, Harrison, Evan, Brian, Ashley, Katie, Rachel, Ashley...) took an overnight train to San Sebastian, a beautiful beach town in the Basque country, just on the corner of the Spanish-French border (the other, southeast corner, is Barcelona). For the Hemingway fans on the blog, you may remember that San Sebastian is where Jake Barnes goes after the Pamplona bullfights in 'The Sun Also Rises' to wait for Lady Brett while she finishes her torrid tryst with Pedro Romero in Madrid. It´s as relaxing as Hemingway describes it... maybe moreso, and we had a great time.

Here´s what I packed...(water, wine, books, paper, bread, sardines, journal, passport, chesterfields...) On the way over we passed around the wineskin with a Portuguese trucker and a Salamancan student on his way home to Burgos to see his novia in the compartment that we shared. Around three am, some snooty, smelly, smelly Frenchmen kicked us out of their seats, which, admittedly, we were sitting in, but they could have found other seats just like I did when I got on the train and found my plaza occupied. I retaliated by making comments about the French and their personal hygiene habits in loud English, and I think I was understood.



And then our señora gave us this enormous bag of food, a bottle of cider, and a small bottle of aguardiente de yerba, this gross licorice flavored liquor from the nearby sierras of Salamanca.



Here´s the street where we stayed (with Dave modelling)...



and the nearby playground with carousel....


and nearby fruit market...



Here´s the port, shown from the east side...



And finally the beach, ´La Concha´... which is curved, somewhat like a conch shell. La Concha is not to be confused with La Cuesta, which is the other beach at San Sebastian and used mostly for surfing. I tried surfing on Saturday, but found that without something called a 'rash guard', it´s not really a very pleasant experience. Specifically, there´s a lot of nipple chaffing against the surfwax, and if you don´t know what you´re doing, like I don´t, there´s not as much wave-riding as one would hope. Here´s Evan with his board...



And one of the best parts of the trip... we bought a soccer ball and played all afternoon on Saturday. Me kicking...



Brian fetching the balón, all smiles...



Juggling...



Me eating it on a diving header...



The team...


And later four Spanish kids, about 13 years old each, challenged us to a game and soundly beat us. We were 'Real Estadounidense' and they were 'Real Español'. I think we lost about 6-4, then switched teams, but I was on the losing team again with this skinny little kid that they kept calling 'Puto Alfonso'. He was garbage...





On Sunday, our last day, it was raining pretty steadily, but Dave, Ashley, and I decided to brave the weather and hike of the Monte de Orgúl, a big hill that overlooks both beaches. It has a big statue of JC on top, which makes the whole town look a bit like Rio de Janeiro...



Dave and I posed accordingly on the way up...



And when we came down, completely soaked, we went to a bakery for breakfast and had the BIGGEST, most DELICIOUS, most BUTTERY breakfast ever of pastries and café con leche...


And then I wrote about it on the way home in my hip little moleskine, over a beer in the dining car, all the while repping Baltimore...



Here´s Ashley´s art shot of it...




That´s all! In our next two editions, a trip to Granada and Nerja, on the Costa del Sol with Kat, then our fantastic road trip/soccer game to Porto, Santiago de Compostela, and La Coruña.

Love,
Robbie.