European travels

(this is quite the ramble... sorry about that.)

 It's been a while since I dusted off ye' old blog.  But I'm in Europe for two months with the fam, and I've insisted they keep a journal, so it seems fair I do the same.

We've been here for a week and a half.  I've meant to write this whole time but it's been busy.   And my blogging passion is not what it used to be.  

We flew into Lisbon and took a train directly to Porto, Portugal.  From there a train to Santiago del Compostela and then a Ryan Air flight to Barcelona, where we've been since Monday (today is Friday).  We leave for Valencia tomorrow.

So far the trip has gone great.  We are all a little tired of each other, but in totally understandable ways.  We work with the kids most days on math, which is really the only schoolwork we're insisting on.  Teddy is working on fraction multiplication and Greta was working on dimensional analysis, which was a struggle but she has figured out.  Now she's on to working with percents.  MJ's math is somewhat beyond what I remember... part of it I've been able to help with, like simplifying square roots by pulling out terms so that only non-square root terms remain under the radical.  (there's probably a term for this?).  But writing proofs for geometry completely evades my memory.

We generally do math in the morning before we leave our Airbnb.  But some days we have tours early and just bring it with us, or they do it in the evening when we come back.  We have also been making them keep a journal, something that can be shared with teachers.  Discussing the art they've seen, language, history they've learned.  They also read a fair amount, on their school iPads, because we just don't have enough space for books.  Apart from that we're not making them do other "school".  Instead, they learn from being here.

In Barcelona, we've been to two of Gaudi's buildings.  I've heard about Gaudi before but not thought much about him.  The Sagrada Familia, though, was the most stunning building I've ever seen.  I am, broadly, a little over churches even though we're still early in the trip.  But this one was worth the hype.  The light inside, the unusual shapes, the columns turned into trees.  

(continuing this on Saturday, 16 March, on the train to Valencia.   Currently going 220 km/hr, or about 125 mph)

I feel the need to catch up on our travels a bit.

Porto Portugal was stunning.  Narrow winding cobblestone streets, much of it built hundreds of years ago.  So many stairs, though.  Showed me how out of shape I am, but in our short time here I’m feeling stronger.  Regularly logging 15,000+ steps, plus hills, biking, etc.  One of the most surprising things in Porto was the number of vacant and completely falling down buildings there were.  It was tragic to see such lovely buildings with no one taking care of them.   But also, I can’t imagine being an older person living with all those stairs.   It was a very inaccessible place. While there, we did the 6 bridges cruise (pretty, but not informational enough for my liking).  We visited the Saint Francis church (old, lots of gold. The Franciscans were persecuted.). We took a street car to the beach (cute little street car, long wait for one.  Beach was beautiful but the waves were SUPER rough.)  We ate a lot of seafood.  Crossed the Bridge to Gaia (turns out I’m kind of scared of heights).  Ate a Franzeschina (sp?  Was kinda gross in my opinion.). Took a food tour (good food, but also port tasting, which the kids couldn’t partake in.  I maybe kind of like Port?  Still not my go-to, but interesting to learn about.). 

Things I learned: the oldest treaty in the world is between Portugal and the UK, largely revolving around the export of Port from Portugal to UK.  UK prefers Tawny port, which leaves Ruby port for the Portugese, which they prefer.  

We thought we could get by speaking Spanish in Portugal.  Definite no.  At first, I couldn’t even hear Portugese as being connected to Spanish, it sounded Russian to me.  We then had people correcting, saying “that’s Spanish” when we spoke and I, finally, realized they were insulted by us trying to speak Spanish to them.  After chatting with some folks, they explained that they hate getting lumped in with the Spanish, and it’s essentially a micro-aggression to speak Spanish to them (my word, not theirs).  But Spanish is my go-to language other than English so it took me a bit to not revert to Spanish.  And many people speak excellent English, so it was fine.  Anyway, not being able to speak the language, even a little, was difficult.  We learned please and thank you, that was about it.

We took the train from Porto to Santiago del Compostela, which was a bit of a nightmare.  We couldn’t find the tickets and tried to log into the website, which just straight up didn’t work.  It wouldn’t let us log in, wouldn’t send an email, etc.  We got to the station and they didn’t have us on the register.  The train person (valet?  Not sure his title.  Ticket checker.) spoke only Portugese, and we weren’t on his list, and we didn’t have time to fix it because the train was leaving.  He told us the train was full, but there was no one assigned to the seats we knew we had.  So we got on and sat there.  We did everything we could think of to get the tickets, including calling the company (number didn’t work), and Aaron found where he had saved them on his phone just before the first train stop, when the valet was going to make us get off.  It was super stressful but It narrowly worked out.

We ended up having to take a bus for part of that trip because the tracks were under repair.  Real doozy of a day.  But we made it to Santiago.

Santiago, however, was very wet.  Porto was a little wet, but we got two days of sunshine and only one with spotty rain.  Santiago was downpour most of the day, every day.  We brought three umbrellas and bought two more.  We barely saw the sun.  Every store/restaurant etc had an umbrella stand.  If I forgot to leave my umbrella there they chased us down.  A bit like wearing snowy boots in someone’s house I guess.  I haven’t seen that much rain since Oregon.  We learned it is the rainiest place in Spain, and this is just typical.  In fact, it’s one of the only medium amount of rain months, the only months without much rain are June/July/August.

In Porto, our Airbnb was stunning.  In  the middle of the old city, this building was probably several hundred years old.  Stunning view of the  bridge and Gaia across the river.  It meant that even if we stayed inside, it was still the best view around.

Our Airbnb in Santiago was fine, but kind of meh.  In the more modern part of the city.  Small and not very charming.  No room to spread out (there’s five of us!). Tolerable, but given all the rain it would have been nice if our indoors was a little better.

Old city in Santiago was, again, stunning.  A bit like Porto but not nearly as many stairs.  Just old winding alleys/streets and cute little shops.  Probably more cute shops than Porto because there weren’t so many abandoned buildings.  But So. Much. Rain.

Again, seafood.  Octopus.  Barnacles.

The Highlight of Santiago was a private tour we booked at the Cathedral.  Sylvia was an amazing tour guide.  We learned about Saint James, the patron saint of Spain (and the cathedral).  They feel he is the best of Jesus’s disciples because he was Jesus’s cousin, so related by familial ties.  After Jesus died, James came to Santiago and started preaching there.  He later returned to Palestine (I think) and was killed.  His body was then returned to Santiago, where the Cathedral was later built (starting in about 1200).  James also appeared to Spanish soldiers during battles agains the Moors in the 900s.  So he is variably depicted as warrior, and also the reasoning behind him being patron saint of Spain.  (I have probably butchered this explanation.  But it was interesting to me.)

And lastly, for now, Barcelona.  We arrived Monday and left today, Saturday, March 16.  Finally, beautiful weather.  Sunshine.  Not hot, highs in the low 60s.  Most of what we’ve done in Barcelona is roam.  We did see the three different Gaudi locations (park, cathedral and apartment building), all beautiful.  Worth his notoriety.

WE rented bikes the first two days, and it was a lovely city to bike in.  Protected lanes, pretty flat, cars paid attention to bikes.  We roamed La Rambla and the adjacent plazas, on three of the days we were there.  SO many shops.  Cafes.  Street performers.  The historic buildings were many, you could roam far and wide and see more beautiful buildings and more beautiful alleys.  That’s most of what we did.

Teddy spent a lot of time trying to catch pigeons in other cities, but Barcelona had parakeets, which he loved even more.  Loud but more interesting.  

And now we’re on a high speed train, going about 120 mph, on our way to Valencia.

No real drama in the family.  No debacles other than our train to Santiago.  No stress other than kids fighting (typical).  

Next up: Las Fallas.