There´s nothing better than Spain with friends. Even new ones. Dana and I had no plans when we landed in Madrid late last Monday night. So we felt lucky when we headed for Alcoy, despite the fact that it was a small inland industrial puebla with nothing particularly good about it. My friend from college Amanda had lived there for almost a year and we were invited. Over the next week, we had the pleasure of spending most of our days with Amanda, Celia and Oli, old friends and new.

After a night in Madrid, we caught the train to Valencia where we met up with Celia, Amanda´s cousin who´d just recently moved there. A few beers later (establishing a theme for the week) we hopped a train to Alcoy. Meeting up with Amanda and Oli, we hit the town. Apparently, it is a custom in Alcoy after a night of drinking to have one last tequlia shot with the bartender free of charge. Makes for a great morning.

The next morning the five of us rented a car and headed to the beach. After only seven or eight wrong turns, we finally got on the right track. We made the beach and sunned our selves.

(Sidenote: Navigation in Spain by car is more difficult than it has to be. For one, there is a roundabout every 10 kilometers. Now I´ve got nothing against these in theory but after a while, they make driving around awfully confusing. Especially when there´s some arcane sign at the beginning of the roundabout directing you where to go (wait, was Alicante the turn at 3 o´clock or 2 o´clock!?! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!) Luckily however, not much harm is done by roundabouts, because, by their very nature, they allow the lost traveler to keep circling and circling until you decide which way to go (look kids, Big Ben...Parliment...) However, it doesn´t end at the roundabouts. The highway numbers themselves are inconsistent. You can´t trust them. They change for no reason and people in Spain are the first to admit this. So you basically have to follow the signs for the town you want to go to. Of course, the town you want is not always the town on the sign. Not only that, but the tricky Spaniards like to switch it up on you - they like to throw all sorts of different random names at you. So you´re driving north from Valencia and one sign will say "This Way - Barcelona" and you´re happy because you want to go to Barcelona. But then 20 seconds later (after a few small turns), you´ll get a sign that says "This Way - Figures" pointing the same way. So now you´re all turned around and panicked that somehow in the last 20 seconds you´ve suddenly missed the turn for Barcelona and you are now heading to far-off Figures and for certain doom. What you don´t know is that Barcelona and Figures are both the EXACT SAME DIRECTION from Valencia. Not only that, but Figures is WAAAAY PAST Barcelona, which is obviously a big city. So you´re still going the right way -- Spain just wanted to switch it up on you.

Imagine driving up 101 north from Los Angeles. Most (if not all) of the signs say "101 North -- San Francisco". Sure you´ll get the occasional "101 North - Santa Barbara" or something in there, but it´s usually pretty clear. I mean at least they put the DIRECTION on there - you know you heading north! Imagine if the signs on the road just read "San Francisco", then 20 miles later the signs read "Portland" then 10 miles later "Seattle" and then "Sacramento" and "Anchorage" and on and on. And every 20 miles there was a roundabout for good measure to make you nice and confused.

All of this results in the American in Spain having to constantly check the map to make sure the town on the sign is in the same direction as the one you want to go to. EVERY sign. If the stupid highway signs from Alcoy had simply said "EAST", we´d never have made a mistake. Thank god when I´m driving, I have Dana to read the map. She´s like the Rain Man of map readers. It´s amazing. I just drive. In any case, I digress...)


Where was I? Oh yes, we were chillin´ on the beach in Spain. Perfect. Like a Corona commercial. Except I´m much fatter and more pale than any of the models in those commercials. But no matter! We were still there enjoying the sun and surf and the aftereffects of a huge meal of paella and sangria. You should be jealous.


After the sun went down and we had a few more beers at the beachside bar, we headed to Altea to experience the tourista nightlife. Amanda´s ex met up with us and we drank until the wee hours of the morning. And we took all sorts of strange photos like this. And then I drove us all home, somehow miraculosly not getting lost on the way back to Alcoy. (We took the new highway. And I quote "It´s so new, it´s not on the map...") Then we slept. And it was good.

Next up -- Barcelona...

After we'd had our fill of all the selections of beer & whiskey in Dublin, Dana & I hired a car and drove up the coast to Northern Ireland. The scenery was unbelievable -- the same kind of wide green meadows and even greener cliffs over the ocean that your imagination conjures up when thinking of Ireland. The most famous attraction was definitely the highlight -- Giant's Causeway, an incredible stretch of coastline that was unlike anything I've ever seen before. Apparenly not many others have either, because it was recently named the fourth-greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom!

(And yeah, apparently Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but there's not even any visible border to cross. In fact, the only way to even know you're in a different country is that suddenly everything costs pounds instead of euros. Which makes everything more expensive. Laaaame. And yeah, there used to be a whole lot of fighting up there. It was known as The Troubles when residents were trying to join back up with Ireland. That unrest ended in early 1998 with a peace accord, but you could still get a sense of a significant police presence. In fact, I think most of the animosity was aimed at the police themselves, since they were seen as the British government. The police cars were huge armored tank-vans and the police stations had tons of razon wire and high walls. Serioulsy the police stations even had surveillance cameras watching their surveillance cameras. All of that was just enough to make Dana and I uneasy when we visited the city of Derry to find a place to stay. And Derry basically scared the hell out of us. There was almost no one on the street except for young hooligans and all the stores and bars were closed and sometimes boarded up. Overall, it was just spooky and unfriendl. So we bolted to the warmer and safer Donegal, back in Ireland proper. One of the new rules of the trip is we never stay in a city whose citizens can't even agree on the name of the place.


But back to Giant's Causeway. Legend has it that a giant named Finn McCool built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish equivalent Benandonner. Once you witness the sheer physical beauty of the place, you realize why men needed myths to explain it. There were shapes there that I'd never seen before in nature (at least not without a microscope.) The major attraction are these incredible basalt columns in hexagonal shapes. There are over 40,000 of them, resulting from a volcanic eruption over 60 million years ago. The formation of them juts out into the Northern Channel below huge green cliffs.


After we were finished climbing all over the columns, Dana & I hiked up to the tops of the cliffs above. (If you look over our shoulders in the photo, you can see the columns jutting out into the water) After that hike, we were hot, hungry, tired and thirsty. So we retired to the tea room near the beginning of the path and drank lemonade and ate cake. Just like all good Englishmen (and Englishwomen) do.


Overall, the beaches of Ireland were extremely impressive. I'd imagined windy and cold pockets of sand tucked under cliffs similar to Northern California. But these beaches were bright and sunny large expanses of sand with beach houses lining the dunes. The water was cold, but people were still braving it even though we were pretty close to Iceland! (I got in up to my waist, but couldn't bring myself to dive under the waves. My legs were numb and in pain.) Still driving back to Dublin, D & I both agreed it was someplace we could spend our summer vacation. If we didn't have the rest of the world to see, that is...

Tomorrow we leave for Spain. So slán for now (that's Irish for "goodbye"...)

Dana & I hit up the two most touristy locations in Dublin yesterday -- a distillery and a brewery. Jameson makes some of the most popular Irish whiskey on the planet and Guinness is a beer that needs no introduction. After tasting them both at the source, I'll go for a pint. I think I've had too much Jack Daniels to switch over now. Although Jameson was quite nice in that Irish coffee. Perhaps a few more days of both and I'll come around...

Dana & I have landed on the Emerald Isle safe & sound! From Orlando to New York and then to Dublin on the red-eye. We cruised the town, had some Irish lunch and now we're heading to check into our first hostel of the trip! At long last, we're finally in Europe.

(for the record, I didn't take this photo. Some gentleman named "asteridesign" did. But this is Dublin. It really looks like that. Not bad...)

This seems like a very good philosophy. Sometimes you just have to take a vacation. Man cannot live on work alone. So I'm leaving right now for a red-eye flight to Florida. Tuesday, we fly to the Emerald Isle. Let the journey begin!

It seems I move across the country with the greatest of ease. After driving over 5,000 miles from California to Florida, I'm suddenly back again. Yesterday I was watching fireworks explode over the beaches of Jacksonville and yet today I'm climbing rocky trails looking for waterfalls in Yosemite National Park. What a life.

July 4th was spectacular, spent frolicking in the lovely goodness that is the Reimer's lake house. We drank cold beers in the sun then dove off the dock when we got too hot. Then we ate shrimp ceviche and fresh berry cheesecake until we couldn't breathe. Then we went waterskiing. It was bliss beyond words.

Yet once the 4th was over, I didn't waste any time. I caught a flight to San Francisco at dawn and my parents were waiting at baggage claim to whisk me away towards El Capitan and Half Dome. Now I sit here typing away in the upstairs lounge of the Ahwanhee Hotel. It's amazing where you can find wireless these days.

Tomorrow we'll head back to civilization and spend a few more days together before I catch the Sunday red-eye back to the East Coast. I meet up with Dana in the Jacksonville Airport and the next morning we're off to Europe.

And finally the real trip will begin...

It took 11 days and 5,071 miles but Dana & I successfuly traversed America from Palo Alto, California to Gainesville, Florida. Leaving last monday from my parent's house, we arrived in Florida this past Thursday a few days before D's 10 year high school reunion on Saturday.

The drive to the Sunshine State was an adventure in itself. We got a flat tire on the way to Elko, Nevada, saw Mount Rushmore in all its glory, visited with Grandma on the banks of the Mississippi, partied at Pat & Krissie's wedding in Long Island, sailed the flooded Chesapeake with Debbie & Michael and saw Valley Forge at moonlight when we stayed with Woody, Monica and Baby Byron. We ate Geno's cheesesteaks in Philly with Travis & Laura, real italian food with Mazz in Jersey and crabcake sandwiches with Sama in Baltimore. We couldn't quite make it back to Dana's hometown on Wednesday so we crashed out at Josh & Krissy's house in Atlanta. Then Florida at last!

Thanks to everyone who housed us and fed us and made our roadtrip an amazing beginning to our round-the-world adventure. Please check out my Flickr gallery for the most recent photos posted and we'll update more soon...