The Bald Heretic

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Eurrail passes arrived in the mail! We’re counting down the weeks at this point.

We did some fine tuning on the itinerary over the weekend. Looked online at our flight reservations and discovered our flght time from Granada to Barcelona had changed. Not a big deal, we’ll just have to get to the airport a few hours earlier than previously anticipated.

Cynthia and I have each done a test packing. It’s a challenge getting everything you need into a backpack but we are managing. We have learned that travelling light is the only way to go.

As Cynthia likes to say, there’s probably not too many women her age willing to travel with me across Europe with only a backpack full of supplies. I’m sure that’s true, but I have to remind her that backpacks were HER idea!

Tags: Cynthia, Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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When travelling overseas, communication can be a problem. Not a huge problem as many people in Europe do speak English but still, in an emergncy you don’t want something like a language barrier to get in the way of what you need.

If our cab driver, as well as some of the staff in the hospital in Brugge, Belgium spoke no English the Maiming Of The Nose story would be a much more painful anecdote.

For those that might be interested in being doubly prepared on there travels I have found the perfect accessory!

The Traveler’s Phrase Book T-shirt

The tee shirt has a phrase book printed on it: point a finger at the pictogram you need and then point it twice at the question mark, which means, “Where is it?”

Available for purchase at store.artlebedev.com/catalog/t-shirts/2007/phrase-book

Thanks to Laanba for the head’s up!

Tags: Humor, Travel, Travel planning, Trip to Europe 2005 by Jay Lee
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In reviewing the pictures from our two previous trips one thing stands out and that’s the fact that there’s simply too few pictures of Cynthia and I together.

Sure, she has her camera and I have my camera so we’ve got some pictures of each other, but the thought of handing hundreds of dollars worth of technology to a complete stranger causes one to pause. For the sake of a romantic shot of the two of us in front of (insert cool landmark here) we are risking them dropping, or even worse, stealing the camera.

And holding a full SLR at arms length doesn’t work very well either.

Then I had a brainstorm.

I came up with the idea of purchasing a used and inexpensive point and shoot camera. The idea being that it’s something that can easily be held at arm’s length so we can get the self portraits of ourselves and it’s cheap enough so that if we do decide to let someone take our picture and they drop it or run away we’re not out that much.

It occurred to me that the secondary camera market must be huge and that by being willing to sacrifice a few mega-pixels and some features, a few year old used point and shoot digital camera should be pretty inexpensive and readily available.

We headed over to The Camera Exchange and I was able to pick up a used Nikon Coolpix 4100 with a 1 gig memory card for a song (as in well under a $100 song)!

I’m sure I could have gotten even cheaper on Ebay or from Craigslist or even the Chronicle Classifieds but this was better for me as I like to put my hands on technology before I buy it, even if it’s cheap cheap cheap.

The camera weighs next to nothing, runs on AA batteries so there’s no charger which makes it a breeze to transport. 4 mega-pixels, 3X zoom, super easy to use.

It’s PERFECT!

Tags: Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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We finally found a hotel in Barcelona we like.

The Hotel Pulitzer is a bit pricier than we originally wanted, but it’s well situated in the city center and within spitting distance of the Placa de Catalunya.

The reviews at Trip Advisor give it an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5. It was also the winner of the 2006 Trip Advisor Traveller’s Choice Award.

Even with it’s designer price-tag, we’re still in under budget for hotel accommodations for the entire trip so we went ahead and booked it for the 8 nights we’ll be there.

That’s the last of the hotels for the trip. Yay!

We also booked the flight that will take us from Granada to Barcelona. This is bugging me a little because the carry on restrictions are very tight in Europe. It’s 10kg (22 lbs) and that’s not per bag, that total per person. My camera gear comes in at 4 lbs alone so I may have to check my backpack which fills me with dread thinking it could get lost or stolen at the Barcelona airport.

If I end up having to check the backpack I will remove a few items and add them to my carry on and just hope for the best knowing that Barcelona is a big enough city to allow me resupply if the need arises.

I also found some great shirts for the trip. 100% silk and very wrinkle resistant. In terms of clothing I think I am all set.

The next phase of planning is the Eurail pass. We need to go over the options and see what we need and then purchase them online. That will probably be next weekend.

Tags: General, Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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For the last two days Cynthia and I have woken up an hour earlier in the morning so we can make overseas calls to Madrid, Seville and Granada to book hotels.

Yesterday we secured our hotel in Seville but there were no vacancies at Los Tilos in Granada. Not totally unexpected as we will be in Granada during Fiesta Nacional de España or Día de la Hispanidad (aka: Spanish National Day; aka Hispanic Day) which is a Spanish national holiday commemorating the exact date when Christopher Columbus first set a foot in the Americas.

We went back online yesterday and did some more research and found Carmen de la Alcubilla del Caracol, a charming 7 room hotel on one of the slopes of the Alhambra. It’s rated #4 out of 132 hotels on Trip Advisor and all the reviews are quite glowing. We called them this morning and successfully made our reservations. I’m actually very excited about this hotel and am rather glad Los Tilos was unavailable as it lead to this discovery.

So far, not one of the hotels we have booked or tried to book have had any English speaking employees. This is not a problem since Cynthia speaks Spanish quite well, but it is something to consider if you are planning a trip to Spain. I am sure that any of the larger chain or luxury hotels can easily accommodate non-Spanish speaking guests, but getting a room in one of these smaller, private/family owned or “boutique” hotels could be a challenge if you don’t speak the language.

The proprietors of these places seem wary of non-Spanish speaking people seeking to make reservations, probably as a result of misunderstandings about rates, dates, services, etc. That’s understandable. The hotel in Madrid would not even take our reservation over the phone and will only work with us via e-mail. I am sure that is probably so there is a record of what has been agreed upon and way to avoid any misunderstandings that could be caused by the language barrier.

I have to say, it was pretty cool listening to Cynthia negotiate our reservations and doing it all in Spanish. I think her language skills are going to allow us to have an even better experience than we would if neither of us spoke the language.

Up next, finalizing Madrid hotel reservations, more research on Barcelona hotels, more research on rail passes and possibly booking a flight from Granada to Barcelona. No way I am taking a night train again.

Tags: Cynthia, Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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One of the things I am liking about blogging our upcoming trip is that the posts are being quickly indexed into the main search engines. This is producing an increase in random visits to baldheretic.com from people all over the world searching terms related to travel to Spain. Besides the helpful and much appreciated comments from my friends and other known readers of this blog, I’ve also received some random e-mails and comments with suggestions about what to see and what to expect on our upcoming vacation from total strangers who seem eager to share their own experience, strength and hope.

It’s also resulting in people being able to benefit from our experience and efforts which is pretty cool.

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After a marathon planning session that lasted from 11:00 am Saturday morning till 5:30 pm that afternoon, we’ve pretty much nailed down our itinerary and are in the process of booking hotels in all the cities we will be staying in.

We have been using a fantastic web site called Trip Advisor. The feature most helpful has been the hotel reviews. Trip Advisor allows visitors to the web site to post their own experience with any given hotel directly to the site along with pictures.

This type of site can be subject to some fraud. I’ve heard of companies sending their employees or appointed P.R. folks to sites like this to write canned positive reviews and I am sure it happens here with some of the bigger hotel chains, but it’s easy to spot. Plus, we’re focusing on smaller hotels that are privately owned and don’t seem to have the where-with-all, much less the budget, for such chicanery.

On the site you have the ability to sort the reviews by best and worst. You filter through about a dozen or so of these and you end up with a good feel for the potential of the establishment.

Even if a hotel has several negative reviews you can often eliminate a good percentage of those when you read things like “hotel staff did not speak English” or “Inadequate parking” or any of a host of other so-called problems that just won’t apply to us or can be overcome with a little common sense.

The site is very user friendly and we have located most of the hotels we are interested in. Now it’s just a matter of getting up early and making some overseas calls. Fortunately Cynthia’s Spanish has gotten so good we should be able to negotiate our reservations without any trouble at all.

We’re going to get up early in the morning and call Hotel Los Tilos in Granada and and the delightful and musically themed Hotel La Musica in Seville for reservations.

We’ve believe we have found a suitable hotel for the Madrid leg and even our one night hit-and-run whirlwind visit to La Linea/Gibraltar. Barcelona is a challenge as it seems to be the most expensive leg of the trip with the most options. We’ll finalize those in the coming weeks along with a few others.

Tags: Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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Obviously one of the key components to the upcoming trip is the photography. It’s my first trip with my new digital SLR and Cynthia will be bringing her new Pentax K10D.

On our previous trip I used the Sony F828 which was a glorified point and shoot camera.
It had the benefit of having a built in but very versatile 28-200mm lens and it did a good job. I can’t complain about the pictures I got in Venice or the glorious time-lapsed picture of the Eiffel Tower.

Now with the Sony Alpha 100 I find myself with 6 lenses, 4 of which I plan to take with me on the trip.

Where the F828 was easy to manage and carry in a small shoulder bag, my current photo equipment needs required the purchase of something a bit larger. I went with a Domke F-3X after seeing how nice Cynthia’s Domke F-5XB bag was.

It’s made of good, solid canvas construction with minimal padding except on the bottom. This makes it much more flexible for storing a variety of lenses and other gear. The strap has a non-slip surface so it doesn’t continuously slide off of my shoulder.

It holds all I need plus some stuff I don’t. The side pockets hold my external flash and the charger quite easily.

I was really happy to get this sorted out but during our research we realized something that has thrown a kink into our planning. We kind of knew this from before, but it’s even more of an issue now and that is the fact that many museums don’t allow camera bags. You have to check them at the front desk. Of course this means you might get your bag back with certain key elements missing, like your camera or lenses.

Most places will let you carry your camera and some allow photography without a flash but the bag-check issue it a real problem. It looks like I will have to purchase a photographers vest. That way I can check an empty bag while carrying my lenses and accessories on my person.

When looking at the camera store the vests run around $100. I just ordered one off of EBay for less that $40.

Tags: Photography, Sony Alpha 100, Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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We spent the better part of today hammering out some of the details of our trip. We’re determining how many days we need to each leg and starting to fill in the schedule.

We have discovered that getting in and out of Gibraltar is going to be much more difficult than we had previously imagined.

Apparently the fact that Gibraltar is subject to a disputed irredentist claim by Spain means that practical methods of ingress and egress are not high on the priority list for Spain.

We have determined that we will need to take a 3-4 hour bus ride to La Linea from Seville as there are no trains that travel the route.

From La Linea you can just walk across the border to Gibralter. We ‘re trying to find out if we can manage this as a day trip. From what I can tell there’s not enough to do in Gibraltar to fill two days. If we can get there early enough we can tour The Rock and then go back to Seville that evening.

We have not been able to find too much information on the web, but if we’re lucky, there will be any number of companies marketing trips to Gibraltar from Seville and it will just work itself out once we actually get to Seville. Otherwise we’ll need to stay the night in La Linea and then find our way on out the next day to go back to Seville or just move on to Granada from La Linea via a convoluted combination of bus and train trips.

Even though the Spanish government and the transportation system seems determined to hinder our ability to add Gibraltar to our itinerary, Cynthia is adamant about going to see the monkeys (apes) and Europa Point.

Tags: Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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Cynthia and I put in our time off requests with our respective employers on Monday. Mine was approved that day, Cynthia’s boss made her wait till today.

I’m burning up all my saved vacation plus one personal day. Cynthia is doing more or less the same thing. That’s in excess of 170 hours of vacation each. 4 work weeks and a few work days plus the weekends.

With approval secured we went online to buy the tickets this evening.

Buying this far in advance and not travelling during the peak season means we are saving about $500 each on airfare which is good. Of course the airfare is only a small portion of the overall cost of spending a month overseas but every little bit counts!

Now comes hammering out the exact itinerary in terms of days per location and proceed time for each destination followed by researching hotels and making the reservations.

Our experience on our European vacation in 2005 was that the hotels with the best overall rates were not easily booked online, but usually had a web page with contact information with pictures and descriptions of the facility.

The process was for us to find the one’s we were interested in and then e-mail them to check on availability. They would respond the next day and then we would make a final decision and arrange to fax or phone in credit card information to secure the rooms. This worked really well from Amsterdam all the way down to Rome.

We’ll also need to sort out which rail pass will be the most efficient.

It’s hard work nailing down all the particulars, but it’s all part of the experience for us. We don’t want to be tied down to a tour group or a scheduled dictated by a third party. We want the freedom of exploring on our terms based on well thought out decisions that we have made.

We’re using a lot of what we learned on our last two trips to ensure the success of this one. The most practical and useful decision we came up with last time was to travel using only what we could carry in a back pack and a camera bag. The back pack measures 9” x 21” x 14” and I had it down to 20lbs last time. Not having any checked luggage and being able to “wear” what you’re bringing with you does wonders for your mental state.

On the European trip we brought older underwear and socks and just disposed of it as we travelled. That was good plan! Our load lightened as we travelled! Plus you’re not stinking up your clean laundry with dirty socks.

Midway through the trip we did have to make a laundry stop in Paris.

Going to the grocery store to buy laundry detergent in a foreign land and a foreign language adds a whole new dimension to any trip. You would think picking a laundry detergent would be simple, but I was never absolutely certain that I wasn’t marching off to the laundromat with a box of dishwashing detergent, all the while being snickered at by an amused clerk who had done their level best to convince me that they spoke no English.

Then there was what could have been an international incident as I crossed the border from Rome into Vatican City to dispose of the last of our dirty undergarments. I could just imagine hearing something like “Arrestar, arrestar! Siete sotto l’arresto per terrorismo biologico!”

Fortunately I was able to utilize the cover of darkness and slipped stealthily to the dumpsters and returned without incident.

We’re starting to feel the excitement!

Tags: General, Travel, Travel planning by Jay Lee
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Armed only with some guide books, two laptops, high speed Internet access, our previous experience planning and executing our trips to the UK and to Europe and an over abundance of gumption we are started out plotting our next vacation.

Jay and Cynthia are going to Spain!

Our plan is to fly in to Madrid where we plan to see:

While in Madrid we have mapped out several day trips.

From Madrid we catch the high speed train (Ave) to Seville to see the barber of as well as the Seville Cathedral and climb the Giralda Bell Tower. Well also see the Basilica De La (hey!) Macarena and the Tomb of Columbus.

From there it’s on to Cordoba to see The Mezquita and then by bus to La Linea where we walk to Gibraltar to see:

Then it’s back to La Linea (by Bus), to Algeciras and from Algeciras (by train) to Granada.

In Granada we plan to see:

From Granada we will catch a short flight to Barcelona (The land of outrageous Gaudi architecture!) where we will see:

While in Barcelona we have one day trip planned and that’s to Figueres to see the Salvador Dali Theater and Museum.

And then it’s back to Madrid to catch a flight back home.

All mapped out the trip looks like a crooked coat hanger.

All in all it looks like we’ll be gone for about a month. We’ve put our vacation requests in to our bosses and once approved we’ll secure the air fair and nail down the particulars in terms of hotel reservations, rail passes and so forth.

Tags: Travel planning by Jay Lee
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