France through the Iberian Peninsula

OK! Hello to all from Seville, where I am just a few hours from dearture for Cadiz. I've made it south from London all the way to near Gibraltar, which I plan to cross tomorrow. Morocco here I come! Anyways, here's what I've been up to.

PARIS: JANUARY 16-19
I stayed with friends of friends, Ben and Peri (short for Perigrine), two Americans living in Paris. They were wonderful hosts, especially because we had never met before I showed up at their house tired after a long day of travel from London on the 16th. They bought me meals and gave me great advice as to places to go and things to do while I was in town. I am so grateful to them.

Highlights include:
- Eating copious amounts of the fruit known as the pomelo, which Ben and Peri eat almost every night. It is not a grapefruit, but that's probably the closest equivalent. It's drier than a grapefruit, and very tacticle - you have to peel first the fruit and then each individual slice. By the end of my stay with them, I was known as the unofficial ambassador of the official pomelo festival.
- The museums: I went to the Louvre, the Orsay, and the Orangerie, seeing works I had only seen in books for the past 26 years. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Rodin, Cezanne, Monet, Picasso, Matisse, the list goes on and on.
- The way I ate walking around Paris. Instead of stopping for full meals, I would get a small sandwich here and a croissant or pain au chocolat there, slowly nibbling all day. I was never full but I was also never hungry.
- Peoplewatching with a jambon au fromage (ham and cheese) sandwich on a baguette just north of the Champs-Elysees.
- Sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower at sunset, first seeing it unlit and watching as the floodlights came on from below after sunset, and seeing the first sparkle of the night at exactly 6 o'clock. If you don't know what I mean by sparkle, just search "sparkle Eiffel Tower" on YouTube. You will be pleasantly surprised, I promise.
- How Paris is actually a small city and everything is walkable. I was walking from the 1st and 7st Arr. back home every night around dinner time because it was only a 20 minute walk. All of the major tourist attractions are within spitting distance of each other. I bought 5 metro tickets when I got to Paris and only used 4 in the time I was there.

ANGOULEME: JANUARY 19-21
I spent two nights with a friend of my stepmom's, Adlynh, in Angouleme. Angouleme is a medieval city just north of Bordeaux that was founded on on a hill and eventually spread into the flats below. It has recently reinvented itself with a strong visual arts culture. There's a multi-campus school (more than 13 different buildings, if I'm remembering correctly) spread throughout town that has schools for comic-making, video games, documentary filmmaking, painting and drawing, etc.

Higlights include:
- Drinking tea from tiny tea cups and eating tiny cupcakes while sitting on tiny chairs in a tiny teahouse.
- Seeing a punk show. The punks in Angouleme look remarkably similar to the punks I know in Oakland.
- Sitting around with Andlynh and her friend at the apartment one night, making savory crepes and playing guitar. Her friend and I were passing the guitar back and forth, each playing a song for the other.
- Getting asked about Trump by a doner kebab shop owner as soon as he realized I was an American. I thought this might happen traveling abroad but this was the first instance of being shamed for my country's decision.

BORDEAUX: JANUARY 21-23
They call Bordeaux "petit Paris" because the architecture is so similar, and after just two days there I can understand why. I spent my nights in a hostel called Hostel20, where I met a young man named Peter from Milwaulkee who I really vibed with. Peter and I discovered we would be in San Sebastian and Lisbon at the same time as well, so we made plans to have a buddy for this leg of our trip.

Highlights include:
- Climbing hundreds and hundreds of steps to the top of a church's belltower to get a view of all of Bordeaux.
- Meeting an extremely religious man from Cincinnati who could speak English, French, Spanish, and Arabic but refused to speak English. He would say "J'deteste Inglais" when asked why. But he understood everything I said in English perfectly, even my slang. We talked religion and politics for hours one night, and I would often have to verbally translate what he said back into English just to make sure I got it right. He would either nod or shake his head and then try another way of explaining with more cognates so I could get it. That night was the first time I had ever seen the Bible in Arabic.
- Seeing a group of boys playing guitar, walking down the main street like modern troubadors.
- Stumbling upon an indie band pratice in a warehouse near a coworking space called Darwin.
- Going to a ramen shop and speaking entirely in Japanese with the owner while I was there. When I went to go pay, she asked for the total in French and I had to explain (in Japanese) that indeed I did not speak French, just English and Japanese, and it would be easier for me if we did everything in Japanese. She was very surprised!

SAN SEBASTIAN: JANUARY 23-26
I took two trains from Bordeaux to San Sebastian on the morning of the 23rd. San Sebastian is a small beach town on a bay with an incredible food culture centered around "pintxos," which are tapas-style plates that are all displayed on the restaurant counter. You get a plate from the man behind the counter and then put whatever you want to eat on it yourself, then bring it back and are charged for the food you took, usually about 2 euro per item. It's a great way to have many different tastes while simultaneously never accidentally getting something you don't want to eat. I was sitting on the beach on the 24th when I heard a voice say, "Hey, I know this guy!" It was Peter. That day, he introduced me to his friend Amu from Argentina, who he had met in Bordeaux the day before I arrived. She was going to Lisbon as well.

Highlights include:
- A sunny 65 degree day during which I sat on the beach and played my guitar, and meeting a dog who sat with me for about an hour on the beach that same day.
- Getting meat and cheese and bread from a grocery store, and eating dinner by myself on the pier, watching the lights from across the bay play on the water. It was 6:30 and I was very hungry, but because of the siesta none of the dinner places were open until 8, so I had to improvise, and it ended up being the most memorable meal I had there.
- Multiple pintxos meals.
- Meeting Amu, who I later spent a few nights with in Lisbon.
- Climbing up to the statue of Christ on the top of the hill that overlooks town.
- Seeing an accordion jazz trio playing on the promenade overlooking the beach at sunset. In front of me, the accordion player's fingers were flying like Oscar Peterson's, and behind me the sun was setting behind the mountain and casting orange and red all across the bay.
- The night that Peter got into the fight (this is a long one). We were at a mostly empty bar and we all left our table and went to the bar to get another beer. Peter left his phone on the table. We came back less than two minutes later and it was gone. No one had come in or out of the bar, and there were two sketchy looking men sitting at the table next to us. Peter confronted them about the phone, but they were Algerian and spoke no English or Spanish and very little French. The left their backpack at the table and went out "for a cigarette." Peter followed them, and they took off down the street. I ran after them but was a minute behind and couldn't find them. Apparently, this is what happened: Peter caught the two of them in an alley and they took off in different directions. Peter followed the younger one and they ended up brawling on the street with cars whizzing by. The fight got dirty after the Algerian bit Peter's shoulder, breaking the skin (seriously! who bites people? the dude was a cannibal I guess). The police came and they took them both to the station but the Algerian didn't have his phone. He chased the wrong guy. Amu, Marta (another friend from the hostel), and I were searching through the streets of San Sebastian for him until 4 in the morning when we called it quits and went back to the hostel. He got back in at 8 am after a trip to the police station and the hospital for his bite wounds. Poor guy never got his phone back either.

PORTO: JANUARY 27-29
I took the night train from San Sebastian to Coimbra, and then a train that left at 5 in the morning for Porto. Unfortunately, the seats in the train didn't recline so I slept very little. I met my stepfather Rick and my Uncle Chris in Porto and began a several week portion of the trip with them, during which time we travel through the Iberian Peninsula and into Morocco. Porto is a port town that is famous for port wine (big surprise there, did the name give it away?). The downtown itself is quite small and touristy, especially in a little strip by the river. Porto is where we began our tradition of losing power, which has now happened in every AirBnB we have been in since.

Highlights include:
- Having no electricity in the house when we returned after our first night out. The apartment wasn't particularly well insulated, so that was a cold one.
- Finding a bar high up on the hill with Uncle Chris, just underneath the Palace of Crystal, with a sun deck overlooking the river, and having a few beers there.
- Stumbling upon a tiny church near the Palace of Crystal that had a service going on. I heard the Lord's Prayer in Portuguese (ir maybe Latin?) and was able to recognize the words "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" - "Padre, Filli, e Espiritus Sanctum" or something like that.
- Hearing a man named Denis play blues on the street.' I guess it is a distinctly American art form that has been exported everywhere.

LISBON: JANUARY 29 - FEBRUARY 1
I love Lisbon. The culture, the food, the walkability of the city. I can't wait to come here again.
 
Highlights include:
- Meeting Amu and Peter again. One night, before Peter arrived in Lisbon, Amu met me and introduced me to a friend of hers named Karen who is studying hotel management in Geneva (I think?). She lived in Lisbon for several months earlier in her life so she took us around to some bars filled with locals and a restaurant that served kale soup and pao (bread) with chorizo to end the night. In other good news, Peter seems to have recovered from his injuries and is in good spirits.
- Losing power in the AirBnB - the streak continues!
- Seeing a group of buskers near the water that consisted of drumset, keyboard playing space noises, and digeridoo. Sounded almost like trance music that you would hear in a club.
- Going to a big market for dinner with probably twenty stalls all serving different food.
- Meeting Dandy, an American who has been on the road for 2.5 years and sustains himself playing music on the street and playing the cryptocurrency market.
- Eating paella. It's very very good on the Iberian peninsula.

MERIDA: FEBRUARY 1-2
Basically just a stopover between Lisbon and Seville, just across the Portuguese border. A quiet town, not a whole lot going on.
Highlights include:
- Seeing Roman ruins.
- Ordering some nachos at a vegetarian restaurant that ended up being just chips with a small amount of melted cheese. I thought maybe the vegetarian restaurant would put some vegetables or beans on. I was wrong.
- Losing power again! We are unstoppable.

SEVILLE: FEBRUARY 2-4
Seville is a beautiful town that is full of life. I love the Alameda de Hercules, a pedestrian avenue in the center of town filled with bars and restaurants and people at all hours of the day: parents pushing strollers, groups of teenagers, kids playing soccer, twenty- and thirty- and forty-somethings drinking and hanging out, old women stopping with coffee for friends. Like everywhere else in Spain, all the shops are closed between 4 and 8 pm for the siesta, but then everything is open until midnight or 12:30. Most people seem to eat dinner around 9:30 or 10.

Highlights include:
- The Plaza de Espana. It's so large and beautiful and I just can't put it into words.
- Flamenco dancing and guitar on the streets and in the Plaza. I don't know what was more impressive to me - the guitar work with all the flourishes and the use of every finger on the strumming hand, or the dancing with all the footwork. The dancing reminded me of a combination of the sensuality of tango and the rhythmic work of tap dance or Irish dance.
- Hearing more blues on the street. It seems that the farther I get from the USA, the more soulless the blues I hear becomes. They were playing the right notes but without the right swing, in my opinion. Playing what they heard on records but not what they felt in their body. As we were walking by, I said "It's like they're making Mexican food without the cilantro." The ingredients were there but there was just no flavor.
- Losing power just one more time. Who knows what we're going to do to the Moroccan power grid...
- Eating salmorejo, a local specialty. It is a bread and tomato soup.
- Seeing a Jusapol march and rally in the Plaza. Jusapol is a current political movement in Spain asking for equal pay for regional and national police forces. We watched probably 7,000 people walk by, waving Spanish flags and JUSAPOL flags and blowing whistles and vuvuzelas. They would always play the vuvuzelas and whistles in threes: "BLOW BLOW BLOW rest BLOW BLOW BLOW rest."

And now we're leaving the apartment in Seville in half an hour for Cadiz. I'll write again once I'm out of Morocco and back in Spain.