Lisbon

Well, there goes my last trip for the year anyway..... Probably!

Now I have another country marked off on my map of europe - Portugal. Think at this stage the only pre-accession states of the EU I haven't hit now are Greece, Sweden and Norway. And all thanks ot Air France! Thanks to them overbooking my flight and stranding me in Birmingham last year on my way home from Paris, I had a €150 token to use with them - which I forgot about nearly as soon as I got it and only found in the drawer 2 days before it was due to expire! Was a quick "Oh shit" moment, and straight on to the info-hyper-global-web to see where I could go with it. After finding out to my disappointment that their other sky alliance (or whatever it's called) partners wouldn't take online bookings with air france tokens, I found myself back at airfrance.com. Looked at the destinations, and decided that Lisbon was the place to go - Sara had been there last year and loved it apparently. Then, I discover something else. Not only did their partners not take them. but you couldn;t boko on Air France witht he token either! I had to ring them up, book over the phone, and then post off a print-out of my booking details along with the token! How 20th century!

The day of the flight arrived, and I found pretty quickly that the one disadvantage of booking with Air France was that I had to fly with Air France, which meant going via Paris. Knowing Dublin Airport's less than stellar record of getting planes off on time, I'd given myself plenty of time for a stopover in Charles de Gaulle, which was a bit unfortunate since we only took off maybe 30mins late and I had about 2hrs to kill in the airport. Landed at terminal 2F, and had to make my way to terminal 2D. I'd forgotten how big Paris airport was! Thought at one stage I must be passing by lisbon on my way! When I got there, I took an instant dislike to the termional. I know that airport terminals are there to be endured rather than enjoyed - Charleroi airport for example has all the aesthetic grace and ambiance of a school gym, but doesn't pretend to be anything other than it is - but for some reason Terminal 2D in Charles de Gaulle really rubbed me up the wrong way. A big long half-tube of a place with a ceiling so high that any flight announcements drowned in their own echoes if you weren't directly under the speaker, and yet such a lack of space on the floor that you had to squeeze past the queues of people boarding their flights. Crap shops and a crap-looking restaurnat at either end complete the ensemble. Having such time to kill, I decided on getting a coffee, only to discover that whatever about Gay Paree itself, the airport can give good old Dublin a run for its money in the rip-off stakes - €5.50 for a regular coffee! At least I thought that, it being france, the coffee would be good when I got it, but it seems that however they may complain about "France for the French", they have ebraced globalization enough to have discovered the machines that spew black plastic crap into a cup with "coffee" written on it at the push of a button. To top it off, the waiter made a big osmg and dance about having to break a €50 whe I went ot pay - lots of gallic shrugging and sighing!

Finally, the time came to leave, and we started boarding. Problem is, after the first 5 ppl went through, we stopped boarding again, and remained that way for 20mins. Eventually, we got ont he bus, which proceeded to bring us all the way back to a gate at terminal 2F, which I believe may actually have been the gate I landed at! All that walking for nothing! I wouldn't have minded had we been bussed to a plane out on the tarmac, but we even had to climb the steps abd board via the jetway just like we'd been checked through at that gate! Anyway, eventually Paris receded beneath me, and I was on my way to Lisboa!

When I got there, I decided to be a bit adventurous. Never mind the fact that I didn't speak the local lingo, or know my way around, I decided to take the local bus into town. According to the guide book, I could take the 41 bus which would drop you off at gare de oriente, at the end of one of the metro line, which would leave me on my favourite form of transport. Unfortunately the airport was just another stop on the bus route rather than one end of it, and I forgot to check which direction the bus was going! Luckily I copped this soon enough, and hopped out at the first sniff of a metro sign. I eventually got to my hostel at about 7 in the evening, after leaving the flat at 9 that morning. The joys of transfers! The hostel itself was pretty small - only held about 30ppl total, and I arrived to discover that on friday nights some local woman came in and for a minimal fee, cooked a meal for whoever wanted it. So, I threw in my dosh and was soon snacking on Portugese chicken and pasta - score! Before dinner, there was also a free portugese class of ppl wanted it, and seeing as I knew a grand total of zero portugese words, I decided to take part as well. I soon discovered that portugese, while similar enough to spanish that I could read it (yeah, like I'm fluent in spanish), is pronounced a lot differently. It's sort of like spanish as it's be pronounced by a russian with a Sean Connery accent. So, after learning such useful words as "thank you" ("obrigado"), "sorry" ("me desculpe" or "con liciensa"), and "beer" ("cerveja" - some things don't change), munching on damn fine chicken, and getting to know some of my fellow hosteliers, I was ready to head out and see what Lisbon had to offer. Then I discovered that the hostel bar was serving bottles of beer for €1 a pop and cocktails for €2.50 each, I decided "shur it's been a long day, might as well relax for a bit, I'm on holiday after all" and proceeded to do just that!

Now, nightlife in Lisbon apparently doesn't really get going until 2am, just about the time us poor Irish folk are trying to hang on to our last drinks of the night and listening to "are ya right there folks, have yis no homes to go to!", so a bunch of us decided to head out about midnight(ish). In typical hostel fashion, it was a mixed group, there was an irish, an austrian, a few yanks, a few aussies, a couple of brits, a mexican and a welshman - there's a joke in there somewhere..... The bar street in Lisbon (or at leat the one we found) was, um, different, not like back home at all. Was a pokey little side street on a hill, with the bars being on average the size of your front room at home, with ppl packed in and cheesy music on. We hopped from bar to bar til about 4am, at which point the combination of a long day travelling, the pissing rain and €1.50 a bottle of beer made me decide enough was enough for my first day!

The next morning dawned bright and sunny - too bright and sunny, as I realised I'd left my damn shades at home! So, first stop, buy sunglasses. Luckily there were some nice gentleman hanging around placa de commerciao who were quite wiling to part with "genuine" armani and DKNY shades for a mere €25 (must have been a special limited edition, as they didnt even have armani written on them!). there was a british guy who was bying a pair ahead of me, and he drove a hard bargain, and got hem for €20. Then it was my turn, and while the guy was prob used to haggling, he hadn't learned his trade in Beijing's Pearl Market like I had. So, newly adorned with my €5 pair of shades, I got on the hop-on hop-off bus to get my tourist on! I always find this is the best way to take a look around a city you've never been in before, take the tourist bus first thing, stay on for the whole trip and then you know what you want to go back and see later. This time tho I actually got off at one of the stops, which was a bit out of town and which I'd pretty much have had to get a train back out to again. On the way we passed by a big-ass bridge across the Tagus river which is the spit of the Golden Gate in San Francisco, and that added to the fact that Lisbon is probably the hilliest city I've been in since San Fran made me a bit confused as to where I was for a while. Then, I looked across the river and was even more confused as they also have a big-ass statue which is the spit of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio! By the time I got off the bus in Belem tho, I had my bearings back again. So I wandedered around a bit saw the big monument to Henry the Navigator, went up to the top of it (good view), and was just debating whether or not to eat there or go back into town to eat when the hop-on hop-off bus arrived along. Seeing as they only go every 45mins I took it as a sign from the gods that I was meant to eat in town and hopped on.

Once I arrived back, I headed up Baixa to get some grub. there were no shortage of restaurants but they were all pretty much serving the same thing, so it was a case of pick one at random. The food was OK but nothing to write home about, but the experince was slightly enlivened by guys coming up to me every 5mins and offering me drugs - and I mean nodges of hash the size of your thumb for feck-all money! And this just off the main shopping/touristy street in the town, Rua Augusta! After that I decided to do my pressie shopping for the folks back home, as I heard that pretty much every shop in Lisbon closed on sundays. Miracle of miracles, I managed to get every single pressie I needed in two shops! So, laden down with gifts, I struggled back up the hill to the hostel (did I mention that Lisbon is bloody hilly?) Got there and met Gunther, the Austrian guy I'd been on the piss with the night before, and we spent a bit of time chatting to the really, really cute Estonian girl who was working the reception at the hostel. Gunther had been to the butchers and had gotten pork kebabs at a ridiculously cheap price, which he threw in the oven and offered to share with a few of us, so instad of going out for a meal that night we again ate in again! While he was cooking, Guenther hatched a plan to save himself a lot of money on groceries - apparently it'd be cheaper to catch a flight to lisbon on fri night, stay in the hostel, do all of his food shopping in Lisbon and fly back sat afternoon than to go out and buy everything at the local Tesco in Edinburgh! We hung around the hostel again, got chatting to a Serbian girl who'd just arrived, then about midnight headed out with our new-found Estonian and Serbian friends, the barman from the hostel (a yank) and a few other guys. Went to a small-ish club near the hostel, which was deserted til about 2, but after that the place filled up in short order and it was jammers by 3. Music was shyte (crap danc remixes of crap 80s tunes) and women were nothign to write home about, so left early-ish - maybe 5.

Sunday morning, I got chatting to Olja, the Serbian girl, and Lynette, a Canadian who was in my room the night before (who, probably rightly, was accusing me of snoring), and they said they were heading out to Belem with some others (mostly aussies), and did I want to come. Decided to tag along despite it being what I'd pretty much done the day before, but I had no better plans of my own so we headed out with a bunch of about 8 ppl to catch the train out. We discovered when we got there that touristy stuff like museums in Lisbon were free in until 2 on sundays, so we went into the Mosterio dos Jeronimos, then wandered to the castle at the mouth of the river, then to a bakery which our guide books told us was famous for some local custard-filled pastry delicacy. Have to say it was damn nice!

After that, the Aussies decided to head back to the hostel, and me, Lynette, Olja and Mel (an Aussie girl) hopped on a tram to got to see the castle. The tram ride was a bit mad, the hills were so steep and the roads were so windy it was almost like a slow-motion roller coaster! We got to the castle and were just debating whether or not to spend the €5 admittance fee whn it started to piss rain, which decided the issue for us, so we browsed the touristy shops a bit and then headed back to the hostel, as we'd agreed to meet the rest of the crowd from that morning for dinner. The plan was that maybe 4, 5 ppl were going out for dinner, but then someone else heard we were going and wanted to tag along, then they asked their mate, who suggested it to their friend, and so on and so forth, until eventually 17 of us forayed out to invade some hapless unsuspecting restaurant! I have to say, I was well impressed with the place we found - not only did we all manage to get the one table, but the food was good and the service was so fast that we gave the one waiter we had a big round of applause (and a big tip!) at the end. We eventually rolled back to the hostel and, despite the rain, ended up huddled up underneath the umbrellas out at the outside bar talking bullshit til the wee hours - a pretty chilled night I must say. Lots and lots of beer was drunk, and I'd say we drove our cute estonian friend nuts after teh bar closed by going down to buy beer off her at reception!

Finally, eventually, on monday morning I had to leave. The sun broke though the clouds just as I was leaving (typical), and seeing as Gunther was heading off as well, we split a taxi to the airport. We were both going to the same place (Dublin), but seeing as he was going direct and I wasn't (Bloody Air France!), he was taking off at 10:30am and getting to dublin at 12:30, and I was taking off at 11:30 and getting in at 6pm! Seeing as I hadn't had the chance to do much shopping for myself over the weekend, I was hoping to pick up a t-shirt or somethgin in the airport. So, I went thru security fairly early only to discover that there were shag-all shops thru the gate so all I could do was get a coffee! I only had about 1h15min of a stopover in Paris this time, so I was a bit concerned about the flight, but we took off relativly on time (as in, we were boarding at the time we should have been taking of and in the air 15min later), and I made it to my gate with hust about enough time to catch my breath in CDG before we boarded. Was too bad actually I didn't have more tiem, as Terminal 2F looked like it had a lot more going for it than the one I was stuck in on the way over! When we went to board, I was a bit unnerved to see a 747 waiting for us at the gate - to dublin? - but instead of boarding that we went down the stairs and hopped on a bus which seemed to take us half-way back home already before dropping us at the expected little BaE 50-seater plane, same as we had coming over (think "minibus with wings").

So, I arrived in dublin again evenbtyallu, and pretty much went straight out on the piss with Gunther who had a night's stopover in dublin! A nice way to end the trip!

Oh, and the pictures from it can be seen here.....

The Jihad Joes are at it again.....

I was just reading an article in the paper about some of the reactions in the Muslim world over the weekend:

A NUN was killed by gunmen and churches were firebombed in an apparent escalation of violence over the Pope's speech about Islam last week.

Sister Leonella Sgorbati (65) was shot four times in the back by two men at the front of a hospital in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Her bodyguard was also killed.

also:

An Iraqi insurgent group, the Mujahidin Army, threatened a suicide bomb attack against the Vatican.

Addressed to "the dogs of Rome" it said: "Our minds will not rest until we shake your thrones and break your crosses in your home."

The reason? The pope quoted from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, in a conversation with a “learned Persian” on Christianity and Islam — “and the truth of both.”

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread the sword by the faith he preached,”

He apologized yesterday but "stopped short of the full apology or retraction demanded by some Muslims. Most still insisted his speech portrayed Islam as tainted by violence."

Tainted by violence? No shit? "Someone said that our religion is a violent one. Let us refute their argument by torching some buildings and killing some people". So at exactly what part of becoming a muslim do you achieve the emotional maturity of a 4-year-old? It's like the Mohammed cartoons earlier this year - again the fuzzy-wuzzies went ape-shit. Yes they may be offensive to islam. Yes what the pope said may be offensive. But you have muslim clerics saying way worse about the "western zionist crusader infidel dogs" every day, do you see us rioting in the street and burning mosques?

I have one message to all the rioters and pissed-off

GROW THE FUCK UP! GET A SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE!

If you have a problem with what someone says, tell them you have a problem and try to deal with it in a civilized manner. Throwing a strop whenever someone says something you don't like is not a way to make people take you seriously.

bloody firefox auto-upgrade.....

Crap. Last time I reinstalled firefox I forgot to uncheck the "automatically download and install updates" button. As a result, I got "upgraded" to 1.5.0.6 without warning, and as usual, this nuked all my extensions settings, my taskbar, my themes, and for some resaon, my bookmarks file. Also, for some reason, whenever I get upgraded like this, I can't customize my toolbars - every time I do, when I restart firefix, they're back to the defaults. Only way I know how to fix this is to wipe my prefs folder and redo everything. Got to be an easier way!

Later..........

Yup, is an easier way, from the Mozilla FAQ:

Exit Firefox completely and then open the profile folder and delete the file "localstore.rdf".

So, pretty much the same way you fix the download taskbar going missing - except there you delete downloads.rdf.

Hmph

Just got this from airtran:

"I do understand that you accidentally forgot your camera on board ,however, we are not liable for items that were not checked into our airline and under our contract of carriage we do not cover electronic items."

In other words, "tough shit" :-(

A Busy Year For Flying

I was working this out when I was waiting in the queue to take off late from dublin the other day, I've had quite a busy year for flights! In chronological order, these are the airports I've been through this year:

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Airport, Salzburg


2. Dublin


3. Heathrow


4. Capital Airport, Beijing


5. Hong Xiao Airport, Shanghai


6. Xi'an


7. Narita Airport, Tokyo


8. Charleroi Airport (aka "Ryanair Brussels South")


9. Atlanta, Georgia


10. O'Hare Airport, Chicago


11. General Mitchell Airport, Milwaukee


12. Baltimore, Maryland


13. Logan Airport, Boston


14. Liberty Airport, Newark


15. Girona

...And I have at least one more to go, possibly more if I go on that ski trip I'm hoping for!

Reminders: Tips for travelling in future

• Don't book the 6pm flight to Barcelona via Ryanair - when you throw in the bus in from Girona, the inevitable hour delay at takeoff means you don't hit Barca until after midnight.


• Ryanair may look like the cheaper option most of the time, but you also have to factor in the €20 and extra hour you'll spend on the bus to/from the airport.


• Apparenly checking in over the internet works now with Ryanair going out of dublin, and it also bumps you to the top of the queue at boarding time. So, no need for the 2hrs hanging around the airport before you take off any more!


• You're allowed bring liquids again, so long as you're not going to/through the US or the UK. So no need to have to rely on borrowing toothpaste & shower gel from the ppl you're staying with!


• Don't put stuff in the seat back pocket and then fall asleep, as you'll inevitably forget it after you wake up. Last time, the camera, this time, a book. Thankfully, Ryanair are being rather helpful in this regard as in a lot of their planes now you don't have a pocket in the back of the plastic non-adjustable seat you get. (next helpful innovation from them will be removing the seat cushions so no loose change can get lost down between them)


• The bottle of Sangria that the pushy Indian dudes are charging you €11.95 for in the shops off La Rambla can be got in the airport shop for €4.

Barcelona - an "accidental" holiday.

Ever have one of those holidays that just sort of pops up out of nowhere? About 2 weeks ago, I was sitting at work thinking that two holidays in the space of 7 weeks was pretty packing them in, when I got an email from my old "email penpal" Sharon in Israel. We've known each other about 10 years nearly, but we've never actually met. Every year or so, we make all these promises about meeting up, but it never actually happened and we haven't really talked all that much the last two years. Suddenly I'm reading an email saying that she's after (finally) booking a holiday outside of Israel, in Barcelona, she has a 4-bed apartment and only 2 ppl to stay in it, so did I want to come over? Well, we were supposed to meet up in Barca about 2 years ago, but her college tuition fees came in just before she went so she had to choose between college and the holiday. I ended up going to Barca anyway that time, as I'd already booked my flights when she cancelled. Anyway, I took a quick look at ryanair.com, saw flights for about €120, so decided "why not?"

Sharon was going to be there from the 1st to the 10th, so I decided to go over on the 2nd, the saturday, and stay a few days. Then things started getting complicated. I texted my ex-flatmate Leti, who I knew sometimes lived in Barcelona, to see did she want to meet up. She replied saying that she was actually going on hols on the 2nd, but that Raquel, our other flatmate was going to be visiting her in Barcelona from the 29th to the 31st, and did I want to go meet them? So far so good, but then I remembered that Dani, my Italian ex-flatmate was coming over to visit some time that week, so I got in contact to find out when she'd be in dublin. The reply? the 1st to the 3rd! So instead of going to spain the 31st to the 5th or 6th to visit my Spanish and Israeli friends, I was staying in dublin until the 3rd to meet my Italian friend, missing my Spanish friends, then going over to meet my Israeli friend. Confusing eh?

Anyway, Dani and her austrian friends came on over, we met up for the first time in 4(?) years, and hung out for the few days, then she headed to the airport sunday morning and I followed along about 4hrs later. I'd forgotten that Ryanair now had effectively their own pier in Dublin airport, and true to them being the "no frills" airline, it was an ugly prefab parked way out on the tarmac where you had to walk out so far to get to the gates that you felt like you were half-way to your destination already! They had improved it a bit, when when I was going to Brussels last it was an ugly soulless prefab with no redeeming features whatsoever, it was now an ugly soulless prefab with a coffee shop and a bookstore.

True to form anyway for dublin airport, we took off about an hour late, which meant me getting into Girona about 11 and Barcelona itself around 12:15ish. Now the last time I'd gone this way, that was enough of a delay to cause me to miss the last metro and have to get a taxi to Marta's place (who proceeded to get lost along the way), but that had been during the week, and luckily the metros ran later on the weekends. So, I abandoned myself to that (for non-irish people) most incomprehensible of pleasures on hitting a foreign city, relaxing on a public transport system that worked and was fairly on time! I finally got to Barceloneta where I was meeting Sharon, and strangely enough we pretty much recognised each other straight away. I say "strangely enough" as I'd only ever seen 3 pictures of her ever, the most recent being 2 years old!

So anyway, we decided to have a drink before we went back to their apartment,a nd she introduced me to her friend Alon. It was a little bit awkward for the first while, as while we probably knew more about each other that most ppl I actually know in "real life" nowadays, it was all over email and IM, and even then not much of it over the last 2 years. So, it was sort of a case of "where do we start"? It was also slightly complicated by the presence of Alon - not through any fault of his, but it's sort of hard to meet someone you know really well but never actually met in the flesh for the frst time and get a feeling for what they're really like, in front of someone you don't know at all. Also, Oran didn't really drink so I couldn't use the traditional irish icebreaker of getting drunk with him!

When we got back to their rented apartment another issue arose, that of sleeping arrangements. When the ad had said "sleeps 4 ppl" it forgot to metion that it was 2 double bed arrangements, and rather csy doubles at that. So, I'd been warned in advance and brought a sleeping bag, but was still sleeping on the floor! Not the most comfortable of arrangements, especially without a ground sheet or pillow. So, after an hour or so of my head bouncing off the concrete floor, we decided to try something different so I ended up in the same bed as Sharon (just sleeping!). It took a bit of getting used to on both our parts, but we managed and eventually got some shut-eye.

The next morning dawned as it always does in spain - damn hot! Before I'd headed over, weather.com was telling me that the temp would be about 25-6, which I thought was quite tolerable, so I wore jeans and only brought one pair of shorts. That turned out to be a teeny bit of a mistake, as I idscovered once the temp hit 30! :-( Seeing as it was my 4th time in Barcelona and their first, I was the tour guide for the duration, but since they'd already picked off the "low hanging fruit" of La Rambla, Passeig de Gracia and the Sagrada Familia, I took them around the Barri Gotic (where we hit the chocolate museum), Carrer Ferran and down to Placa Real, where we got tapas, Placa de Catalunya the big marketplace down by Licieu. We ended up in that wierd little fairytale-like bar I'd found before down by the wax museum, El Bosc Des Fades. Then we went back to the flat in Barceloneta via Port Veil. A pretty busy day!

Next day (tues), we were up real early as the plan was to head out to Montserrat. So, up at 8am (on a holiday!) to hop on the metro and get to Placa d'Espanya in time to get the 9:49 train to Montserrat. Unfortunately, we left the flat a tad late and were racing the clock to get to the train on time! We literally made it at the last sec - the train doors were practically closing on me as I hopped on board. We made it anyway, and got as far as the base of the mountain where we were to get the cable car up to the monastery. I'd decided on the cable car at the last sec when we were booking the tickets, as I'd taken the funicular he last time I was there, but the flaw in this plan became apparent when I discovered that Sharon was not overly enamoured with heights! We made it up without incident anyway, and went poking around the church and monastery, killing time until this choir recital thingy which we thought was on at 11am but actually wan't until 1pm. While we were waiting, we discovered the particular joys of trying to find kosher food in a restaurant where everything was pretty much meat-based! The recital, when we got it, would have been nice enough in slightly more reverent circumstances, but while it was in the rather impressive-looking church, the church itself was packed with busloads of eastern european tourists who were busy jostling for better positions while all the time ignoring the "no cameras" signs around. Sharon in particular was less than enamoured by this experience. After that tho, we went out hillwalking on the mountain which was more to everyone's taste - even mine, as it was a lot more pleasant than the first time I'd done it, mainly due to not being hungover from drinking 1/3 of a bottle of absinthe the night before!

After we were done, we headed back into town, where we decided we had enough time to go to Parc Guele to see all the Gaudi architecture. Now for those who haven't been there, while the guidebook says that "Lesseps is the nearest metro stop to Parc Guele", what it doesn't say is that by "nearest" it means over 1km away (1250m according to the signposts actually), with the last 400m being uphill. Just what we needed after a long day out on the mountain! After some more lovely healthy exercise, we were in the mood for food, so we headed back down to Port Veil where we went to that all-you-can-eat vegetarian restaurant I'd found on my previous trip (vegetarian being the closest thing to kosher you can get in the land of chorizo and jamon). After that, being a tad weary, it was back to the apartment and pretty much bed (altho we did watch a bit of TV - some crap british cloak-and-dagger spoof which was probably helped in its entertainment value by being dubbed in catalan so we had to guess as to what was going on).

The next day, my last, was spent doing pretty much feck-all. We were a bit tired after all the previous day's walking, climbing etc and were in no real mood to over-exert ourselves in the still 30-degree heat, so it was pretty much spent killing time in shops and stuff while I was waiting to head to the bus station to get my bus back to Girona to go home. When I finally got to the airport, I was most pleasantly surprised to find that we nearly took off on time - as in, we were boarding when we should have been taking off and were wheels up 20mins later. This was a vast improvement on my previous ryanair flight, where the 2 1/2 hour delay on the way out to brussels could have been blamed on the bomb scare in the airport that morning but the 4hr delay on the way back couldn't.

So, a rather pleasant and unexpected holiday! It was good to be back in Barca, and even better to finally meet someone who up til then had only been text on a screen for the previous 10 years!