The sweet night bus of Poland - The Buho Harry Potter Style

So, we blew into Warsaw today, via Norwegian Air from Copenhagen.

We had really great (read hot) weather in Kopenhagen. We wandered
around a bit, rented some bikes for a fortune, and had plenty of time
at the airport.

Quick segway (sic). The Kopfenhagen airport has one of those malls in
it, that all the cool airports have these days. They are so "pijo".
The duty free shop has now expanded to an entire floor, and basically
all space that is not an actual boarding area is now a selling floor.

We managed to escape their clutches but still dropped about 45 bucks
on two sandwiches, a coke, a muffin and a bag of chips.

We are glad to be out of that country. Pricey!

Well, back to Harry Potter.

Our flight was delayed, meaning (importantly) that we landed in Warsaw
after the magic 11:00 (23:00) hour. At that hour, normal buses stop
running. I tried to plan ahead, and bought some zloty's in
Køpfenhagen. I got some 20 bills (worth about 10 bucks) and was raring
to go.

So, we land, the busses are stopped, and I ask the info guy what to
do. He says "Night Bus". I say sweet, and am glad to avoid a 50 zloty
cab ride.

We head outside, and find the stop, and wait. Sweet. The bus comes in
5 minutes.

Let's talk about the bus first. Yellow, big, old. Not like a school
bus, but like one of those cars that's gotten dinged up enough, that
the owner goes to the junkyard and buys a whole new door, 'cept the
door is a different color than the rest of the car. Apply that to this
bus. It is mostly yellow, but there is some red, and probably some
brown too.

The driver. Older man, gray party hair (sticking out in cool ways).
Gruffly getting us on the door. Not pleased to see the crumpled 20
zloty bill I hand him. Shakes his head, and just waves me off. I show
him my map from www.hotels.com and hope that this guy shows me some
sign that we are going near our hotel, the Sofitel Victoria Warsaw.
Not so much. He turns the map around, fishes out his glasses, and
takes another gander.

Eventually he just ignores me, I tell Nicci to sit down, and we stuff
ourselves into the front seat.

This guy takes off. Everything is in Polish (duh). We (and actually
another dude got on, same sitch, same response, but still on the bus).

At 11:30 the streets are dead. Did you know there is a Jeff's Steak
House in Poland? On the road to the airport? In full neon (red and
green?) Hmmm.

So there are a bunch of stops, and this guys stops for a total of
about 9 seconds at each one. I didn't even notice the dinger button or
pull cord to indicate "Driver, I'd like to stop at the next stop,
please".

He just seemed to discern when to stop, or caught a clue from the
little old ladies working their way to the door.

We finally get into the central area, after about 30 minutes, and
start seeing large buildings, more neon, and city-ness.
We hope we are not in the wrong place, but relax when we see the
central train/bus/mall/casino that they have in the center of town.

A taxi queue. Yay.

So, we managed to get to Warsaw downtown for free, and had a cab
waiting for us.

Nice. I'm glad to be back on the mainland. Things have gotta be
cheaper here.

Best y'all.

Stockholm - wow

Well, so far, Stockholm is my favorite city. Norway is my favorite
country (in beauty - not in price), but Stockholm is gorgeous. It's
clean, there is water everywhere, the architecture is beautiful. It
consists of 14 islands connected with 50+ bridges. Some of the water
in the city is a big lake, other parts are the Baltic Sea. We didn't
have much time in Stockholm, but I hope to go back during the holidays
this year. It's health friendly and veggie friendly and a little
nicer on the pocket-book instead of Norway. However, it's still not
very cheap. Since we had limited time there, we did one of those city
bus tours to try to get a picture of the city and then we went to
their city hall, which is where the Nobel Prize banquets are every
year. I did not know that Alfred Nobel was Swedish, but alas he was
and that explains why the prize ceremonies and events are in Stockholm.

From what we've been able to tell, the swedish countryside is much
less varying than Norway. It is more like rolling hills and farmland
with lakes and trees sprinkled in frequently. Again, everyone speaks
English as a second language, so getting around was there was also
easy. I think we will be in trouble when we hit Poland. We've gotten
used to the English thing. Stockholm is much more touristy (or at
least has a much larger touristy section) than Oslo, but it is a
large city that has much more to offer and do. Similar to New York
having Time Square or San Francisco having Pier 39 or Fisherman's
Wharf - all touristy sections that you kind of have to go to if you've
never been, but if you care to get away from that and see the actual
city, then it's possible. As is the situation with most of these
cities we've been to or are going to, Andy and I quickly get through
the tourist sections and then move to the authentic city as soon as
possible.

Oslo in a Nutshell. We love Norway

Oslo was a really beautiful city. It's has a shore line for ships and
boats, etc. but most of it is off of the water. During our time
there, we were able to wonder around on foot quite a bit. It's
becoming a spread-out city as a lot of people are moving into the city
from the country and there is currently a building height limit in
Oslo. It's so expensive it, it's unbelievable. We had a medium
cheese pizza for $30, a smaller bag of chips for $7. The average
entree price was well into $25 (for like a salad) and then just went
up. It's not just Oslo, though. The whole country was expensive. As
we traveled to the west coast to Bergen and back, we stopped at many
small towns along the way and the prices were basically the same. The
cheapest glass of wine was $12. It's crazy.

However, aside from the expense, the country itself is really
spectacular. There was so much variation just in the parts we
traveled in, it was unbelievable. We were in farm land for parts of
it, cold mountainous areas with snow still around in other parts and
tons of waterfalls and water. There are many fjords in Norway and the
size of them is hard to comprehend. The general population looked
like an ad for REI. I think if you live there, you are raised outside
primarily. It's gorgeous.

In Oslo, we were able to walk around to various parks and go to some
museums. We enjoy walking around the cities to different places since
you can see so much more of the color of a city and get away from all
the touristy places. Oslo is touristy, but much less so than any of
the other places we've been to so far. People there are friendly and
helpful and everyone speaks English. So, getting around was pretty
easy. Although most restaurants aren't terribly veggie friendly in
dishes they offer on the menu, I had no problems what-so-ever in
eating establishments when I told the waiter/waitress I was
vegetarian. They were always more than ready to make me anything I
wanted within their ability. It was very nice. The city was very
clean. No smog, no bad car exhaust (unlike Madrid), clean sidewalks
and hardly any graffiti anywhere. There are flowers everywhere and
the buildings are very baroque in style (at least that's the style I
think they are). Overall, I would recommend visiting Norway - Oslo
itself, but also go see the countryside and the fjords - that is where
so much of the beauty and character of the country is.

Ahhh, Rome...

What a great trip.

The whole point of being here is to be able to live in a foreign
country, make a enough money to only go broke slowly, and travel as
much as we can.

Well, Rome was high on our list. Many thanks go to Nicci to pushing to
get it planned and executed. Surprisingly, she is more organized and
stuff than me...

Public transport is great in Europe, and there are metros, buses,
taxi's, planes, trains and automobiles available. I've seen rickshaws,
big red tourist buses and horse drawn carriages (Which always remind
me of Kate and Tori).

Europeans have their own way of doing things, and one thing they seem
to like to do, is have weird schedules and do odd things at odd (to
us) times.

Case in Point:

We fly in to Rome after working in Madrid all day. We land about 9:45,
collect our bags and aim for the metro. There is a train from the the
Frampachino (not the real name, but something like that) to downtown
Rome, (the Termini station). Rome is a bit inland, and the train takes
about 40 minutes. We were lucky as we got to the train near the
airport just as it was about to leave. Yay! 22€ later, we were
onboard and waiting to get to Termini.

We get there, and are in your typical huge, center city, train, bus,
metro station.

We aim for the metro, of which there are two lines (A and B)
http://www.rome.info/metro/

Our hotel is on line A, down by porta
furba (out of center down, but right on the line, so still good).

Compare this to Madrid's metro:
http://subway.umka.org/maps/madrid.gif

Ok, back to the topic.:

Rome CLOSED their metro at 10pm, to continue building line C ;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Metro

GRR!!

So, we are in rome, with bags, at night and hungry. There are buses
(we find out later), but my italian is very poor, and I end up punting
and paying a cabbie to drive us down there. He was nice, and stopped
speaking italian to us once he realized that we were american.

Anywho, that first night was a bit of a trial for my need to have all
our trips go perfectly, but hey, in the end it worked out fine.

Lesson learned.

Living In Spain. Audio Post 1. Saint-Jean-de-Luz

We made an audio recording, so you should listen to it!

Bordeaux France, to Albi, France

Happy Easter!!!! Well, this morning we made a mad dash for our train
from Bordeaux to Albi. We made the first leg, but were delayed in
Toulouse as we missed our connecting train due to delays on our train
from Bordeaux.

Anyway, our time in Bordeaux was fairly short - about a day and a
half. We arrived on Friday afternoon in the fairly consistent rain
from St. Jean-de-Luz (French Basque area). We wandered around
Bordeaux for that night and then day tripped the next day to a little
town inland called St. Emilion. St. Emilion is a tiny little town in
the middle of serious wine country (hello - Bordeaux, France).

We did a little tasting and some wandering and some chilling out at a
cafe for a while. It was really nice to go out there. We actually
had a sunny day, although it was (and still is) freezing everywhere we
go. Wandering outside in the low 50s/upper 40s is not so fun if
you're only moderately prepared for the weather.

They seem to have the same early spring weather as most people in the
states do. Some days of nice, warm-ish weather paired with days of
what is left of winter. When we planned the trip, the forcast was
different - appreciably warmer. Oh well. C'est la vie, n'est pas?
Anyway, back to St. Emilion - the countryside was beautiful. Their
vineyards look different than what we know from Napa/Sonoma. The are
much lower to the ground. According to one the of the wine shops we
did tasting at, the lower vines produce higher quality grapes - which
means that they produce higher quality grapes compared to Napa/Sonoma
accordingly.

We have no idea if that is true or not. Nonetheless, it was fun, but
cold. It was nice to be under open skies for the day. We finally
headed back to Bordeaux for our second and final night there. We ate
at fabulous little Italian restaurant (recommended by an English
local) - called Le Bistro. I had one of the best Arrabiata pasta's
I've ever had and Andy had an excellent (which is high praise from
him) Calzone. If you are ever in Bordeaux - go there for dinner.

We left Bordeaux this morning, got delayed briefly in Toulouse (as
mentioned earlier) and finally headed to Albi. Just to give you an
idea of how cold it really is here - it snowed very lightly, but
definitely was snowing, three different times on us today. Once at a
train stop and twice here in Albi. We finally arrived here and
eventually settled into our hotel and headed out to the main site
here- the St. Cecile Catherdral - one of the most beautiful
Cathedrals I've ever seen. Everything was painted in it. In COLOR! A
bishop hired 7 Florentine painters to come and paint the ceilings, the
walls, the pillars - almost everything. It's just stunning. It was
also really cool to be there as it's Easter and all that.

We leave for Carcassone early tomorrow morning and are spending the
night there. It's supposedly quite the medieval town and full of
history. Andy will love it being the history guy he is. I'm hoping
for not raining and a little warmer than freezing point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcasonne

http://www.cntraveller.com/Guides/France/Bordeaux/Default.aspx

More soon. Picture uploading is slowed down, as the Net connections
have been spotty.

Live in Spain. Trip 1 to San Sebastian, Bilbao, then France (Bordeaux, Albi and Carcasonne), Then Barcelona

Finally, we have secured a piso (flat/apartment) in Madrid in a great
location (close to the Prado and the Retiro Park) for a great price so
now we can start traveling!!!!

We kick off our travels with a two week journey up to the Spanish and
French Basque regions, then up to Bordeaux, then over to some tiny
medieval towns in southern France around Toulouse and then down to
Barcelona for a couple of days and finally over to Madrid.

We left our apartment in Madrid yesterday morning to catch a train up
north to San Sebastian. It was a 6 1/2 hour train ride, which is
about all the time I can handle on a train. I now know that I cannot
read on the train, whereas Andy can read on a ship in a storm in the
ocean and not have a problem. Anyway, not being able to read just
makes the journey longer for me. Thankfully, the scenery did change
periodically, especially as we started to get into the foothills of
the Pyranees to get to San Sebastian.

We arrived in San Sebastian yesterday late afternoon. It is a
beautiful city. It was nice to see an ocean again (Atlantic Ocean).
The most popular cite for San Sebastian is the promenade across their
beach and looking out onto their small inlet of water and out onto the
ocean. It was such a clean town too (nice change from Madrid). The
Basque region is known to have the best tapas in Spain (they call them
pinxtos here in the native Basque tongue of Euskara). The are also
known for the fresh Cider and a local wine called Txakoli. I was
fortunate to discover Txakoli before we left the states and am very
happy to be in the land of it. It's definitely one of my favorite
wines. Andy even likes it too. The cider is really good too. It's
different than the typical cider you would get at an Irish pub or
something like that. It's very fresh and apparently, you have to drink
it soon after it's poured or it goes bad. We did a txikiteo (tapas
crawl) last night in San Sebastian. I, of course, struggled to find
anything I could eat, so I had many samplings of Tortilla Espanol. (I
will be so sick and tired of Tortlla Espanol well before I even leave
Spain to return the states next year.) I think Andy enjoyed it, it's
different than Madrid. It's a tapas crawl at super speed.

We slept fairly well and woke up today, ate breakfast and got on a bus
to head to Bilbao - home of the Guggenheim Museum. We will be going
tomorrow to see that. In the meantime, we've so far wandered around
Bilbao (another beautiful, clean city) for the day. We were even so
fortunate to eat lunch at a vegetarian restaurant here (yay!!!!
finally, some vegetables and something other than Tortilla Espanol).
It was fabulous. Tonight we will do another txikiteo as Bilbao
competes with San Sebastian for the best pintxos/tapas in Spain.
Andy will have to tell you which town is better, as I will no doubt
have more Tortilla. We will end our day finding some Irish pub to
celebrate what is left of St. Patrick's day. We have both been very
good and have been wearing green all day :)

We're off to the Guggenheim tomorrow!!!