September 12, 2006 by zankbennett.

Arrived by private car into Positano, Italy from Naples. The drive here is amazing. The road drops off to the water at amazing heights along the serpentine path. Olive trees line the road in places. Top speed along much of the trek is no more than 20 mph.

To quote the DK guide:

Known for decades as a smart playground for the wealthy, famous and decadent, postiano is an astonishingly vertical town in shades of pink and other faded pastels. Only one street snakes its way down and up…the rest are stairs.

That’s really the truth. The town is built right into the cliff here along the Amalfi coast. The stairs are a workout no matte where you want to go.

I dropped by the deli where I bought all my food the last time I stayed here and the lady slowly remembered me from last year. She happily sold me supplies for making bruscetta, some mozzerella (Jill says that’s how to spell it), some local figs and wine..and a watermellon Breezer.

Me in front of the deli after hours.  Steps are EVERYWHERE in Positano

Our first night we all went out to dinner at a roadside café above town with full views of the sea and town below. My favorite restaurant from the last trip here.
The second night Jill and I cooked for George and ‘Ofa. Jill made roasted fennel, tomatoes, beans and garlic. I made bruscetta and pasta sauce. We started eating at 1 am and finished at 4:30…just a few hours later, after a nightcap of lemoncello, George and I were the only ones awake to watch the morning sun rise and gently illuminate the soft colors of the town…

The days here are are spent leisurely enjoying the small-town atmosphere and sweeping sea views from our huge, grassy deck. We did some kayaking and visited a grotto and jumped off some of the rocks into the warm, salty water.

Jill kayaks like a maniac…she called it her 30-foot radius of danger…the region inside of which, you were sure to collide with her at crazy velocity. Call her the spinner…you could turn back to look at her and she could be facing any direction at all…paddling frantically to get back to the right direction…

I spent all of today on the deck playing guitar and eating amazing cheese, bread and drinking wine…there is something so special about the little town; a magic that surrounds it.

If someone has the time to find a link of a picture of the town, please post it as a comment.
All the best!!!!

-having the time of my life…still.

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September 12, 2006 by zankbennett.

Arrived in Barcelona on Monday night after spending all day in the Madrid train station. There’s an interesting system for buying train tickets there; you grab a number and wait until you’re called. For us, it was about an hour and a half….so we did it twice.
The ticket alone was > my daily budget, at 60€.

I called from the train station and reserved a hotel room at a place that was recommended by a place that was full. MY FIRST BARCELONA MISTAKE…

The train boogied along at like 90 mph. It was an easy metro transfer to get to the center avenue, Las Rambles. I had one night solo before George was to come, and figured that the center of it all would be the spot to be for one night. Peter and Ayo couldn’t find anything else either and booked a room at the same place. How could we have known?

So, I show up an hour earlier at the hotel. I’m standing 50 feet from the front door in the busiest pedestrian walkway I’ve ever seen. I call the hotel and the guy sounds like my differential equations professor and is equally incomprehensible. We spoke for about 5 minutes and during that time, with a thick Indian accent, he referred to the street the hotel is on as three or four different streets while I frantically scoured my map…as quickly as he could make up an English word, I would trace my finger in panic motions across the map, foolishly believing I was looking for something that actually existed.

So I hang up the phone and walk 15 paces to the hotel. The nice man has my name as Dank, and even though 75% of my name is correct and I have a credit card of the correct last four digits…all that is just too much of a coincidence for this man. I clearly am an imposter. So began the interrogation.

What’s your room #
-i forgot

Hmmm. How much are you paying?
-i don’t know. When I agreed, it was an amount that I could afford, so I didn’t make more of a note of it than that.

[snickering obnoxiously] so you don’t keep track of how much € you spend?
-are you my mom?

Anyway, using some rather advanced sign language, I cheched into my room. I’m not sure how to describe the smell, so I won’t. I pulled the sheets back to reveal the furry hairball that was my bed. The pillow was in the same condition, and upon further scrutinization, I found a ball of ear wax with a hair in it. So I leave and go out for some dinner. Obviously, the room is for storing my pack while I stay up all night and wait until the next night to sleep. Peter and Ayo agree when they checked in and so began the evening. I grabben my camera and wallet and hit the town…only one of those possessions would be with me at the end of the night.

After a few Irish car bombs! we made our way to a local club right on Las Ramblas with a few girls who joined us for the ICB’s. Good club. Little bit of dancing, and we left around 5 when they closed down. So the 6 of us go back 400 meters to our hotel and I run up and get my guitar and we sit on the avenue and play and sing and lots of people stop to listen and enjoy it. It gets worse.

Here is a picture at that moment>>>

So, I get up to pee behind a bush. I leave my guitar. This woman walks up to me and pulls a tit out of her shirt and asks me if I want some of that. So I’m trying to find a nice way to tell her that I’m not interested when she takes 3 quick steps and grabs onto the thing in my right hand…you know. I’m shocked and tell at her to get the hell away from me and so she leaves. I finish my business and, with a different expression, walk back to my friends. I reach for my camera. The one with the FULL memory card. Yeah, it’s gone. We ran all around and she was no where to be found. Great.

So, we went back up to our rooms and changed and Peter and I went for a great run, per his suggestion. We went out to the beach and back. Come to find out that he was a high school all-American lacrosse player. By now it’s near 10 am and time to get on to finding a hotel room we can sleep in.

Peter, Ayo and I went to the beach for the day. Later that day, George got into town.

Enter George-great friend from LA, and Jill, recent acquanitence from work.

We all met at the Opera bar for some sangria and to formulate a plan for the evening. A couple Sweedish girls came with peter and Ayo and Jill was with her friend Amber.

Went out that night and danced until all hours…On the way out of the beach-front disco, met a few girls from Germany…Astrid (the fire-diving stunt woman), Judi (the pop-and-locker) and Tina(? Shit, is that her name?).
We dance at the next bar until the sun came up. We all had to force George off the D-floor.

Next day was consumed mostly with sleep. We made our way into a huge Dept store in the center of town. We bought a few things. My Spanish is really coming along well. People are so happy to let me struggle through it. This is much different than anywhere I’ve ever been. Usu, people are just as happy to practice their English, but in Spain, and especially Barcelona, most people will work with you. I learned a ton and really got a lot better! Doing the day-to-day there was really a blast.

That night, we met the Germans for a buffet dinner. My next mistake in Barcelona! The dinner was great…on the way DOWN!!!

Here is a picture at the buffet>>>

So, after dinner we go to a couple clubs and dance until the sun comes up…again. Had to beg the doorman to let me in with rips in my pants. It’s just like home…standing there in front of a 300 lb gorilla trying to convince him that 3 girls should outweigh 2 rips in my pants. Spanish must be getting better, ’cause we eventually made it in. We danced until the lights came on and the blister on my left foot from new shoes was the size of a small walnut.

At home, I got about 30 minutes of sleep and at 9:30 had a nice return visit from that all-you-can-eat meal. Probably some meat in there somewhere……

Get a call that morning from Ayo…scooter crash! Just a fender-bender. He regrouped and scootered up above town and explored the hillside above town. George and I relaxed that day and eventually found our way to the beach for an evening sangria.

The next day, we made our way out of town to Montserrat. We climbed way up to an abandoned house built into the high hillside. The place was amazing. There was graffiti everywhere. Old refrigerators, metal parts, debri. The scene was incredible. George shot some priceless video of the scene. Hopefully I can post some pictures I took with the video camera. To get to where we were exploring, we had to take two trains and a cable-driven train than went seemingly straight up the side of a cliff! It reminded me of the cog railway that takes people up mount Washington in Vermont.

That night, we took a nap and agreed not to go out too late…ha.

We met a group of people at a supermarket and made our way to The Black Sheep, aka, The HOT bar. It must have been 95 degrees in that place. So George and I agreed that we couldn’t stay and left everyone and went searching for a new place…never found one, so se went back in to say goodbye and go home…so 3 hours later we’re playing foosball and yelling and having a great time. German girls can’t play foosball worth a damn! ;). I had a great conversation with a woman from Peru yelling Spanish across a table in a that loud bar for about 45 min. At 4 am -cause we weren’t going out late that night-we grabbed a taxi home…

It was really the end of the Spanish leg of the trip but marked a special point for me; I’ve wanted for at least 10 years to be able to spend time in Spain and learn to communicate in Spanish and gain a better understanding of how the day-to-day works there. I value that experience immensely. My Spanish is still terrible, but it improved and I could definitely see myself getting better.

We woke up and made our way to the produce/meat market in town for some food supplies for Italy. Jill met us near noon and it was on to the airport…

Next stop…Positano, Italy…bring on paradise!

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September 4, 2006 by zankbennett.

Got into Madrid late Friday evening. Hotel I’d booked was a bad scene for about 53 good reasons. The least of which was not the plumbing that ran right next to the bed so that during the entire night when someone walked down the creaky wooden floor to go to the bathroom, if the marching didn’t wake me up, the flushing sound ripping through the pipes running 3 inches from my head made me feel as though I was in a barrel, suspended from the top of Niagara Falls.

Showered and went out to get some food in Madrid. Made my way down to La Latina district. Got a little lost and wound up in the ghetto, but made it out alive. Went to The Retrobar for tapas (average, but good) and a drink, tinto de verano, red wine and soda water. So good. Just sort of hung out there like the weird guy who speaks terrible Spanish and is a little intimidated by the whole experience…this is a frequent phase for me. Some guy kept coming out and telling something into a mehaphone right next to me. Yeah, then everyone would jeer. I bet if I’d understood Spanish slang, at 500 dB, it would have had the same effect on me. Great place.
Wondered the streets for a while. Nightlife seemed nuts. Went back to the wonderful hotel for my nights torture.

First thing Sat, moved to new hotel. Of course. Finally got laundry done…and folded for me. Sweet! It was sure to happen once on this trip.
Went to The Prado museum. Took the English audio tour. Never done that before; type the # of the painting and a voice comes on and tells you about the piece. That was ok. There was a phenomenal piece there that was awe inspiring to see in person: Las meninas by Diego Velázquez, painted in 1656. It stands at least 15 feet tall. Later will post a pic.
Went back at least 5 times to look again and again. The most amazing painting I’ve ever seen.

Went to Chueca region for dinner/drinks. Cool region, if completely gay at night.
Eventually wandered into a Mexican (well, it was an attempt at authenticity) bar. Met about 5 people and we stayed there and talked and drank until they closed the place sometime after 2 am…with all of is in it. We must have stayed until 3, then all walked across town to Sol for some dancing. Some of the pictures on this walk are hilarious….coming soon.
In the crew were some girls from Switzerland and two guys from NYC, Peter and a guy with a first name so difficult that even he can’t spell it!
We stayed out and danced until past 7. Hilarious pictures coming…
I left to walk home and hit breakfast at 8 am. For some reason, a fish (from canned tuna) and onion (I hate onions) omelet sounded like a good call. Those first few bites were tough to endure. Sleep by 9…and the streets were still crawling with people. Unbelievable. Do these people work, or is the siesta just that effective?

Sun. Went to The Thyssen museum. Instead of the audio tour, I fired up the new Gomez album on the MP3 player. Prefect! Saw another piece that absolutely blew my mind. It was: Despedida by Max Beckmann. Just an incredible. From arm’s length it’s hard to even make out a human face, never mind an expression, but at 15 feet the expressions on the central character’s face in unmistakable. How in the world do some artists do that so well? This painting gave me chills. Perhaps a new favorite. I absolutely loved it.

***Update***

—
Thanks to Scott for this link…
http://coleccionctb.museothyssen.org/coleccionctb/upload/obra324/museo_thyssen_p_CTB.1996.42.jpg

I hope it works for everyone…and I hope you all like it.
—

Met up with Peter and E-O. In the park. We had a beer at a small outdoor cafe and I played guitar while some girls danced and we all had a great time. Priceless.

From the cafe we could hear drums…the kind coming from a drum circle…we walked over to this huge monument and there were at least 35 drummers gapperung away. E-O danced. The experience was amazing, and the last thing we’d expected that Sun night.

From there, out to Tapas in Chueca again. Had some drink in a green bottle. It was really popular: kept seeing them go by. I’m convinced was cleaning fluid. Maybe Simple Green mixed with windex. Luckily, the aftertaste, be it entirely debilitating, was quite temporary.

From there, back to Sol, but it was dead.

Made plans to meet and go to Barcelona together…
On a speedy train…5 hrs…
More from Barcelona!

Hopefully pictures coming soon; they’re getting really funny.

(note on typos: this is all done via blackberry and it’s so easy to miss things… combine that with a propensity to misspell nearly everything I write…)
-Z

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September 1, 2006 by zankbennett.

Thurs (31Aug) arrived in the afternoon in Granada, Spain. The food I bought in Sevilla must weigh 20 kg! I could barely walk with the pack on…it was about a half mile from the bus to the hotel…man!…in 42-degree weather too…with a cold…I’m a baby, I know.
Great town. I didn’t do much more than the typical tourist stuff…all of it is easily Googled, so I’ll save it but for a few comments…

The audio tour of the fortress is a must-buy at 3€.

The extent to which there has been Muslim influence here is unimaginable. There seem to be more falafel stands than tapas places.

This town is young and fun and gets a strong rating from me.

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August 29, 2006 by zankbennett.

Sevilla!
3 days and 2 nights.
Arrived late in the afternoon, Tuesday. Outside the bus station where I arrived, it was 44 C! So I loaded on the pack and, with the help of the very good Let’s Go map, eventually found my way to the Hotel Athena. It was fairly centrally located…meaning that nearly everything was a long walk away! I left right away to find a good place to watch a Flamenco performance. Found a good one for €10 for the next night. Circled the cathedral at dark. The 3rd biggest in the world. I figured that since I’d seen the other two (in Rome and London) I’d settle for the outside view. It was nearly impossible to navigate the narrow streets at night, even with my newly acquired map. I’ve never seen such a labyrinth of streets since playing video games as a kid. Each turn offered up at least 5 options. Someone will say, go 1 block and turn left. Ok, so which of the 3 lefts did he mean? That’s what it’s like here. It felt pretty good to walk without the map in front of my face by the end, though, scoffing at the patent tourists who hadn’t figured it out yet.

Wed. was consumed with finding someone to give me a Flamenco guitat lesson in this, the Flamenco capital. So, in 115+ degree weather I lit out looking for a music store. One thing, no one here speaks English out of desire. They’d rather you struggle than demonstrate to you how much better their English is than your Spanish. That’s great, it makes learning the language that much easier. So, armed with fists full of sign language, I approached a music store…the guy there was very nice as he told me that two days of Flamenco lessons would be about as useful as wet socks and that no one would even waste the time to sit down in front of me. Then when he was done, he sent me another couple blocks away to the Flamenco Keller. Perfect. Went there. Scheduled a lesson for that night at 5:30 and again this morning at 9 am.

Both lessons went very well, even if the were taught 100% in Spanish. Lito was the instructor’s name and he couldn’t have been nicer. The first day - 1.5 hrs each - was spent focused on the Flamenco technique and the second morning on the progressions and various forms. Great overview, but at the and I can’t say I could play much of anything. The technique is so difficult and fast and there are new forms and permutations of chords that will take some practice to get used to. Time. Such a beautiful art. I fully recommend this to anyone with guitar aspirations or abilities.

  Me with Lito and our cutout dancer.

By wed night I had come down with a full-blown cold from all the A/C and no doubt all the cigarette smoke. Sneezes all night and no going out…
I wandered back to the hotel and stopped into a place for tapas. It was a packed spot that looked like a locals hang-out. I’ll post a picture of their address from their napkin, but this was the best food I’ve eaten in 10 years. Unbelievably good tapas. 13€ for a selection of 3 with an olive plate and a bread basket and 3 beers (sm). This is a have-to visit spot..right off the river, and just south of the cathedral.

Here’s the address.   …the BEST!!!

The Flamence show that night was in a small 10 m square room with pillars and ivy surrounding the room. It was a guitarist, a singer and a dancer. The guitar playing was amazing and the rhythm tapped out by the girl’s dancing feet was dizzying in it’s speed and complexity. She could get really quiet with the tapping but still maintain the furious tempo…must be extremely difficult.

Left Sevilla Thurs midday for Granada. Another bus ride…Lenny will be proud!

 Here’s what I look like, all loaded up and ready to go…

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