Just a short summary of the cause of my dissappearing act for approx 2 weeks. I went to Europe again! But visited different place (of course). It was a more concentrated visit this time, (but still, sigh, extremely normadic). It was a circuit around Spain with a detour to Portugal. Due to the complications of each state name, which adds on to the repititive visit of Cathedrals, as well as the limitation of places of interest in Spain, gives me a very dry and limitedc ontent to blog about. Mainly because it was cold, I was sleepy, and I was half asleep most of the time. Also, there ain't much interesting things in Spain.
Maybe there's this contrast effect. Central Europe last year with all the big & bad states/countries. Extremely famous landmarks last year. Let me tell you I visited nothing really spectacular this year. It was just Europe again, but nerfed. Yep, nerfed, to a very astronomical extent. I wouldn't say it was boring, but it was the contrast effect. The damn contrast effect that made everything seem so unimportant and ungrand and unglam (and anything, you name it) compared to last year. Well, comparisons usually breeds unhappiness. So just let's say this was a decent trip, a different place and a totally foriegn land where most people speak Spanish (like duh)....and most of the time we have to do a sign lanquage game inorder to order our food. But it got really easy in the later part of the trip.
14 days this round. Overall a short trip, as after deducting deparature and arrival days we are only left with 11 days (which is really really short), but still the urge to go home was still strong.
And yes this brings us to the subject of food. The food there tasted initially very good. But the standard (or maybe the perception of the food, by our tastebuds) exponentially declined heavily after a few days. Breakfast was a good example. The first day we were greeted by an array of fanciful tarts, crossiants, breed, and interesting unique Spanish delicacies (I was hungry mind you so I gobbled them before I could ask them their name!). Beautiful breakfast! But as the day past, we find ourselves eating the same old garbage again and again. First day was sweet, yumyum, Second day was Umm not bad. and by the fifth it there was this irking sensation to puke. I wasn't savouring my food, I was DRINKING my breed. (we were kinda in a rush every morning as soon as the "sensational breakfast" or the affection for 'delicious' breed wore off). We grew sick and tired. Lunch was so-so. Most of the lunch were eating in Service stations (like petrol koisks and along toilet stops). Some were decent (standard white food), Pasta, Meet and stuff. Some were horrible and I recall eating the worst meal ever in this trip in a service station which pasta tasted worst than water. Besides that, there were several optional lunch/dinner included which included a local delicacy "paila" (seafood rice), [my eye lighted up because I thought that was FRIED rice at first but there was slight resemblence as a consolation]. and also the pork there was so tender that you could chop it with a plate. Chinese dinner for most nights, not wonderful, but decent.
Service station reminds me of the long and 'gruelling" bus rides. Yes, tour guide Sam told us that we had to travel 4400 KM of route (just city to city) ALONE for the entire trip.Trust me, that is a long distance. Imagine if you can, if the bus would to be travelling even at a considerable fast speed, 100Km/hr for instance. That would amount to 44 hours of butt torture for the entire trip. Which averages (if you divide by 11 days) to 4 hours per day. And more often than not, the bus was travelling at a considerably lower speed than hundred, so it was almost about 5 hours of bus ride PER day. There are days when morning/afternoons were spend totally in the bus.
Not much of sightseeing from the window. and I was smart or economical enough to chop the back row. That turned the tables. It turned out that I enjoyed bus rides the most because I have a flat 'bed" to sleep on everytime we board the bus. thanks to that I didn't listen to much 'history' or explanation.
I took pictures this time round, alot more. will be posting more. And updating slightly more. this is just a summary, jet lag is killing me. Gotta sleep!
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