Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon was our last stop in Europe, before returning home to Singapore.

We were here for a week, but we were not here for fun. Deanna had to attend a business conference during the day, and I spent most of the day in my hotel room working remotely from my laptop.

I don't have any good pictures of the hotel room because it was too stylish to photograph.

Like a ninja. Our hotel room was completely black. So much black that there was no reflected light. So much black that even in the bright of day, with the blinds open and the room lights on, you couldn't see yourself well enough to shave in the bathroom mirror.

Not just the guest rooms, Deanna said the conference rooms were also all black.

See, this hotel was a self-described "style hotel." And to prove it, they made sure that their style superseded your function. They celebrated the geometric flat surface of the bathroom walls and doors by refusing to install hooks or towel racks. And to make sure you keep your towels to yourself, they made the doors go all the way to the ceiling so you couldn't even drape your towel over the door.

They suffered no power outlets or handles or knobs or any other clumsy devices that might interrupt the perfect flatness of the perfectly black walls.

Even our room number was banned from the door. You had to look along the floor to find your room. Walking to your room was a featureless corridor of black. Like a morgue. Or Princess Leia's prison cell on the Death Star.

Other useful things for which the stylish have no need: irons and ironing boards. I don't know about you, but when I travel for business, one of the first things I do when I arrive is unpack my business shirts and give them a quick touch up with the iron. Feel free to call the cleaning service.

One plus: they had good wireless internet access (extra charge), and I was able to work without too much trouble once I also discovered how to access the concealed power outlets.

It was a strange hotel, but it was was comfortable and it made a good jumping-off point to see Lisbon because it was just a short walk to the local metro station.

In addition to seeing Lisbon, I made one day trip out to Sintra, which was about an hour's train ride east.

I had never heard of Sintra before. But when we were back in Barcelona, the clerk at the hotel said that Sintra was the most beautiful place in Portugal, and we had to see it. So I did.

But mostly I went there to see the castles.

Everybody loves castles, don't they? Especially boys like me who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons and medieval war games. But its not just us Ren-Faire geeks and gamer boys. You will find tourists of all persuasions out to see the castles.

Its not just the castle itself that draws you, but everything that a castle implies: swords and shields, knights in armor, moats and siege engines. Everything that castles were built to withstand, all of the manual and mechanical devices of medieval warfare that became obsolete with the introduction of gunpowder.

For some reason, it seems more romantic, more honorable to fight wars with swords instead of guns. And castles represent this romantic ideal. As the great sage, Kool Moe Dee, teaches:

Guns, we don't like to use them
Unless, our enemies choose them
We prefer to fight you on like a man
And beat you down with our hands

Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, Spain

We took a day trip from Barcelona to go wine tasting in Spain's Cava region. It felt good to be in a wine-growing region. It reminded us of back home in California.

Cava, we learned, is Spanish sparkling wine, produced mainly in the Penedès region in Catalonia, Spain. This region is an easy day trip from Barcelona, just inland and south west. It was a relaxing tour bus ride through the Spanish countryside.

From the bus, we saw the massive rock formation that makes up the jagged Montserrat mountain. We didn't get to visit Montserrat, but I'm curious, because it is supposed to be one of the possible locations of the Holy Grail from the legends of Kind Authur.

We did see the village of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia and the surrounding area, which produces nearly 95% of Spain's total Cava output. This is where the most famous (or most prolific) Spanish Cava is produced by the winery Freixenet.

Even though I've become big fan of Champagne and Prosecco and other sparkling wines, we didn't go for the Cava this time. For this trip, we went after the Spanish reds. After drinking our share of the local reds, we each bought a couple of bottles to take home -- but not too many bottles, mind you, because Singapore has very strict limits and very high import duties on wine and spirits.

Then we both took a well-earned nap on the bus on the way back to Barcelona.

Barcelona, Spain

We originally planned to take the train from London to France and then on to Spain. But we were surprised to learn that the Eurail train is more expensive than flying. We already had the experience of taking the Eurostar channel tunnel train on a previous trip from London and Paris, so we decided to skip the trains this time and just fly straight to Barcelona.

One of the cool things about Barcelona is how compact it can be. Nearly everything we wanted to see was in the "Old Town" area on either side of La Rambla or in the Gothic Quarter. Our hotel was on the edge of the Gothic Quarter (on the center right of the map), just a few blocks from La Rambla.

I'm not the only one to say this: if you do only one thing in Barcelona, you must walk La Rambla, from the bottom at the harbor, to the top at Placa de Catalyuna. It is the one thing that everyone recommends.

As you walk this pedestrian mall, you'll pass cafes, bars, restaurants. You'll see hawkers selling birds and turtles; tourist shops selling typical baubles and trinkets. Its similar to Pacific Avenue in our hometown, Santa Cruz, only more so.

One of the fun things to find along La Rambla is every sort of common slacker made up as a human statue tacitly asking for small change. They’ll spend hours standing around semi-patiently dressed as random pop-culture references doing little tricks for tourists.

Here are some of the ones we photographed. My favorite one is the first guy in this series, who made subtle little faces appropriate for his task:



Given the diversity and creativity of Barcelona's street talent, I suggest we send our own Pink Umbrella Man of Santa Cruz out to Barcelona to take some fashion lessons.

As I mentioned above, we stayed at the edge of the Gothic Quarter, which was almost as much fun as La Rambla. The Gothic Quarter is a dense maze of old medieval buildings, with thin streets winding seemingly randomly through them.

From our hotel, we were just a few steps away from Barcelona's cathedral, La Seu, protected from the main street by old Roman battlements.

The cathedral is dedicated to Santa Eulalia, who was killed by the Romans in some horrible way for being unapologetically Christian, and who now serves as the patron saint for the local sailors.

At some point in every trip to Europe, you get tired of seeing yet another cathedral. And at Barcelona is where this started to happen to me. But what made this cathedral worthwhile was the cloister of geese protecting the church gardens. The geese also represent the virginity of Santa Eulalia. Apparently, there are 13 geese to represent the age of Eulalia when she was killed.

Barcelona has a fabulous street scene, day or night. And its not limited to just La Rambla. The medieval streets themselves are so fun to wander, it draws out the locals and tourists alike to join in the fun. We spent several afternoons and evenings just walking around watching people and looking for places to hang out or eat or drink.



Of course no visit to Barcelona is complete without visiting the various creations by Antoni Gaudí throughout the city.

The most obvious Gaudí attraction is the Sagrada Família, one of the most famous churches in the world. It is still unfinished, after more than a century of construction. Sure, its yet another cathedral, but unlike any other cathedral in the world. Actually, its not technically a Cathedral, but a temple; its full name is the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família./

I don't know what the difference is between temple, cathedral, abbey, or church.

Continuing on our Gaudí tour, we went to the rounded, organic apartment building La Pedrera. Unfortunately, we couldn't get inside because we came to late. We did manage to spend an afternoon in the Alice-in-Wonderlandish Park Güell, which Gaudí designed and lived with his family in the early 1900s.



In addition to seeing the works of Gaudí, we also made it to the Salvador Dalí museum and the Pablo Picasso Museum. And we got out of the city to the Spanish countryside for a bit of wine tasting.

I first wanted to go to Barcelona after I graduated from college and was living in an apartment in Santa Cruz. My housemate, Dag, and I used to go to a local dive bar, called the "One Double-Oh Seven," named after its address of 1007 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz. The bar was walking distance from our apartment, so Dag and I could play pool not worry about driving.

The thing about playing pool in bars is you only get to play as long as you are winning. If there are people waiting, whoever is next in line takes the place of player that looses the match. The new player pays for the game.

If you keep winning, you can play all night and never have to pay for your own games. But if you're with the bar with friends, you probably want to play together as long as you can. If one of you looses early, then you have to wait until your friend's name moves up from the bottom of the chalkboard waiting list until you can play together again.

If you sink the 8-ball in typical bar pool, you loose. Game over. The next challenger struts over to take your place and start a new game. If you had a good game, that's okay. But if you just started a game and accidentally sink the 8-ball in the first few rounds, then it spoils your fun to walk away early. You can't hide the sunk 8-ball, because all the challengers are watching your game, waiting for their chance to play. They all know when you loose.

That's why we invented a pool game we called "Barcelona-7." In Barcelona-7, you play by normal bar rules unless you sink the 8-ball early. When that happens, if a challenger approaches the table, you tell him "we're playing Barcelona-7."

Nobody ever asked what that meant. I think because they didn't want to admit there was something they don't know about pool. What it really meant was we were going to keep playing. And for the rest of the game we treated the 7-ball like it was the 8-ball. It is helpful that bar pool rules tend to vary from bar to bar, so its rare that anyone is 100% sure of the local house rules anyway.

I think we came up the name Barcelona-7, because we happened to be practicing putting "English" on the ball for making trick shots. Some drunk guys were tying to be clever and were joking about putting some "Spanish" on the ball. Which is when we improvidently sunk the 8-ball and wanted to keep playing. "Spanish" of course triggered "Barcelona-7," which sounded just slightly exotic and convincing enough to justify keeping the table.

That story has no real connection to the actual city of Barcelona, other than sharing the description "slightly exotic."

The Roman Town of Bath

After seeing what the prehistorics did with their bare hands in Stonehenge, we also went to see what the Romans did when they had their chance to have a go at things in the nearby Roman town of Bath.

The Romans had better building techniques and modern tools for stone cutting. They also took advantage of two important inventions: They understood the weight-bearing ability of arches (probably a “discovery” more than an “invention”). And they developed a modern concrete mixture of cement, lime, sand, volcanic ash, and finely crushed rock or brick.

Like today’s concrete, Roman concrete hardens even under water, which is important when you need to build pools, drains, bridges, dams, and aqueducts. The Romans used all these features during their occupation of England to build the famous baths at the naturally-occurring hot spring in today’s English city of Bath.

The location of Bath was originally a Celtic town before Romans wandered in. But the Romans made it famous for the alleged medicinal power of the waters. They used the water from the hot springs to fill the bath house. And nearby, they build a Temple to the Roman goddess Minerva (Sulis Minerva).
Similar to today, the combination of bath house and Minerva temple attracted tourists and religious pilgrims from around the Empire, which in turn brought wealth and prosperity to the town.

Various authorities have called Minerva the goddess of intelligence, creativity, poetry, and wisdom. Some claim she was the goddess of domestic skills, handicrafts, and commerce. Others claim she was was the goddess of warriors or medicine. At least one myth says she was the inventor of music.

Like most Roman gods, Minerva was copied from the Greeks, where she was known as the Greek goddess Athena. And the copying didn’t stop with the Romans. My kindred Californians copied her again when they designed the Great Seal of the State of California.

Adopted in 1849, the Great Seal was designed by Major Robert Selden Garnett of the United States Army, and it was introduced to the new state at California's constitutional convention, where it was described as follows:

"The foreground figure represents the Goddess Minerva having sprung full grown from the brain of Jupiter. She is introduced as a type of the political birth of the State of California without having gone through the probation of a Territory. At her feet crouches a grizzly bear feeding upon clusters from a grape vine emblematic of the peculiar characteristics of the country. A miner is engaged in a rocker and bowl at his side, illustrating the golden wealth of the Sacramento upon whose waters are seen shipping typical of commercial greatness and the Snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada make up the background while above is the Greek motto 'Eureka' (I have found it) applying either to the principle involved in the admission of the State, or the success of the miner at work."

Global political and religious connections are everywhere. It makes us Californians feel welcome among the Roman ruins.

But it also illustrates how our own country was once much more religiously tolerant than we are today. I can imagine the extreme religious right getting all incensed today if the legislature proposed symbolizing our state as a female pagan goddess sprung from the brain of another pagan god. 

The Romans and their gods were eventually forced out of England in the 5th century. Not by the religious right, but buy the Saxons. The Saxons were subsequently forced out by the Normans, who abandoned the city of Bath after trashing the place. The hot springs of Bath were forgotten until rediscovered in 18th century and restored in the Victorian period.

Today Bath is a modern English city. There is a museum on the site of the original Roman Baths and the temple to Minerva still stands. At some point, the British recovered the original head of the "Sulis-Minerva" statue and returned it to the site.

Adding to the religious diversity, the Christian Bath Abbey sits across the street from the original Roman pagan temple.

But even the Christians never agreed among themselves who’s religion was best. The first church was built by the Anglo-Saxons in AD 757. When the Norman’s forced them out, they tore down the Saxon Abby and replaced it with a massive Norman cathedral. Unfortunately, the cathedral was so big that the monastery could not afford to maintain it, so it fell into disrepair and ruin like the original roman temple. The current Abbey church was built in 1611.

Today, same as then, the temples and baths continue to attract tourists from around the world, bringing wealth and prosperity to the town.

Taste Test Challenge

English food has a terrible reputation worldwide. Why? Well I can give you at least one example. The last time we were in England, we had a breakfast in our hotel. It consisted of eggs and sausages boiled in grease. Yes. Not fried. Boiled. The grease wasn't hot enough to fry, just sort of a warm simmering pan of week-old oil. Boiled long enough to absorb the greasy flavor of everything else they cooked in the same oil that week, but not hot or long enough to actually fry the egg or fully cook the sausages. If you accidentally cooked this at home, you would throw away and start over.

But to be fair, that was hotel food. And it was a very cheap hotel at that.

Is the rest of English food all that bad?

One way to find out is to do a taste test. Based on my previous experience, I didn't want to set the bar to high. So I had to find some type of food to give England a sporting chance.

So my taste test challenge is English Food vs. Airplane Food. It seemed like an obvious match-up of historically bad cuisine. And I didn't have access to other obvious contenders: hospital food or high school cafeteria food.

But it is not fair to represent all of England by one cheap hotel breakfast. So to find a better ambassador for the Empire, I went to a traditional pub in the afternoon and ordered one of the specials off their hand-written chalkboard menu.

Please meet today's contestants:

English Food	Airplane Food
click to enlarge	click to enlarge
The Defending Champ: On the left, representing England, a traditional pub meal from an inn in Wiltshire county.	The Challenger: On the right, representing the air travel industry, from Singapore Airlines Flight SQ-318
Weighing In With: Grilled sausages, potatoes, carrots, peas, gravy on everything, a basked of pre-buttered sliced bread, apple pie (not shown), and a pint of cold beer.	Weighing In With: Grilled beef, potatoes, carrots, crackers, cheese, one bread roll, shrimp salad with packet of thousand-island dressing on the side, and a tiny plastic cup of water.
Scoring: Visual Appeal: 8 Ambiance: 8 Taste: 9 Beer: Yes	Scoring: Visual Appeal: 3 Ambiance: 1 Taste: 5 Beer: No

The winner by unanimous decision: English Pub Food. No contest really. A meal with only a tiny plastic cup of water will never compare to anything with a pint of beer. There is nothing better than a generous country farm meal served with beer in a traditional English pub.

In fact, everything we ate in England was good, and with generous western-sized portions and friendly, but never overly persistent waiters.

As much as I've enjoyed all the variety of Asian food back in Singapore, noodles and rice can get old now and then. It is fabulous to get back to the west where you can enjoy a hearty meat-and-potatoes supper. Congratulations England!

Stonehenge

Our trip to England got a bit further out when we visited Stonehenge.

This is one of those nearly mythical places that you hear about all your life. But I never expected to ever see it in person.

You have to drive several hours from London to see Stonehenge, or take a bus as we did, to the English county of Wiltshire. But to visit such an enduring icon, the journey is well worth it.

There is no end to the speculation about who built it, why they built it, or how they built it.

Stonehenge has been credited, at one time or another, to the Phoenicians, Celts, Romans, Sumerians, Druids, extraterrestrials, wizards, and all sorts of other paranormal beings. It has been called a solar calendar, a Buddhist shrine, a temple of animal worshipers, or altar where defeated soldiers were sacrificed for blood offerings to heathen gods.

Archeologists continue to argue over which race or culture is responsible for building it, and how old it is.

Not to diminish its mystery, but I don't see the need to create any big cultural or spiritual explanation for why someone would want to build a big circle of stones.

Guys do this stuff all the time. Just hanging out, having reached some tacit group understanding to dig a big hole and half-bury some rocks in it.

Add beer (invented long before Stonehenge) and repeat. And Stonehenge is not the only evidence of group drinking spots in England. There are over 900 stone rings in the British Isles, and scholars say that twice as many may have existed before modern men started knocking them down. Also frequently the result of beer drinking.

I'm guessing building it was a lot more work in the old days. But ancient civilizations built a lot bigger things using only manual labor. It doesn't seem much different than any gathering of able bodied men with access to simple tools, alcohol, and a lot of free time. Well, at least until the "clever" one decides to go all artistic and line up a few rocks with the sunrise and sunset.

Whatever the reason they decided to build it all those thousands of years ago, they certainly captured the imagination of many generations.

And rightfully so. It is a very impressive monument. And it gets even more impressive the closer you approach.

You used to be able to walk right up and touch it, and climb on the rocks. Not anymore. But keeping people out of it makes it a more powerful experience to see up close. It doesn't need any ancient magical powers to be a place of wonder. There is no question that Stonehenge is (and was) a site of great awe and wonder.

London England and Windsor Castle

We spent a long weekend visiting England, the political motherland for our great country.

We started our weekend in the City of London, where we ran all around the city on the bus and underground, but also took a tour bus out to Windsor to see the Castle.

This is supposed to be the oldest and largest "occupied" castle in the world. Apparently, at least one English royal sometimes lives there, justifying its more formal name, "The Official Residences of The Queen And The Official Residence of The Prince of Wales."

Nobody explained why the "residences" are plural for the Queen but singular, "residence," for the Prince. Maybe the Prince only has one room? Or maybe it’s related to the fact that the Queen really does stay at Windsor Castle on the weekends, but the Prince does not?

Other than her statute, we didn't get to see the actual Queen during our visit. But our tour guide insisted that the Queen really does stays in Windsor Castle for the weekend. Apparently she commutes back to London for the workweek, where our guide says she works just like you and me.

I doubt that the Queen's job is much like you or me. Start with her job title, "Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith." Put that on your business card.

With a job title like that it nearly justifies earning nearly as much money as JK Rowling.

What can you say about the Queen’s place in Windsor?

Well, it’s a castle, and thats always fun. And it’s guarded by blokes in ridiculously impractical hats.

Our guide said these guards are actual live British soldiers, who rotate in and out from their various soldiering jobs. Not many left, she commented sadly, since so many have died in America's war in Iraq.

Of course, we road all around on the London Underground for sightseeing. I took a couple of morning runs through Hyde Park and Regent's Park.

We visited the mythical offices of Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, at 122b Baker Street.

We also took advantage of London’s cultural diversity to purchase black hair care products, which are not generally available in Singapore.

Oh, and I got my picture taken in an English phone-booth.

Of course, we did a bunch of other fun stuff too. Its too much to write about here, but I have pictures posted online in our flickr account.