Rainbow Wanderers

Albufeira, Frankfurt, Germany, Lisbon, Portugal

Lullaby of Europe

May 17, 2015 9 Comments

A European odyssey of this scale deserved a languid, multi-destination farewell, and that’s just what we planned to give it.

It began last Saturday morning, when we bade a bittersweet farewell to our home-away-from-home in Albufeira; gonna miss that view, I mused, gazing out at the ocean one last time.

A comfortable ride up north brought us to the nation’s capital, Lisbon; two short metro rides brought us to arguably one of the most fabulous (and reasonable) accommodations in all my years traveling the globe: an ultra-modern, eco-style wood-and-stone remodel of a classic Lisbon building straddling one of the city’s many hills; a fabulous (and equally reasonable) lounge, Mediterranean restaurant, and gym/spa rounded out the package. Having experienced something similar earlier in the year in Istanbul, I can safely say that affordable-yet-hip cities on Europe’s periphery are the place to go for great value and an sophisticated, urban vibe.

That was further confirmed for us on our meanderings through the city: we strode down the super-broad Avenida de la Liberdade down toward the city’s historic core, Baixa. Although obviously a far older place, Lisbon shares a thing or two with San Francisco: built around numerous hills, for one; and having experienced a mammoth earthquake – in Lisbon’s case, in 1755. This old city core is, in fact, not that old, having been rebuilt after that era. However, having been an imperial maritime power, this city – a mid-sized place comparable in population to Vienna or San Diego – holds a grandeur evident in its statuary, its broad city squares, and its glorious buildings.

Later that evening, in search of a vegetarian meal, we wandered (literally) over hill and dale, climbing and descending the city’s steep byways and stairways. It was a beautiful evening, coloring the multi-hued tile façades with orange tint. As with other southern European cities, Lisbon’s got its share of crumbling edifices and splashes of graffiti; I found the effect enchanting, however, like a faded yet still vital old fairyland.

Next day I wandered the nearby Parque Eduardo VII, a green space cresting the hill at the end of Avenida de la Liberdade. Emerging relaxed from a stellar (and, again, reasonably-priced) massage at the hotel spa, Mathew joined me as we headed across town to see more sights in Belém, the city’s historic seaport district.

Or so we thought: the tram to Belém was packed, so we opted for a ride in one of the city’s tourist tuk-tuks. Yep, they’ve got them here as well, just as they do in India and Thailand. Our driver, however, was a young lady who spoke a near-perfect English and was thrilled to hear we were from San Francisco: she’s going to study there in the fall. As we passed under the suspension bridge across the River Tagus riding down the broad waterfront boulevard, I couldn’t help but think: lady, you’re gonna feel right at home.

Belém played a big role in Portugal’s maritime exploits, with a number of the Portuguese explorers (De Gama, Magellan) departing from these shores. A monument by the sea commemorates this event (nothing on the mass depredations it caused the indigenous peoples of the Americas, alas). Nearby is a sea fort, Belém Tower, built in the high Gothic style one normally associates with more northerly European cities. Even more impressive was the Jerónimos Monastery, with the requisite awe-inspiring pillars, vaulted ceilings, and other carvings so prominent in the Great European City Who’s Got The Biggest Church Contest I feel must have existed in back in the day.

After that, an unusual but for me fascinating attraction: the National Coach Museum, displaying a range of grand, ceremonial conveyances from the age before autos. The museum is housed in a glorious but faded old edifice; a new building, all modern and glass and concrete, is nearing completion across the way. While no doubt the new digs will be nice, I wonder if it’ll lose something in moving to so different a venue.

After that, down to business. The business, that is, of finding an inexpensive bag to haul all that additional stuff we’d bought (or were going to buy) back home. Mathew, uncharacteristically, had traveled fairly light on the way over, planning to make some clothing (and footwear, his ongoing obsession) purchases on this trip. We’d already acquired a cheap rollaboard at one of the discount Asian shops around Albufeira (in our case, the curiously named “Chinese Shop Good”)… only to have it literally fall apart after a couple of train rides. We seemed to find one of marginally better quality at one of the tourist shops in Lisbon, but only time would tell if this bag would stand the test.

Meanwhile, TAP, the Portuguese airline, was coming off a pilots strike that left us wondering if we were going to get off the ground at all. Fortunately we did, and a few hours later were waiting with our bags (the new cheap one’s wheels already showing signs of wear) at the airport train station in Dusseldorf for a couple of German Regional Express trains to the town of Bad Honnef.

Uhm, where?

As I’d mentioned, Mathew is something of a shoe aficionado; his taste of late runs to offbeat, colorful variations of Birkenstock sandals and clogs. So when he learned that the two-century-old German footwear manufacturer had an outlet shop not too far from where our flight home was to depart… well, that was all the incentive I needed to plan a little sojourn.

Our train rolled by the Rhine, passing the hilltop of Drachenfels bearing a ruined castle. This part of Western Germany held sway over the Romantic poets during their period of Rhine Romanticism, and it wasn’t hard to see why: broadleaf forests, rolling hills, and the lazy river made clear we’d left Mediterranean Europe behind for the moodier, temperate climes up north. However, unlike our Paris trek a couple weeks back, this time a warm spell was gripping the Continent, and the humid sunshine felt rather like summer in New England. We dropped our bags at the hotel in the middle of the picturesque little town center, and hopped in a cab to a nondescript building in an equally nondescript industrial park at the edge of town to arrive at Shoe Mecca.

The shop definitely delivered: Mathew scored half a dozen pairs, and even I purchased a semi-casual pair of more standard footwear. We hoofed it back to the hotel in the unseasonable heat – only to discover that our accommodations had no air conditioning, fan, or any means of moving air around the room at all. Fortunately, it cooled off as we headed into the town center for a great meal at an Italian eatery attended to by a warm, friendly Indonesian lady. She was a nice contrast, as we’d already begun to notice the curt, German “take it or leave it attitude” in some spots (the checkout lady at the supermarket refusing to take our non-European cards, even those bearing the all-important EMV chip, was one example).

Next morning, on the move again: another regional train back to Cologne, then a quick ride on the German high-speed ICE. With wi-fi, digital readouts at every seat indicating the passenger’s destination, and LED-lit bathrooms, it was clear this was the nicest high-speed train we’d taken in Europe so far. Arriving at Frankfurt’s cavernous Hauptbahnhof, we settled in at our design-y hotel nearby – dodging the city’s somewhat dodgy red-light district on the other side of the station – for our final day of remote work in Europe.

I’d transited through Frankfurt once in my big world trip, and it left something of an impression on me – not entirely positive. On my way to the airport, I’d inadvertently popped into the small section of an S-Bahn train that was designated (though not terribly well marked) first class – and got a Germanic ass-chewing from some uniformed fare inspectors.

This time I knew to watch for that – but what I hadn’t counted on was our supermarket experience in Bad Honnef to metastasize as we sought to purchase tickets to get to the airport. First off, none of the fare machines accepted any of our credit or debit cards – even those that matched the “chip and PIN” spec we knew was the norm here. Then none of the ATMs took any of our bank cards – save one of Mathew’s, thank heavens. Then the fare machines refused to accept cash until we inserted exact change. Glad we came early, I mused.

The fun continued at the airport: after a smooth checkin, we stood in the near-empty security line; knowing how much gear and luggage we both had, I pulled out three of those plastic bins used for electronics and personal effects.

“AY-YAY YAY! VUN BY VUN!” barked the lady overseeing our security lane. Apparently, grabbing more than a single bin at a time ist verboten in these parts, even with nobody ahead in line. Really?

Fortunately, the flight home, although lengthy, was stellar: the upgrade fairy gifted us some extra-comfortable seats and some really killer on-board service. We drifted off to sleep for a spell, memories of Europe — its grandeur, as well as its foibles and faults — washing over us like a lullaby. Looking out over the Rockies as we neared the West Coast, I realized this lengthy time away was tougher for me than it had been in past explorations — what with a home, a job, two pets and a partner (Mathew had been home for the first part of these travels) now in the mix. Given that, will we be getting back in the travel saddle again anytime soon?

Only time will tell, but if past travel adaptations to new life circumstances are any indication… we’ll find a way.

Albufeira, Amsterdam, Beach, High-speed Rail, Paris, Portugal, Spain

Trans Europe Express

April 21, 2015 8 Comments

Spring Break presents an interesting conundrum for one trying to time travels around school holidays: what if the weeks off overlap? Such was the case with my niece Lola and Mathew’s friend Jasmin, who’s teaching school in Cairo (we also met her last April in Malta). This year, both Jasmin’s and Lola’s school vacas were on adjacent weeks — and I was determined to both conclude my Lola travels and meet up with my beau and his pal at their destination of choice this year: Amsterdam.

But… that wasn’t it: Mathew and I had also pledged to take a grand rail journey across Europe to our longer-stay destination in the Algarve, in southern Portugal. I’d scoured rail websites for months before this, and plans were set in motion.

Suffice it to say it was going to be an interesting week.

It all began last Tuesday: two Paris Metro rides, one Eurostar trip back to London, a Tube to the Heathrow Express, then a flight to Montreal on a jam-packed plane to return Lola safely to her family. All in all, her trip seemed as much a hit for her as it was for cousin Jackson a year ago; next day in school, a gaggle of classmates surrounded her and pumped her for details of her voyage. For me, the joy of actually seeing a kid’s horizons broaden before my very eyes proved priceless indeed; guess there was something to those MasterCard ads from a few years back.

Now I know how flight attendants feel, I mused, as I savored a layover of some 24 hours in my hometown, Montreal. To say my circadian clock was a mess would be an understatement as I ignored jetlag as I labored to stay on Europe time. The pleasant sunny weather in Montreal — finally warming up after a long winter — felt more surreal and bright than welcomed. As evening approached, I returned to the airport and re-boarded that same British Airways flight for a hop back across the pond.

Arriving at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport aroused a well of memories: while I lived in the Middle East as a boy my family flew KLM a lot, connecting through this major Western European gateway. My earliest memory of running to catch a connecting flight was here. Those large, modern walls of glass and round jetway windows brought it all back to me.

Amsterdam, meanwhile, retains that distinct mix of prim, flat-fronted canal buildings and carefree laissez-faire fun I remember from seven years back in my big world journey. I slept like a log the following two nights, the faint racket from bars downstairs from our accommodations — an attic apartment in a canal townhome — hardly fazing me. After getting back into the swing of remote work, I joined Mathew and Jasmin for a spin through the Red Light District. It remains an odd juxtaposition, historic churches and scantily-clad prostitutes and gawking tourists on narrow streets. But heck, it’s fun.

In spite of a Dutch shift toward conservatism a few years back and the banning of Magic Mushrooms not long after my visit in 2008, little has changed in the “soft drug” scene in Amsterdam from my memories. Efforts to restrict cannabis sales to locals fell flat, particularly in Amsterdam. And the Mushrooms ban extended only to a number of strains of the plant – a variant, magic truffles, remains legal. While there are said to be fewer Smartshops selling psilocybin products as there used to be in years past, we had no trouble spotting quite a number.

The coffeeshops, meanwhile, remain evergreen (pun intended) in the city, offering all manner of cannabis products for sale. Actually, judging how far things in the States have come, with five states legalizing the stuff and numerous others (including California) offering it medicinally with little fuss or muss, the Netherlands’ experiment feels at once trend-setting and prosaic.

Although the Rijksmuseum has finally reopened after years of remodeling, Mathew and Jasmin were looking for a less daunting art appreciation experience on their last day in the city. So we went next door (wisely buying our tickets at the line-free kiosk a block away) to the Van Gogh Museum, where I got to once more appreciate the once-unappreciated tormented genius of this master painter.

We made our way back to the train station, bade Jasmin farewell, and looked for the NS International Lounge whose access came with our train tickets. Alas, we picked the wrong week: it was closed for remodeling, though the Starbucks next door offered similar high-vaulted ceilings and grand Victorian architecture. We boarded our high-speed Thalys train (successor to the old Trans Europ Express) and rolled out of Amsterdam in the late afternoon light.

Why do this overland? Well, a long time ago on a continent rather far away, my budget-minded and sun-starved Canadian family went on the mother of all road trips: we packed up our station wagon and drove from our home in Montreal all the way to my grandmother’s apartment in North Miami Beach. Although the allure of surface travel persists from those halcyon days, my one complaint with road trips is the need to drive oneself.

Europe offers a tantalizing way out of that conundrum: although the Continent is a lot smaller than North America, traveling from end to end is actually comparable in distance to that long-ago journey from Montreal to Miami – in our case, on this trip, from Amsterdam to Albufeira, Portugal. Thanks to high-speed rail, a journey like this can be accomplished in half the time as conventional driving – and all without the need to get behind the wheel.

We rocketed through the Netherlands and Belgium — last time I took this train these portions of the line hadn’t yet been upgraded to true high-speed — arriving some three hours later at Paris Gare du Nord. It was my third time transiting through this station in just over a week. Since it was late, we skipped urban rail and hopped in a cab to our cute little hotel right near Gare de Lyon. It was a mild Parisian evening, and the city bustled as we called it an early one in preparation for our big next day.

Next morning, a five minute walk toward the great clock of Gare de Lyon, then a climb onto the double-decker TGV Duplex for a lengthy yet speedy train ride across France. We left the plains of central France behind and slid through tunnels under the mountains of northern Spain to arrive at Barcelona Sants station in the early afternoon.

A bite of lunch, then back on another train – this one a Spanish high-speed AVE – to cross most of the Iberian peninsula toward our next stopover for the night. I have yet to visit Spain, but the views out the window of the Spanish countryside have only further whetted my appetite: verdant fields and glorious mountain vistas glowing in the late-afternoon sun.

Mathew, meanwhile, found the experience a bit more jarring: at Zaragoza a rather loud group of schoolkids filled up our mostly empty carriage; at our destination point for the night, Seville, our taxi driver sat lazily in his cab while we hauled out our baggage; at check-in at our hotel, front-desk staff chatted with their cohorts for a spell before getting us situated. All that efficiency we’d become accustomed to in Europe’s more northerly big cities was less apparent here.

Nonetheless, things moved expediently: our hotel in Seville lay just across the street from our next transport terminal. Although we’d aimed at doing trains the whole way, realities made that challenging: Europe’s Iberian neighbors both have pretty sophisticated rail networks, but interconnections are still in progress: to date there’s no high-speed link between the two capitals, Lisbon and Madrid; nor are there any links between high-speed lines in Andalusia in southern Spain, and Algarve rail in southern Portugal. So we opted to make up the distance in a more prosaic fashion: a bus making the run out of Seville. As with the previous morning in Paris, we rose at the crack of dawn and boarded the conveyance. Morning light filtered into Seville’s historic center as we crossed the river and headed west toward our final destination.

I always have this fear, when taking buses in foreign countries, of what I call “chicken bus” syndrome: it’s based on that scene in Romancing the Stone, where Kathleen Turner gets on the wrong bus from the airport in Colombia and ends up on a rattletrap with luggage on the roof and peasants within, chickens in arm. Interestingly, none of my bus experiences in South America came close to this cliché. Here in Spain, however, our DAMAS bus (their version of Greyhound) was a bit less fab: so-so on cleanliness, and milk-run-level stop and go – including one unusual pull-over as we crossed into Portugal, where uniformed inspectors examined everyone’s passports.

“Ah. Now we will be delayed,” fumed an older gentleman seated in front of us as Portuguese officials grilled a couple of passengers. The EU has mostly made these border checks obsolete, but a few nations still keep them alive. The fellow chatting with us was a tour operator who hailed from Madrid, catching a train out of Faro. Happily, we were released soon after, and made up time as we rolled through the orchards and green hillscapes of the Algarve. A couple more stops, and we were at our destination for the next three weeks.

We had traveled some 1,800 miles (about 1,300 as the passenger jet flies) from near Europe’s top to its bottom in about thirty hours (including two overnights)… all without leaving the ground.