(Day 16) My sleeper train from Madrid stops at Barcelona at 7:25am. I woke up at 7:45am. The next stop would be in France. Luckily, the train hasn’t left the station yet, so still drowsy from having barely any sleep in the tin can, I gathered up all my shit in a flash and jumped off the train just as it was moving.

I was really jonesin’ for a shower and a nap so I got to my hostel at around 8:30am, but was told that I couldn’t get into my room until noon. Fuck. I stowed my bags into their storage locker and went out to get some breakfast instead.

My hostel’s right by the touristy area, Las Ramblas, it’s a wide street with tons of cafes, souvenir shops and people dressed up like characters trying to get some change. After getting some bacon and eggs, which cost way too much, I realized that I forgot to reserve a train to Nice, France. It’s tourist season and i’ve read that a lot of the trains were being sold out. The train station was pretty far away, I mean it was a 30 min train ride to my hostel, but I didn’t feel like buying train passes after spending too much on breakfast.

I figured my room would be open by the time I got back since i had 2 hours to kill. I got a map and a bottle of water and started walking.

2 hours later, I got back to my hostel, having only reserved half the trip to Nice, because I have to reserve the 2nd half at the transfer point. I finally got into my room and got some shuteye for an hour or two and woke up to 2 French chicks talking to each other in my room. They were both cute and in their underwear. Score.

Sarah and Marilyn are vacationing here for about 2 weeks before heading back to school. They spoke a little english but they said that a lot of French vacation here in Barcelona since it’s not too far away from France and things are cheaper.

Anyways, I didn’t do much for the rest of the day since I barely had any sleep in the tin can of a sleeper train. I picked up some food from the local market and decided to just get an early start in the morning.

(Day 14) I woke up with a giant blister or cut on my left foot. It was right on my heel, so that meant no more long treks for awhile. After a quick band aid, I decided to take it slow and just visit the Museo Del Prado. The Prado is Madrid’s Louvre, albeit smaller, a lot smaller.

It was pretty cheap if you had a student ID, only 3 euros compared to the standard 6. There was a Picasso exhibition going on which was cool. I kind of dig his stuff, it’s not just a bunch of splotches or random crap on a canvas like the stuff i’ve seen at the Tate Modern in London. No one was allowed to take photos in the exhibition but they did allow you to take pictures of everything else in the museum as long as you don’t use the flash on your camera. I was surprised that you can take all the pictures you want here, but not at the Louvre even if you don’t use your flash, which I think you’re better off not using, since all these places are well-lit already. I guess the Spanish aren’t as anal as the French.

Aside from the Picasso stuff, there was tons of other interesting stuff in the Prado, like this beauty. Yes, it is Mary, mother of Jesus, squirting breast milk into the mouth of some dude. I’m not sure that was in the Bible, but hey, she’s Mary, mother of Jesus, she can do whatever the frack she wants.

There was another cool exhibition at the Prado which showed the underdrawing or whatever of some paintings through infrared tech or whatnot. Like here and here. Honestly, like I said before, i don’t know squat about art. What I do know of classical art came from watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons when I was a kid. Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo, those are the only artists’ names I can remember aside from Pablo Picasso, which is an easy name to remember. Speaking of Raphael, he has some stuff here too.

Aside from the above, there wasn’t much else, aside from the standard naked statues of men and nude paintings of women. Oh and more naked paintings, but with Adam and Eve. The only other attraction were the women that were talking around the mueum. I tell you what, Spanish women have good genes or something. They got tight bodies, like tiny waists with the best possible boobs and ass in proportion to their bodies. Since I can’t take a photo of hot chicks without being so goddamn obvious, i took it from behind. Then again, sometimes they’re too damn skinny, like Nicole Ritchie skinny, like this chick. It’s kind of funny cause she looked like she was serious about art since she was jotting down notes like crazy, but yet she’s dressed like a whore.

Anyways, I was getting hungry and I wanted some tapas. Tapas are Spain’s answer to hors d’oeuvres. They’re like small dishes of food like ham, tuna, bread, meatballs that they serve for free along with your drink. I didn’t know what was a good place, so I just went to one around a few blocks away from my hostel. It was called Canas Y Tapas, meaning drinks and tapas, so I figured hey, that’s exactly what I want. There wasn’t alot of people in there, but it had locals eating there, so it can’t be that bad. I ordered a cana de cervesa, meaning the standard draft beer and i got my first tapa. It was tuna fish on bread and it was pretty good. I got my second tapa when I got another drink. It was fried taters with hot sauce. Not bad for just 4 euros total. But, since it’s been a while since I had some alcohol, I went back to my hostel and passed out.

(Day 10) I totally missed the free breakfast today, but I heard it was just a croissant, a roll and coffee, but I really needed the coffee. I went to the nearby supermarket for food and noticed that bottled water is dirt cheap here, it only costs 20 euro cents for 1.5 liters. Soda’s expensive though. a can of coke will set you back 1 euro.

With food in my belly, I headed off to Montmartre which I hear has a sweet overlooking view of the city as well as the Basilique Du Sacre-Coeur, a huge church at the peak of Montmartre.

It was only 15 minutes away by metro, but the walk up the steps took a little longer. There was a lift for the lazy fuckers, but I wasn’t about to pay my hard-earned money for that. It would’ve been shorter if not for the local assholes trying to con you into tying a string around your fingers and not letting you go unless you paid them. I dodged them like the plague.

Aside from that, the area was gorgeous. One of my favorite movies, Amelie, was shot here. Amelie is hands down the only chick flick I ever liked even though it’s French. The area had the carousel and everything.

The view from the top was totally worth it. The sun was working overtime though, so I headed into the Basilique Du Sacre-Coeur for some free R&R. Apparently the Basilisque’s bell tower is the highest point in Paris and can be seen anywhere in the city.

Southwest of Montmartre is the area of Pigalle where the Moulin Rouge club is, so I decided to take a look. The streets around it were pretty much like the old school Times Square in NYC. Just a bunch of seedy looking men and sex shops leading up to Moulin Rouge. I heard it gets really dodgy at night so I thought I’d be better off taking a look during the day cause I really didn’t want to get an ass-raping. But, if you’re thinking about catching a show at Moulin Rouge, better think again because tickets are from 87-170 euro.

After consulting the map and picking up a salami sandwich which was as long as my arm(only 3 euro!), I decided to go check out the Arc De Triomphe. It’s the big honking Arc west of the city and is also a huge traffic rotary that interconnects 8 different streets, including one straight to the Louvre. There’s another Arc in the city but it’s not as old as the Triomphe and I mean really, how many Arcs do you wanna see?

The Arc De Triomphe was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 to honor the French army and under the Arc is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, much like our own in the US. People can buy tickets to go to the top of the Arc, but I already got a free view from Montmartre so I passed on that.

There was an American teenager standing next to me with her friends and the wind blew her ticket right on top of the Tomb. There wasn’t any cops nearby and she was afraid that stepping on the Tomb would set off alarms.
“I don’t think an alarm would go off.’’ I told her.
“Really?” she said.
“Yeah, it’s not like the Mona Lisa, it’s made of concrete so I don’t think it’d be a problem.”
“Why don’t you go in and get it for me?” she tried convincing me.
“What and miss taking a picture of you defiling the Tomb”?
She convinced her friend to go in and get it for her. Needless to say, there was no alarms going off.

The Arc wasn’t that spectacular to me, it reminded me of any of the monuments In Washington DC like the Washington or Lincoln Memorial.

Continuing my tour of huge monuments, I noticed one of the streets from the Arc went straight to the Eiffel Tower. There were 2 approaches to the Tower, from north of the river or south of the river where it actually stands. I came from the north, which I read has a better view. I’m totally glad I did, because the view was sweet as hell.

The Eiffel Tower doesn’t really have any purpose as the creator, Gustave Eiffel wrote, “France is the only country in the world with a 300m flagpole.” It was designed to be the tallest structure in the world for the 1889 World’s Fair.

Do they even have World’s Fairs’ any more? I know they built those weird monuments by Met’s Stadium in Queens, NY for one of them, but no one really goes there compared to the Eiffel Tower. Anyways, the tower’s huge with 3 viewing floors and if you wanted to, you can buy tickets to take a lift to those floors, the higher it is, the more you pay, but if you’re feeling athletic or cheap, you can pay 3-4 euro to walk your way up to the 2nd floor.

I wasn’t in the mood to walk to the freaking moon, so I passed on that. Maybe on my last night, but not today, I was getting pretty bushed.

(Day 2) I wanted to get a nice overlooking view of the city today but I didn’t want to pay the 17 quid they were charging over at the London Eye. I heard the Monument was a cheaper alternative that also had a good view and was just 2 quid.

So I headed over there and then I found out why it was so cheap. You had to work for the view by walking 311 steps up a cramped circular staircase to get to the top. It was harsh but there was some encouragement on the walls. Combined with the heatwave, I was sweating buckets by the time I got to the top. After taking some photos, I happily walked down the stairs and was awarded a certificate for braving the steps.

The Tower of London wasn’t too far away, so I walked over there and decided to check it out. I tried to use my old student ID card to get a discount but i forgot to take out the sticker that had the years attended on it. I could’ve saved 4 quid, damn it. Anyways, I took full advantage of the free guided tour to balance it out. It was a pretty cool tour, you get a guy who’s an actual Yeoman Warder to guide you through the area. Yeomen Warders are the ceremonial guardians of the Tower of London. They’re responsible for looking after any prisoners at the Tower and safeguarding the British crown jewels, but nowadays they’re basically tour guides.

He talked about executions and how shitty life was back then. There was a cool story about some guy named James Scott, who got beheaded, but the executioner was drunk off his ass and had to take a bunch of strokes to get the head off. Then they put his head on a spike and placed it on London Bridge, but they forgot to do a portrait of him before the execution, which is tradition. So they had to get his decomposed head, dig up his body, sew the head back on, put some make-up on and comission a portrait. Good stuff.

After the tour, I walked through the Tower Bridge unto the south bank and scoped out Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. This theater is where old Bill’s plays used to be performed to the masses. I think it was where the flick, Shakespeare in Love, was shot. The cheapest ticket was a groundling seat(5 quid) which wasn’t really a seat. It’s like a general admission ticket, standing room only but it’s half the price of a regular seat and you can get as close to the stage as you want. The play didn’t start for 3 hours, so I went to the nearby Tate Modern art museum.

It’s a big honking museum and it’s free! The museum used to be a power station and the main hall used to hold giant turbines. There was some weird art pieces including an interactive one. Lucky it was free, cause I found it boring.

After the museum, I went back to the Globe Theater to get a good standing spot. Since I figured i was gonna get tired of standing, I should get one with a wall to lean on. There were some poor bastards that got seats but got stuck with the sun in their faces. Suckers. I got a pretty good view of the stage and not long, the play started. Granted it wasn’t one of Shakespeare’s plays, but it had pirates in it and involved Long John Silver and nudity. Too bad it was male nudity, goddamn it.

3 hours later, the play was over and I was ready to pass out, having almost nodded off and smashing my face into the concrete floor. I missed my free dinner at the hostel so I went out and got some food from the local quickie mart. I started talking to a hot spanish chick outside of the hostel. She was rolling a bunch of joints like a madwoman. Apparently she can’t hold her liquor, so she preferred to get her kicks out of weed. Cynthia’s from Seville, Spain and is spending the summer learning english here. I’d like to teach her some english if you know what I mean. Hehe. Anyways, after chewing the fat for a bit, she said,

“You teach English, pretty good”

“thanks, I used to teach kids back when I was in high school”

“Oh you used to touch kids?”

“Uh, no. I mean teach”

“Touch?”

“No, you’re pronouncing it wrong. Teach. Touch is this” I said as I copped a feel.

“Ohh, sorry, teach, not touch. Touch is Michael Jackson”

After a small laugh and 3 joints later, we hit the sack. Not with each other though.

Damn.

(Day 1) Today just had to be the hottest day in London History, didn’t it?
I was almost bumped off my flight last night. There were only 2 seats left when me and a family of 3 were checking in at the airport. Guess who scored one of the tickets? The family couldn’t split up since they had a kid so they had to stay overnight for the next flight to London. Sucks for them, good for me!

It was a quick 7 hour red-eye flight in which I watched TV, had dinner and then proceeded to pass out for 3 hours. Landed in London around 10am and then quickly studied the Underground maps and tickets and bought a 3 day pass and headed to my hostel.

The Underground was pretty easy to figure out since it’s pretty much the same as the subway system back home in New York City except that they had a more complicated ticket pricing system and a zone chart with peak and off-peak times. I guess it wasn’t that easy.

The hostel was located in a pretty nice neighborhood. There was an HSBC bank which was perfect since I specifically opened an account with them since they have branches all over the globe. I had 50 pounds or quid worth of british coins which I needed to convert to paper money since they were extra weight that I didn’t want to carry around. I had to organize the coins into separate bags and some of them turned out to be obsolete. What a waste.

When I checked into the hostel, they gave me a free upgrade from an 8 bed dorm to a 4 bed dorm since they ran out of 8 bed dorms. The upgrade wasn’t worth it since my roomates turned out to be 2 dirty French guys who were staying long-term. The hostel offered a cheap alternative to renting out a flat for those who worked in London. They pretty much peppered their stuff all over the place since they’ve been living there for a few months.

After I escaped the animals, I headed off to get some lunch at the most familiar area that I can think of, Chinatown. It was close by all the other attractions in central London and I figured they would have cheap eats. It wasn’t cheap. It may be cheap for London but it was almost twice the price of what i’m used to pay for in NYC, thanks to the damn exchange rate here(£1=$1.86). I paid 7 quid for singapore style noodles and a glass of iced tea, which would’ve cost $7US back home. Do the math.

I walked around for the next 6 hours in the frying sun, through Picadilly circus, Trafalgar Square, Parliament, Big Ben, London Eye and Westminster Abbey. London’s pretty much like New York City, it has tons of office buildings, a diverse population, taxis all over the place and some nice views. It’s freakishly crowded, it’s like all the tourists decided to come out today. London’s pretty much like Manhattan’s city hall times 10 because of all the old buildings everywhere. The main differences that I notice is that everything’s crazy expensive and the British like their food pre-packaged, especially sandwiches.

As i was walking towards Buckingham Palace i noticed a lot of women walking around with funny hats. Apparently there was some kind of soiree at the Palace with dignitaries or something. I arrived just in time for the changing of the guard.

(video coming soon)

After a long day of walking, I went back to the hostel just in time for their free dinner service. It was Chicken Chillie Surprise. The surprise is probably that it comes out looking the same way it goes in. What are they thinking? Serving chili surprises to everyone at a dorm hostel with one shared bathroom on each floor?

I met my final roomie when I found him sleeping in my bed with just his underwear on, when I came back after I took a shower. So not cool… It couldn’t be a hot chick, could it? Christopher got the beds mixed up since he didn’t know they were specifically numbered and assigned when you check in. He was pretty cool about the situation and gave me back my bed, which I then turned the sheets and pillow upside down.

Cheers!

Finally got to catch the shuttle launch after 3 days of delays.

We couldn’t get someone to take us out on a boat so we decided to drive, but right before we left Z’s place, his beeper went off. He’s on roadside assistance service this week so he’s on call 24/7.

We decided to meet at the watching area when he got done, so i drove off.

When I got there, there were already a bunch of people camped out on top of a drawbridge with binoculars and lawnchairs. The view wasn’t bad, you can still see the launch pad, but it would’ve been better if there weren’t telephone poles and trees in the way.

Greetings from Daytona Beach, Florida! It’s been about a week since I landed here and it’s been cool so far. The first thing I always notice whenever I visit the south is that there are alot of hot blonde chicks down here. Like white-bred, corn-fed, Daisy Dukes’ wearin’, farmers’ daughter hot, not Starbucks-drinking, bug-eyed sunglass wearin’, rich white mens’ daughter hot, not that i’m objecting to that either. It’s like Jessica Simpson(Dukes of Hazzard) vs. Sarah Jessica Parker(Sex in the City). No contest. As a native New Yorker, I don’t see alot of that, except in Times Square.

Another thing about the south is that it’s not diverse(aka full of white people). The only Asians i’ve seen is at the nearby Embry Riddle University(Glorious, Free Wi-Fi!) and it’s an aeronautical university, ie. engineering, so no surprise about the Asians. (Fun Fact: After the 9-11 attacks, investigators thought the school trained at least one of the hijackers, but turned out it was a fluke, although a former student shared the same name as one of the terrorists but he’s still alive and had no connections to Al-Qaeda) The only other place you can see minorities is at the mall. Not so much at Walmart, except on Sundays, which apparently is when Mexicans get their only day off.

Racism in the South isn’t like what’s been shown on TV, unless you happen to be black. So, I guess not much has changed, but I haven’t gotten any comments about me being an asian-american yet.

I’ve been crashing at my buddy, Z‘s place since last Tuesday. It’s been about 10 months since he moved down here from NYC and he’s already morphing into a redneck. The guy’s into NASCAR and owns 3 guns(which are loaded and stashed in each of his rooms, so its best not to piss him off.)

Speaking of NASCAR, one of my to-dos was to catch a race at the Daytona International Speedway. I wanted to see what the fuss was about since no one gives a shit about NASCAR except for rednecks. If you look closely at the pic, you can see the guy’s watching the same, exact race on his portable TV! What a tool… Anyhoo, we scored tickets from Z’s friend, Kenny. Talk about your stereotypical redneck, the guy has his shirt off for christ sakes! You can’t tell from the pic, but he’s also missing alot of teeth! But the guy was hilarious and cool as heck!

The Daytona racetrack is friggin’ huge. It has a 2 mile track and the race is a 100 lapper and the cars go up to 190 mph. Sounds exciting, but then again you’re watching cars go around in circles and that can be pretty boring unless someone crashes or spins out of control.

Our tickets were pretty good, as you can see. We were right on top of the starting line and in good view of the pit areas.

Watching the races on TV is a total different experience than watching it live. The cars dont seem like its going too fast on the tube, but when you’re there standing by the track, it looks like this:

Kenny even told us he once got hit in the face by a piece of flying rubber from one of the cars when he was watching by the fence.

For the first 50 laps, nothing exciting happened, then suddenly some car got bumped and it spun out of control right in front of us:

We can smell the burnt rubber from where we sat.

Nothing else happened for a while just a few small spin outs. In the end the crowd favorite, Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the race.

I’m looking forward to this weekend for the Discovery shuttle launch. It’s supposed to be its last since we can’t afford to send it up anymore because Dubya’s throwing all our money on the “war” on terrorism.