Western Europe Trip 2 - Page 2 |
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 I
had the opportunity to take in a number of Museums in Madrid. The
image to the right is of a painting by Goya. It's called El Entierro
De La Sardina. I don't know what that translates to. To me it
looks like a Day of the Dead kind of celebration. It's joyful and a
bit sinister at the same time.
From Madrid, I traveled first south to Seville. Seville is a pretty city and I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures of it. I went further south to Cadiz (a city where Salvador Dali lived that today is not to exciting - just a port city - perhaps reminiscent of Marseille in France. I thought a little bit about heading over to Morroco but decided against it having heard too many horror stories about people being kidnapped and forced to drain their bank accounts. So I headed back north to France. I stopped in at Bordeaux for a day or so. I'm no wine connoisseur so the city didn't hold much appeal for me. |
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 From
Bordeaux I traveled north to Nantes. I remember a few things about
Nantes - one is this beautiful cathedral. The second is that I ate
dinner at a Moroccan place and had cous cous for the first time - and I
met a nice family at the restaurant. They said they wanted to go to
visit America. I spoke French with them. The last thing is
that I was watching some comedy show on TV in French and I was getting the
jokes. I think it was pretty much slapstick kind of humor so it
probably wasn't that impressive a feat! |
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 I
kept to my northward trend and head a bit to the west to get to the town
of Brest along the western shore of France. I tried really hard to
be impressed by the fact that I was standing on the opposite shore of the
Atlantic but it just didn't come to me. I was very impressed with
the beauty of the area though.
There is a very nice youth hostel in Brest. In the town, they had, when I went there, just opened up a new Laundromat. I travel in a fashion pretty similar to how I hike and raft - which is to say in a very minimal approach. I had two pants, a couple shirts, some underwear, etc. I decided that it was time to do some laundry so I wanted to clean as much as I could. The owners of the place happened in just as I was about to take off my pants and put on my polar fleece pants. I was a little put off. How was I going to strip with these guys there? Well, I said, "Excusez moi, mais je veux laver mes pantalon." and then in English said don't be scared when I take my pants off. They averted their eyes and were very nice about it. Then they asked about what I thought of the facilities. I said they were very nice and reasonable priced. |
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 This
is another shot of the Atlantic ocean from the Brest area. |
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