Saturday February 28th: Leave Florence around 5pm, fly from Pisa airport to Paris Beauvais airport, shuttle to central Paris, taxi to hostel. Finally "in Paris" at about midnight!
Sunday March 1st: Full day in Paris.
Monday March 2nd: In Paris until roughly 3pm, leave for a flight out of Beauvais to Madrid. Arrive in Madrid at hostel at about 11pm.
Tuesday March 3rd: Full day in Madrid.
Wednesday March 4th: Fly out of Madrid at roughly 4pm, arrive in Barcelona/Girona airport, shuttle bus to central Barcelona (arriving around 6:30pm). Stay in Barcelona until 3:15am (yes, only about 9 hours!), go back to Gerona.
Thursday March 5th: Continued from Wednesday, fly out of Gerona for Eindhoven, Netherlands, arriving shortly before 8am. Take train from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, arrive at hostel a little before noon. Rest of the day in Amsterdam.
Friday March 6th: Fully day in Amsterdam.
Saturday March 7th: Fully day in Amsterdam.
Sunday March 9th: Take a train out of Amsterdam back to Eindhoven at about 8:30am, fly from Eindhoven to Pisa, finally get back to Florence via bus at a little past 4pm, back in my apartment at almost 5pm!
There are so many things about the trip to talk about but I'll share some of the most essential and most interesting tidbits. First off, the entire week let me prove to myself that I can succeed at flying all over the world. The flight here to Italy was my 3rd real flight on a plane/from an airport ever, so making 5 flights in 8 days was a great learning experience, albeit a bit exhausting! I'm only a bit let down that the practice of stamping passports has seemingly all but gone out of style. I would have accumulated a good collection, hitting four counties over the course of the trip. But I digress...
Paris:
Paris was everything it was made up to be. Romantic, quaint, beautiful. Great food (croissants won't ever be the same), amazing things to see, and a general feel of beauty. The Eiffel tower was fatastic, as I expected it to be. I wasn't hit with a deep moving sensation when I visited the tower or the Arc de Triomphe, yet it was kind of a validation, succeeding in seeing things that had always been out there and at times seemed unattainable, almost mythical. To be able to stand in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and lean against its physical cement supports, right where steel meets earth, it felt almost necessary. I've done it, and now I can get on to other things.
Aside from the big landmarks and fantastic food, just walking around the streets of Paris felt like a sightseeing trip on its own. The Champs Elysees, Boulevard Saint Germain (which the old main street of my hometown is named after), and little side alleys in between reminded me at all times that I was in Paris. I have seen their art (we spent a few hours at the Louvre, Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo among other priceless pieces were all fantastic), eaten their food, ridden their subways and (at least tried) to speak their language. I can only say good things about Paris and the French people. Here are a few pictures from the French portion of the trip:
The Notre Dame cathedral. Mass was actually ongoing as we and many other people wandered around the inside. Two sopranos that sang portions of the mass had some of the best voices I've ever heard.
Coffee and a croissant at a nice little cafe. Picture "The Sun Also Rises" but with much less alcohol...
Art at the Louvre.So after a few long and expensive bus trips and other flight, I found myself arriving in Spain.
Madrid:
Madrid instantly had a different feel to it. A bit rougher around the edges, Spain brought a new interesting change of pace. While the weather while we were there wasn't quite ideal, museums full of priceless art (very little of which I was able to photograph) and bars packed with fantastic music made it possibly my favorite part of the entire week. I'm working on getting videos uploaded to the internet but rest assured, there is fantastic jazz happening in the Spanish capital. It's fairly concentrated, easy to find and impossible not to enjoy. The first group I came across was class all the way. Performing vocal standards in English, I was able to nurse a bit of Jameson whiskey (don't worry, I kept it to one glass) and enjoy tasteful piano and guitar solos for nearly two hours.
The first place I got to, Central Cafe in Plaza el Angel, Madrid. It was nice to be able to walk for two minutes from my hostel and wind up at the front door. (video hopefully soon).
I moved on to a place called Populart. This cafe was a bit less upscale, but the music was much more my thing. The band did fairly complex, progressive-tinged originals with great Spanish vocals over the top of a traditional guitar quartet setup. I couldn't understand it, but I appreciated it completely. Video of this one soon as well.The rest of my time in Madrid was also fantastic, but finding such great jazz in such a convenient and cheap location was a huge highlight of the trip for me. I've only been out to see live music a handful of times while here in Europe, and the Spaniards did not at all let me down. A special note, you can get eggs for breakfast in Spain. You can't in Italy. I took advantage of this.
Barcelona:
This was a terrible experience of busses, planes, a quick dinner and soccer match on tv, more busses, a cold station, and very little sleep. I've decided to not say in the future that I've been to Barcelona, the few hours I spent there did not give me any sort of idea for what the city was like. I'm contemplating deleting the pictures I took there as well. No use complaining now though, I eventually made it out of Spain and onwards to....
Amsterdam:
Amsterdam was the city I was looking forward to most before the trip began. Not only did we have the most amount of free time to just be in Amsterdam, but it has always been interesting and beautiful to me. Honestly, the best part of the Dutch city for me is just the look of it. Thin buildings all in a row, four or five stories tall along a bit of sidewalk that ends in a murky canal. You can't help but walk down the street in slightly chilly weather here and picture yourself as a budding poet or modern artist. Call it snobby, call it silly, call it pretentious, but I wanted to get to Amsterdam just so I could walk around and just be.
Aside from walking and thinking about how to start my first novel and scheming up a way to land an apartment somewhere between the art galleries and red-light district shops (everything they say about this city is true, everything), my travel companion Kristen and I treated ourselves to the Van Gogh museum. Never being all that informed or enthusiastic about his work in the past, I came in with an open mind and left with a lot of respect for a man that started painting in his own way just to pay the bills. While I preferred a lot of the big-name attractions at the Louvre and in Madrid's Prado and Reina Sofia, seeing a collection of art all by the same person turn into a sort of artistic biography was a welcome change of pace. Add a couple of rented bicycles and a night-life that really stretches the constraints of what "night" is and Amsterdam secured a place in my heart. I'll make a point to return, next time with a pack of close friends.
So after a lot of time (and money) spent in Western Europe, I'm back in Florence. I thought for a long while about how odd it is to be coming back to my comfort zone...in Italy. The city has never felt more like home and I'm very thanful to be in a place where I at least somewhat know the language. I hope all is well with everyone back home, I am thinking of you often! Hopefully I can fill out this post with some more pictures and videos soon and I plan to have audio recordings of music (both other groups and a bit of my own) headed down the pipeline quite soon!
love to all,
Scott
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