Having spent a couple of good days in Santiago, I decided to check out some relatives. I have a few sets of cousins, aunts, and uncles in the region but this family is one that my mother keeps in contact with so I decided they would be the ones lucky enough to see me. I decided to take the cheapest route, the bus. The bus company around here is called Castromil and their seats are quite comfortable. I took an hour bus ride south to Vigo, a port city of about 250,000 people. I’ll have to check it out at some [View Full Entry]

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PART II Upon driving through a small-modern city, the cab pulled in to a small plaza. It had an island in the middle that house an underground parking lot hidden under a small park. Bordering this plaza was what looked like and was the medieval quarter. Paved streets do no encroach upon it. It is a sanctuary of the pedestrian. I paid the driver and stepped I to the gray cobblestone street. There is really nothing in the states like this. We just didn’t exist when these kind of cities were built. So of course, excited, I began to wander the [View Full Entry]

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PART III One of the things to know about Santiago is that telling the old part of the city apart from the newer sections id fairly easy. Once you cross a street with automobile traffic, you’ve left the old quarter. I actually circumnavigated it in this manner until I came to an arcade across the border from the old section. It is near the park and is both an arcade in the sense that the entrances featured a series of arches and a video arcade as well. I decided to go in and take a look at the city’s youth. One [View Full Entry]

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SANITIAGO DE COMPOSTELA PART I The flight from Madrid to Santiago was a short but drastic one. At only forty-five minutes, the plane stays at only about 11,000 feet instead of the 30,000 you would expect on a longer flight. It isn’t worth climbing up to those altitudes for such a short flight. This creates the great perquisite of short flights: getting a bird’s eye view of the landscape. You’re not going to see anything but clouds and horizon at 30,000 but at 11,000 you see for miles around. You can see plots of land, individual mountains and hills rise and [View Full Entry]

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Going from New York to Spain is about six hours. You ride the jet stream at 30,000 feet across the Atlantic. Some people hate planes, they are cramped, they oblige you a gauntlet of long lines and checkpoints. People may have airports but they are great places to people watch. You see all of the foreigners and wonder why they have come, where they are going. Airports are also usually replete with attractive women. I see it as something else. It is a respite, an auxiliary state of mind where you have no responsibilities other than to get from point A [View Full Entry]

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I think I'm about to take a unique trip. Perhaps it’s worth reading about but I'd like to keep it documented so friends and family can keep track of me. I've quit my job and although my bank account isn't as large as I would like it to be, I am going to travel in Europe at least until June where I hope to arrive in Austria and surround myself with the ambience of Euro 2008. I've purchased a one-way ticket to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. I'm starting in Spain and this region specifically for a few reasons. My [View Full Entry]

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