Travel Realities: The Other Side of the Postcard

“Do you ever write about the bad stuff. . .or do you ever experience any bad stuff?”

The question has been asked more than once of us.

In reality, we  haven’t experienced any real ‘bad stuff’ –  lost luggage, small rooms, cranky people, schedule changes – are irritations, but not ‘bad stuff’ in our book. 

Yet, we probably are guilty of focusing on the  pretty side of the postcard when writing of our travels. We’ve not spent much time on the flip side, the one on which the human message is written. 

Our travels -- particularly in Europe --have given us a chance to see the other side of the post card; particularly the graffiti and the protests.

Those images on the flip side of the card aren’t the picture-pretty tourism shots, and we don't focus on them but realize  it’s important not to forget them either. Today we remember:




Madrid, Spain

In Madrid, Spain posters announced a manifestacion (a protest) that would ultimately fill the Plaza del Sol with such numbers of unhappy Spaniards during our stay that we ultimately quit going through the square but took back streets to avoid it. We weren’t particularly afraid of going through the gathering but just as we avoid emotionally-charged groups of protesters at home, we do so on our travels as well.



Dubrovnik, Croatia

From the top of the Old City wall’s of Dubrovnik, Croatia we had spectacular views like that to the right, but also far too many views of graffiti marred historic buildings like the photo above.






Bologna, Italy

Graffiti artists had struck nearly every building here – even those where owners had painted murals to decorate the metal security doors that are pulled down and locked each night.

And while we loved this Italian city and hope to return one day soon, we’d be less than honest, if we didn’t mention the smell of urine that filled the air as we strolled through some of its famous arcades (and there weren’t that many dogs. . .let your imagination do the rest)







Naples, Italy

As we began our day-long explorations last fall the ‘welcome parade’ was a protest march – again by another unhappy group.

In fact, it is always interesting when we see the notices and the signs being carried. . .prompting this basically monolingual pair to wonder what all the unhappiness is about?












Seville, Spain

One of the more interesting protests we encountered was a group of unhappy teachers who’d set up their protest camp inside the massive Cathedral:



Venice, Italy

Even Venice was not immune to graffiti vandals who tagged walls where ever they saw fit:

Lisbon, Portugal

Where the  tram was so graffiti covered that it almost appeared to be a mural. . .

Madrid,  Spain

Where faux-blood, red paint was splattered near the sign of the Syrian Embassy when we went past one morning. . .and gone by the time we returned a  couple hours later.

And  the protestors who lined the street near the Embassy the day before. (Just down the city street firefighters had set up a protest camp).








United States:

I wrote that first portion of this post prior to our arrival in Honolulu, Hawaii last week.  It would have ended there, but we’ve got a post script to that postcard now:  We spent three nights with this view of Waikiki – the postcard view, you might say:

Saturday night as we walked back to our hotel, we sadly witnessed a fight between two street people; one who was using his leather belt to whip the bare upper body of the man who’d challenged him.  By the time we got past, they were grappling on the ground as sirens of the responding police cars could be heard. Three of the police cars were below our room for some time.  Just last night a police chase in Waikiki ended in officers killing a soldier, whom they were unable to otherwise restrain.

Yes, we’ve come to realize there are certainly two sides to the postcard. What have you learned from the other side of the postcard during your travels?

And that’s our contribution to Budget Travelers Sandbox’s Travel Photo Thursday.  Head over there for some additional armchair travel.  Hope you’ll visit our Facebook page as well. And come back again real soon.

Travel Tales: ‘La Tuna’ solves that Seville Mystery

It was late one night in Seville, Spain. The bar filled with robed musicians. . . from where they came, their reason for being there, a mystery to us. . .

Two weeks ago I wrote about searching for that elusive Spanish ‘duende’ – the  devilish Earth Spirit that captures  -- if you are lucky -- the souls of both performers and audience members with riveting emotion. (Click the blue link to read the original post.)  We found it among a group of musicians we'd happened upon who seemed as mysterious to us as the 'duende' itself . . .





I asked if you’d had similar experiences. Your response was fabulous:

Heather at Lost in Provence wrote that a similar concept exists in Bali.  Called ‘Ngayah’, is applies to more than the just the arts.

Inka at GlamourGranny Travels said while in Galicia she “went in search of ‘morina’ that atavistic longing of the Galegos for their ‘tierra’.”

And then my blogosphere friend from Jamaica Marcia Mayne at Inside Journeys wrote that it had sparked a memory for her; of a similar experience in Spain:

“We just happened on it in a restaurant. There were maybe 4-6 guys playing various instruments, a bucket or vat of sangria that we kept drinking from and singing along.

I remember that it was so much fun, we stayed until the restaurant closed around 1 a.m. or so. Even now, some 20-30 years later, I can feel the warmth, the camaraderie of that evening. We told our professor -- we were in Spain to study Spanish - and I remember him telling us a bit of the history of the Tuna but from the link you sent, I see it's been around for 700 years - impressive! I doubt we knew then that we were part of something so quintessentially Spanish.

I hadn't thought of the Tuna for a long time. In fact, the name was on the tip of my tongue as I wrote my comment. I wasn't sure I'd remember but just before I finished, it came to me and I decided to Google it.”

Marcia’s Google search solved our late night Seville mystery. Here’s one of many videos on You Tube of . . .yes, indeed. . .La Tuna. 

Like modern-day pen pals, Marcia and I began sending each other information about La Tuna and Lorca, the Spanish poet I quoted in the first post. One find was a web article that explains these troubadours have been around since 1215, the time of King Alfonso. 

The members were university students who in the beginning used these traveling performances to pay for their education; today it is an activity steeped in history and keeps alive the tradition of the medieval minstrels.

"The duende….Where is the duende?

Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odor of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things."

--Federico Garcia Lorca

Thanks to Marcia at Inside Journeys for use of her photo and content used in this post.  Hope you'll come back on Monday to see whereTravelnWrite will be Meandering to then. . .

TPThursday: Searching for Duende in Seville

Duende.  A Spanish concept as hard to define as it is to find.

But I was bound and determined to find it last year in Andalucia.

Prior to our trip, I was inspired by the writings of Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca who discussed the elusive concept in the book “In Search of Duende” (A New Direction Pearls publishers, 1975).

Lorca described duende ‘as a power, not a work. . .a struggle, not a thought.’ Likening it to a demonic ‘earth spirit that captures an artist, be it a bullfighter, Flamenco dancer or musician’  in such a manner as to cause an emotional – even physical response – by the audience.

In theory, we would know it was duende when we found it.


With our legal and journalist backgrounds, finding such a thing would be a stretch of our ‘fact and figures’ approach to life. I anticipated it would require attending a bull fight or a flamenco performance to even have a chance at experiencing duende, but then as we walked back to our hotel in Seville late one night. . .



We saw through the open back door of a tavern that is was packed with men in dark robes with colorful sashes, patches and a few tassels. We’d noticed similar dress on a few people we’d passed earlier on the street. It sounded like they were having fun, so curiosity – or was it that rascal duende – led us inside for a closer look . . .

. . .at the red and white sashes, the patches and other adornments on  their outfits:



It didn’t matter that we were the only English speaking twosome in their midst; certainly the only Americans.  In our broken English/Spanish conversation we think they told us they were from various universities, they gathered annually at different locations in Spain.

To this day and despite Google searches we still aren’t sure exactly who they were or what they did, why they gather, or why they were in town. 

But sometimes that really isn’t important when you think back on an experience. . .








Especially when it was an experience like no other we had in Spain because when they picked up their instruments and began to play music. . .and sing. . .



The atmosphere changed as first one and then others picked up instruments and joined in. . .

The man in the center, a patron at the bar, requested a particular song and they began to sing it. . .



A song of such power and emotion that soon the patron – with a deep, strong voice – had joined in. . .



Here I should note that earlier in the evening Joel had told the woman in the photo that I had been searching for duende on this trip. . .

We were caught up by the music’s intensity, the vibrancy in the small place, the spontaneity of the continuing song-fest . . .

“Duende?”
You want duende?” 
This, . . . this, is duende!” she said to me.

But she didn’t need to tell me that.
I knew it was duende – I’d felt it too.

“But there are neither maps nor exercises to help us find the duende. . . .

The great artists of the south of Spain, whether Gypsy or flamenco, whether they sing, dance or play, know that no emotion is possible unless the duende comes. . .”

- Federico Garcia Lorca

Have you ever searched for something so elusive in your travels? Did you find it?

It’s Travel Photo Thursday so head over to Budget Traveler’s Sandbox.  Hope you also sign up to receive our posts in your email or become a follower of TravelnWrite. . .thanks for visiting!

TP Thursday: Osuna, Spain The Land of Olives

The air in Osuna, Spain was so thick with the scent of olive oil that we’d often pause stop during our walks through town to take deep breaths just to savor the invisible delicacy.



Osuna, the Andalucian town 90 minutes from Seville, is in the midst of The Land of Olives. Lucky for us that our November visit was during harvest.  (This tree at the Santa Teresa Company’s 1881 Olive Oil plant is more than 100 years old.)

Spain is the world’s leading olive oil producer with more than 300 million olive trees and groves that cover more than five million acres - 80% of the total crop is grown in Andalucia.



Trucks stacked high with branches laden with olives rumbled along the city’s narrow streets as they made their way to one of several olive oil processing plants.

In Osuna  more than 250,000 kilograms of olives are refined every day and 30 million liters of oil are bottled each year.

There were simply enormous amounts of  olive oil. . .as evidenced by these storage tanks  and the tanker trucks at Coreysa’s olive oil plant an easy walk from our hotel. 



Coreysa was founded in 1917 by Daniel Espuny Aleixendri, whose  family in the 14th Century owned oil mills in Northern Spain’s Catalonia region.  He worked his way to Osuna and started what today continues to be a family operation, today it is run by his grandchildren and their children.

Across town at another processing plant, the entry gate displays the generations who’ve carried on the family’s oil production since it was begun by Daniel Espuny Aleixendri.

We often buy a couple of bottles of wine to bring back from our travels but this trip the wine was left behind to make room in the suitcases for the olive oil.



These bottles now have a place of honor on our kitchen counter. Not only is the oil superb for eating, but its taste – and smell – are great reminders of our short stay in The Land of Olives. 

For those of you cooks out there: the larger 500ml bottle cost a bit over $4US in Osuna (back home at our neighborhood grocery similar Spanish oil sells for $28). The smaller bottle was a gift from the fellows  I wrote about in an earlier post who introduced us to gourmet tapas.

Note: Today is Travel Photo Thursday so head to Budget Traveler’s Sandbox for more photos from bloggers around the world.

Barcelona: Adios Espana

We begin the final phase of this Spanish Adventure tomorrow (Sunday) when we board our Celebrity Constellation cruise ship here in Barcelona bound for Ft. Lauderdale.

We’ve already vowed to return to Andalucia, the area where we spent most of this trip; there are far too many towns like tiny Osuna just waiting to be discovered by us.  We’ll likely not return to the Costa del Sol as it was a bit too touristy for our travel tastes. It was a nice contrast though to the interior towns of Seville and Osuna.

And speaking of contrasts, we are now in Barcelona, a metropolis of 1.6 million people. Our hotel is in the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter.  We’ve strolled through the area on previous cruise ship stops, but as is our only complaint with such stops, they usually don’t allow us to see a city at night.
 
So we are soaking up the ambiance of the night as we stroll our ‘neighborhood’ streets  - a warren of medieval twists and turns past buildings that date back to the 15th Century.

It is interesting to be back in a big city especially one that is known for pickpockets and theft.  Our Hotel Colon, provided a security checklist for us upon arrival that included tips for street safety – jewelry, money and all non-essentials are left in the room safe each time we venture out – night or day.

And days have been spent strolling the famous pedestrian street, La Rambla, where the flower stalls were a bright contrast to a rather gray morning yesterday.
La Rambla gets its name from a seasonal stream that once ran here; rather hard to imagine this busy walkway was once  a stream.

The only thing that might have been brighter were the fruit displays inside the Mercat de la Boqueria, the sprawling municipal market just off La Rambla, that is a highlight of a trip to Barcelona.

We’ll ease into leaving Spain as we will visit Alicante and Malaga before we head  for the Atlantic Ocean.  That is a good thing. . .it will be hard to leave this fascinating country.

Night and Day ~ Day or Night?

Travel days make a tumbled, jumbled mess out of one’s body and mind.   The longer the journey, the longer it seems to recuperate from it.  We left our home Tuesday and arrived at our hotel in Seville some 22 hours later.

Our routing was an overnight flight from SeaTac that arrived in London at noon (about 4  a.m. our body time).  A significantly long layover there gave us plenty of time to travel from Heathrow to Stansted Airport some 60 miles away for our three hour flight on Ryan Air flight to Seville. . . 


We were awake and ready for night life as I mentioned before but found ourselves sitting on our balcony sipping a glass of wine at 2 a.m. with the three street cleaners who came by providing our entertainment.
We awoke yesterday at 11:30 a.m.  But getting into the swing of Seville life we dutifully took a siesta and then headed out for the night. To bed at 1 a.m.  The days and nights are now falling into a pattern of day and night, night or day.

Sunday is another travel day. We leave this town of just under 800,000 people with far too many places that we still didn’t have time to get to; but are eager to begin exploring Osuna, population 45,000, some 90 miles away.  Tomorrow we travel by long distance bus – a journey that will take only two hours to complete.  We will arrive in time for siesta and then it will be time to start exploring. . .

Hasta Osuna ~

The Rain in Spain. . .

.  . .is falling in Sevilla this week.  But it isn’t about to dampen our visit!

The sun has returned momentarily and is shining during the afternoon siesta hour; I write this post while drying out my shoes and feet that got dampened in this morning’s rainstorm.

We arrived in Sevilla (seh-VEE-yah) during the normal dinner hour – 10 p.m. – Tuesday evening.  However, we quickly learned that rainstorms curb the late night activities. The tapas bars in our neighborhood were closing at 11:30 p.m. so by the time we got to our hotel, dumped the luggage and headed out, we had time for some wine, cheese and olives  and called it a day.

The rain which welcomed us Tuesday, let up Wednesday and returned full force last night and this morning.

Seville is spectacular – even when soaking wet.  (The photo is of Giralda Tower and Seville’s Cathedral – we are a few blocks from here – this was taken the night we arrived.)

We had had a tapa-sized taste  of this Andalucian town four years ago when during a day-long cruise stop in Cadiz we hopped a train and headed here. I noted then in my journal that the city called out for us to return.  We are glad we did.

Writer James Mitchner may have described it best  when he wrote, “Sevilla doesn’t have ambiance, is ambiance.”

Our ‘home this week is in the historic Santa Cruz district at the Hosteria del Laurel, a family-owned hotel, bar and restaurant on the Plaza de los Venerables (the vulnerable). Our spacious corner room overlooks orange tree shaded tables and the one-time Hospital-de los Venerables (retirement home for priests); today a.n art gallery.

The old concrete walls don’t conduct wi-fi so posts will be somewhat limited – and dependent upon visits to the neighborhood Starbucks.. .yes, they have several locations here.

Spain: A Land of Fact and Fiction

“Why Spain?” we are asked by those who add, “You’ve already been there, haven’t you?”

We have been there several times if you count cruise ship stops; those tapa-sized tastes of a country that leave you wanting a full-meal-deal size experience.

Our week in Madrid last May scarcely gave us time to see the town, let alone anything nearby.
 
And so we’ve chosen to return to Spain to continue consuming its history, sights, culture, and of course, its food and wine.   We’ve been studying – both fact and fiction – preparing for this trip.


Spain “. . .for the greater part . . .is a stern, melancholy country, with rugged mountains and long sweeping plains, destitute of trees and indescribably silent and lonesome. . ."  Washington Irving wrote in his Tales of the Alhambra in the mid-1800’s.
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The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Spain’s jobless rate has hit an all-time high (21.5%) and that the number of households without any income hit 3.2% of the country's population, or 559,000 families.
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Spain’s elections are scheduled to take place the day we board the cruise ship in Barcelona to head home.  We know that a major terrorist attack occurred prior to elections there in 2004.

In reality, it’s doubtful we will see the poverty, politics or protests up close.  We will – as do most travelers  – visit historic sites, marvel at the architecture, stuff ourselves with tapas and paella, and wash it all down with copious amounts of inexpensive, but excellent, Spanish wine. 

Oh yes, and we won’t forget those famous Seville sweets – a specialty of the Monasterios’ bakeries – thanks to a tip from Carol, a travel writer friend of ours. (Click the link for her sweet look at Seville.)

In a manner of speaking we’ve already spent a few months traveling through Spain’s history and countryside, reading – in addition to guidebooks and news reports --  of fictional characters whose stories brought history to life. Two books, Victoria Hislop’s The Return and  C. J. Sansom’s Winter in Madrid each took us into Spain’s Civil War and the Franco years. The Seville Communion by Spanish author Arturo Perez- Reverte provided an entertaining murder mystery set in the city we’ll be visiting.

Yes, we are returning to Spain - our previous tapa-sized tastes are bringing us back for more adventures in this land of fact and fiction.


Note:  The books mentioned above and others we’ve read on Spain now appear on our Amazon carousel on the Travelnwrite homepage.  Clicking on them will take you to reviews of the book; and in full disclosure, if you buy one from our page we will earn a few cents.