Marching in Madrid

Well Madrid is a pretty big city compared to what I've been seeing. It reminds me a lot of London with the architecture and the bustle. We arrived in Madrid and went straight to the hostel. It's supposedly a gay friendly hostel and the decorations look like it. I can't describe it, but the style fits with the gay friendly vibe. No big deal. Plus, it was a great big room that was nice and clean.

After dropping off our stuff, we went and explored the Plaza Mayor. It was amazing how many street performers there were. They were everywhere. And hardly anybody was giving them money (probably because there were so many). We saw artists, musicans playing wine glasses, a demented winny the pooh, a GI Joe, and many more human statues. From the plaza Mayor, we went exploring walking down through the Plaza Sol and towards the resting gardens on the other side of town. There are lots of shops of all different pursuasions and tons of people always milling about. We didn't end up going to the resting gardens, but we went to the botanical gardens instead. They had a very large collection of plants but I must say, my favorite was their grape vines. They have a huge tunnel of vines and up each spoke of the tunnel is a different grape varietal from different places in Spain.

From there, we meandered uptown because I wanted to stop by a wine shop and an olive oil shop. At the wine shop, I tasted one of their simple wines. It wasn't very good. It just wasn't balanced. At the olive oil shop, they had a good selection and I ended up picking one from Andalucia.

After that little bit of shopping, we went in search of this chocolate shop that was supposed to be part chocolate shop, part art gallery. We didn't find it, but we did find a patisserie in about the same spot. So we had a light dinner of quiche and pastry there before returning to the hostel.

In the morning, we tried to go the Palacio Real but it was closed for the day, so we went go see a monestary. While waiting to get into the monestary, a political caravan came and stopped right in front of us and everybody went into the building beside the monestary. And we were wondering why there were snipers on the roof across the building :-). It might also be why the palace was closed. Don't know though.

In the monestary, they don't just let you wander. It's a forced guided tour and they were only running in Spannish, so we didn't really know what they were saying. But, they had a lot of really good looking art. Especially the tapestries, those were fantastic, if faded as all tapestries are.

From the monestary, we had lunch. Matilda wanted to get some spicy food and she found a Thai place so we just went in there. It fixed the craving. After that, we went to the Prado for the afternoon. They had a student rate but you have to be under 25. damn! The museum itself was pretty big but I was able to get through all of it in the time we had there. Of course I wasn't looking in detail at everything, I was basically using the audio guide and their map and making sure I hit the audio for all the "masterpieces". The audio was really very useful in order to get the context for so many of the paintings. For example, in a royal family portrait, the painter put the queen in the center of the frame and the king off to the side a little, probably because the queen was known to be the one really in control. I like understanding the historical context of things. If you don't have that, it's just another pretty picture. I also don't understand why all these Spanish galleries and museums don't let you take pictures. I'd expect not being allowed to use a flash because it'll damage the works, but almost everywhere, you can't even take a normal picture. It was very dissapointing.

From the Prado, we went back to the hostel and I went exploring while Matilda rested. I ended up mostly around Grand Via, the Times Square of Madrid. But it's not quite Times Square. Times Square doesn't have hookers. I was walking down one of the streets and noticed a very tall bottle blond woman wearing a pair of super tight and short shorts. I remember thinking, that's weird. They I saw her try and proposition a guy walking by. After that, I noticed that there were tons of hookers. It was a whole hooker line right down the promenade, one per tree. Definitely not Times Square.

One of my goals exploring was that I wanted to find some clothes for a relatively cheap price that I could wear on the trip home and stay bedbug free. I went into a bunch of shops but some were too expensive and some just had crap. Eventually, I ended up at one of the El Corte Ingles stores. They're like Wal Mart, but more so. They do everything from groceries, to high end perfums to travel agency. I kind of felt bad going there, but they had something I was willing to buy so.... Funny thing though, I was too small for the Men's floor. I was there looking at pants and one of the sales women comes up to me, wraps a tape measure around my waist and says I'm too skinny. I have to go to the young adult floor. And here I was thinking that Europeans were small.

For dinner, we went to a place up the street the guidebook listed for some tapas. The book explicitly mentioned some fried eggplant with a honey dip that sounded interesting. And it was. It was eggplant fries dipped into a very dark honey that was almost mollases. It might actually have been mollases. It worked pretty well. The rest of the stuff we had wasn't anyting to write home about, although their wine selection was good.

In the morning, we tried the palace again. We ended up having to wait in line for almost an hour before they actually decided to open the doors, but then we got to go in. There were three areas, the armory, the pharmacy and the series of rooms. It was pretty packed with school groups and other but it was a good thing to see. The pharmacy was cool because they had racks and racks of glass or ceramic jars that used to be filled with all sorts of exotic plant matter which was brought from around the world to cure ailments. As for the rooms themselves, they were just as obscenely lavish as any other palace I've seen. They even had a Stratavarius room with 5 instruments made by the master and another room designed and built by a porcelain workshop so that the walls were covered solid in intricate porcelain.

After the palace, we walked towards Sol plaza and the market. We stopped for a quick lunch at a fake Greek place with terrible food. Oh well. At the market, I picked up a bunch of cheese and tried some hot chocolate and churros. It was fantastically rich hot chocolate and the churros aren't suggared. They're purely fried dough for dipping. Yum.

In the afternoon, we went to the modern art museum. Like all modern art museums, there was a bunch of stuff that was really stupid. Like a blank canvas, or a single piece of metal. Whatever. I found it interesting when I latched onto a couple of french student groups that were touring around. Their teacher was telling them about the paintings so I listened in. This not only gave some context on some of the paintings - like Picasso's Guerria which was drawn at the end of the Spanish Civil war to show how disgusting war is - but also helped me practice my French. Furthermore, it was useful to have somebody showing you where all the crap is in the Dali paintings! Some of those guys were just nuts. Or high. Or both. Who knows.

For dinner, I went to a vegetarian restaurant that had a great almond soup and some greak leek and carrot tarts. A good last meal in Spain and on this trip.

Shaking For Some Sherry

We've spent the last couple of days in and around Seville. We got in yesterday around 2:30 on the train from Granada and made our way to the hostel. After getting settled in, had some lunch/dinner, and went exploring. It took a while, but we managed to do a little bit of zigging and a little bit of zagging to get to the cathedral, Alcabaz and Plaza Nueva. We we got close, all of a sudden, there were tons of people and we could hear drums not to far away. Obviously, we had to investigate. Turns out that it was a parade of drummers marching along the streets. They eventually gathered in the square in front of one of the churches to meet up with a Saint's idol and then march around some more. I'm not sure which saint's festival this was for, but it was definitely fun to watch and be a part of the crowd.

We explored the area a little more and unfortunately, both the cathedral and Alcabaz were closed for the night, so no luck there. But, there was plenty of opportunity to get some great pictures as the sun set. Also, in Plaza Nueva, there were a bunch of different street performers. One guy had two puppets on his back, a guy and a girl, in a dancing pose. He'd get on all fours (hidden by the woman's skirt) and start prancing around in circles to the music making it look like the two puppets were dancing together. It was pretty neat. There was also a clown working the crowd. It's amazing how much of a difference a clown act can be when it's in a different language. I suppose there are some acts (like the one I saw at Cirque de Solei) that don't use words and thus have no language barrier, but when a good portion of the act is working the crowd, it just doesn't have the same effect if you can't understand anything being said.

We wandered around a little more and then decided to turn in for the evening.

The next day we split up. I really wanted to go down to Jerez de le Frontera to see the Sherry bodegas, while Matilda wanted a more relaxing day so she stayed in Seville. On the way to Jerez, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get into any of the bodegas. I had looked online the night before and only found one that might potentially be open on Sunday in the offseason. I decided to risk it even though going would mean I wouldn't be able to see any of the sights in Seville since they'd be closed by the time I got back. I figured, I've seen a bunch of churches and ruins already, but Sherry's a special kind of wine and I really wanted to see that. I guess this means I'll have to come back to Seville at some point and see everything :-)

Anyway, I knew the first tour of the bodega was at noon, so I took the 10am train down there. The train was quite empty. Not too many people around that early on a Sunday. Even the bakeries were closed, so my breakfast was quite limited. The ride itself was interesting because of how desolate the area is. You could tell that the ground is farmed, but there's hardly any greenery anywhere even though it was 20 degrees outside. I guess all the water's gone at this time of year. Makes me understand why they say 80% of Spain could become desert in the next 50 years with global warming.

In Jerez, I had an hour to get to the bodega. It only took 10 minutes so I had some time to look around at the Alcabaz. I couldn't go in because they were doing some restoration on it, but I could walk around the outside. On one end, under the park of orange trees, was a gigantic flea market. Ok, let's be honest, junk market. It was full of a lot of crap!

I was able to get a tour of the Gonzales-Byass bodega, one of the biggest in town and it was even in English! There were 5 of us on the tour. Two older couples, one from Sweden and one from Britain, and me. We got to see the distilleries where the make their Sherry brandy, as well as all the Soleras for the wine. For those who don't know, Sherry's done a little differently from other wines. First, it's fortified a little bit. Second, the wine is aged in a stack of barrels called a solera. The barrels actually have to be American oak as of about 75 years ago. In the solera, you have a different layer for each year that you're going to age the sherry. Each year, you draw off a third of all the bottom barrels. Then you replenish it by taking a third from the barrels above. You keep doing this until you get to the top of the pile. At the top, you put in the new wine from this year's harvest. This process means that the wine will be very consistent year by year, which is good for marketability and if you have a very finicky environment. I understand that the grapes grow in that area because the soil is very chalky and holds a lot of water. In the winter, they get a lot of rain and the ground holds that water all through the dry summer. This would seem to me a fairly reliable climate, so I wonder why they felt they had to start this kind of system. They even do the Sherry brandy like this.

From the tour itself, I guess the most interesting thing (apart from the tasting of course) was the fact that their guestbook is created by having people sign barrels. In this case, you have to be famous to be asked to sign a barrel, but they've definitely played it up and gotten a lot of people from 6 generations of Spanish royalty, to Winston Churchill to Picasso.

At the tasting, we got to try a sweeter one and their famous dry Fino. Fino is made with a lower alcohol content and the barrels aren't filled to capacity, so that a flor of yeast can grow inside the barrel and add flavour to the wine. Only at the end is it fortified. I found these two wines were too extreme. The nuttiness in Sherry doesn't work that well when it's dry for me. It needs a little bit of sweetness to balance. In the shop, I was able to try some more and found an off dry Amontillado made from partly Pedro Ximenez and partly Palomino grapes that suits my taste. It also has a very robust flavour profile that develops from fruity on the attack and evolves into a nice nuttiness by the finish. I also bought some brandy and sherry vinegar to round out the options to take home.

After the Bodega tour, there wasn't much to do since everything was closed, so I hung out in a bar with some tapas and wine before catching the train back to Seville for the evening. This evening was similar to last where I just wandered around town taking pictures and then we had a small dinner of tapas that was ok. Nothing too special.

Oh Alhambra!

We've just left Granada and are on our way to Seville for a couple of days. Granada was a beautiful city and we had a great time, largely because of the generocity of Wendy and Hicham, who we stayed with. They have a pretty special setup where they're living in a flat in Spain for the winter, while Wendy's working remotely from the states and Hicham is putting together a mountain biking guide of the area. Their flat's just south of the center of town and the town is small enough that it's really easy to get everywhere on foot. Then, if you want to be outdoors, it's quick and easy to get out of town in a few minutes and just a little farther away, you hit the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The original ones :-)

We arrived in Granada early in the morning because we had taken the overnight train from Valencia. That train left at 1am and we got to Granada at 8:30. The way the trains work in Spain, you can't really get directly from Valencia and Catalonia to Andalucia. You have to go back almost all the way to Madrid. This night train is the one exception as far as I can tell. Each night one train leaves Granada and another leaves Barcelona. It worked pretty well except that it was an old coach and there were some bugs that bit Matilda and she had a serious allergic reaction. This meant we had to stop into the hospital in Granada and they just gave her some steriods to handle the reaction. Seems like it's working, but not fun. I sure as hell hope the bugs were some crazy Spanish bug and not bedbugs, but just in case, when I get back home, everything's being sealed up and put directly into the washing machine while I hop in the shower. I do not want to risk those little bastards!

Aside from that major setback, Grenada was a lot of fun. We went exploring with Hicham at first. He took us up by the Alhambra first and gave us a quick overview of town and then we split off. The Alhambra is a big castle that overlooks the town. It was originally built by the Moors, but when the Christians came in, they built their castle partly on top of the old Moorish one. It's the most famous site in Granada.

Anyway, after we split off from Hicham, we were hungry, so we had lunch at a place downtown with a daily menu for 9 euros and it was excellent. For an appetizer, we had a chicken soup with crumbled eggs and mint. Then for the main, I had some salmon with a cream sauce and Matilda had chicken with a creamy pepper sauce. Very well done. For desert, I had a flan (the first that wasn't from a box!) and Matilda had some pineapple.

After lunch, we wandered through the Albacin, the old Moorish quarter. It's up a hill with a ton of windy, squirrelly streets. At the top of a hill, there's a church and a ton of people were just hanging out sitting on the wall, playing guitar etc with a great view of the Alhambra. It's a fun little neighbourhood. After than, we went back to the center of town and explored all the shops and then made our way back to the flat.

For dinner, we started with some tapas and wine at the flat. Then we took Wendy and Hicham out to a traditional Andalucian restaurant. It was fantastic. We shared an appetizer of chocolate and oxtail croquettes, then for the main, Wendy had wild boar, Hicham had oxtail and Matilda and I had some seared Iberian pork. All of it was perfectly done and super tasty. We had a sampler of deserts to try before we finished. They were all incredibly rich and to be honest, I'm not sure what my favourite was. There was a fudgey chocolate thing doused in rum, and a coconut flan that were definitely memorable. This being Spain, we left the restaurant at 12:30am and it was still jammed.

The next morning we went to check out an English langugage bookshop, but it was too expensive to justify buying anything. Then, we were on our way to a gourmet food shop that's known for doing olive oil tastings among other things. Unfortunately, this is when we decided it would be a good idea to take Matilda to the hospital because the allergic reaction wasn't going down. We were there for a while and Wendy came to help since she could translate, and well, because she's super nice.

We also had a reservation to go into the palace of the Alhambra at 3:30, but the hospital nixed that. As soon as we could we made our way up the hill, but they refused to let us in at a later time because the papers from the hospital didn't say when we left, only when we got there. So we couldn't prove that we had to miss our time because of the hospital. Complete crap. They just didn't want to deal with it, but there wasn't much time before they were closing everything else up there so it wasn't worth fighting. So, we just got to enjoy the Genrelife, which was where they did the agriculture for the fort. It was pretty spectacular since it's all flower gardens now and completely gorgeous. Especially at sunset.

After they booted us out, we went back to the flat. The plan was to do a tapas crawl. Granada has kept this great tradition where if you order a drink, you get a free tapas. Well to start off, we just had some tapas at the flat. Wendy made a lentil salad with wild thyme, bay and green olives, as well as a Moroccan cauliflower dish. On top of that Wendy got some local cheese and hams. In Andalusia, they don't have many different kinds of cheese, just "not aged, partially aged, and aged", but they do it well. They were all hardish cheeses kind of like a Manchego. As for the hams, well, that was an experience. She brought back some of the gold star andalucian ham called Jamon Iberia Bellota. The pig had to have eaten acorns all of its life, even for finishing and then the ham had to age 36 months. It's super expensive (~700 euros for a full ham), but it is absolutely incredible. The marbling is mixed well throughout the meat and when sliced, the meat almost glistens with a light layer of pork fat covering the maroon meat. The flavour is hard to describe but it's sweet and salty and sumptuous all put together. Fantatistic!

After tapas at the flat, we went out in search of some restuarants for a little more tapas. There was enough at the flat that we weren't too hungry. This was about 10-10:30, so just late enough to start reasonably doing dinner. We started off near the center of town at a place with a giant bronze bull in the middle of a relatively quiet courtyard. We sat around a barrel and ordered small beers and got tapas of bread and an herbed iberian ham. Just for context, the beers cost 1.20 euros and you get a free tapas. I like it. After that, we decided to go to Sacramonte. It was a long walk since it's on the other side of Albacin, but that's where all the Flamenco is and since it was Friday night, we figured it would be pretty lively. Turns out that it wasn't. It was very quiet up there, but we got to see the neighbourhood, which was quite interesting. The houses are built right into the hill to the point that there's actually some caves which are now museums, but they used to be used by the Moors way back when. On the way to Sacramonte, we also went by this street which was pretty hilarious. At one point it's so narrow, we saw a cab go through and he had to fold in is mirrors. At the end of the street is a sight that reads "Passage Physically Impossible 1.6m". We think it's to stop the tourists from getting stuck down the street :-)

We eventually walked back to the center of town and stopped in at second place. It was after midnight at this point. We had another round of drinks to finish off the evening and then went back to the flat.

We didn't see Wendy or Hicham in the morning since they had a 9am group ride, but it was definitely a fun and refreshing couple of days and great to see them again.

Visiting Valencia

Arriving in Valencia, we made our way to the hostel to drop our stuff off. The place was pretty incredible. Each room had a theme and was decorated to fit that theme. I think somebody wanted to have some fun and the hostel provided a good canvas. Our room was a safari theme. The beds had leopard print sheets, there were bug nets hanging from the ceiling, african masks on the walls and the walls were painted a rich earth brown color. Quite fun :-)

After setting in, we went in search of food. The guy at the hostel suggested a place around the corner and man, did it turn out to be a good choice. It was a cidery where they make their own cider and serve tapas. But their tapas was pretty damn incredible. Especially their cured meats. We ended up going there for two of the nights we were in Valencia and in that time, we tried cured wild boar and cured venison. yum. We also had their grilled calamari which was a foot long squid, grilled perfectly and topped with a drissle of good olive oil, balsamic reduction and some parsely. Simple and declicious. We also tried their meatballs, some cheeses and grilled mushroom topped with sea salt. Everything was very good. Their cider, they serve in a fun way. They hold the bottle high above their head and the glass at their toes and then pour. This gives the cider a good head.

In the morning, we started by going to the market. Every town has at least one mega food market with all sorts of goodies. I tried to find Alepo peppers for Catherine, but I don't think they had it. They had no idea what I was talking about. In the end, I ended up with what I think was a mild paprika for using in paella. Not to sure since I haven't tried it :-). I also found some saffron and I got a big cannister of it because it was so cheap. Finally, we picked up some tasty fruit.

After the market, we picked up our train tickets to Granada and then hit some of the tourist sights. First stop was the Cathedral, whose relics include a saint's forearm all shriveld up and the supposed Holy Grail. Here I was thinking that Arthur had it or something, but no, apparently it's in Valencia.

Next stop was lunch. We found a place mentioned in the guidebook that offered a vegetarian menu of the day for under 10 euros. It was a four course tasty menu starting with a soup, then a cold quinoa salad with veggies and mint, then an asparagus custard tart with a side salad. The tart was interesting because it had enough hold, but I wonder if the asparagus was used partially as an emultion tool to lower the amounts of eggs needed. Dessert was a tasty banana custard topped with creme.

After lunch, we went to the botanical garden, which was overrun by ferral cats and painters. They were everywhere. Ok, the painters were art students from the university and doing a good job as far as I could tell. The cats on the other hand were almost a plague. They were so numerous, you felt that if you turned around, one would drop for a tree and surprise you. The garden itself was full of palms and mostly a lot of greenage from tropical climates. Not too many flowers. I did find some amazing rosemary shrubs that had almost a sweetness to them. Not as woody as normal. I was sorely tempted to take a cutting back home. Finally, to end the sightseeing, we went to the fine arts museum.

The next day, was a pretty long day since our train to Granada wasn't leaving until 1am. We started by treking out to the City History Musem which follows the history of Valencia from it's founding as a Roman colony to modern day. It's really a good museum! They tell the story clearly, have lots of english content and move you through time. They even have a series of these videos where actors are pretending to be people from the city at various points in time. For example, there's one where there's a silk merchant complaining about some new taxes. It's a very polished and well done museum.

After that, we took the metro back to the center of town and walked along the old river bed to the new Arts and Science area. The old river bed is a park that used to be the river that flowed by town, but in the 60's, they diverted it because it flooded and they didn't want that happening again. Now it's full of soccer fields (some dirt, some turf), trails, playgrounds, a ball diamond, etc. It was blazing hot in the sun walking around there, but it worked. The Arts and Science place is a new set of buildings designed by some crazy Spannish architect. The same guy who's building the new subway stop at ground zero. They're not done yet, but there's a science center, an art gallery, a gigantic aquarium and a couple of other buildings. They're fantastic pieces of enginerring and are a continuouation of what we'd seen of the rest of the city. Namely a lot of construction. It was everywhere. I couldn't beleive it.

After walking by the Arts and Science center, we kept walking towards the beach. We had lunch at a crappy restaurant that served over priced cafeteria food, and then went on the beech. The water was surprisingly cold, so there was no point in swimming. So we just sat down and read/relaxed for a while. Then, we went to a cafe for some tea and desert and to watch the sunset. After sunset, we explored more along the beach and found this awesome exercise trail. You know how normally those trails are just some wooden beams and bars, well this was like fancy exercise equipment without the computers or resistance and made out of metal like a playground. There was an eliptical machine, one of those gazelles, a hipflexor lift, some arm wheels. Kind of intriguing.

After that, we made our way back to downtown and had dinner at a vegetarian place that served some spectacular salads. I had a seaweed salad that definitely hit the spot. Finally, we hung out at the hostel for a few hours until it was time to go catch the midnight train.

Barcelona Baby

I think I'm going to do less blogging from here on because there's just less time. Right now, I'm on the train from Barcelona to Valencia to spend a couple of days there before going on to Granada. The last few days in Barcelona were really enjoyable. I had the first half day to myself before Matilda arrived. I was orginally thinking of taking Scott's advice and stopping in Girona on my way down, unfortunately, the trains only ran twice a day from Girona to Barcelona so there wasn't a practical way to spend a couple of hours there.

So, I arrived in Barcelona and made my way over to the hostel. In this case, we had to call the folks up to get the keys and open the apartment up. The hostel was really a set of apartments. It was an entire floor of a flat, with 6 rooms, two kitchens, two baths and two common areas. it was really quite quiet during our stay.

After dropping off my stuff, I went to explore Las Ramblas. At the bottom of the main street, there's a monument to Christopher Columbus. It was the site of a greenpeace protest that day trying to get people to write to the Spanish prime minister in order to get him to do his part of climate change in the upcomming Copenhagen talks. One of the protesters talked to me and gave me the letter they wanted people to send in. It was really pretty neat.

On Las Ramblas, there were a lot of human statues plying their trade. Well, sort of. Most of them weren't actually trying to stay still for most of the time and were actively messing with the crowd. Though some of their costumes were definitely creative, I feel that if you're going to dress up like a statue, you should at least act like one for part of the time. Plus, staying still like that is much harder. Ah well. To each their own.

Further up Las Ramblas was an incredible open air market. They had everything from mangos to nuts, to chocolates to seafood to rabbit. It was fantastic. I spent a good amount of time salivating and finally came up with a plan for dinner. Since we had the kitchenette, I figured we should take advantage of it. So, I got some potatoes, leeks, boletes (like mushrooms, but woodier) and some anchovies. The plan was to grill the anchovies and serve that over the potatoes, leeks and boletes, which would be brought together with a white wine sauce.

After dropping off the stuff at the hostel, I went to pick Matilda up at the train station. He train got in late (quarter to 10), but she hadn't eaten yet so it was perfect to whip up dinner.

The next day, was historically themed. We started off by going down to Las Ramblas and then making our way over to the Cathedral. It was very similar to the other gothic cathedrals I've seen other places throughout Europe. From there, we went to the Placa del Rei and went in to the city history museum. The museum talks about Barcelona's orgin as a Roman port and goes underground to show the old roman ruins. Unfortunately, they were closing early for some reason, so they really rushed us through the museum. For lunch, we had some sandwiches at a great place nearby. Cheap and tasty.

After that, we went to the Picaso museum. This museum was interesting because it went through his early work and didn't focus so much on the stuff he's famous for. However, you can definitely see the progression from his early stuff when he was doing real portraits, etc, until slowly, his painting got more and more insane. It was kind of interesting that way. Also, they had a temporary exhibit looking at some of picasso's sketches that were based on the old japanese porno art. The whole thing was kind of screwy especially when body parts aren't anywhere near the right location.

For dinner we went to a place recommended by the guidbook as being one of the best places to get paella in Catalonia. I wonder how much it's hyped up because their counter at the front was covered in guidebooks with bookmarks in them (presumably marking the restaurant). The seafood paella we had was excellent and I think what I've done wrong in my paellas is that I haven't used a strong enough seafood broth and I havne't had enough salt. This one tasted like the sea!

The next day was a Gaudi day. We started at his famous apartment building that he built in 1918. According to the guidebook, some people didn't want the apartments because they didn't know if their furniture would fit. Going on the inside, I find that silly. The curves were very gradual and it wouldn't have been that big a deal. The roof was really cool too with all sorts of crazy spires.

After that, we walked down the street to Sangria Familia, or the unfinished gaudi church. After a bit all we had to do was follow the sound of the drums. It turned out that at the base of the church, there were a couple of groups congregated in the park. The first was a high school drumming band. The second was a miniature Star Wars convention. Spannish Rebel Squadron #501 was fulling decked out from kids in Ewok suits to a bunch of Storm Troopers to a couple of princess Leias. Not was I was expecting to see in Spain, that's for sure.

As for the church itself, it's pretty impressive with all the details and masonry work they've done. It really is like an old church considering how long it's taking to build. They think it'll be done by 2030, making it well over 100 years for construction. That's like all the medieval churches way back when. Nothing takes that long to build anymore. I did like a lot of the elements of it, especially how the columns are designed to look like trees, branching near the top to hold the ceiling. It has a very surreal look to it that's enticing.

Finally, we finished the day by going up the the Gaudi Park, which is the outdoor landscaped park that Gaudi designed. It was perhaps my favorite of the three because it combined the natural trees with a lot of organic rock sculptures intertwined everywere. It just worked so well and is a very useable space. Plus, it gave a great view of the city :-)

Dinner was in again, using up the rest of the leeks, bollets and potatoes and then adding to that some flat iron beefsteaks we got from the grocery store and bringing everything together with red wine. The only steaks we could find were really thin, so they were a little tough, but whatever. It was tasty.

In the morning, we were heading out, so first we went to the train station to put our bags in the left luggage. From there, we made our way up to the Olympic venues. They're all up on the hill to the SW of the city center, kind of off on their own. You climb up the hill (with the help of a ton of outdoor escalators) and then you can see the main Olympic stadium, the aquatics center, the indoor sports area, the baseball diamond and more. The baseball diamond is funny because there's only about 100 seats now. I suspect it's hardly ever used. The Olympic stadium was impressive in how small it was. It looked like they had just done a winter X-games or something because they were cleaning up a gigantic snow ramp even though it's about 20 degrees outside. Also, the torch which they like by arrow was ridiculously small! I do remember that being one of the more memorable lighting ceremonies.

From the sport areas, we went to the Olympic village where the atheletes stayed. To be honest it doesn't look like good housing, so I feel bad for the folks who live there now. However, the area looks like it's been built up recently. It feels like the downtown of a lot of modern North American cities with big streets, lots of patterned concrete and restaurants. It goes right down to the beach and is actually quite nice on the water.

After that, we made our way back to the train station to catch the train to Valencia, which we're pulling into now.

Farewell France

Well it was my last day in France. I'm going to miss being able to talk to the locals. Even though my French isn't perfect and after a sentence, they know I'm an english speaker, it sure helps being able to understand people quickly and to talk reasonably well. I definitely need to come back and spend some serious time here.

The day started fine. I woke up in the disgusting hostel and had breakfast. I wasn't rushed because I found out about an english bookshop in Avignon that opened at 9:30 and I wanted to buy some books because I'm going through them too early. Also, I wanted to buy that bottle of wine I tasted earlier in the week from Croziers Hermitage. That shop opened at 10. So, at 9:30, I was at the bookshop. It was a quaint little place run by an old English gnome. All sorts of used books that have been collected for a while. I found two books and made my way to the wine shop.

The wine shop wasn't opened at 10, so I waited around for a few minutes and the owner eventually showed up to open the place. This was the shop where you could pay by the taste and try a bunch of different wines. I talked to the owner about the shop and apparently it's quite new. They just celebrated their first anniversary and definitely cater to the tourist crowd seeing as how they're right on the Place D'Horloge. They had a guestbook and he was saying that they counted it recently and have had people from 21 different countries come into the shop from Tawain to Australia to South Africa to Canada. I added my name.

Next stop was the train station. I had to return the bike to Lunel and the plan was to take the train there and drop it off. Unfortunately, I missed the train by 10 minutes (I never did check the schedule) and would have to wait until 1:30 for the next train that would allow bikes. So, I had some time to burn. I went to the post office to ship all my bike gear back home. I wanted to make room for wine and goodies in my pack, and I didn't need the bike gear. Unfortunately it wasn't cheap. I tried sending it the cheapest possible, but it's still going to get to Pittsburgh by Nov 10 and cost me 40 euros. I suspect there's some cheaper way that's not through the post office, but I definitely wasn't going to figure that one out.

Lunch was a tomato and goat cheese crepe, but they ran out of goat cheese so it got supplemented with some slightly stinky cow cheese. Delicious. And for desert, I went to the patisserie and bought some macarooons. Real french macaroons, which are basically two merengue cookies sandwiching some cream. They were damn good.

Finally, it was time to catch the train. I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to put my bike, so I put it in a car that had some open space if you fold up all the chairs. It was designed for wheelchairs. It worked, but I found out when I got off that one of the other cars actually had hooks to hang the bikes from. Go figure.

Dropping off the bike wasn't to eventful. They seem pretty impressed by how far I went and in particular how mountainous the terrain was. I was kind of surprised because I know that shop caters to avid cyclists. They advertise tours for things like climbing Mount Ventoux. Incidentally, Mount Ventoux woudn't have been possible on this trip even if I wanted to do it. Apparently it's a 6km, really tough climb and I think the mountain is 1600m high. It's what you'd expect considering it's the famous one from the Tour de France. However, this week it received it's first snow of the year. Not easy on a bike.

After dropping off the bike, I took the train to Montpellier and went to my hotel. The hostel was booked full, so the cheapest I could find that was close to the train station was a 15min walk and turned out to be a pretty facy place. It was 50 euros for the night, but I had my own little apartment complete with kitchenette and itty bitty dish washer. The dish washer was the size of a drawer. It was kind of hilarious actually. Unfortunately, I didn't really get to take advantage of it because I wanted my last dinner in france to be a little fancier and my train in the morning left at 7:30am. Also, I would have written this last night except that when plugging in my phone, I somehow tripped the circuit breaker and it was late enough that I lost power for the entire night. Good thing I brought a headlamp :-) I hope my phone charger and laptop charger still work, otherwise I'll have problems.

Before dinner, I went exploring Montpellier. It's actually a lot more modern than I thought on my first time through. My first time through, I was staying in the old part of town, but this time, walking around a little more, I was impressed by how americanized it was. There'a huge shopping mall right off the main boulevard and looks exactly like ones in the states unfortunately. I even saw some American chains like Clair's accessories. That made me laugh. Also, looking closer at the sandwich shops, I realized there's a sandwich "Formule Americaine". It's a baguette and inside is steack (yes, spelled that way) and french fries. That's not American! It's Yinzer! But somehow, it's over here and because it's the cheapest thing on the menu, quite popular with the young folks. Arrggg.

I had dinner at a busy cafe/restaurant. I didn't notice that the restaurant was upstairs, so I ended up sitting in the bar area and it took me forever to figure out that I had to ask for a restaurant menu to get some food. Eventually, I got a tasty, wafer thin crust pizza with chicken, emmantal, olives, garlic and oregano. Worked for me.

Final Day of Biking

Well that was the best Creme Brulee I've ever had in my life. I suspect it was because of the hint of lavender and mint in the creme and the fact that it was perfectly made. I found this delicious concoction in a restaurant, Chez Francois, in Avignon. The restaurant was off the beaten path, there beign no other restuarants on the street and it caught my eye because of it's 23 euro 3 course menu price. I think the chef/owner just recently started the place because it was quite empty when I got there, to the point that the chef even came out to talk to me in English for a little bit. Then when people did show up, I got the impression they were friends or family since they saying how great each of the rooms looked. For dinner, it started with a lentil salad topped with some heavily smoked pork belly. Then the main was a chestnut sausage with grilled apples and a saurkraut like thing on the side except that there were bits of ham it in and it was warm. On the side was a round of mash potatoes that even catherine would like. They were drenched in a fantastic olive oil :-)

Anyway, to back up. My day started in Gigondas where I got breakfast by going to the local store and getting a pear and a chocolate croissant. Then, I hopped on my bike and went down to Carpentras. This meant going back through Vaquerays and Beaumes de Venise, which I was more than happy to do. Carpentras is a decent sized town and like all the others, it's centeral area is basically pedestrian only with a church in the middle. The town's known for it's Truffle market because this is where most of the black truffles that come out of France get distributed to chefs or distributors from around the world. Of course it's not truffle season for another month or so, so there was less to see. However, I did pick up things for lunch later on. First stop was a fromagerie and bought a little itty bitty wheel of cheese for lunch. It was about 5cm in diameter, was AOC Picondon. I've seen these kinds of things all over the place, and and this one was goats milk. It cost 3.50 euros, so wasn't super cheap, but it was fantastic. Plus it taught me something when I ate it. It was a slightly stinky cheese, but the moldiness to it was mild enough that it didn't turn me off and allowed me to apprciate the great depth of flavour. I expect I could probably teach myself to like the blue cheeses if I slowly work my way up from something like this, just so long as I don't trigger the "eck, it's mold" taste.

By the way, I ate this cheese with a loaf of whole weat bread. Ok, not a whole loaf, but a good 3/4 of it :-) I'm just trying to be french. It's fun that the first thing french folks will do in the morning is go to the local bakery and get the bread for the day. I'm not just talking about a single loaf either. I've seen people walking with 5 baguettes in the hands. Or this morning at the hostel, one of the Moms came back with a box full of bread for the family. I think it was 3 loaves and 4 or 5 baguettes. Fun stuff.

After Carpentras, I went south. At the end of the day, I was shooting for Avignon, but the road from Carpentras to Avignon is one of the busier ones and my guide book said that there were a couple of interesting towns further south, so hey, why not. In total, my day ended up being around 50-60 km. I've really stopped keeping good track since my bike computer died and the GPS hogs the batteries. Anyway, further south is Pernes-Les-Fontaines; a town with tons of water fountains sprinkled throughout. Of course, the water had been turned off by this point, so I poked around and continued on to Ile-Sur-Sorges. This town is on an island in the middle of the Sorges river and there are a ton of picturesque, moss covered waterwheels turning away with the fast flowing river. The high school was out for lunch so there were a lot of young kids around while I ate lunch there in the sun in front of a water wheel.

After Ile-Sur-Sorges, it was time to head back to Avignon. The route was fairly built up and included a big climb up to Chateauneuf-de-Gagnoron. Cut little town, but I was quite ready to go back down the other side. I really like hills a lot better when I'm not lugging up an extra 40 pounds of stuff on my bike :-). Getting close to Avignon, the road sort of dumped me onto a bike trail. Before this, there had been plenty of bike paths, even on the 2 lane roads between towns (think of a bike lane on King Rd for those in RH or a lane on Fox Chapel Road for those in Pittsburgh), but I hadn't seen any bike paths per say. Well I found one. The weird thing is that my GPS actually knew about it and was trying to route me on it. It's the first time the GPS surprised me in a good way. I"ve basically taken to using it as a map and a reference of where I am, but not for directions.

Into Avignon, I went to the other side and across the bridge to the campground. Online, it said the hostel there was full, but I knew they had campsites, so I figured that I'd finally get to use my hammock, on the last day of biking. Well turns out that didn't quite happen. The guy at the desk said there weren't any sites with trees that would work for that, so I;d have to use the hostel. Of course, at least the hostel wasn't full like I thought. I did poke around the campsites and found a couple that actually would've worked. I don't know what he was smoking but whatever. I think the hammock really is best used if your hiking up in the wilderness, and not so much if your trying to stay at the same place as motor homes :-)

Well, that's it for the biking. Tomorrow I return the bike and head to Montepellier for my last day in France. I could definitely come back here. Hell I could easily see myself living here for a year. It's just so gorgeos, with a great lifestyle and great food.

Night.

Galavanting to Gigondas

I've decided not to head up the Rhone River. Mostly because I couldn't find cheap lodging up there since all the campsites are closed. Also, the wineries start to peter out. However, I did find a hostel in Gigondas, right in the middle of wine country and well known in it's own right. So I figured, perfect.

The ride to Gigondas was uneventful if horribly horribly uncomfortable. I guess the rain that came in yesterday brought in a cold front because it's annoyingly cold now. And dreary. I can't say that the ride was fun at that point. I figured that I'd stop into Vaqueray first since it's only 3km away from Gigondas and is also known as a different unique region. That's right, you're supposed to get significantly different wine 3km away. Crazy isn't it? Especially when most of the vinyards for the towns are all int he same flat space, although Gigondas does work it's way up the hill a little.

Anyway, I went to one of the winemakers in Vaqueray to try their wares. Most of them were basically closed, but I got somebody to open the door for me. It was this nice lady although I could tell she was thinking "stupid kid tourist wants free samples". Anyway, it wasn't worth the stop. All their wine was horrible. So, on to Gigondas to drop off my gear and get some lunch.

I wasn't in too good a shape when I got there because I was cold and it was starting to rain, but I got to drop off my stuff in the virtually empty hostel and change into some warmer clothes. Turns out that this hostel exists because right behind Gigondas is a small mountain range called the Dentelles de Montmirail, which has some great hiking and climbing. So the hostel caters to the eco-toursists. It's even a common stop for bike tours.

I went up to the town for lunch, which of course was pretty empty. The only people there were the folks working in the local vineyards, so I found a small place. There was one other lunch customer who knew the proprietress pretty well it seemed. They were chatting all lunch. Between the chatting, I managed to order a tarte (quiche) of broccoli and smoked salmon with a glass of wine and finished with some tea. The tea was the best part. I was finally able to chase away the chill I had all morning.

After lunch, I wanted to do a tour up through the hills so I headed up. The paved road stopped and it turned into some mountain biking through the vineyards that were clinging to the hills. I'd almost say that this was the most scenic part I've seen so far. It took me a while to figure out since I haven't really done much before, but it was fun. Took a little while though. Although part of that was that I was stopping every 50m to take a picture :-)



On the other side of the ridge, I found some paved roads and made my way down to Baumes-de-Venise where I stopped at a couple of wine caves. I found out that most of the vines up in the hills were Muscat and they make an excellent wine. I ended up buying a small bottle of the Muscat, mostly because it would remind me of the incredible ride. I also found a Plan-de-Dieu that could use some aging, but it was a nice subtle complex flavour and for 8 euros was a steal.

Finally, I made my way back to the hostel and found out where the other tennants were. They were up in the mountains hiking all day. I walked in and the front porch was covered with very muddy hiking boots. My kind of place :-)

Pictures

By the way, the album for this trip will be at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mdesnoyer/Europe09

Carrying on To Chateauneuf-Du-Pape

Looking online last night I wasn't able to find any reasonably priced places to stay further North, so I knew that I'd end the day in Orange. There were no youth hostels, no campgrounds I could find that were open this time of year. The best I could find was in Orange, which is a single room place for 32 euros. Not the super cheapness of hostels, but it won't break the bank either. The only annoying thing is that Orange is only about 20km from avignon. Not a very long ride at all, so I figured that I'd either be dropping my stuff off in Orange and taking the lighter bike out for a loop, or I'd be just vegging out and relaxing for a day. So, the short of it was that I wasn't very fast getting out of bed.

Of course, that may not have been a bad thing. The day started ominously since I knew rain was in the forecast. I was even woken up at one point during the night by the heavy storm outside. Fortunately, it turned out that by the time I got moving, the rain was basically over and the clouds opened up to the sun and a chilly northern wind.



I knew that I had to stop in Chateaunef-De-Pape because it is THE place that the AOC system started in the Rhone valley. Basically making it the first named Rhone wine. It's also the most famous which is why it's so expensive (~20 euros a bottle on average compared to between 5-10 for other areas) and why you can easily find it in the US.

It's a small town on the top of a hill surrounded by tons and tons of vinyards. As in your wasting space if you have a tree or two. Since wine from the region is so popular (and fetches a good price), and the region is strictly defined about where the grapes can be grown, it would be stupid for a wine maker not to cover every square inch with vines. It was interesting too look at the different vinyards on the way up. There is obviously tons of rocks in the soil, but some growers have let grasses grow around the rocks and produce a little bit of soil whereas others litterlly till piles of rocks and somehow a vine is growing there. I know the theory is that the rocks absorb the sun better during the day and then release that heat slowly at night, creating a more even "soil" temperature, but I don't know why some growers let the weeds go. Maybe the cheaper houses just don't till as much? I didn't really get a good answer from the folks I talked to in town.

Anyway, so my timing arriving was horrible. I got in right at noon just as all the caves were shutting down for lunch. So I decided to find a restaurant, read my book and have lunch to wait it out until 2pm when the caves opened up again. Oh right, I need to explain the caves. So the streets in Chateaunef are solid wine caves. The cave is basically a place where you can get free tastings of some of the wines. Some of them are run by the winemakers themselves, whereas others are run by negotiants or middle men, who then will let you try wines from a few different producers. So yeah, the town is completely stuffed with caves and lording over the whole thing is the broken papal castle that was burned down most recently in WWI.

So after taking some pictures, I sat down to lunch. I figued I'd do the full menu of the day. Tip, if you go to southern france, always get the special of the day. It's a lot cheaper that picking things and if you go for the menu, you'll get appetizer, entree, dessert and coffee usually for a very reasonable price. In this case I was looking at 15 euros where my appetizer was a salad and a slice of quiche. This plate looked exactly like what you'd order in the states at a french bistro for lunch and it was only the appetizer. For the main, I had a steak with a pepper sauce accompanied with sauteed vegetables and bread. I was surprised by the steak because they barely seared the thing. Almost mooing and delicious. I didn't have dessert because at this point I was stuffed even with a good morning climb up the hill to get there.

After lunch, I went to a few caves, bought a bottle of wine for aging and some spendildly mild goat cheese. I spent a lot of time talking to this lady from one of the vineyards about how they make their wine. They sell a Cheteauneuf and a Cotes Du Rhone and the vinyards are right beside each other, so you're not getting that much of a difference in raw grape quality. However, because of the way the market works, they can sell the Cotes Du Rhone for 10 euros and the Chateauneuf for 20. So, the Chateauneuf gets coddled because they can afford to do so. They pick all the grapes and lay them out on a table. Then they manually inspect everything and if the grape isn't ready, into the garbage it goes. She said about 20-25% of grapes get thrown out in this step. Then, since aging the wine in oak is expensive, they only do that to the Chateauneuf, but not the Cotes. A note, many new world producers that have cheap, oaky wines like Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon will get the oak by throwing woodchips into the stainless steel vat while the wine is maturing. Anyway, back to France :-) I tasted their 2006s side by side to see the difference and it was absolutely huge. The Cotes was super fruity, one might even say a fruit bomb, but I'm hesitant to say that because I've been having so much french wine lately that my pallate's probably shifting. The Chateauneuf on the other hand had a nice oaky and smoky complexity to it that slowly gave way to the fruit in the finish. It was excellent, but for 30 euros a bottle I couldn't justify it especially when I had already found a bottle down the street for 17 that needs aging, but will most likely be just as good.

So after my wine lesson up on the hill, I went north down the other side to get to Orange. The ride itself was beautiful if short (10km). It was through the vineyards and you could see for miles. In the distance, Mont Ventoux was visible with a crown of clouds lording over all the golden leafed vines. There were other cyclists on the route too who were just doing either a training, or a fun ride on road bikes. It's really easy to see why this area is popular for riding even at this time of year when it's ever so slightly chilly with the wind.

In Orange, the reception for the hotel was closed, but I expected that. It's Monday and a lot of toursit places are closed or have short hours on Monday. Hey, they need a break too right? Especially when most of these places are just family run affairs. Anyway, they had already given me the keycode to get in and my room key was on the desk at the front. I honestly think that I'm the only person in this hotel tonight, which is kind of eerie. It's a great place, especially for 32 euros a night. Clean and brightly painted and has all the basics you need even if the bathroom and shower are shared with a bunch of rooms. I'd much rather be in a place like this than pay three times as much for my own can. That would be silly.

Orange has more roman ruins. They're all over this area. In this case, the most striking one is the Roman theatre. It's huge! Oh and it's still used as a theatre :-) I kind of want to see a show there although I'm not here at the right time to do that. Maybe when I come back with Catherine. They're playing a kockoff of Phantom of the Open called Phantomes du Theatre. Oh and there's a new fancy theatre just down the street, but I like the old Roman one personally.

I wanted to save some money on dinner tonight, just I bought a kebab from a street vendor and a merangue for desert from a patisserie and then enjoyed some of my goat cheese with goat sausage and wine bread. A good way to end the day.

Beautiful Baux De Provence

At the beggining of the trip, Tom, the guy I rented the bike from recommended that I go to St. Remy de Provence because it was a beautiful medival town nestled in the hills surrounded by some of the best riding in Provence. Not one to turn down good advice, I figured that it would be worth doing a day trip down there since it's only 20 km from Avignon and Avignon has cheaper lodging. So, today was this day trip, fortunately without the huge bags. A nice change that meant I moved significantly faster.

The ride to St. Remy was actually fairly boring. It was nice country roads and very flat so it was just good exercise without much to see except the countryside which was full of the normal mix of rural areas. I arrived in St. Remy around 11:30am and started looking around town. It was obviously not the one that Tom was thinking of, but it was a pretty neat town anyway. My guidebook said that it's become something of a foodie's paradise, so I set out to try and scop that. In the center of town, there were doing an awards ceremony for a race that apparently had run earlier. It seemed to be a teenage meet doing sub 10km. Pretty neat to see. I wandered around the town to see it and get my bearings, figuring that I'd get lunch as soon as the restaurants opened. I went past a cheese shop that looked fantastic from the outside and my guidebook said that they've been agiging cheese in their celler since the 11th century. Stupidly, I didn't go in, thinking that I could just come back after lunch. I had forgotten the fact it was Sunday and didn't notice that there were closed on Sunday afternoons. Pretty dumb of me really.

Well, I found a place for lunch that I didn't feel too bad about eating at in my bike clothes. The owner's were perfectly happy with me coming by for food and I expect that I really shouldn't be worried about that. Anyway, it was this italian place. I figured, hey I'm close enough to Italy they should be able to do it right. Yep, basically they did. I ordered a spaghetti au Provencal with Gambas. To translate: spagetti with herbs de provence (sage, thyme and parsley), a could of tomatoes and a bunch of Gambas. Gambas are a lot like Shrimp, but I think they're slightly different even though they don't look like it. Ok, on your plate they look a little different because they're usually served with the heads still on, but still.

Reading my guidebook some more, it sounded like the town Tom was talking about was actually Baux de Provence, which was 10km south through the itty bitty mountain range. I figured, hey, what the hell, it should be interested, so I went down. First though I stopped at the Roman ruins (Gallum) south of the city. Most of it was closed for some reason, but it was still possible to take pictures of the Triumphal Arch and peer through the gates.

Shortly after the ruins ended, the mountains began. They're not big per se, but they are quite beautiful. It took me about 15 min to climb to the high point of the road, which was about 3/4 of the way up to the summit I figure. Along the way, there were tons of trailheads for hiking and I will say, they were quite busy. At this point, I wanted to come back to St. Remy in the afternoon to visit the cheese shop and do some olive oil and truffle tasting, so I was thinking I'd get to the top of the ridge, which would give me a view to the other side and be able to see Baux right? Wrong? It was quite treed. So I sped down the other side and man, am I glad I did. It is absolutely gorges there. There are alternating olive groves and vinyards with the hills in the background. When I finally could see Baux, it took my breath away. The old castle perched on the top of a hill protecting it's little medieval town nestled in the fold leading up to it. Very picturesque.

So, after taking some pictures, I made my way back to St. Remy. I was concerned about daylight so I didn't want to dally even though it was pretty special. In St. Remy, I found the cheese shop was closed. Damn! and got to try some pretty spectacular olive oil. I had a nice little flight, all grown right where I was biking a half hour before. One was all black olives, one half black, half green and the last all green. The green they got, the more interesting and herbaceous in my opinion.

From St. Remy to avignon, I made great time since I was able to keep up a consistent pace of 28 km/h. It felt good to be able to still have gas in the tank after moving all day. Back in Avignon, I found a tapas place for dinner, which served some interesting takes on things. I had a sardine empenanda, some mushrooms in garlic and I think cloves or allspice, an artichoke ragou and finally some escargots in a ridicously spicy sauce. It was an interesting presenation for the escargots, but I wasn't too much of a fan of the spiciness. Oh, that reminds me, I bet the escargot were local. I saw a couple of escargots farms while riding along. Anyway, for desert, I had a pastis. If I'm in Provence, I had to try a pastis at some point. They give you the shot in a tall glass with an icecube in it, then give you a carafe of water to water down as much as you'd like. I tried a few different dillutions and I think I ended up with about 3:2 water to pastis. It was very anise and good. Made me wonder: could you infuse water with anise the way you do with cucumber or lemons or mint? I think that might be good.

Anyway, that was dinner. Not much to say after that.