Gibby explains what he's pointing at

Sorry I haven’t written in a while, I have literally been busy non stop for the last 3 weeks with traveling and my dad being here and will update more on those trips soon. I was in Lisbon and Sintra this weekend however and with that fresh in my mind I am going to write a little bit about that experience.

Lisbon was truly one my favorite trips I’ve taken so far. Everything from the hostel, food, friends, sights, and culture I loved. Our hostel was the nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in and was also the cheapest. The first night we went out and enjoyed some Portuguese tapas which were some amazing cod and spicy sausages over some Fado music. Fado is a traditional Portuguese music where while you are eating dinner they would dim the lights every 20 minutes or so and play a few songs and then you would go back to your dinner. There was a guitar, a Portuguese Guitar which is kind of a guitar harp combo,  and a singer or two or the whole restaurant. It was a really nice evening and we enjoyed some traditional drinks as well.

The second day I spent with some friends from Barcelona getting lost trying to find the castle and eventually finding it hidden amongst an area of tall buildings. The view and lookout were absolutely incredible and despite the weather being a little poor truly showed Lisbon in all its glory. I walked out near the beach area where there are steps that go right into the ocean as seen in the picture above. Giant squares were all throughout the city however there was an extremely different feel to it than Spain. When driving from the airport to Lisbon on the bus I thought some of the streets looked a little similar to Spain however once we got in the city it truly felt like we were in a different country. I spoke Spanish to people to try and cover the fact that I’m a tourist and most of them understood me and I was able to read a lot of Portuguese although I could not understand a thing anybody said. Despite many of the words being similar to Spanish they say them with such a different accent it was impossible to understand. 

I also took the Carris, which is their trolley system, Belem sea front on that day and had a Pastel do Belem from the world renowned Pasteles do Belem. I had no idea what this was but people kept talking about it and I had to try one and I immediately understood all the hype. It was this little cake that was filled with some sort of custard that they covered with powdered sugar and it was truly perfection. I took a little walk out to the ocean where the Tower of Belem can be seen sinking into the river. At high tide this castle like structure is entirely in the river and is quite a sight to see. Belem was a very quaint little area a little outside the city center but has a lot else to offer that I didn’t really get to see but would highly recommend. 

The third day we took a day trip to Sintra with some new friends from our hostel which was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in my life. This place is Narnia. There is a castle, a palace, and a mansion all on a beautiful mountain landscape. We only had time to visit the Mansion which is called Quinta and was a summer residence of a very rich family. This place was everything I imagined Narnia to be. Aslan was even there! The mansion itself had all kinds of different architecture and lookouts and libraries popping out of the most ridiculous places. Then outside the mansion is the house grounds which has a series of tunnels that we got lost in and explored hedges, lakes, and came out of the tunnels at the bottom of a giant well that we got to climb up. I can’t really put into to words how beautiful this place was and I have to go back there some day to see the palace and castle because they look equally amazing. There is also close coastal cities that I saw pictures of that are breathtakingly beautiful as well. If you go to Lisbon and have the chance take the trip to Sintra, you wont be disappointed. 

We spent our last night in Lisbon in Bairro Alto which is basically a huge party in the streets. Every place was a bar, and what wasn’t a bar was converted to one at night. At one place we were getting drinks in a tattoo parlor and at one point we were playing Buena Vista Social Club covers with Portuguese guys in some sort of studio. Everyone drinks in the streets and its a great time.

Portuguese people were also extremely nice. It made me realize how cold people in Barcelona can be. I think it may be because Barcelona is almost like a New York of Spain and it has such a city attitude to it but the Portuguese people made everyone in Spain seem like assholes. We walked into a small little restaurant one night with about 20 Americans who spoke no Portuguese whatsoever and the lady came over and explained the full menu to the best of her ability without speaking much English and let us look at and try what we did not understand. That kind of service just does not exist in Spain and really made me feel welcome.

All in all Lisbon and Sintra was a fairy tale of a weekend. Despite missing my flight home due to a alcohol/alarm mishap the trip couldn’t have been any better. I enjoyed every moment I spent in Portugal and feel an immense desire to spend more time traveling the whole country. I recently came up with a trip where I would go up through the Basque country of Spain, down through Portugal, then down to Sevilla, Granada, Gibraltar, and Morocco which would be probably a month long amazing backpacking trip. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to do it but it’s definitively a route I would love to take some day. Anyways I will write more soon about Paris, Madrid, and other Barcelona experiences. Miss you guys!

This weekend I took a little overnight trip down to Valencia with my program. I have to say I fell in love with this city, it has a little bit of everything. It touches on modern and ancient architecture in superb fashion combined with some of the nicest beaches I’ve seen in Europe.

Located about 4-5 hours down the coast from Barcelona, this medium sized city hosts bigger pyromaniacs than my 8 year old self could have ever imagined. Almost every day fireworks that can be heard throughout the entire city are lit off in a street sectioned off specifically for that purpose, and these fireworks are LOUD. We were walking around at night and heard a few of them go off, I have no idea where they were coming from but I’m sure you could hear them from all parts of the city. They also host the third largest festival in the world only losing to Carnival and Mardi Gras. Fallas is a festival in which different groups throughout the city build gigantic structures stories high in the middles of squares and streets. There is events for 5 days while these are being built and louder and louder fireworks are lit off every day. At the end of the festival these structures are then lit on fire and burnt to the ground. It takes place in the middle of March and I can only dream of attending this wonderful festival some day.

Valencians are also a very proud and intuitive people. A river ran through the city that dried up and they were left with a dry river bed. Instead of building a highway down the riverbed, they decided to make the entire thing a continuous park filled with playgrounds, parks, soccer fields, and at the end what is called the city of arts. The city of arts consists of beautifully constructed giant modern buildings built by Santiago Calatrava and Felix Candela. Many of the buildings are used for research purposes or, like the one we visited, entertainment.

We had the pleasure of going to Oceonografic which is the largest aquarium in Europe. This is no ordinary aquarium, it truly is a work of art and really exemplified Valencian attention to perfection. They had separate habitats for all the regions of the world and have every fish you could imagine. They also have the longest underwater tunnel in the world which is what I am double pointing at above. This thing was wild to walk through and there was even a scuba diver cleaning the tank while we were in there which gave the added bonus of seeing a human with the fish.

The dolphin show was truly something else as well. I have seen dolphin shows in the U.S. and this makes them look like childsplay. I always knew they were incredible creatures but I am truly amazed by what they were able to do during this show. Amongst other amazing feats they were able to jump probably a story out of the water, carry people across the pool, throw people stories into the air, and were able to be almost entirely out of the water hovering with only their tails in. I am so envious of the people who got to be in this show, they looked like they have the best job in the world.

My experience in Valencia was short but very very sweet. We enjoyed a bus tour, a walking tour, a night out with the group which got a little messy, the aquarium, and some time at an absolutely beautiful beach. I was truly impressed by this city and recommend it to any European traveler. It can easily compete with any of the major cities you’ve heard of. 

The excitement of the word bullfight is not exactly what its cracked up to be. This last weekend I attended the second to last bullfight to take place in Barcelona and all of Catalonia (the last one took place on the next day). There are two main reasons sited for the ban on bullfighting in Catalonia, either of which seem to have a distinctly different outlook on the sport. To fully understand both reasons I will first explain my bullfight experience. 

The bullfight experience as seen from these pictures was not some glorified fight in which a bull really fights anything. In fact right from the moment the bull is let into the ring, it has no chance to survive. The sport of the bullfight comes from the Matador and his skill in killing the bull.

There are four stages to the fight, all of which weaken the bull until its demise. The first stage the bull has a small stab in his back and is put into the arena, with all his energy and rage from being stabbed he runs around the stadium at 3 different people waving him to them until they hide behind a wall when he gets there. After a little while of this two blindfolded and padded horses enter the arena with a man on each carrying a long pole with a spike on the end. The bull then charges at these horses and while running into them at full force and in some cases picking them off the ground or moving them, the man on the horse stabs the bull in the back, jabbing the lance deep into the back. Fun fact, the horses used to not have padding and it used to be that more horses died in these fights than bulls. After the bull is stabbed in this way twice, the horses leave and three men come into the ring. These men attempt two stab three banderillas, which are sharp bladed sticks, into the back of the bull. A few times these guys missed and were chased pretty closely by the bull. After the bull now has these six banderillas sticking out of its back is time for the matador to do the fight. It is now just the Matador and the very weakened bull. The matador will shake his famous red cape and the bull charges directly at it, ignoring the matador entirely.

There is somewhat of an art form to the way a matador can get the bull to chase the cape. In several different moves from getting the bull to do multiple circles to behind the back to getting within centimeters of the bulls horns the matador shows off his talents to the crowd. In some cases, like one fight I witnessed, the matador made a few mistakes and the crowd yelled “Fuera!” and began loud whistles, this particular matador left quickly with no victory lap. After a while of the “fight” the matador then switches to the killing sword. He sets up the bull directly in front of him and stands with his sword directly at his back. He then waves his cape, the bull charges, and he lunges his sword deep through his back and into the heart. A perfect attack should kill the bull quite quickly after this attack, although a few times some of the bulls lasted for a little long and a second attack was needed. If done correctly, the Matador is greeted with cheers from the crowd and he receives the ears of the bull which he marches around the stadium holding up and throwing hats that were thrown into the stadium back to their rightful owners.

There is no question that to the eye of an outside american such as myself, this entire display was one of utter brutality. I felt I had been thrown back centuries into an 1800’s society in which such disdain for life was held as normal. They repeated this full process with different matadors 7 times in the fight I attended, effectively killing 7 bulls in front of my eyes. Some of the friends I had come with left after 2 or 3 fights, I however stayed until the end. I certainly was intrigued by the culture and even when we tried to leave halfway through the last fight, I found it hard to turn and go down the tunnel away from such an utterly bizarre experience. Despite the brutality of the “sport,” there certainly is such a tradition and one could even claim an art form to the way a matador handles the bull. Many who argue against the ban say that the bullfight is in fact a long tradition of bullfighting in Spain and that it is just as much of an art form as painting. However one obvious reason for the ban of bullfights in Catalonia is the brutality of the fight. The utter disdain for the life of an animal in the 21st century is certainly something the western world does not understand, and as Spain becomes more and more integrated into western society, it must leave behind its bloody traditions. 

The other reason for the ban however has nothing to do with the bullfight itself. Catalonia and many Catalan people see themselves as their own country apart from Spain. They have their own language, Catalan - a sort of mix between Spanish and French, that they use over Spanish on a daily basis. When talking to many Catalan people they will tell you they are not Spanish and that they think Spain is degrading their country. Since bullfighting is seen as a distinctly Spanish tradition, Catalans sought to outlaw it to cut their ties with Spanish culture to a further extent. While people in Madrid will disagree with this entirely, Catalonian’s don’t necessarily find bullfighting grotesque as much as it is a Spanish culture draining on their own. 

No matter which reason is the real reason for the Catalan ban on bullfighting, I certainly can sleep easier knowing that their won’t be any more bullfights for the duration of my time here in Barcelona. This is especially nice considering my window literally looks out to the bullfighting ring. Every time I see it now I get flashbacks of that experience and it certainly feels like it was not something that happened in this lifetime. 

I have decided to start this blog in order to keep some people updated on my travels and pointings. (If you don’t know I have an album dedicated to me making a rather stupid face and pointing at things in city’s I have been to on my travels.) Anyway this is my first time blogging so don’t attack me. I wrote this a little drunk too, I promise future posts to have more detail and care to them. 

This is me pointing at a dragon at Correfoc, a portion of the festival of La Merce. La Merce is a Catalan festival celebrating the end of summer. Correfoc translates from catalan to fire run, a tradition at the end of this festival every year. In one of the craziest experiences ever this event started with thousands of people in a square around a stage with a dragon head. After a devil looking character made its way through the crowd to the stage, the most dangerous fireworks show I’ve ever seen took place about 100 feet above our heads. People started to back away a little as a giant group of people with spinning fireworks lit them off within the gated area as soon in the photo above. That wasn’t even anything compared to what happened next.

Giant groups of drummers and people with fireworks connected to all sorts of things proceeded to walk through the crowd and light the fireworks as if nobody was next to them. People dressed in clothes ready to deal with the fireworks danced and paraded in the fire in a manner I could not even explain. La Merce festival was one of the most crazy things I have seen while being abroad. It included free concerts in squares all around the city with groups like Man Man, Aloe Blacc (I need a dollar), or quite a few other spanish bands/dj’s I have now fallen in love with. There was also a human tower competition in which groups competed to make the best tower, called castilles, and were graded on performance. These towers reached as high as 4 to 5 stories of people standing on each other. If anyone gets the chance to experience this festival I highly recommend it, it was one of the best weekends of my life and to close it all off was literally the best fireworks show I have ever seen attended by what must have been all of Barcelona.