#tbt Copenhagen and Malmo, June 2000

I've long since lost any text I wrote about this trip, which was a weekend trip we took for Bryan's 25th birthday.  I think I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Copenhagen has one "must-see" tourist attraction.  For some reason it is this mermaid statue:

The architecture was great, lots of boats on Nyhavn, and almost everyone we saw was Bryan-sized and blonde.

We decided to visit Christiania, a former military barracks turned hippy commune turned tourist attraction.  It was like the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show, except you'd see groups of guided Asian tourists following their leader with a little flag strolling through, passing the people openly selling drugs on "Pusher Lane." Trippy place.

This trip is also special because our Favorite Accident of All Time happened here, what we lovingly refer to as The Huey Lewis Incident of 2000.  Bryan and I went to this little amusement park called Tivoli Gardens, so we could do silly things like this:

We decided to get some ice cream.  I took the safe choice with a chocolate dipped cone, but Bryan decided to get sprinkles on his.  Heads up: Sprinkles in Denmark are really black licorice!  As he was gagging and I was laughing, we spotted this sign, which I thought was so awesome that we snapped this picture.

We didn't look closely to see the date - we were just excited to see that Huey was still touring.  As we wandered off, we noticed a crowd gathering.  Hmm, something must be going on.  Let's check it out.  Then the lights dim.  Then we hear  th-thump, th-thump, th-thump.... you guessed it.  We heard the HEART of rock'n'roll, still beating.  Before we knew it Huey came bounding on stage with the same energy he probably brought in 1982.  We had unwittingly stumbled into a free Huey Lewis concert.  Of course it was great, until he just HAD to bust out his new material. BUZZkill.  A group of Danes behind us started chanting "HIP TO BE SQUARE! HIP TO BE SQUARE!"  But apparently Huey wasn't feeling all that hip or square, as he left them high and dry.  As for us, we went back to the hotel not needing a new drug at all, smiling from ear to ear about our luck.

Our last day we weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves, but we did learn that you could take a ferry boat to Malmo, Sweden.  Why not visit another country when you have the chance?  So we took a boat to Malmo, walked through the town and found ourselves a Pizza Hut (to date the second-most expensive Pizza Hut - and we can safely say this - in the world).  That was really all we had time to do, as we were flying back later that night.  But I got this little pic of the architecture and Bryan being Bryan.

And then we flew back to Ireland, where we lived happily ever after.

#tbt August 27, 2000 Barcelona, Day 2 - Hello, Dali!

Hola again! Having the time of our lives still and celebrating eleven months together today! Last night we went to an area called Port Olimpic for dinner.  Really pretty. Tons of restaurants on the water, and all of them have tables set up outside.  We strolled along the area well lit with a lot of Christmas-type lights, looking at the fresh fish selection - I'm talking octopuses (octopi?) and all sorts of critters, many staring right back at you, eyes and all.  Then we settled on one right in the middle of the strip and had ourselves a feast!  We started off with olives and shrimps that we didn't even have to order (you can tell how often we eat at fancy places) and the traditional Catalan toast with bread rubbed on it (forgot the real term.) I guess the Spanish prepare this themselves, but being an ignorant American has its privileges, because the waiter somehow "knew" we wouldn't know how to.  Bryan ordered the "grandmother's feast."  While he was eating one of the three appetizers that were included in it, we noticed that the couple next to us were eating it between the two of them.  Needless to say my growing boy still kept his status as a member of the Clean Plate Club.  I had the "sarsuela," which is a Catalan seafood stew.  Just about every living sea creature (including lobster) in a beef-flavored broth with the hake pretending to be mashed potatoes. Then I finished off with Catalan creme, almost like creme brulee with a burnt marshmallow flavor.  This is my favorite dessert ever.  The mix of this feast and a pitcher of sangria left us too stuffed to enjoy the surrounding dance clubs, though we got a good feel for them as they opened up on to the water.  Each club had its own resident scantily clad woman dancing on the counter, though I must comment that none looked quite as good as those of us who dared to dance on the counters of Jack Astor's for Sarah's bachelorette party!

Today we got a somewhat late start as the jet lag still has us kicked, but we were out of the room by noon and made our way to the station to head to Figueres for the Dali museum (about a two-hour journey).  The museum itself is as surreal as his paintings, shaped as a rounded theater.  From the outside, right next door is his house, which is pink with his signature eggs balancing along the top and a few gold bodies spotted along.  The museum is filled with a lot of his less famous stuff, including a lot of really cool pen and ink drawings and many sculptures.  Of the more interesting art I found were some paintings that lay on a table with a silver wine bottle on it - the painting itself doesn't look like anything, but when reflected on the bottle, it takes on its intended image.  Absolutely brilliant. There were a couple of other Dali sites within a bus ride but we just didn't have time to catch them.  It gives us a reason to return to Barcelona someday!

The tapas thing came in handy as the Spanish don't seem to like to eat dinner before 10 pm, so I got some garlic mushrooms and Bry got some potatoes with garlic and oil to hold us.  Tonight we're heading toward Poble Espanyol where we'll eat dinner and then catch a flamenco dance show. Tomorrow will be a travel day as we're heading to Rome via Frankfurt.

#tbt Hola from Barcelona - August 26, 2000

Hola, everyone! We got to Madrid last night and were there just about an hour and a half. We didn't have time for a meal, so I thought it would be a good chance to try out the tapas. As I don't speak any Spanish, I got what looked like four meatballs. Then as I sank my teeth into one, I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that bulls' testicles are served as a delicacy, at which point I decided I would no longer order something if I didn't know what it was. They didn't taste that great anyway. So we headed for the platform for our night train that left Madrid at 10 pm and was to arrive Barcelona at 7 am. In a hurried glance I saw Barcelona at platform 15. As Bryan asked "are you sure," I made some sarcastic remark about knowing how to read. When there were about four more minutes before our train departed, some woman spotted the stupid Americans with backpacks on the platform with the arriving train from Barcelona and tipped us off. We hightailed it to platform 19 and got on our train just in time. Bryan was nice enough not to say I told you so.

Our "first class" sleeper car was very small with one bench that I referred to as our "lounge" and two bunk beds. We were still pretty jetlagged from NY, so neither of us got to sleep til pretty late. Luckily they let us check in to our hotel at 8 so we caught a couple more hours of sleep before hitting the streets of Barcelona. What a beautiful day we were blessed with! It was 34 degrees Celsius, which translates to pretty darn nice Fahrenheit; sun shining all day long! We started out walking down Las Ramblas, the street with all the street performers and neat little booths and artists and flowers and just about anything you could hope to find in a city. We then strolled down to the port and took a stroll through an air conditioned centre before hopping on a bus to Parc Guell.

Parc Guell was an amazing sight/site. It is a park designed by the architect Antonio Gaudi (presumably under the influence of hallucinogenics.) It had all sorts of twists and turns and tunnels through rocks and twisted trees. The few buildings on site are tiled with colorful mosaics. If you can imagine a building as curvaceous, then you might get the picture. Then underneath a park lined with these curvaceous mosaic benches is a shaded area with large columns and a small band playing classical music. It is just so neat. I think I found my new favorite playground in the world, at least eye-candy wise. Gaudi's influence is all over the city, and the architecture of most of the buildings displays it. Some of the buildings look like they are carved out of bones. Almost every building you see has rows of windows on the front that are accompanied with intricately designed shudders and a small porch with plants. 

The best part of the trip so far is that we have way over-budgeted for the Spain part, so tonight we are going out for a nice meal on the sea, and then tomorrow we take a train to Figueres to see the Salvador Dali museum and a house that he designed. That is just a day trip, and tomorrow night we will be back in Barcelona and are hitting an 11:30 flamenco dance show. Until then...