Pirotechnics with Jazz

Last night I joined about 5000 other people in Placa Espanya for the grand finale of the Merce festival. This weekend festival began last Friday and ended last night (Monday). Every evening there were fireworks down at Barceloneta beach, concerts throughout the city, castellers, correfoc, every type of traditional folk dance, a circus in cuitadella park,... the list of things to do was endless. Anyways, last nights performance topped them all. The theme of the 40 minute pirotechnical show was 'the History of Jazz' and so the fireworks were correographed to everyting from New Orleans Dixieland, Ella Fitzgerald, and Marilyn Monroe's happy birthday, to Duke Ellington's big band jazz, some Rag-time, swing, and tin-pan alley, to the more modern jazz, fusion, and Afro-Latin/Soul jazz. They had everything, and I am sure I will never see more spectacular fireworks in my life. I took many videos of the show, but I have yet to figure out how to post movies on this blog, so the still pictures will have to do until I have a chance to show you the videos. Enjoy :)

Mum&Dad arrive next Monday for a 2 week holiday! Words cannot describe how much I am looking forward to seeing them. How has 4 months already gone by?

Sarah.

Mas fotos,...

This past weekend was relatively uneventful. I went to a jazz concert with a girlfriend from work, and some of her friends, and we saw a couple of movies. But other than that, I just relaxed, cooked, and spent time with my flatmates.

Upon arriving at work today, my friend Marc, with whom I went to the Pyrenees with 2 weeks ago, sent me the pictures that he'd taken, and because they are much better than the ones I took, I'm going to post them here. I rarely have pictures of myself, so it's a nice change to finally be in some of them.

P.S. I've decided to post pictures whenever possible instead of attempting to describe my spanish surroundings because 1. my limited vocabulary will always prevent me from doing it justice, and 2. as I'm sure you have all noticed (and politely avoided mentioning in any correspondance), my english spelling and grammer is deteriorating. (However, this is not to imply that it was ever at a decent level to begin with) My excuse is that it's inevitable after speaking broken english sentences with people whose native languages are not english for 4 months now,... : )

My apologies, Love always, Sarah.

Los Pirineos

"The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain" - Well it's September now,... and during this month in Spain it rains quite a bit (it did this morning and is supposed to continue through the week) and I've heard it's common to have a couple of good rain storms. However, this past weekend I was off of 'the plain' and into the hills as I took a weekend up North with my friend Marc, from work. We drove 3 hours up into Los Pirineos (the Pyrenees) last Friday night after work to his parents house which is located in a small mountain village (the building's called "Comoloformo" --> see pic). Contrary to what the weather report had predicted, the weather this weekend was perfect.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early; we drove to a small town called Vall de Boi, and from there we took a jeep taxi with about 6 other people up some crazy roads farther into the hills of the park. We were dropped off, and thanks to Marc having grown up in this area, he knew the trails blindfolded and I never had to worry about getting lost or which path to take. We walked for about an hour and came to a small lake that was surrounded by the mountains and a flatter field area where some cattle work every day to keep the grass nicely trimmed. We had our breakfast by the lake and watched ducks swim, fish jumping, and the cattle graze. The morning sun coming over the mountains and through the trees made for some excellent picture taking.

Just before noon we returned to the taxi which which took us back to Marc's car. Our next trek that morning was a hike up to another open field called Rio Malo. To get to this area we had to drive into another part of the park, hike up a winding road to a huge dam that's about 50 or 60 years old, hike around the huge lake that's been created by the dam and then up another hill. By this point we were really hungry for the lunch we'd brought with us, so we picnic'd on the grassy fields of Rio Malo. After a siesta we walked back down, and drove home. There, Marc's mum, Marie-Carmen, made me the best tea I've ever had; however she put so many things in it, recreating that taste may take many years of experimenting. Considering my very limited espanyol, and Marc's parent's english, I think we had some decent conversations (Marc's translating helped quite a bit as well).

Sunday morning we slept in and relaxed, and then midmorning after a nice breakfast we headed out to see some of the renowned, extremely old, romanesque churches. Before Sagrada Familia became the very popular Catalan icon that it is today, a small simple church dedicated to St. Clementine located in the mountain village of Taull was by far the most famous symbol of the province. The rectangular bell tower is a familiar symbol known by everyone throughout the region. Of course Marc and I made this our first stop. We climbed the bell tower, took in the view, and looked around the surprisingly simple and very small church. I guess the lack of extravegance is what gives it it's charm, and makes an extreme contrast to the elborate cathedrals more often toured in Barcelona and the larger Spanish cities. The most amazing part about this church, as well as the others I was to see that day, is that they all date back at least 1000 years, if not more. This is phenomenal when you think about it,... One-Thousand-Years! There is so much religious history in this country, it's a little overwhelming. It's funny, but even with all of this christianity ingrained into the culture and society, (it seems the country's entire foundation is built upon it) the younger generation (at least of the people I've met in Barcelona) is surprisingly athieste, if not agnostic. They have told me that this is not the same in the South of Spain; it is much more religious down there; However, they still make the Southern United States seem fanatical in comparison..... not to make this blog political,... just a thought.

Finally, after seeing a couple of other churches after the most famous St. Clementine one, we ended the morning with a visit to Cami de l'aigua (Water walk). This park contains lots of water fountains all over the place and some great walking trails. There are tons of drinking fountains, each with different types of water all taken from different locations in the moutains, and it's amazing how different each of them taste (ferric/contains lots of iron, ice cold, warmer, and of course the worst one had a sulfuric taste,... uck). After lunch with Marie-Carmen again, we left midafternoon to return to BCN.

This is my favourite mountian picture of the weekend. heaven.

Finally,... before I end this posting I have to include that I have just finished a really good book called 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini. If you've already read it, then you already know what I'm talking about, and if not, well I think you would like it, because I honestly can't think of a single person that I know who wouldn't fall in love with the story. It made me cry three times,... and not many books can do that. It revolves around the life of a boy who grows up in Afghanistan,... the crazy part is that what he describes is unbelievably still going on there today (last Thursday I read that there was another bombing in Kabul),... and now we have Canadian soldiers there in the midst of it all. Anyways, if you are looking for a good read, it's the most compassionate story which I learned a lot from.

Con todo el carino, Sarah.

Our Menorcan Adventure

Menorca. Where do you start? The water is pure crystal blue, the sand white and soft, the air warm and breezy, and the sun always shines. It is the true definition of paradise, and a perfect hideaway. For the average person, this Balearic island slows time down to a crawl, and brings out the relaxed side of everyone. Unfortunately, we are not your average people. We don’t see vacations as a time to slow down or sit around taking in the view. Three days in paradise? We take that on as a challenge…

This journey out into the middle of the Mediterranean began Friday night when we boarded a huge transport ferry, and left the BCN port at around 10pm. After walking around the ship and having a picnic dinner on the upper deck of the ship that we'd brought with us, we realized we were absolutely exhausted from a week of lots of work for me, touring for Kat, and not enough sleep for us both. We staked out some chairs below deck, similar to that found in a bus, and fell asleep even without the gravel we'd brought. Our sleep probably wasn't as restful as if we'd stayed in a room, but still not bad considering the room was full of people and the lights were on. At around 6am we were jostled awake as the ferry make it's last turn around the East end of our island destination and into the second largest natural deep water port in the mediterranean (I think). This port is called Mao (or Mahon in Catalan), it is the biggest city on the island, it is where we started, and finished our trip, but that's about it, as we knew there were many places on the island, far more picturesque, still to see.

We went and picked up the two mopeds that I'd reserved, and with the briefest and most basic explanation of how to use these bikes, they turned us loose. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing as neither of us had ever driven a moped or motorcycle before. Anyways, our learning curve was fast, and we were off.

The trip across the island took about 45 minutes with our destination being the 2 person flat that we'd rented on the South coast of the island in an area called Cala Galdana. The flat was great for the two of us with a bathroom, bedroom, small kitchen and a balcony. We unloaded our stuff, went and bought some groceries, and then headed for two renowned beaches very close to Cala Galdana called Cala Macarella and Cala Macaretta. After a 40 minute walk (only getting lost once) down a wandering, well-trodden trail, and then a large set of stairs, we came to our first Minorcan beaches. We spent the afternoon snorkeling from Macarella to Macaretta and back. That evening we drove to the West end of the island to the second largest, but much nicer city, of Cuitadella. We had a great seafood paella dinner at a restaurant right in the port, and then wandered around the markets buying souveniers. Our ride back to Cala Galdana was our first ride in the dark, and we were lucky the rain held off until we were home.

Sunday morning we woke up and decided to head up to a beach called Cala Predonga, said to be the best on the North shore. Using what we had assumed to be a trusty map that we'd purchased the day before, we chose our route and took off. Filled up with gas, and headed up what was termed on our map to be 'a secondary road'. This road is pretty much a narrow paved lane wide enough for about 1.5 cars. We wound around, up and down, along this 'road' as it became smaller, steeper, and sketchier with every turn. Then at one point, after atleast 40 minutes of driving (too long to turn back now) we came to a point where we really second guessed if we we'd taken a wrong turn (but we knew we hadn't,... there hadn't been any other options), because the 'road' ahead looked more like a terrible canoe trip portage than anything else (a steep hill of loose dirt and rocks). We think that this is the section of the route where the map called it 'an unpaved track'. Kath and I quickly realized that what we'd figured to be a nice dirt road was not even close to that. They are really serious when they call any path 'unpaved' or 'a track',.... this looked like no one had even walked it since the Romans had inhabited the island about 500 years ago. In what was not one of our brightest moments we decided we didn't have any other option than to go down this path,.... please keep in mind we are not on dirt bikes here,... we're riding little 50cc mopeds. Anyways, I now really wish I had a video our reactions when we got to the middle of the 'unpaved track', had absolutely no idea where we were, where the 'track' was, it seemed like we were at a fork in the road with 5 different diverging paths, and we were just about panicing. I can't believe we ever actually found it without something going wrong,..... we are 2 very lucky girls.

ANYWAYS, after all of that anxiety/excitement we eventually made it to the paved road on the other side of 'the track', and this led us to the beach we'd been looking for, and from this beach we could walk to Cala Predonga,.... we were so relieved to finally get there. I'm sure we appreciated that afternoon of lying on the beach more than anyone else there! We snorkelled, sunbathed, and played some paddle ball (a typical wooden raquet game played by people of every age at the beach).

Sunday night, since we were already in the North, we went to a fishing village on the North coast called Fornells, known for it's seafood. We had a delicious seafood dinner which included the seafood version of the typical lobster caldereta soup. Very good. And again drove back in the dark, but as the moon and stars were out it was a well lit drive.

Monday morning we decided that we didn't want as much excitement as the previous days trip to the beach had provided, and we would definitely not be taking any thing else that wasn't fully paved. Again we hopped on our vespas, but this time only Kath's took off, as mine was out of gas :( I got on the back of her bike and we went and got our routine breakfast, cafe con leche and a chocolate pastry, and then decided to sign up for a kayak tour of the coast. We both agree that this was the highlight of our trip, mostly thanks to our tourguide. Because no one else had signed up for this Monday morning trip, we got a private tour of the coast by Ben. Ben is from Belgium, speaks about 7 languages, likes adventure sports and really just looks like he's been giving kayak tours in the sun for 4 months now,.... needless to say we probably would have followed Ben anywhere. The tour went east of Cala Galdana and we got to go way back into some huge caves and learn the history and legends behide each of them. We were already impressed when we came to an amazing beach called Cala Mitjana. The was such a bright tourquoise colour that made us feel like we could have been in the Carribean. We did some great cliff jumping and swimming in the bay. A breath-takingly beautiful place!

We returned to Cala Galdana, grabbed some lunch and then Kath went and got me some gas for my bike. Then in the afternoon we went to a less touristic beach, but the water wasn't quite as spectacular. Finally in the evening, after showering, we raced against the setting sun to the South-East of the island to a bar/discoteque called Cova en d'Xoroi which is a famous due for it's unique location. This club is actually built into a series of caves in the side of a cliff which drops off into the sea. A great place to watch the sunset and have a drink. This place had a great atmosphere and it would have been great to visit for the discoteque as well,... but there's just never enough time.

Tuesday we dropped off our mopeds in Mao, boarded our ferry, and returned to Barcelona.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started planning a long weekend trip out to Menorca for Katharine and I, but it is suffice to say that it was an adventure and we have survived. This has been the first of our travelling adventures together,... and plans for where our next one will be is of course a main source of constant discussion. We know this won't be our last.

Carino, Sarah & Kath.