We slept well that night, although it was a little strange to sleep in a cave environment.  It was dead silent, too.  Surrounded by all that rock we couldn’t hear anything from our neighbors above us or on either side.  We kicked off our morning with some juice and fruit, and then tried out the shower.  There was no curtain, but luckily there was a drain on the floor.  I managed to get just about every surface wet.

Walking around Oia in the morning we noticed right away the lack of tourists.  It was completely empty, except for a one or two shopkeepers and a couple of stray dogs.  It was a nice way to look around town, although the rising sun was shining directly on the backs of our necks, which called for plenty of sunscreen. As for the lack of tourists, we later discovered that most of them come from cruise ships that dock down at the port, and then are bused to other parts of the island.  The Oia buses are very popular, and later we saw them disgorging hundreds of tourists into the narrow streets.

For now, we had the place to ourselves, and so we took advantage and found a secluded café tucked into the hillside with another beautiful view of the ocean.  The owner was a little grumpy at first, but she eventually warmed up to us.  Another mission I wanted to take care of was to find a restaurant that I had heard about in the area, but it proved to be hard to find.  So we decided to just wing it for dinner later on, and spent the rest of the day relaxing by the pool, reading, writing, taking naps, and doing a little shopping.  The plan for Santorini was always to spend the time relaxing after rushing around Turkey and Spain, and I think we followed that plan perfectly.  No special activities for us.

We did end up buying a really nice white Santorini wine from a local wine shop.  The store owner recommended it and we were eager to wash away the bad experience from the previous evening.  The wine was a little pricey, but when we opened it later we were pleasantly surprised.  Rich, flavorful, and full-bodied, it was just what we needed to restore our faith in Greek wines.

While lounging at the pool we met a family of four Brits from London.  They gave us some advice on local restaurants and eating out.  They had been in Santorini for the past 9 days (!) and had plenty of opportunity to try many places to eat. They raved about how fresh all the seafood was, but coming from Japan we didn’t really place a high priority on eating fresh fish – we have pretty good access to fresh fish every day.

For dinner we ended up at a place just a few steps from our hotel called Petro’s.  It was a two story restaurant with open-air dining on the top floor, and that gave us a great view of the sunset.  We weren’t the only ones looking to watch the sunset – it seemed like the whole village was out on the narrow streets jockeying for position to watch.  The restaurant was pretty good – a little better than the meal we had the previous night, but nothing earthshaking.  We had four kinds of hummus, some fried cheese, and I had a lamb knuckle as a main dish, while Kuniko had the souvlaki.  Not bad, not bad.

We went back to our place and sat out on the terrace as the moon rose, finished off our bottle of wine and also fixed up a cheese and meat platter thanks to the local grocery store.  It was nice to just sit and talk and enjoy the peace of mind.  It was hard to believe at the time but this was Monday, and back home in Japan everyone we knew was going back to work.  We didn’t feel even a tinge of guilt as we stayed on vacation, however.  We even went out for a nightcap at the local bar to celebrate the feeling – I had a passionfruit cocktail and Kuniko had a strong pina colada.  It was yet another relaxing evening.

2:45 am is awfully early to get up, especially after an evening of tapas bar hopping.  I almost slept through my alarm, but luckily Kuniko woke me up.  We got ready quickly, packed our bags, and then checked out of the hotel at 3:30 am.  One of the hotel staff was covered in a blanket, so I’m guessing they stayed up late for our benefit.  Outside the taxi we had ordered was waiting for us, and he grabbed our suitcase and headed out to the airport.  As we pulled away from the hotel and started down the main street of La Rambla, I couldn’t believe how many people were running around.  This is the dead of night, and the nightclubs were open and doing a good business.  It was what I imagine Mardi Gras feels like – street party craziness.  After we left La Rambla things got back to normal (that is, quiet).  It was a bit of a drive to the airport, and it was a little expensive using the taxi, but at that time of night (morning?) our transportation options were limited.  On the way to the airport we were treated to the sight of the moon on the horizon.  It was huge and red, and probably the biggest I’ve ever seen the moon in my life.  Hopefully it was a good omen.

The airport was almost empty, but there was another flight leaving at the same time as ours, and the Air France counters were packed with people.  Turkish Air had a small line but only one employee checking people in.  Luckily more people came soon, and as we approached the front of the line the airport started turning on their lights.  It was time to start feeling human again.

As we checked in the employee asked suddenly if Kuniko spoke English, which made us both laugh.  I had been doing the talking during the check in, and it seemed at first like they were worried about my wife’s communication skills.  Of course they were asking about it for the emergency exit row, and luckily we received some seats with lots of leg room for this leg of the trip.  Before boarding we had time for some coffee and a bocadillo sandwich, and we departed for Istanbul about 20 minutes late.  Upon arrival at Istanbul we had a bit of a rush to find our connecting flight to Athens, but as it turned out we made it with plenty of time to spare.  That flight left 30 minutes late, but they made up about 20 minutes in the air and we arrived close to our scheduled time at Athens airport.

From Athens we went through immigration and customs (out of the EU, to Turkey, back to the EU) once again, and then had a little time to kill.  There are lots of flights from Athens to Santorini, but I didn’t know how the connections would work out so I picked a flight leaving in the early afternoon.  We killed the time quickly and then caught an Aegean flight to Santorini that was only 45 minutes long.

With all the delays and plane transfers we were sure that we would lose our suitcase, but somehow it made it through OK.  Lucky us!  We had arranged a driver and he was there to take us to our hotel.  As we found out later, there are only 38 taxis on the island of Santorini, so it is best to arrange a taxi in advance or have your own car.  The driver was making some money on the side by digging up other passengers for his minibus taxi, and so we shared the ride with another family that probably paid the same amount of money (25 euros) that we did, effectively doubling the driver’s income.  This seemed to be pretty common, but not what I had expected.

Finally we arrived at Oia, the village where we were staying.  Our hotel owner was waiting for us when we arrived, and he brought our suitcase over to the reception area, a small office on the top of the hillside overlooking the entire town and caldera of the volcano.  Absolutely beautiful view, and it really actually did take my breath away when I first saw it.

Our hotel room was very nice – a cave room that was down the steps of the hill.  We had a terrace with the same great view as everyone else, and there was a swimming pool and hot tub nearby to share with the other villa residents.  We were very satisfied with the accommodations.  The owner even gave us a fruit basket and a bottle of his homemade wine to welcome us.  What a nice guy!

We freshened up really quickly and then headed out into the village to explore a little bit.  The village is perched on the western side of the crescent shaped island of Santorini, and it was full of shops, restaurants, hotels and homes.  While we explored there was always a great place to take a picture, and I used up a lot of memory card space the first day.  There were also a ton of tourists (like us) walking around, and sometimes it was hard to pass through the little lanes between white houses when somebody stopped to look at a shop.  On the way back to the villa we stopped and bought some cold Greek beers (Alpha and Fix) to drink on our terrace and take in the unobstructed view.  It was nice – the tourists up above had to fight for elbow room to enjoy the view but nobody bothered us behind the gates of the hotel.

For dinner that night we had a simple meal at a nearby café called Mezzos.  The staff was kind enough to use English with us, and she had a cute voice that sounded like she learned English from a German.  The food was only so-so, but the local sparkling wine was very nice.  Once the sun started to go down we walked around town in the cool of the evening and took more pictures.  As a nightcap we decided to go back to our patio to enjoy the bottle of wine from the owner and watch the moon rise.  Ack!  The wine was totally oxidized and well past the dumping point.  Someone probably should tell the guy that this wine had reached the end of its life, but it wasn’t going to be me.  So we dumped it down the sink (easy come, easy go) and called it a night.  That turned out to be a very long travel day.

This was the day we had decided to leave Barcelona and go on a day trip to Montserrat.  Since we were planning on being in town for so long, I had come up with Montserrat as an ideal get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and a way to see other parts of Spain.  We kicked off the expedition by getting up early and heading to our closest subway station.  I was following some directions that I had downloaded from the internet, and there were some pretty vague descriptions.  We made a few wrong turns, and it took a while to find the correct train station – they could have posted some better signs.  We asked a few people and got pointed the right direction, and once we entered the correct station then we saw signs everywhere touting the railway as the easiest way to get to Montserrat.

Our train ride was a pretty shaky one.  This was the first time for us to ride the train on this trip.  Usually on our trips to Europe we spend a lot of time on rail, but this trip we were using mostly airplanes.  It felt good to be back on the rails, but the position of our train car and the terrain made the carriage shake and rock quite a bit, which upset Kuniko’s stomach a little.  We continued to travel northwest out of Barcelona for about 40 minutes until we reached the foot of Montserrat.  We got off at a tiny station with a few other tourists and sat down to rest a bit and gather our courage.

And we did need courage, because the next stage of the trip was a gondola ride from the base all the way up to the mountaintops.  Montserrat is the name of the mountain range, and perched on top is a monastery, some lodging, a couple of restaurants and a church.  There is also a wide network of hiking trails.  Originally I had considered that it might be good to hike around and burn calories from our trip, but as it turned out we had been doing quite a lot of walking on our own already.

We were early enough that there was no line to ride the gondola, and the ride was great.  It was about a 1000 meter climb up to the top, so it is a pretty steep angle.  The gondola operator looked bored but everyone else was oohing and aahing about the view as we went.  Luckily the weather was beautiful – it would have been a different story on the gondola if the wind was blowing hard.

The gondola let us off just a short walk below the terminal of a rack train line that also runs to the mountain.  We chose the gondola because of the views and the speed, but a lot of other people had chosen the train for comfort.  Once we passed the train station we decided to explore the immediate area.   The views from the top back down on the valley below were phenomenal, and I couldn’t stop taking pictures.  The grounds were more modern than I expected.  Everything was clean and well cared for – I guess the monks have a lot of time on their hands up there.  We managed to sneak into the church on a self-guided tour right before they closed the building for morning prayer.  This saved us a lot of time later on, although we didn’t realize it at the time.  In contrast to the other mosques, churches and cathedrals that we’d seen this trip the church on Montserrat was dark, with a gothic style that included lots of tile and metal work.  We waited in a short line to see some religious artifacts that didn’t really mean that much to us (the Black Madonna, for example), and finished with a short circuit around the church proper.  It was beautiful, especially considering how it was built so high in the mountains in the 1700s.

From the church and monastery we could choose two different funiculars to explore further.  One went down some ways to another valley, where there was apparently a weeping statue and some hand rails designed by Gaudi.  The other option was to go onward to the summit of the mountain and see some of the hiking trails and some abandoned churches.  We opted for continuing upward, and took the funicular of St. Joan to the top.  It was a very steep ride upwards – I’m glad I was hiking it – and after reaching the top we walked around the summit taking in the views.  For about 20 minutes we followed one hiking trail, trying to stay in shade when possible as the temperature was warming up quickly.  Kuniko hates to be out in the sun for too long, and I didn’t blame her in that heat, so we decided to walk only as far as the nearest church.

We found the tiny church pretty quickly, and it was right on the edge of the hill with a spectacular view overlooking villages and green fields below.  Nice spot!  We found some rocks under the trees nearby and sat for a while in the shade eating our picnic lunch (leftovers from our hotel room party the previous night).  Walking back Kuniko “prayed” to St. Joan that the sun would stay off us, and in a flash some clouds rolled in and blocked the sun.  I’ve never seen prayers answered quite so fast.

We caught the funicular back down to the main Montserrat area, and then stopped at a strange café/cafeteria to have a glass of white wine and some snacks.  It was a strange place to drink, but the monks surely appreciated the extra money they could bring in from visitors.

On our way back to the gondola we passed some local farmers selling produce and goods, and I bought a pear on impulse to snack on.  It was fresh but a little firm.  I like my pears to leave juice on your chin.  We caught the next gondola back down the mountain, but we missed the once-an-hour train by less than a minute.  That meant that we had to sit at the station for about an hour reading and drinking juice.  Finally, the train arrived, and we had an uneventful train ride back into town.  One interesting thing about the train car we used on the way back was that they had outlets built into the seats so everyone could recharge their wireless devices.  I wish I had thought to bring my charging cable.

Back in town we decided to go out for one last round of tapas and cava.  We found a nice place in a different neighborhood with excellent food and staff that kept our glasses full.  After a couple rounds we decided to try another tapas place, and then we went out for pinxtos, and ended up bar hopping through the dinner hour.  We really enjoyed the variation in all the tapas, the small sizes making it easy to keep on eating, and how cava purchased by the glass was so damn affordable.  In Japan they charge more than 1000 yen a glass for sparkling wine, and the glass is only a little over half full.  They fill to the brim in Spain.

We finally ended up at the hotel, arranged for a very early checkout and a taxi the next day, and then we set our alarms for 2:45 am the following morning (just a few hours away) and went to sleep.  It was an early departure from Barcelona airport the next day.

Today we got up quite early (for the holiday, at least) and headed out the door to go line up at Sagrada Familia.  We kept with the walking theme and hoofed it out there.  When we arrived there were only ten people in line (compared to nearly a thousand the day before).  Since it was still an hour before opening time we walked on to a nearby café to sit out front, drink coffee, and keep an eye on the line.  As we drank coffee I noticed a couple of nearly naked men sitting up on the balcony above us.  Not sure what the deal was, but I guess that if my apartment had a balcony facing the Sagrada Familia I might get up naked every morning and go take it in.  The coffee hit the spot, and we went back and still had only 20 or so people in front of us.  We had about 45 minutes to kill, but the line was the perfect place to watch people arrive and check out the situation, and then head to the tail end.  I was perfectly content to people watch the whole time until we could enter.

Once it opened and we got to the front to pay for our tickets, we found out that may credit card didn’t work for them.  Kuniko’s did, so we were in.  Credit cards overseas are seriously a crapshoot.  About 30% of the time my credit card doesn’t work, so we have to pull out another.  This happens to us so often it is now completely normal.

Kuniko was thrilled to finally get in to see the cathedral.  Inside was much more modern than I expected, and more colorful, too.  They had tours of the interior but we went out on our own and explored.  As usual I took lots of pictures, but the feeling of churches and cathedrals are especially hard to capture.  We spent a long time looking through, did a little shopping, and finally sat in the pews for a bit to take a rest.

I looked at a map, and we were actually pretty close to the beach.  Since it was still early and not unbearably hot, I suggested that we walk out there to dip our toes in the ocean.  As we left Sagrada Familia the line was getting extremely long, and the tour buses were showing up.  Good timing, today.

The walk to the beach turned out to be about an hour long.  We stayed on the shady side of the road where possible, and it was very cool.  Since the humidity was so low, the only time we got hot was when we were in the direct sunlight.  Again, it was nice to see some parts of Barcelona that the tours tend to miss.  We walked right by a bullfighting ring (closed) and through some parks that were related to the Olympics somehow.  We finally got near the beach and saw more and more people with towels and skimpy clothes.  There were a lot of buildings and businesses nearby to attract beach-goers, and we had to weave through them to reach the sand and waves.  The water was a very comfortable temperature, and I had to keep looking out over the water to avoid seeing the topless grandmothers who lounged all over the place.  No supermodels in sight.

After playing in the water a little bit we showered off our legs and then walked back into our “neighborhood”.  On the way we found a nice wine shop and bought a good bottle of wine for our hotel room party we were planning.  Lunch was pinxtos and cava, and then we scouted a department store to stock up on some omiyage, and supplies for dinner (Iberico ham, meatballs, black bread, and cheese).  The supermarket was well-supplied, and I’ve never seen so much ham in one place.  People take their ham very seriously in Barcelona.

I was feeling pretty dehydrated and overwhelmed with the crowds, so we stopped one more time for beer and water (in that order).  Then we wandered back to our hotel, and laid out our spread for dinner.  The wine turned out to be really nice (sorry that we drank it out of hotel water glasses), and we ate and drank to our heart’s content.  It was a nice, low pressure dinner that allowed us to write in our journal, organize all the photos that we had been taking, and decompress from the crowds.  Every trip we try to have a hotel room party.

The next day we were planning a day trip out of town, so we ended up hitting the sack a little earlier than usual.

Of all the cities that we were visiting on this trip, Barcelona is the one where we would be staying the longest.  So it was in that spirit that we slept in a little bit longer than usual, and instead of rushing off to do some sightseeing we walked down the street to a little café on the Rambla thoroughfare, ordered some bacon, eggs and toast, and two hot coffees with milk.  At our hotel in Barcelona we had skipped the breakfast option, and we were happy to go out and get something different each day.  The breakfast was just what we were craving, and the constant stream of people walking down the street towards the local subway station made for interesting people watching.

Kuniko was excited to finally get a chance to see the Sagrada Familia, so we decided to head that way and take a look.  It looked to be about 2 km away, so instead of taking the subway we decided to walk it and see the city as we went.  It was a bit of an indirect trip, but we crossed town on some not-so-busy streets and got a flavor of the city that tourists usually don’t see.  I liked the feel of Barcelona a lot, as long as we were away from the tourist hordes.  We arrived at Sagrada Familia, and it was definitely impressive.  Kuniko had been looking forward to this the whole trip, and I think it met her expectations.  The thing is so tall and the scale so large that pictures really didn’t do it justice.  We walked to the front entrance to get a better view, and were surprised to see a huge line of people (think Tokyo Disneyland) already waiting.  The line wasn’t really moving, either.  We made the decision to come back earlier on another day, and instead walked around town some more.

We visited the location of a historic hospital nearby, and then walked across town another direction to find a park that was designed by Gaudi as well.  We walked all over town, and thanks to my iPhone and a free application that has GPS maps, we could navigate our way easily.  All the walking was good for burning calories also – and that proved to be even more important later on once we discovered the local cuisine.

The park designed by Gaudi was pretty interesting.  There were works made of tile throughout the park, and especially dramatic was a tile lizard straddling a staircase as we entered.  I was interested in the use of color, and also the creativity in arranging the tiles in such a way as to bring order to chaos.  The park was packed with people.  There were countless vendors who set up a sheet on the ground, laid out their wares, and were ready to dash off when the security made their patrols.  They often put their souvenirs on the sheet in foot traffic – I’m sure many people are looking at everything and step on the products accidentally.  The vendors knew they’d have a sale if it happened, so they did what they could to encourage it.  Capitalism finds a way, I guess.

After the park we walked to the nearest train station (Lessup) and went back to an area closer to our hotel (Catalayun).  We were feeling a little hungry by then, so we walked into a pinxtos bar for a snack and some cold beer.  When I think of Spain I think of tapas.  Pinxtos are just like tapas, only with a local Catalan flair.  In the front of the bar were glass cases, and the paper menu in front of us identified the different pinxtos that we could order.  Everything was cheap, the pinxtos were designed to be beautiful as well as delicious, and the ordering system was simple.  As we drank our cold beer and got into the ordering system, we noticed that more and more of the customers coming in were Japanese.  In fact, at one point, I was the only non-Japanese sitting at the bar.  It was easy to listen in to their conversations, as opposed to the locals who spoke Catalan, which I couldn’t understand at all.  Everyone was enjoying the place, and I guess that it is probably in a Japanese guidebook somewhere.  We moved on to another pinxtos bar down the street and it was a repeat performance – we walk in to a mostly empty place, and soon afterwards the Japanese tourists started to show up.  The restaurant should be paying us to eat there!  After all the beer and cava we decided to head back to the hotel for a little siesta – we had done a lot of walking today.

The nap refreshed us quite a bit, and soon we were back out on the crowded streets, walking through some historic neighborhoods for sightseeing and shopping.  We walked by a restaurant that was recommended to me by one of my former students, La Peradeta, which is a seafood restaurant that is popular with locals and very reasonably priced.  We were there two hours before opening, though, so we thought we ought to find a way to kill some time.  Luckily, right nearby was the Picasso museum, so we could spend a lot of time looking through at so many works of Picasso.  They had a lot of his early sketches, as well as some very famous originals.   It wasn’t too crowded since we were there just an hour before closing time.  There was an American family with a teenage boy who was getting into all kinds of trouble.  He kept trying to touch the artwork (which made the staff angry) and tried to take pictures of them with his cellphone (which also pissed them off).  Nightmare tourists – and I’m sorry to report that they were American.  Ugh.

We still had about a half hour before the restaurant opened, but we went over there early to see what the situation was.  Surprisingly, there were four young people standing outside the shutters waiting for it to open.  We decided we might as well wait, too, so we kind of stood against the wall next to them.  The group ahead of us just smiled and kept talking.  The restaurant had two shutters, and it wasn’t clear if one was the entrance, one was a window, or if they were both entrances.  We were kind of lined up in front of one shutter and the initial group in front of the other.  As we got closer to opening time, more and more people started showing up.  Kuniko and I both felt surprise that nobody really tried to line up anywhere.  They just found a loose crowd outside.  At about ten minutes before opening a staff member raised the shutters and started to organize the line.  As it worked out, the shutter we were standing in front of was the front door, and we were first in line.  We backed up a bit to make sure that the four people before us could get in front, but just about everyone else in the crowd of maybe 70 people looked pissed that they had to line up behind us.  Lots of aggressive looks and they crowded right up behind us – which was kind of a personal space issue for Kuniko.  In the end they finally opened the door and we could go in, but the system was very unusual.

Luckily we weren’t first, so we could watch the other people order.  Upon entering the restaurant there was lots of fresh seafood on ice in the front, with signs saying what it was and how much it cost (of course, in Spanish).  The walls were lined with instructions and extras (again in Spanish), and then the lady looks at you expectantly and says, “What do you want?”  It’s a lot of pressure with 70 people behind you eager to get in and eat and you fumbling through a foreign language.  But luckily we could pick out some big shrimps, a couple of small lobsters, and big slab of tuna, and some oysters.  The staff put everything we chose into a bucket, and then passed it on to the kitchen.  We paid at the next station, and then sat down to await our dinner.  The kitchen staff cooked the fish however they liked, and then they called our number and we picked up our food as it became ready.  The oysters were served raw (yum), and the shellfish was served grilled with a spicy sauce.  The tuna was pan seared with a tangy citrus marinade, and it was my favorite of all the food we had.  The price was very good for all that fresh food and we left the place satisfied.  The line was about 100 people long by the time we left, so it pays to get there early.

On our way back to the Rambla we crossed town and found a lively bar and café that had a nice atmosphere.  We stopped for a glass of wine, but ended up staying for tapas and paella – kind of a second dinner.  At each restaurant or café that we visited in Spain I would teach Kuniko how to order and make comments in Spanish, and when she did each waiter or bartender would give her a big smile and take care of us the rest of the meal.  This place was like that – Kuniko ordered paella in Spanish, the guy smiled and started our order, and then laughed at Kuniko’s victorious reaction to her ordering success.  We are serious about trying to use the local language when traveling, and the good vibes we get from the locals when we try (or fail) make things go so much better.

We wrapped things up and walked home to the hotel, after a small wrong turn that almost had us at the beach.  Luckily the extra distance helped to digest all that delicious food in our stomachs.

Sleeping in on holiday is one of life’s greatest pleasures.  Nothing to worry about except for maybe the cleaning staff barging in.  Luckily, we had no problems and got up a little later than usual.  There was no sign of hangover from the previous evening, so that was a good sign.

We went down to breakfast and the same crowd was there eating, and we were eating the same food as well.  The breakfast was just as good, but I think if I was staying longer than a few days it would probably get old.  Kuniko and I were both craving some eggs.  Our flight that day was in the early evening, so we arranged with Julio, the manager, to hold on to our suitcase while we explored some other parts of Granada.  We explained that we had raided the beer cabinet, and he added it to our charges, and presented us with a bill.  Everything looked fine, but then he said something that caught our attention.  He said, “And we only take cash.”

To make a long story much shorter, Kuniko had handled most of the hotel reservations (including this one) and she was sure that she had already paid online via credit card.  The manager assured us that he hadn’t received any money – just the reservation via the internet, and in fact they have never taken credit cards.  So we had to schedule an ATM visit sometime during the day to pay for our hotel.  Kuniko was a little upset because she was sure she paid, and I trust my wife when she said that she had taken care of it, but I figured the guy isn’t going to lie to our faces, and anyway we’d need to pay to get our suitcase back.  So the day started off with some confusion (and a little stress).

To cut through any sense of suspense, later in the trip through a telephone call to Japan we found out that we had not in fact paid in advance for the hotel, and we had just been confused with some other charges to other hotels.  So Julio was all good, we paid him off at the end of our stay in his hotel, and everybody was OK.  But I will say that it took some wine and deep discussions before we reached an understanding and could enjoy the rest of our day. So luckily we were in the center of the local wine region and there were plenty of sangrias available.

So we left our suitcase (hostage) and headed into Granada.  This time we headed to the modern side of the city.  The city center was very different from the old Arabian district where we were staying, and it seemed like just about any other modern European city.  The streets were lined with tourists, the weather was beautiful, and it felt very busy and very safe.  We walked around in sort of a random pattern taking pictures, enjoying a park where we watched a group of older folks playing bocce ball, and walked through a semi-abandoned shopping mall looking for lip balm.  I finally found a pharmacy to sell lip balm, but I couldn’t remember how to say “lips” in Spanish, so I fumbled through the transaction.  Lips in Spanish is “labia” which reminded me of some of the antics we got into during our Spanish classes in high school.

As part of our research into our hotel miscommunication we stopped at a small café boasting free Wi-Fi and tried to do a little research over the internet with bocadillos and sangria.  For some reason the staff spoke to me in French – I look like an out-of-towner but not that far out of town, I guess.  We also went to a tapas bar that was listed on the internet as one of the best in the city.  It was so packed, but we bumbled into a corner to stand, and enjoyed a plate of spicy chorizo, bread, and a half bottle of a really nice Rioja (that I had been wanting to try for the last year).  The tapas bar was a lot like a pub in the UK – more of a community meeting place, but this had been taken over by tourists like us, and it was next to impossible to have a conversation with all the activity in there.  Still, the place had plenty of atmosphere and I’m glad we stopped by.

We slowly made our way back to the Arabian district, stopping at the ATM to pay off Julio on the way.  We made a final stop at one more tapas place, and unknowingly shut it down (lunch service ended at 4 pm).  This was almost our dinner, but they were just wrapping up lunch.  The food there was excellent – especially the veal in a rich, meaty sauce and some montadillos.  They had some good wines by the glass there as well, and I could try a local white wine that was recommended in a guide book – a sherry-like buttery white that I couldn’t imagine drinking for more than one glass.

Finally we went back to our hotel and paid Julio.  He was a little concerned that we might feel bad about the whole thing, and to his credit offered to let us go without paying and to pay him later if we liked.  We did insist on a receipt, but that turned out to be a difficult maneuver with his printer failing during the print.  That made for an awkward delay as we and the taxi driver that we had hired waited Julio to fix his printer and print the receipt.  But finally we were on our way, and the taxi to the airport was an easy and smooth trip.

Unfortunately, our next bump in the day happened when our flight was delayed.  They wouldn’t give us an ETA on when our plane would arrive, so nobody had any idea if it would be 90 minutes or 9 hours.  The staff seemed to sense the angst, and gave everyone vouchers for dinner at the airport.  The vouchers (strategically, I think) didn’t have any amount on them, but there was a secret cut-off point that the cashiers knew.  Passengers who overloaded had to give up some items, and that made people more cautious as they selected their dinner.  We got a beer, a soda, and a couple of sandwiches and had no problem at all.  We weren’t all that hungry, really, but it was a good way to kill time until the plane arrived.  When it did, everyone was very relieved.  The flight departed around 9:30 pm – about 90 minutes later than expected, and after 45 minutes we arrived in Barcelona.  We picked up our luggage, found a taxi stand, and from there we caught a taxi and got to our hotel just before midnight.

Our hotel was located in the lively (and maybe a little dicey) part of town called La Rambla – a big thoroughfare through the city lined with markets, shops and nightclubs that open in the evening.  The hotel itself was down a side street directly across from a building designed by Antoni Gaudi that brought a lot of traffic.  The hotel was a little old, the room was a little small, but it was very comfortable and clean.  We didn’t waste too much time before crashing out for the night.

We woke up well rested and ventured downstairs to the small kitchen for breakfast.  There Julio (the owner of the hotel) was putting together breakfast for the guests, along with some help from a young lady.  There looked to be about four other rooms in the place, so it was smaller than I had expected.  They made us fresh orange juice (yum!), nespresso coffee (just like at home) and then served us some toasted breads, fruits, and butter and jam. They gave us a small loaf of sweet bread that was spiced with anise, and then later some plain toast with some very simple salsa to spread over it.  Simple, easy, delicious.

The next step was to go check out the town.  Granada is a fairly large town, and we were staying in the historical Arabian district.  I couldn’t really notice the difference the previous evening when we came in, but walking around in the morning most buildings were very old, painted white with dark roofs.  We really enjoyed walking around the town and poking around the corners.  The streets were all cobblestone, and once in a while we’d meet someone walking the other way.  There was a family riding by on Segway scooters that caught us by surprise.  Just about everywhere we visited had some people trying to sell tours on a Segway.  Weird.  Eventually we found a church that overlooked the Alhambra palace.  The view was pretty spectacular, and since we were planning on visiting the Alhambra in the afternoon, it was a good way to see the whole thing from a distance.  There were a few people walking around and even a Japanese family of four taking pictures and enjoying the view.  We asked the dad to take our picture – and he did a great job.  You could tell he was very serious about photography.  In return I took the family’s picture, but I think I hashed up the first shot.  I was worried about getting everyone’s feet in the shot and I completely missed the Alhambra.  The second shot turned out much better.

We continued sightseeing in the Arabian district, and found ourselves walking down a street that was right out of a movie.  It was like exactly what you would see in a Hollywood movie if it called for a small town in Europe.  We walked down the stone streets, with little stands selling produce on the side of the road and locals walking around greeting each other and gossiping.  No tourists around really (except for us) and I wondered if they’d all return to doing something else after we passed.  Other than that area, the streets remained empty, and it seemed like the tourists might be sleeping in a little.  That was fine by us.

We stopped at our hotel for a quick toilet break, but caused a bit of havoc because they were cleaning our room at the time.  They maybe thought we wanted to spend time in our room, not just use the toilet, but in the end we got it all figured out and hopefully didn’t hurt any feelings.  Sometimes small places like where we were staying can be a little more delicate about their services.  I did notice that our cleaning lady was quite attractive, and later Kuniko agreed that Spanish people in general that we had met tended to be for the most part pretty good looking.  Our sample size was pretty small, though, so we figured we’d keep our eyes open.

So we were back on the street, walking towards the Alhambra.  The Alhambra sits on a giant hill overlooking the Arabic district, and to get there you can either take a drive up the hill or hike up (like we were doing).  The hike is up a back way, which means there weren’t many other people on the trail, and also that it was mostly shaded from the sun.  It was a fairly steep climb, but probably what we needed after all the calories we took in during our stay in Turkey.

I had pre-purchased entry tickets into the Alhambra palace, but they weren’t valid until after 1:30 pm.  They try to limit visitors into the buildings to try to reduce the overcrowding, and for that we were thankful.  At first we couldn’t find the place to pick up our tickets, but after asking a few questions we figured it out. There were signs set up for people coming from the road, but no indicators for people hiking up the back of the mountain.  Part of the experience of the Alhambra is to walk through the gardens that surround it.  The gardens are beautiful, lush and extensive.  All of the greenery gave us lots of shade to hide under as the temperature crept upward, and gardens, fountains, ponds, and waterfalls were everywhere.  We spent a long time wandering through and enjoying the views.  At one point we walked up some stairs to the upper level, and when I turned the corner and looked up the stairs I discovered that the short skirt wearing lady above us wasn’t wearing any underwear.  Welcome to Spain!

To kill the last thirty minutes before our entry time came up we left the gardens and walked over to a small café.  There we had a couple of glasses of wine outside and watched the tours come and go.  I managed to order everything in Spanish without too much embarrassment, and the wines were excellent.  Even just wine by the glass it was better than what we usually drink at home – and cheaper, too.

Finally we entered the palace after waiting in a short line.  Someone ahead of us passed out from the heat, so it wasn’t just us feeling the effects of the weather.  The interior of the Alhambra was absolutely beautiful.  The influence of both western and eastern combined to make for a very unusual decorating scheme.  I especially liked the tilework, and the fountains throughout the grounds were also beautifully designed.  Most rooms had some kind of archway leading to a unique ceiling, some unbelievably intricate.  One ceiling was star-shaped, letting light shine in different ways during the passing of the day.

We spent about an hour inside the palace going room to room and enjoying the architecture and beauty of it.  Finally we finished up, and headed back down the hill to our hotel to rest up a bit.  On the way back we stopped at a store to pick up some cold beer to drink, but the staff had just put their local beers in the fridge so they weren’t cold.  Instead we bought the beer that was cold – Coronas.  So it was that Kuniko and I drink cold Mexican beer on a terrace outside our hotel room in Spain.  Later we had a chance to try the local beer (called Alhambra beer) and it turned out to be quite good – much better than I had expected.  In our hotel room there was a card that said that they always had cold Cava in the fridge in the kitchen, and to help ourselves if we’d like.  I ran downstairs to get a bottle, but the cleaning lady told me in Spanish that they didn’t have any – just more beer.  I did my best to chat with her in Spanish, but I’m sure there was a lot of Japanese coming out of my mouth.  She didn’t seem to care, and hooked us up with a couple of bottles of beer.

We took a nap to sleep off the afternoon beer, and then decided that we needed to get some food in our system.  We ended up walking to a local town square that had tables set up outside of two small bars.  We ate outside and enjoyed a tomato salad, potato and pepper tapas, braised rabbit on the bone, and some glasses of red wine.  The place was still quiet since it was much too early for dinner, so we decided to head back to the church viewpoint that we had seen in the morning.  Our plan was to take in the night view of the Alhambra.  Unfortunately, everyone else had the same plan, and the place was starting to get crowded.  Not only tourists, but musicians and street vendors also were hanging out around the area.  Below the plaza there was a small restaurant with a nice view of the Alhambra, so we walked down there and got a table and a bottle of Cava.  There we ate some delicious olives and Monchego cheese and waited until it got dark.  It took a long time to get dark, though, and between talking, watching all the tourists lined up above us, and working on that bottle of Cava, I ended up drinking a little too much.  If you read this entry carefully you can see that we drank pretty much the whole day combined with lots of walking and hill climbing.  Luckily Kuniko steered us in the right direction to get home afterwards.  I got some nice pictures of the Alhambra lit up, though, so mission accomplished.

Originally when I planned this trip, this day was going to be only a travel day.  However, because of the post-Ramadan celebration it turned out that the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul would be closed until the absolute last day we were there.  That meant that we’d have to catch it just before we left for the airport.  It opened at 8:30 on Monday, so we got an early start and arrived there around eight.  I thought that the place would be huge and that they wouldn’t really care if the people entering were staff or not, but they had guards posted at each gate and they recognized the staff apparently.  There was nothing for us to do but go find a shady place to sit and to kill a half hour.  Once we got inside, things were just opening up.  I was hoping for something dramatic, but actually it was similar to other markets that we had already explored in Istanbul.  There seemed to be a certain pattern to it – each block had a few clothes shops, a lamp shop, a pottery and plate shop, a jewelry shop, and a spice/food shop.  The market was made up of hundreds of blocks like that, so there wasn’t that much variety if you kept walking.  The more you saw, the more you saw the pattern behind it.  Still, we had fun walking around, and seeing the shopkeepers setting up for the day and the camaraderie that they shared was worth the trip.

So we went on back to the hotel, grabbed our suitcase, ate a quick breakfast, and then had the hotel call us a cab to take us to the airport.  The trip to airport was smooth and very quick.  We took the train and had transferred once when we arrived, so it was our first time to see exactly where the airport was in relation to our hotel.  It was a little expensive (48 Turkish lira) but worth it to rest our legs a little after the big walking day yesterday.  Strangely, during the taxi ride our hotel called the cab and asked us for our credit card information again.  I’m still not sure why they would need it, and why they didn’t ask us while we were still there, but there it was – we were reading off our credit card number to the hotel clerk over the taxi cab driver’s cell phone.  I hope he doesn’t have a good memory.

At the airport the check-in was a piece of cake, and we had a little time to kill.  Our flight was at 1:30 pm to Madrid, and it went pretty smoothly.  From Madrid we changed to the domestic terminal using a bus to catch our next flight on Iberian Airlines.  The domestic terminal design looked almost exactly the same as the Kansai airport back in Osaka.  Maybe the same architect?  We had lots of time to kill here, as we were taking an evening flight to Granada.  Unfortunately there weren’t many restaurants, and the terminal seemed to be under construction so that limited our options even more.  We did manage to find a cafeteria, and we had a wonderful meal of tortilla Espana and quiche with a half bottle of red wine.  At the cafeteria cash register the cashier asked if we wanted them to open the bottle, and since I wasn’t carrying an opener of course we said yes.  They whipped out a corkscrew and popped the bottle for us, and gave us a couple of nice glasses too.  The wine was much better than I expected.  Welcome to Spain!

It was finally time to head for the gate, so we went through security on the way.  Kuniko put her hat through the x-ray machine per the staff request, and since it was so light it was brushed off and stayed inside the machine.  I tried to be helpful by telling the security staff in my best Spanish, but my Spanish was a little rough.  I ended up saying “My wife’s head is inside that machine.”  I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested right there.  But they could clearly see that my wife’s head was right there on her shoulders, and they put it together.  Belly laughs all around and I learned that it will take a while to get used to using Spanish again.

We reached the gate but apparently the flight was delayed another hour.  We had lots of time to walk around, read, and people watch.  Finally caught the flight, and arrived in Granada after only 45 minutes.  It was a very small plane, and a very small airport, so some of the luggage handlers started putting down luggage right out there on the runway after we landed.  Some passengers thought it was their chance to grab them early, but the staff freaked out and shouted at them to go to the terminal and wait.  So close, yet so far, I guess.

Once we got our bag we found our pre-arranged driver waiting for us.  It was a taxi driver, and he drove us into town at light speed.  We didn’t speak at all, and we finally arrived at our hotel around midnight.  Fortunately the owner of the hotel was waiting up for us, and he showed us to our room.  The place was in a very old neighborhood but decorated very nicely in kind of an Arabic style.  He gave us all the info we needed for the next day, and then left us to hit the sack.  It was another busy day of travel.

We didn’t hear any prayers during the night, and so we took the chance to sleep in a little later than usual.  Heading downstairs one of the lights on the landings was burned out, and with no other light around I slip and fell on my ass as we walked down the stairs.  Luckily it was a minor fall, and it didn’t come back to haunt me later.  We did advise the hotel staff that it might be a good idea to change the light before somebody more fragile than I slipped and fell.

After breakfast we walked across town to the harbor.  There we caught a cheap ferry ride to the Asian side of Istanbul.  We sat outside along the water since it was shaded from the morning sun by the bulk of the ferry, and we were joined by a local family with a cute kid smiling and making faces at us.  The view from the ferry was very nice and it was refreshing to be on the water instead of walking around everywhere.  After about 15 minutes we arrived on the Asian side, and we initially took a wrong turn and ended up on the grounds of a religious university.  After backtracking a bit we found a shopping area with plenty of stores to look through.  We were really surprised at the prices – things were about half the price that we were paying over in the historic (touristy) district.  It would be cheaper to ferry over here for dinner every night.  We worked up a thirst walking around in the sun, so we stopped at a place selling bubble tea.  It was a little different than the regular bubble tea with tapioca balls.  This place you could choose exactly what flavor the little gelatin balls would contain.  We ordered a pineapple/yogurt drink with passionfruit bubbles in the bottom.  It was an interesting texture – loved it.

We continued walking through town, and especially enjoyed the street markets with rows of spices, meats and fish, vegetables and fruits.  We had ice cream from a stand that seemed pretty temporary, and I tried a strange yogurt drink from a guy selling them from a truck.  We were still full from snacking so we skipped lunch and instead took another ferry to the newer downtown of Istanbul, back on the European side.   As we crossed this time we passed some more of the harbor where some enormous ships were docked.  The scale of the ships was completely different from what we had seen so far.  Once we arrived at our next dock, we caught a funicular train up a hill (glad we didn’t decide to walk it!) and emerged right at the center of Taksim Square.  This was the epicenter of the protests against the Turkish government a couple of months ago, and it had given us a scare since at the time we weren’t sure if it would be safe to go or not.  As it turned out, we had nothing to worry about.  The place was emptied out, clean and safe.  There was no sign at all of any demonstrations, but we did notice a giant Turkish flag hanging next to a huge poster of the president.  Rubbing it in?

While I took pictures Kuniko wandered into the shade to avoid the heat of the sun.  As she walked through the edge of a park I followed to catch up and saw that she was being trailed by two young Turkish guys.  They were calling out to her, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying and it appeared that Kuniko couldn’t hear either.  One walked on ahead, but the other got pretty close to Kuniko before his friend saw me coming.  He backed off quickly but they stuck around to see what we were doing.  They made kissing faces at me while I watched them, and eventually we got our bearings and moved off.  Everything was cool.

I bought a small cup of lemonade at a nearby stand, and I made the tourist mistake of ordering it before asking how much.  The guy took the liberty of doubling the price to two euros.  That’ll teach me.  I noticed that most stands had no prices posted so they could adjust them as necessary based on the customer and the demand.

From there we walked down a long shopping street that felt a lot more like Beverly Hills than Istanbul.  There was a lot of money on that street, and I could see how sensitive the government must have been to the demonstrations considering they were happening right next door to the high rent district.  Again the men were very aggressive and they gave us lots of looks, but generally people were very friendly.  At the end of the street we found a train station where we could catch a train ride back to the area around our hotel.  The train ride was quick, and I guess we probably could have walked – I didn’t realize how close things were.

We took a break at our hotel and then set out to find a restaurant for dinner.  We were running low on Turkish lira, and didn’t want to change much more money since we were moving on the EU after this.  We found a street near our hotel lined with restaurants that seemed to serve the youth hostel crowd.  One restaurant said they would take credit cards, but they made it seem like they were doing us a favor by accepting them.  We drank lots of ice cold beer, had some decent (but not exciting) food, and watched people walking by.  Cities like this are great for people watching – there is a such a variety that I found myself never losing interest.  After drinking all the beers we thought we’d do a little bit of shopping before we headed back to the hotel but suddenly realized we were low on lira.  The last thing we wanted was to be asking the street market sellers to accept Visa, so we went on back and headed to bed.  Lots of mileage today, and we were pretty sure our feet would be sore the next day.

We got out of bed around 7:30 am and started to prepare for our day.  We wanted to do some sightseeing on the early side to try to beat some of the tourists out of bed.  We started with breakfast in the hotel, and again it was very good.  They served hot coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice – squeezed right there in front of you while you wait.  The staff of the hotel were really friendly, too.  It seemed to be a family operation, but everyone spoke excellent English and they provided us with everything we could want.

We headed to our first stop – to see inside the Blue Mosque.  The first tour was already lined up around the back.  The main entrance was reserved for people that are praying, and during prayer times they close the mosque to tourists.  Our timing was pretty good, though.  We lined up and got inside in under 15 minutes. Women had to heard some kind of covering of their head and arms (although this didn’t look to be strictly enforced), and all visitors had to take their shoes off and carry them along in bag to the other side.  Once we got inside we were immediately struck by two things – one was the beauty of the domes inside.  They are built right on top of one another in some places and make for a dramatic spectacle.  The second thing we noticed was that the smell inside was terrible.  Thousands of sweaty tourists in sweaty socks walk through that place every day, and they have it carpeted inside from wall to wall.  All that sweat sticks around in the carpet making for a pretty awful smell.  Losing the carpet would do a lot to get rid of this problem I’d wager.

After we left the mosque and were free to gasp fresh air outside we decided to go to the Basilica Cistern.  Just a few minutes walk from the main part of the historic district the cistern is used to hold water for the city in reserve.  It was remarkable to go down the stairs and walk around the city, completely underground.  It was cool, dark and beautifully lit. They also played some atmospheric music quietly in the background that reminded me of the old game Myst for the PC. There were even fish swimming around in the water below us as we walked around on raised platforms.  The cistern was supported by many pillars, and two on the far side of the cistern were carved in the shape of medusa heads.  Spooky!

We stopped for a little break at a café for some fruit juice before moving on to the Top Kapi Palace, an ancient Ottoman palace that housed sultans for 400 years. It was in remarkably good condition, and there was plenty to see and do.  They had treasure rooms full of treasures that sultans had attained over their reign.  The sword collection alone was worth the price of admission.  It was my first time to see just how big a greatsword actually is.  Answer: bigger than me.

The views from the palace were just a little better than from our hotel, except they were supported by golden structures and beautiful gardens.  We also enjoyed the tile work that they decorated the palace with.  It was a great visit, and it kept us busy for a long time.

Next we did the old beer and the hotel rooftop routine, and hit a small restaurant outside the Blue Mosque for a kebab sandwich and a kebab roll.  I had pomegranate juice (way too tart!) and Kuniko had cherry juice.  Cherry juice is everywhere in Istanbul, and I can imagine in other parts of the country as well.  It reminded me of the old Cherry Tree stores in Sonoma when I was growing up.

We hid away at our hotel to beat the afternoon heat and took another long nap, and then went out one last time for a grocery supply run and to have dinner.  The dinner this time was at another kebab place – this place had a good reputation on TripAdvisor.  I had a pizza pide – delicious – and Kuniko ordered another kebab dish.  The food was much better here, and more our size.  It also came with the giant puffy bread, but we successfully ignored it.  For dessert that gave us each baklavas, tea and coffee, along with a Turkish delight.  Great meal, great coffee, great service.  Does this sound like an ad for TripAdvisor?

We were full from dinner, so we strolled home on our usual route.  By now we were getting used to the lay of the land.  There was no more festival going on at the main square, so it was just a quiet walk home and then to bed.  We went to sleep wondering when we would get the morning prayer wake up call.

Every time we go to Europe we have a great time.  We have been wanting to go back since the last trip and finally we found some good flights and a time schedule that worked for us.  The plan this time was for three countries – Turkey, Spain and Greece.  We’ve been anxiously awaiting this trip since it has several destinations that we’ve wanted to see our whole lives, and the last six months it has been just about all that we talk about.  Trip, trip, trip.  So when the day finally came, we were more than ready.

Our first flight was delicately scheduled at 10:30 pm on Thursday, and since we were both working, we felt that five hours was more than ample time to get to the airport two hours before departure.  But actually, we almost missed the flight.

In order to make sure that we made it, we took precautions and drove to work that day with our suitcase and clothes inside.  We wanted to avoid the worst case scenario of a train stoppage, so the car made sense.  The plan was to drive home after work, change clothes there, leave the car, and then take the train to Kobe and then the bus to the airport.

During the workday I watched the train schedule carefully, and looked for any delays.  There weren’t any problems at all, until one minute before I left.  Suddenly my cellphone alarm went off – it was an emergency alert for an earthquake nearby.  What that also meant was that the trains were shutting down.  Also, to make things tighter I had some last minute student visits, so I left a few minutes late.  Kuniko was waiting outside in the car, and we dashed off.  It turned out the earthquake was pretty mild, so we figured we’d stick to the original plan, hoping that the trains would resume service by the time we got home and changed.

Luckily, the trains were running by the time we got to the station.  Unluckily, there were still periodic delays and we missed a few chances to change trains and catch up.  Finally we made it to Kobe, and we caught a bus from there to the airport.  Several times we had to stop for traffic, but we made it about two hours before the flight.  Safe!

Kansai airport was pretty quiet, actually.  He had our customary pre-trip cocktail at our usual bar, including a light dinner because we figured we’d be sleeping on the plane soon enough.  The pre-trip cocktail is one of our favorite routines – work is done and only vacation ahead to look forward to.

We easily caught our flight on Turkish airlines, and enrolled in their mileage program since we’ll be flying with them quite often this trip.  The food on board was actually pretty good.  The eleven-hour-flight was smooth, and we even landed early in Istanbul (at 5 am).  We walked out of the arrival gate and there were many guys standing around holding names on paper.  We hadn’t arranged any transportation for this stage, but a guy had Kuniko’s name on a paper.  We are used to this – the hotel sells the names to guys who will arrange some driver to take you to the hotel.  It ends up being more expensive than a taxi, but we went over and asked him how much it would cost.  He couldn’t quote a price right away and desperately tried to reach his driver by phone.  No luck, though – so we left him behind to take the train, which was our original plan.  He called out in desperation as we left, “There’s no train running at this time!”  We sneered because we had already researched it and knew the truth.  Scam, scam, scam.

One thing I noticed right away was the interesting blend of Middle East and European in the people walking around.  I know the city straddles the border between Asia and Europe, but you can really tell by the appearance of the people.  Maybe it is the fashion, the attitude, I don’t know.  Another thing I noticed immediately was that the men seemed to hung up on machismo.  Living in Japan you don’t really see that kind of thing, but this was like a flashback to my visits to Mexico when I was young.  Guys were dressed up and checking out girls, and they looked very meticulous about their image.

We figured out the train system easily enough, and caught the next train into town.  There was one transfer, and then we arrived in the historic Sultanahmet district.  There was a scent in the air when we arrived – it smelled like cinnamon or clove, and I noticed it for the first few days of our visit before I got used to it.  The area where we got off the train was deserted (it was awfully early after all) and so we started walking to our hotel based on the GPS direction that I had on the cellphone.  We ended up walking right by the Blue Mosque.  It was beautiful to behold from the outside, and I couldn’t resist parking the suitcase and taking some pictures right there.  Around us there were tons of stray dogs running loose.  I noticed later that each one had an electronic tag on their ear, but I’m not sure why they were bothering to keep track.  We also saw some dogs chase a passing BMW sedan and try to bite the tires.  The driver stopped the car and the dogs just stood there looking bored until the car started up again, and they chased after it again.  Weird neighborhood!

The hotel was actually just a few minutes from the Blue Mosque, and we were able to check in right away.  We even got a bonus breakfast while we checked in – they had laid out a pretty nice spread of traditional Turkish breakfast foods that consisted of olive pastes, hummus, breads, eggs, and lots of cheeses and meats.

Our room was on the top floor, and it enjoyed a beautiful ocean view.  From our room we could watch the ships coming into the BosporusStrait.  The view was very nice from there, but it turned out that it was even better from the rooftop of the hotel as we found out later.

We cleaned ourselves up after the long flight, and then went out to explore the city.  We stayed in a big arc around the hotel, but managed to skirt the northeastern port and see all the activity around it.  Cruise ships, a palace on the hill, and some fat old guys swimming in the ocean in tiny rubber trunks.

After we covered a lot of territory and really stretched our legs, we were starting to feel the heat of the day.  During our trip we noticed that because there was comparatively lower humidity than in Japan, simply staying in the shade was a great way to cool down.  We ended our loop on a cross town trip through empty streets.  Apparently today was a religious holiday, and people were busy spending time at home with their families.  That meant empty streets for us, which was no problem.  Near our hotel we stopped and bought a couple of cold beers from the convenience store across the way, and then took them upstairs to the roof to watch the ships come and go.  The view was superb – almost 270 degrees of ocean and city.

For lunch we went back into the historic part of town which had turned into the crowded touristy part of town since we had walked through last.  We found a small restaurant that served some meatballs that are supposedly the local specialty.  Each dish we ordered in Istanbul came with a giant puffed piece of bread approximately the size of a watermelon.  As it cooled it deflated to look more like naan bread, but a little more firm.  It was good but filling, and we avoided it hoping to concentrate more on the main courses.  We also discovered that it is pretty hard to say thank you in Turkish.  “Tay-shay kkuray durim” doesn’t exactly pop right out as the waiter is walking away.

After lunch it was getting hotter and even more tourists were piling into the neighborhood.  We made a judgment call to head back to the hotel and take a nap.  We cranked up the air conditioning and enjoyed a few hours of restful sleep.  This kind of method of avoiding the heat became a bit of a habit in the first few days while we were resting up from our busy work schedule.  I know that siestas are supposed to happen in Spain, but we started practicing early.

When we finally got up and moving again it was close to dinner time, so we went to another restaurant that looked good.  It was billed as a BBQ house, and they served so many kinds of kebabs it was overwhelming.  I had the bright idea to order several kebabs a la carte instead of the way they were presented on the menu.  I wanted to try different meats but I didn’t want so many salads and veggies and rice on the side.  Technically it was a success – we received everything a la carte, but on the bill they went ahead and charged us for the full meals anyway.  Expensive dinner!  The meat was very tender and delicious, but it was difficult to finish all of it.  Eyes were much bigger than my stomach. I was interested to note that throughout our stay in Turkey we only saw male waiters – I can only guess why.  We also tried our first Turkish wines of the trip.  The white wine was pretty good, but the red was disappointing.  It was almost more sherry-like to me.

We walked back across the historic square in front of the Blue Mosque and found a festival going on.  It was perhaps related to the religious holiday.  There were tons of locals out celebrating, and only a few tourists walking around.  We walked around enjoying the atmosphere, and even had a chance to buy some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor and go through a street market located right near the big mosque.  Finally we ran out of gas and headed back to the hotel and headed straight to bed.  We were a little alarmed to be awoken at 4:04 a.m. by morning prayers blaring from the nearby mosques.  Loudest prayers I’ve ever heard!

We knocked out last week in a flash, and now we’re sitting pretty the weekend before our trip.

Friday night I finally won the battle against technology and I’ve got a new server running upstairs.  Smooth, quick and without a hiccup, I am looking forward to reading this post ten years in the future and wondering what I was thinking when I set it up.  Hopefully it lasts ten years.

The Yamaji’s invited us to watch the fireworks in Kobe with them on Saturday night.  Usually things are crazy in Kobe that night – crowds of people, jostling for position, and being sweaty and fighting mosquitoes all night.  Luckily, the Yamajis had a connection to miss a lot of that hassle.

We went to Port Island, and then walked a little ways over to a company called Nichirei.  Their business is cold storage and transport of food products.  There was a four story warehouse there, and on the shaded side the company employees and their families had set up BBQs and pallets to have a dinner party.

We sat down, opened some beers they provided, and enjoyed their hospitality.  They brought over food that they had cooked, including some huge prawns they had grilled, steak, sausages, fried chicken, oden, yakitori, and many others.  The kids were kept busy fishing things out of a small pool that they set up, and they had a contest that was kind of like a pinata, but instead they used a watermelon on the ground.

Although it was a warm day in summer, we were set up in the shade, and that helped a lot.  In addition, we were right outside a huge refrigerated warehouse, so anytime we liked we could step inside where the temperature on the first floor was 10 degrees C (compared to 30 C outside).  In freezer storage it was -10 C, but there was no reason to go in there.  10 C is quite enough to see your breath and cool down quickly.

The company employees sometimes came over to say hello, and Mr. Yamaji had a chance to talk to some of his business contacts, and we were introduced to many people.  Everyone was very friendly and hospitable, and there was a good vibe there.

This is something that the company does every year, and so they’ve got a system going.  Just before the fireworks started they lined us up inside the warehouse.  We filled our pockets with snacks (and drinks) and went up the service elevators to the roof.  There we picked out a spot on top, and we had a spectacular view of Kobe at night.

The fireworks lasted for about an hour, and we enjoyed watching, taking pictures, and just drinking and talking.  It was the perfect place to sit and enjoy the show, and with so few people around, plenty of food and drink – it was a lot of fun.  We’re already planning on coming back next year, if they’ll have us.

There was a huge rush of people leaving Port Island, so we decided to walk over to the Portopia hotel and have some drinks upstairs until the rush passed.  It was nice to sit and talk with the Yamajis in the relaxed air conditioned atmosphere instead of being in the crush of people waiting to catch trains and head home.

In the end we got home on the late side, but with Sunday completely off it was perfectly OK to sleep in a take it easy.  Nice!

We noticed something curious lately.  We’ve had a lot of guests come over for parties and what not over the years.  Some people are married, some are single.  The weird thing that we noticed is that the ones that visit us as unmarried couples usually break up sometime afterwards.

Not sure why – but we could think of a pretty long list of relationships that were broken after a visit to our place.  It hasn’t worked on any married couples, though.  That at least is good news.

So a warning to any singles coming to our place.  The chances for continuing your romances are not good.

It is quiet around here lately.  With the server crashed and the new one under gradual construction, we are a little limited in our musical library.  I can stream it from the iPhone, but it lacks the depth of what we’ve got stored on servers. And it skips if we use the microwave…

Today at work was the first time for me to see some of my students after they returned from overseas trips.  We had three days off last week, and it is an easy matter to take the last two off and make nine consecutive holidays.  One student went to Italy, and on a whim suddenly took a high speed train from Venice to Paris to watch the start of the Tour De France, and then go back to Venice the same day.  That was a cool story.   The rest of his trip seemed like it went well, but he was clearly exhausted and jetlagged.  Poor guy.

Another student went to Laos and Vietnam.  His trip to Laos completed his quest to visit every Southeast Asian country.  He said that of all the countries he has visited, Laos was the least developed.  I mentally scratched it off my list after I heard that.  He spent just two nights there, and then spent the rest of the time in Hanoi and the outskirts.

So it was great to hear some of the stories, and I can’t wait to hear even more after the holidays next month.

It has been a long time since I had a chance to blog.

I’m not sure why, since I’ve had a lot of time off recently. But as it turned out, I had less free time than I expected. This always seems to happen during long holidays – a similar situation occurred during Golden Week last May.

Anyway, this time around it was quirky behavior with our home network. Suddenly when streaming music and movies over a wired ethernet connection there would be sudden drops and over slow behavior. I spent two days troubleshooting, and after buying a new router and having no change in the situation, I think I narrowed down the problem to our little home server.

It has been problematic before, but I think it is time to move the data off the little beast and put it into retirement. I haven’t had it that long, a couple of years, but I get nervous with all our music and photographs residing on it. What if it just up and died one of these days.

So my next project is to put together a new server, and then transfer the information over to it. I don’t mind putting together a computer, but it is time consuming.

Yesterday Kuniko and I went into Osaka to do some shopping, see a movie (Monster University) and then have dinner at a Greek restaurant. We weren’t able to find a Greek place in Kobe, and this restaurant was the only Greek restaurant in Osaka. I guess Greek isn’t that popular here. Even at this restaurant they had to pad out the menu with some Italian dishes. Still, the food was better than average. I guess I was just hoping for a little more variety. I can’t wait to try to the real deal soon.

Today it was back to work after the long holiday. A two day week is always good!

Tomorrow after work we’ll go pick up my friend Rico’s son Dino, who is here in Japan playing football for a week. We thought we’d take him out to yakiniku in Kobe. I’m looking forward to seeing him and hearing how his trip is going!