I'll have four please, and make it quick

Someone better test me for designer recovery steroids, because I'm just superhuman right now. I don't get affected by jet lag. I was in Portugal Monday morning and New York/Connecticut last night, with Ireland and Englad mixed in between, and yet I'm ready to go. That's four countries in two days and I'm hardly affected. My body believes it's 11AM and I'm not particularly tired. Moreover, I don't tend to have the problem going the other way across the Atlantic either.

It's mostly to do with flight times. I try to leave NY at night around 9PM ET, sleep on the plane and wake up in London 10AM (5AM ET), a little sleepy but tricked into thinking I slept through the night. With the ensuing flights to Spain, I nap a little bit more and basically get in in the afternoon and think it's the afternoon.

Going back's easier any way you do it: you're basically gaining daylight, so if you go to bed a little earlier than normal, you'll feel like you went to bed a little later than normal and you can catch up the next night, but you won't feel particularly tired either way. I dunno, maybe it's more genius and less super powers, but I prefer to think the latter.

Since I wasn't sleeping on the plane, I had to do other things to keep from crying my eyes out with boredom (which wasn't actually possible: the desert-like lack of humidity on the plane made excretion of tears inconceivably difficult). I initially tried seeing how little time I could spend in between lavoratory stops. I was terribly thirsty and brought my new 1-liter Nalgene on the plane, full from the water fountain. It expired before takeoff. I had to refill from the lavoratory (whose water has an odd milky white look for about 5 minutes), using the complimentary paper cups they provided because my behemoth was too large to fit in the sink. I did this thrice more throughout the trip. Needless to say, I set a new personal best at 7 minutes and made full use of my carefully-chosen, four-star location as aisle seat 42H, two rows in front of the lavoratory.

After sufficiently passing the time in such a way, I turned my attention to reading. After the recommendations of a few Brits, I had picked up Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country (US title: I'm a stranger here myself) a collection of weekly newspaper columns published in a London newspaper by an American who'd lived in England for the previous 20 years. He is literally me if I was 25 years older and extended my stay in Europe by 20 years, dumped Becka, married an English woman, and moved back to the states. He writes just like I do, or perhaps more appropriately, as I wish I did. He uses self-deprecating humor and criticism to cover up the fact that he's really just a big whiner. He is constantly fascinated by the most trivial things (like what happens when you stick coffee grounds down a garbage disposal - answer: think something similar to Mt. St Helens) and is forever engaged by miscellaneous statistics (like you're more likely to get cancer from eating pork chops once a week than inhaling second hand smoke every day of your life). Moreover, he is socially conscious (like the fact that we use twice as much energy per capita than the average ultra-developed western european does) and is hypercritical of the American way of life (well I am moreso of the europeans, but close enough). Lastly, he is living in none other than Hanover, NH while writing this book.

This means, of course that Dartmouth is given a fair mention (always favorable), as well as other local establishments such as Lou's or Rosey Jekes or the itty bitty theater in West Leb. In one of the recent columns, he describes how he was saddened to not find a diner in Hanover when he moved there. I immediately thought, "What about Four Aces in WRJ?" Sure enough, on the next page, he finds it and is immensely satisfied (although he gives the erroneous footnote that it closed a few months after the column published). The book's a great read and reasonably funny. I think it'd be more so for Brits (the intended audience) than Americans, though, so I'm rather looking forward to reading his other entries, especially one about the absurdities of the English language called The Mother Tongue and one about small-town USA called The Lost Continent.

In any case, I've got some errands to run today and then I'll probably take a nice long nap so I'd better go. It's the jet lag, you know. It gets to you.

Ireland: Land of Not very much Ire

so I think Ireland's my favorite country ever. I've only been here a few hours but it's friggin' awesome man.

So you've got the whole different culture thing, but they speak english. AND, that different culture is sort of your culture. So things like the Book of Kells actually mean something to you, and they're cool. I dunno. Maybe I just like it b/c it's english-speaking, the people are friendly, and i found a cheap hostel to stay at. Or maybe b/c I've had about 5 pints of beer. Not sure. But I like Ireland.

Highlight of the day: Guinness storehouse, narrowly beating out seeing the Book of Kells (beautifully gold-plated, spectacularly colored manuscript of the four gospels that was "the greatest prize in the Christian world" according to some Irish crazies in the 1100s when it was lost, and the Brian Boru Harp, the same that appears on the Guinness logo and the Irish Euro coin.

Denounced by my guidebook as "overrated", I found the Guinness Storehouse fascinating and well-done. A temple to everything Guinness, it featured high-tech displays showing how Guinness was made, a large section on advertisements (Guinness ads are some of my favorites), and of course, free samples.

I actually wound up with 2 pints of Guinness instead of the customary 1. I jumped the gun and started drinking my pint when it was about 5/6 full after waiting for about 3 minutes for the black to separate from the white, as I'd been told to do. When it became clear that I wasn't getting it topped off, I started in on the beer. But then the bartender flipped out and told me he couldn't let me drink it b/c "he wasn't allowed to serve an imperfect pint" or something like that. He'd have to pour me another. And it wasn't necessary to throw out the 5/6 full pint. I could drink both. You can imagine the fit I threw...

In any case, I hadn't really had much to eat since 11 am, so those two stouts hit hard. By the time I left, I was certified drunk. And cold. It's a good 20 degrees F colder here but I decided to wear a t-shirt. There was some drunk running going on, for sure.

Stunner of the day: the Guinness Book of records is not coincindentally named the Guinness book of world records. It's actually sponsored by Guinness. It was first written to answer typical Irish Drunk questions like "What's the fastest gamebird in the world?" and has grown into the largest copyright (Bible and Koran, etc are non-copyright) bookseller of all time. We've had copies of it for years, but I never realized that its Guinness was the same as the Guinness...

Head off to NY tomorrow to see the illustrious Miss Duvall. Should be thrilling, but not as much so, as a fresh pint of Guinness from the source.

Lisbon, day 1/2

After a deliciously free breakfast of hot chocolate and bread, the 6 of us started out for Belém, a suburb of Lisbon but loaded with touristy things to do. I booked a hotel at the tourist office for 20€ per night. The twist was when we saw the name of it: Dos Naçaos, the same place we'd stayed at the night before. I'd paid 35€, the others had paid 25€, but for the next two nights, I would pay 20€. It's Portugal.

At 11:30, we finally boarded the cable car for Belém. After a 30 minute excrutiatingly slow and packed ride, we made it to the Torre Belém (pictured, below left), Monument to the Discoverers (pictured, right), and the Monastery of Jerónimos.

After spending a few hours in Belém, we took a bus back that was faster (but not much) than the cable car to the Oceanarium on the opposite side of town. It was cool and definitely worth the time and money to see Europe's second largest aquarium, but didn't really come close to rivaling Shedd in Chicago. There were 4 exhibits representing the four main oceans (Indian, Atlantic, Pacific, and Artic) around the outside of the huge central tank that held sharks, sunfish (largest bony fish in water that can weigh up to 2 tons) and other larger swimmers. The Penguin exhibit was rather lame, and since I judge all aquariums by the strength of their Penguins, I couldn't give it my complete recommendation. Still, very cool, and one of the better things to do in Lisbon.

The group was a lot of fun, and even a day was enough time to get a feel for the individual characters and humor that everyone had. Lieven, one of the Belgians, needed some bootie badly and kept taking 'babe of the week' photos every hour.
We took a ton of photos, so hopefully I'll be able to include them later.

When they finally left, I felt as if we'd spent a lot more time together than just a day, and it made me realize how important it is to have someone to travel with, if just for sanity's sake.

Unfortunately, by the time we made it back to the hotel, they had given my room away 5 minutes earlier. They said I had needed to show up at 6 to ensure they don't give away the reservation. Fortunately, the woman was nice and worked her butt off to find me somewhere else. I ended up having to carry my two 20kg bags up two broken escaltors of 215 stairs each, but at the end, I found a 95€ per night hotel waiting for me with my own private bathroom and shower. Since she somehow decided it was her fault for giving up the reservation, I only had to pay 20€ each night. I think it was worth it.

After my relaxing bath, I headed out to Barrio Alto, the nightlife of the town for a bite to eat and to use the internet.

Today was nothing special, although I managed to find a fantastic old Moorish castle (Castelo São Jorge) and pretend to be an archer shooting down the Christians. I probably wouldn't have spent this day here if I had to do Lisbon again, but I did enjoy not having the need to rush everywhere and see everything before the ticking time bomb went off.

I'm not in love with Lisbon - I wouldn't agree with the Spaniard on my bus with whom I had the following conversation:

Me: Does anyone know where the bus is?
Spaniard: No. But this is common. It's Portugal. It's the third world.

...but I don't think it's got quite the history Paris or the extravagance of London. In fairness, it's probably a lot like Madrid with a bit of poor southern Spain mixed in. Not a ton to see, a few cool public squares, lots of sun, but a bit falling apart.

Tomorrow I leave for Dublin, at 10:20 Portugal time. I'll have a day there before I take an afternoon flight to New York to see Becka. If things keep going as well as they are now, I'll be very pleased....

Peachy in Portugal

So far, excepting my week with the lovely Becka, today was the biggest success I've had on vacation. I made some friends with some intelligent europeans (and a brazilian too) and spent a pleasant and peaceful day in the company of others without having to freak out about everything going perfectly. Again, some valuable lessons learned.

I arrived in Lisbon last night at 8:30, but by the time I loaded up on Brazilian import sausage, got my metro card stuck in the machine, worked my way across town, and eventually found the neighborhood I needed to be in for cheap hostels, it was close to 11. This brings us to note to self #5: don't show up to cities at 11pm and hope to find cheap accommodations. They will either all be taken or be so difficult to get to that you will get frustrated and end up staying at the first available place, often at a premium price.

Seemingly the beginning of another disaster Munich-style, I managed to turn it around with a cool head and a more adventurous personality. Walking past an outdoor restaurant, I overheard some English. Instead of ignoring it and walking past like I might have done before, I stopped, turned around, and asked them, "Do y'all speak English?"

After kicking myself for making a worse intro line than "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?" I was able to pull it together enough to ask a better follow up: "Do y'all know where to stay around here?"

Turns out they did. And they had a buddy who was looking for someplace to stay for the night as well. Maybe we could split a room at their hotel and save some money. Although we ended up paying $35 (for two) instead of the $25 they paid, I wasn't crying about it, just happy to have a place.

The group of 5 (including my recently arrived roommate) and I went out for a bit for some drinks and ended up meeting some other folks in the process. Of the 6 of us, we were a Spaniard (not me), two Belgians, a Czech, a Brazilian, and of course, the Emerican. Four of them were studying at Coimbra, a big Erasmus destination 2 hours north of Portugal. The fifth was working on his medical degree there as well. All were practically fluent in English, although the Belgians and the Czech were a notch above the Brazilian who was herself a notch above Pablo, the Spaniard.

Pablo and I were to stay together, in a tiny room hardly big enough for the smallish double-sized bed. All the Euros rebuffed my attempts to suggest it might be too small for the 6'2" Pablo and I to share, saying "beds are smaller in Europe than in American."

However, when I walked in their room the next morning, I remarked, slightly surprised, to Karel (Czech), "did you guys (he and the Brazilian, Ana, are dating) have two beds?"

"Yes, of course. What would you expect?"

"Well, Pablo and I slept in the same bed."

Laughter ensued. Only made worse by the following comment: "That's too bad, b/c we didn't even use one of the beds!" grrr...

Pablo and I already hadn't gotten the day off to the best start when we trusted my alarm clock I hadn't used in a month to wake us up. It worked alright, and even woke us up at 9:00 like we wanted. Only thing was Portugal's an hour behind Spain and the rest of Europe. Pablo and I didn't realize this until after we had showered, packed, and got ready to meet everyone for breakfast. Having gone to bed at 4:30, every hour counts. I whuffed.

The difference was these whuffs, these problems, this kinks in the plan, didn't affect me as much. One reason is I'm more experienced as a traveler and I've been through some pretty unfavorable situations. But the biggest was that I had other people there to cushion the blows. This was an important lesson.