Travel tip #4 - Take little gifts for unexpected occasions.

I got the idea of takings gifts for strangers while travelling from Rick Steves, the travel writer and guide.

There are countless opportunities for receiving help and making new friends while travelling. Whether it's getting directions, help with deciphering a train schedule or free advice on sightseeing, simple acts of kindness can lift your spirits or make your day. It's nice to be able to do something in return for those occasions when a smile and "thank your" just don't seem like enough. Things that represent your home town or country are best.

One of the simplest and easiest things to bring are postcards from YOUR hometown because they're distinctive and good for writing "thank you" notes.

On this trip, I brought a couple of these little bottles of birch syrup. Canada is known all over the world for its maple syrup but birch syrup is even more special and it's made near home!

I brought larger presents for people I knew I was going to meet but it was great having little gifts as well.

Travel tip #3 - Make good use of zippered pockets!

This is about not losing stuff while travelling. It's a bad habit of mine.

I've got two examples from this trip, both of which could have been prevented by making better use of zippers. Fortunately, neither loss was serious.

The first lost item was prescription reading glasses. I lost them while riding a very crowded subway in Barcelona. They were in a windbreaker pocket that had a zipper but I didn't have the zipper closed. This loss could also have been prevented if I didn't have to always take them on and off. I'll make sure my next pair aren't like that (i.e. bifocals with plain glass on top).

The second lost item was the cash in my wallet and it happened while riding a night train from Granada to Tarragona. I'd never done that before and it's an interesting way to travel. I had a bunk in a little room with three other guys. Before crawling into bed I took off my pants and put my wallet on a little shelf that was tucked up against the wall above my head. I didn't notice my lack of cash until the next day when I tried to buy a map upon my arrival in Tarragona. Fortunately, only the cash had been taken and I was close to a bank machine. Losing 80 Euros is nothing compared to losing a whole wallet or passport so I consider myself lucky! In retrospect, it seems pretty stupid to take your wallet out of your pocket in the presence of strangers and go to sleep!

I would have attached a photo of my lost cash but I didn't think of photographing it.

Auxiliary travel tip, bring extras of critical things like glasses and credit cards. Keep them in different places. Fortunately, I brought extra glasses.

Orgiva's annual food and craft fair

Easter is a big deal all over Spain this town of a few thousand people had its share of events. The one I liked was this four-day indoor fair which featured local wine, beer, cheese, cured meats, olive oil and handcrafts.

The 19th Fair of tourism, crafts and food in Orgiva Spain

I happily visited a beer booth and a cheese booth over and over. The vendors were very friendly and anxious for fair-goers to sample their products. The beer that impressed me the most was a hoppy ale with marjoram added. I would never have guessed that marjoram would add such a pleasing aroma to beer. They also had samples of different malted barleys. This was new to me so I obviously haven't been to enough beer fairs! On Thursday I asked if I could buy a half kilo of the malt but they didn't have enough on hand. I returned every day and finally on Sunday they gave me little bags containing five different malts! They wouldn't let me pay!

The beer guys with samples of hops and barley malt

Goat cheese and free samples

The cheese booth had a goat's milk cheese that was aged for two years and tasted wonderful. It was expensive but the price clearly represented a lot of work and TLC.  

High altitude wine, marjoram beer, barley malt and lemon verbena tea from the fair

This wine is grown at 1350 metres, the highest altitude wine in Europe! Maybe I could grow these grapes at home where it's only 920 metres!

This man had interesting jewelry

Another outdoor oven - More pizza, focaccia and bread!

Family and friends helped make a feast in Andalucia yesterday!

Frannie and Kay preparing ingredients  

We started two batches of dough on Wednesday using my usual method (all the liquid and pinch of yeast on the first day, dry ingredients daily thereafter). Yesterday afternoon I kneaded the doughs, Kay and Frannie caramelized onions, sliced and pitted the tomatoes, cheese and olives, and Thomas started a fire in his outdoor oven ("horno"). Yes, he made the oven last year!



After 3-1/2 hours, the oven was very hot and ready for testing. I divided the large batch of bread dough in two and set half aside for later. The other half I rolled into small flatbreads one and a time. Thomas slid the first one in using his "peel" and we watched as it puffed up into a flying saucer shape almost immediately. It was blackened around the edges and done within 30 seconds! Success! The oven must have been at least 500 Celsius (930 F) at that point!

We did the first batch of bread dough as plain flatbreads because the oven was too hot to use for anything else. Ingredients were white flour, rolled oats, zucchini, pumpkin seeds and cinnamon.

Thomas peeling a pizza out of the oven

Then we started making pizza and focaccia. The pizzas were with fresh sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, fresh oregano leaves and a bit of salt. The focaccia were with black olives, rosemary, caramelized onions and salt. Thomas and Pat managed to slide them in and out of the oven one at a time without any disasters! Ten of us ate five of these then shared a big bowl of salad, washed down with beverages of choice.

Bernard getting pizza

Pat finished up the baking with three loaves of bread from the zucchini dough after the oven had cooled somewhat but it was still impossible to bake without burning it a bit on the outside.

Pat preparing a focaccia

Focaccia out of the oven

Bread loaves were last

A walk in the Andalucian contryside

Click here to download a Google Earth file with photos 

Working 4 hours a day, 5 days a week leaves a lot of leisure time. I had yesterday off and did some exploring.

Starting at the purple spot at the bottom of the map, which is Kay and Bernard's property, I walked up a narrow, crooked road that climbed steadily (the green line). In the lower sections it passed through orange and olive groves but in the upper portions vegetation was quite scrubby.

Agriculture here depends entirely on the diversion of streams carrying melting snow from the mountain to the north and irrigation ditches built by the Berbers from North Africa 500 to 1000 years ago are still in use. It was warm and sunny but a pleasant day for an uphill hike with a steady breeze and a hat to keep the sun off my head. The road gained about 600 metres in a distance of 7 km where it intersected a paved road that connects villages in the "Alpuharra".

I took a break at a little church where the roads intersected and ate the last of the four oranges I'd packed. Then I stuck out my thumb and hitchhiked for the first time in years. I got a ride with a young Spanish guy and was in Orgiva three hours after leaving the house. It was the time of day when most stores are closed but I managed to find a beer, a pizza and an espresso (called "cafe solo" here).

After my leisurely meal at an outdoor table, I started walking the 3 km back home (the blue line) but about halfway, I caught a ride with Bernard who had also been in town. Circular excursions are always more fun than backtracking!

Irrigation ditch, olives and oranges

The little road provides access to properties like this and ...

views like this!

What is this volunteer thing?

I’m on a six-week holiday in Spain, mostly with “host families”. The way it works is that you contact a host in advance, discuss your mutual schedules, and hopefully agree on a type and amount of work in return for room and board. There are hosts all over the world and the work is equally varied. I found my first host for this trip on http://www.workaway.info and the second on http://www.helpx.net. I first did this in 2009 in Bulgaria and Italy and have found every host experience to be unique and rewarding. Living accommodations are not like a hotel because they depend on what hosts can provide but you get a unique insight to what life is like in other cultures and countries and you meet nice people!  

For me, the reason for doing work/travel is that I get to experience a faraway place from the perspective of a local family for a much longer period of time than the typical hotel stay and for a cost near zero. I also like to do something productive or physical every day. Host tend to live off the main tourist routes so I have had excuses to travel to unusual places, in one case a day’s train ride across a country where I couldn’t even read the alphabet. It’s all part of the adventure!

As a small example of the work available, I have gathered chestnuts and olives, cut, split and stacked firewood, repaired furniture, helped with light construction, baked bread, and weeded gardens in Bulgaria, Italy and Spain. 

If you are healthy and would like some adventure in your next holiday I recommend that you look at one of the above websites or find a non-profit society that accepts volunteers.

Picking olives with Claudio in Italy

Welcome to Orgiva!

I took the bus from Granada to Orgiva today and am now with my new hosts Kay and Bernard. They moved down here from the UK 10 years ago, bought a one hectare property with a "ruin" on it, and built a lovely new house and incredible garden! The lot had quite a few old olive and orange trees, which they left, but they have done a huge amount of flower and vegetable landscaping. Right now, the fragrances from blooming orange trees, jasmine, freshias, and lavendar fill the air. Add a clear blue sky, a nice breeze, and singing birds and you've got a bit of paradise!

It is located on the south slope of one of the biggest mountains in Spain, the Pico del Veleta, which at over 3,000 metres, is snow-capped. An irrigation system built by the Moors channels snowmelt to plots that have water rights. This piece of property gets an hour of water once a week but the flow is sufficient to keep a swimming pool sized storage pond filled.  

Here we are in Google Maps at two different scales. We're right in the middle. 

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Wi Fi on the bus!

5 Euros (about $7 CAN) for 90 minutes of Wi-Fi might be a bit high but the price includes a bus ride from Granada to Orgiva. Yes, the bus has free Wi-Fi!

It's a little bumpy to type but this is so surprising and handy, I just had to made a quick post.

I'm mainly using WiFi to follow where we are in Google Earth! It's a gorgeous day and we're climbing up a curvy road!

The Alhambra, Granada

After two busy days of walking, standing in line, and gawking at the splendors, I can say I have a positive first impression. However, much of April seems to be spring/Easter break for Europeans and school kids from from all over the world. Sidewalks on all of the main streets have been overflowing but admittedly, my timing might have been bad.

On the positive side, I was delighted to be able to get an Alhambra ticket for yesterday by simply walking up to a tourist info kiosk on a sidewalk on Friday when I arrived! This was after discovering weeks ago that all of the online tickets for most of April had been sold out! So with the Alhambra lined up for Saturday, I spent the rest of Friday giving myself a guided tour of Granda using a rented mp3 player. It was OK if you like churches, history or walking. I liked at least one of those things so I was happy.

The Alhambra is a large complex of Moorish, followed by Christian, fortifications, palaces, gardens, mosques and churches. The Islamic architecture that remains is apparently the best of its kind anywhere in the world. There are beautiful gardens to see without standing in line but the key palaces are such strong attractions that you have a specific entry time and there are check points to keep you moving in one direction. This gives it a bit of an amusement park feel and it's challenging to get photos without people in them. Just the right people in photos would be great but random tourists seldom work. The most spectacular architecture is inside buildings which creates an extra photographic challenge of lighting. I used a lot of 3 frame auto bracketing with high speed continuous shooting followed by HDR processing. I'm pretty happy with some of my results!

Travel tip #2 - Base layers

Increase your comfort and reduce your packing volume. 

I didn't learn about Merino wool T-shirts until about 20 years ago and since then, the storage space occupied by that part of my wardrobe has shrunk dramatically. All I use cotton T-shirts for now is grubby work. The advantages of the magical Merino for neutralizing body odour are particularly useful while travelling. I brought three on this trip and they are more than enough.

Merino socks have similar advantages as Merino T-shirts.

The next part is for guys who wear briefs (versus boxers or nada).

I grew up in cheap cotton briefs from places like K-Mart and in my late 50's (!) got my Mom to stop buying me underwear! Finally I shopped for my own based on scientific principles which I won't go into. What a pleasant surprise to find out that Calvin Klein wasn't just a "fashion" brand! Get the top of the line! The elastic doesn't get droopy after wearing them for a week.

All of this means I need to pack a third the volume of base layer clothing that I used to and it's much more comfortable.

This tip complements Tip #1 because it reduces the amount of laundry I need to do!

Good news: no photos of underwear! 

Last batch of bread I baked for my hosts in Catalunya, whole spelt with sprouted wheat

Travel tip #1 - Hand laundry

A waterproof stuff sack with a stiff plastic collar that flips over and snaps is a portable washing machine!  Just put everything inside and slosh away without getting water all over the place. 

One pants, one underwear, one socks and good to go! 

PS. Those are someone else's toothbrush, toothpaste and comb on the sink in this shared bathroom and they've been there for hours. I hope they didn't forget them but it would be weird if they left them there on purpose. 

I'd be a wine drinker here!

At home in BC, or really anywhere in North America, I'm a faithful beer drinker. Travel is partly about adapting though and I'm happy to say that I adapted pretty well to the absence of good beer! How can you not like the wine when it is so good, varied, and inexpensive?

Here are three bottles I bought before leaving my hosts in l'Espluga de Francoli. The total was 8.66 Euros or about $13 Canadian. We opened two of them before I left and they left nothing to be desired! If you come here and drink enough wine you could save enough to pay for your trip!

White, Red, and "Cava" (Champagne)

In the left background is the woodshed roof project Pep and I were working on. 

Challenge of the Barcelona Metro

I’ve had a couple of good days in Barcelona which has largely consisted of trying to navigate and understand the Metro system. It’s good but fairly complicated. Many stations are quite large and have multiple lines passing through them. Some stations have two or more entry points from the street that are called by nearly the same name (name of station plus name of street). This can require repeated references to a street map and metro schematic in order to figure out where one is. Of course this now requires numerous uses of the reading glasses of which I wisely brought two pair because I lost one pair last night. I’ve thus managed to get around a bit to walk, see, eat, and photograph. 

Here is a photo of a building I just stumbled upon one evening. I'm glad I had my tripod to photograph the gorgeous stairway entry!  

Entrance to the Barcelona Conservatory of Music

Yesterday I visited Gaudi’s “Palau Güell”, a palace for a patron named Güell (which I think is pronounced Gow). It was more interesting and beautiful than I expected. Being confined on a crowded city lot, it was built up rather than out, covering eight levels, counting the basement and roof where numerous chimneys emerge.

Ironwork above the arched entrances to Antoni Gaudi's Palau Güell

Ceiling detail

Chimneys decorated with mosaics of broken tile

Comiat, Adiós, Goodbye

It was sad saying goodbye to my hosts and new friends in l’Espluga de Francoli Spain on Monday afternoon. For our last meal together (of course eating a meal was the last thing we would do together) we had my homemade pizza and focaccia, plus Dolors’ and Maria’s fresh sardines, green salad and Catlunyan Potato Salad (my name for it). Oh yes, beer, wine, and champagne! All delicious! I'll miss you and your Catalan hospitality!

Adrià, Pep, Dolors and Maria Pep's mom.  

Two special Catalan dishes

Thanks to local culture and my generous hosts, I had two more amazing, delicious meals. Friday night it was Habas a la Catalana or Catalan-Style Broad Beans. The flavor from the onions, garlic, bay leaves and a particular sausage were so good!!! I had forgotten how delicious fresh broad beans are - so tender they melted in my mouth!

Habas a la Cataluna

Saturday's afternoon meal was a “simple” dish of fire-roasted spring onions (calçots, pronounced CALsots) but that doesn’t begin to describe this springtime Catalan ritual (la calçotada). My first clue of something different were the sheets of newspaper spread like placemats around the big table. There was a fire going in the fireplace but I couldn’t tell what would emerge until the first course of appetizers and drinking was over and the main course was presented. Out came the piles of fire-blackened onions and my challenge to figure out how to eat them! It’s a two-handed operation which, if done properly, leaves the charred onion skins in a pile on the newspaper and the edible portion hanging in the other hand. Holding an onion by its top, the outer burnt skin is slipped off by pulling down and the white core is eaten after dipping in a delicious red sauce (salsa romesco). Lets just say none of this involves any utensils! Also served were fire roasted sausages and artichokes. What a sight, three generations of a family talking, laughing and eating messy, delicious and healthy food with their fingers!

Calçots (fire-roasted spring onions)

La calçotada (the event)

Here's a good description of the food and the event! http://www.culinarybackstreets.com/barcelona/2013/calcots/ 

The artichokes went fast! 

Showing that the salsa romesco is all gone!