Tot comença i tot s'acaba...

Evan and mummy


Mummy and Audrey

Després de passar una setmana a Nova York, anant a munt i avall com una boja, caminant sense parar, perquè ho volia veure tot i al final no vaig veure res... doncs el meu viatge s'ha acabat.
Vaig fer couchsurfing amb dos nois de Nova York, un que vivia a la part de dalt a l'oest de Central Park i un altre a l'extrem sud-est del parc i amb tots dos vaig estar molt bé. Els americans han estat amb mi gent molt acollidora, sobre tot els del couchsurfing. Us recomano que si heu de fer un viatge en el futur us mireu aquesta pàgina web. Una meravella de veritat.
El dia 27 d'agost va sortir el meu vol cap a Londres i la meva ex-ciutat d'acollida em va donar la benvinguda amb un fred i un cel núvol! very nice! Sort que a Londres encara hi viuen amics i vaig estar a casa de la Carolina que ja té dos nens maquíssims, bé un nen i una nena. Per cert que el bitllet senzill de metro a Londres ja val 6 euros, argh!
No vaig estar molt de temps per Anglaterra que ja tenia ganes de tornar a casa i desfer la motxilla. I el dissabte dia 30 s'em va acabar el "xollo". Al vespre vaig arribar al Prat. Ja sóc aquí!!!
PD. MOLTISSIMES GRACIES a tothom que m'ha acompanyat en aquest viatge, físicament i espiritualment (ja m'enteneu eh!)
PD2. Fa 4 dies que sóc a Olesa i ja vull marxar. Olesa de Montserrat, el poble més avorrit de Catalunya...

THANKS SO MUCH to everybody I've met along the way. You've been fantastic and all of you have taken a little piece of my heart. Take lots of care wherever you are and hope to see you one day...

Last stop: New York

Jazz at the park, Manhattan...


New Yorker


New Yorkers


an afternoon at the park


ahhhhhhhhhh


ohhhhhhhhhhh


yes, imagine
(Strawberry Fields, Central Park)


Avanti o popolo alla riscossa...


what?


somewhere in Central Park...


Hello there!


United States Coast Guard, the latest recruit


A big apple in the Big Apple


I can see the sky!

I am writing this from New York. I arrived two days ago and like a few hundred of other Spaniards, I bought a laptop over here. What can I say? It's cheap and necessary, well, at least now I won't have the excuse that there aren't any Internet shops around...
I am lost for words when it comes to New York. A lot of people have been here before me. Most of the people have seen New York in TV, in movies, in advertising, so I don't know what to say that will sound different. So far I have only visited Manhattan. I am staying with Sina (couchsurfer from Iran who is studying at Columbia University). He lives in 111th Street West. Yesterday I walked from here to the ferry terminal which goes to the Statue of Liberty, and I stopped over at Central Park. Now if you have been here before, you will know what I am talking about. Bloody far. But soooo worth it. I have seen Times Square (only tourists there), Broadway, Central Park, Wall Street, Fifth Ave., First Ave., Madison, the Empire State Building, Ground Zero (were twin towers used to be), the Chrystler Building (my favourite), MoMA, United Nations Building... I just don't know how many more famous buildings I have seen and funny enough, one of the places it made me more happy to find was... the restaurant from Seinfeld!!! it does exist and it just around the corner from my place, in 112th street, sweet! Well, at least that was something different and unexpected, wasn't it?
I fly on the 27th to London and from there to Barcelona, although I still haven't booked a flight yet.
If anything exciting or unusual happens I will let you know, now I am going to upload a few pictures...

The Greyhound Experience (Part II)

Salem, Massachusetts


Salem


Salem


Salem


Salem


Charles River, Boston


Historical reenactment in Boston Common


Italian sausages at the park


Where everybody knows your name..

In Canada I was traveling with Greyhound too but the buses were so much cleaner!
Since I was back in the States I decided to dedicate the title to my favourite bus company. The next trip was from Ottawa to Boston, Massachusetts. I can't remember much of that journey. I usually take the bus at night so I sleep (or I try to). Most of the times I have to change buses in some obscure town in the middle of nowhere. Now I remember. Syracuse! I had to wait at 3 am in the morning to the next bus at 6 am. I thought I would wait reading a book but I fell asleep and I almost missed the bus, when I woke up there was a massive queue in front of me, but again I was lucky. The only problem is that all the way I was half asleep, half awake so can't remember much of the scenery. I guess it was very green.
In Boston again I stayed with an excellent host from couchsurfing. The people I've met through that website are really really kind, generous, open minded and helpful. In Boston, Jorge, my host, lives in such a pretty pretty place in the center of the city, Beacon Hill. I never got tired of walking around those streets, the "oldest" in the United States. In a park nearby I saw a historical reenactment of the first settlers in Boston. Next to that park there is the Cheers cafe, cheers! I walked by the river and by the sea, around Harvard and the MIT and one evening I went to see "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" I got a bit homesick. The day before I left, I went by train to Salem, only half an hour outside Boston. It is famous because the hanged a few people who had been found guilty of withcraft, but for me it should be famous because of the lovely New England style houses all over the town. Wooden houses painted in the different colours: blue, pink, red, brown, all together looked so charming and cozy. I was very happy to have spent my day there because the day after I was going to THE BIG CITY.

Canada

Lake Robertson




Paula took me canoeing...


Ottawa, Ontario


Louise Bourgeois´s spider at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa




Ottawa, Ontario


Ottawa, Ontario




Ottawa, Ontario


saucisse de caribou, yum yum


Montréal


Montréal


Montréal, Québec

Sorry for the delay, I have been traveling like crazy lately...
In St. Louis I did catch up with my old friend Mike who I met 12 years ago... already! He is working as an architect for a firm in St. Louis and he showed me his office. He works in downtown, as I said before that area of the city is beautiful with big old buildings, but it's deserted all the time, only at lunch time you see people walking down the street.
I stayed longer than preview in that city because it was almost impossible to find acommodation in Chicago, there was a festival going on that week-end and all hostels and couchsurfers were fully booked, so I decided to go to Buffalo instead. When I got to the bus station the bus to Buffalo was full so I changed my plans altogether.
I wanted to go to Canada through Buffalo, because there is where Niagara Falls are. Then Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, NY, Washington DC and back to NY.
But since I couldn't go to Chicago or Buffalo... I took the bus to Washington DC. Only 22 hours. Nothing. Piece of cake. I love Greyhound. In the end it wasn't that bad. The scenery was pretty, specially through Pennsylvania.
In Washington DC I stayed a couple of days with another couchsurfer, Jeffrey, who lived very close to the White House, I am so lucky! So for two days I tried to see as many museums as I could. I was very surprised at the city, very lively and very easy to walk around, and of course so many museums and all of the them are entry free, yippy!!! I saw the White House and the Capitol and the Smythsonian (the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Native America, Museum of Natural History, etc) very impressive!
From the capital of the US then I took the bus to Montreal. That was a funny trip. We stopped over in New York and caught another bus which was delayed (but but of course!) around 2 am in the morning. Then the driver, he was a really sweet man, said that that was his first trip and it would be so kind of someone who knew the route to seat next to him in case he need directions, lovely. We are already late and now we have a new bus driver. People in the bus were very sympathetic so we all cheered up, no worries! The only problem is that someone was waiting for me in Montreal at 8 am (my host from couchsurfing, David) and we arrived at 1pm and neither my Spanish nor my American cell phones were working there, luckily someone let me use his phone, no problem.
Montreal was cold and rainy. It totally seemed I had gone to a totally different country, ehem, yes I was in a totally different country, Quebec! They are more French than the French and even the STOP signs in the street say ARRET. Everybody walks or use the bycicle in the streets, like in Europe, it's a very pleasant city and the old part of town it's really like being back in France. My favorite part of the town though was not the old part. I like the centre, there is a huge gay village and also there is a street with lots of metal clubs and a China town too. There is a lot of events going on and on one of the days I was walking around I found a hip hop festival, with music, skating and lots of people doing graffitti on the walls. Another day at the park near home there was a concert of Yiddish music.
I wish I had stayed longer in Montreal but I was running out of time so I left for Ottawa. Ottawa is the capital of Canada, it's in Ontario and they speak both French and English. I really liked there. It's a small city, but the architecture is so nice, unlike Montreal it really surprised me, the Parliament House because it was so grand but the modern buildings were stunning. I stayed in a hostel but every day I caught up with my friend Ben and his wife Paula. One day Ben had to go to work so Paula took me out to her parents' cottage. We saw so many farms on the way there, the grass look much greener (hehe) and so many pretty flowers. The cottage is by a little lake called Robertson and we did some canoeing, we saw fish, ducks, frogs and even a water snake and the day was glorious, not too hot but at least sunny and on the way back to Ottawa we stopped in a beautiful little town called Perth and we ate a beaver's tail with maple syrup, a true Canadian experience! In the evening we had dinner at her brother's and in the garden at night we saw a raccon (mapache in Spanish). Apparently there are so many, but for me it was the first time to see one, happy!
The day after Ben took me to see the National Gallery of Canada (big surprise, they had one of my favourite Klimt!!!) and the Museum of Civilization, which I liked because it holds a lot of Native American (or Indian American, or as they say in Canada Aboriginal) art.

The Greyhound Experience

proud and glory of St.Louis: Budweiser beer and the Cardinals baseball team


clean?


THE Arch, St. Louis


Mississipi River in St.Louis, Missouri


Memphis, Tennessee


Sun Studio, Memphis, Tennessee


Lucky dogs, Ignatius used to eat them!




French Quarter, New Orleans


French Quarter, New Orleans


St. Louis cemetery, New Orleans


so many gigs


New Orleans


New Orleans


New Orleans


Road signs in Flagstaff, Arizona

It sounds like a scary movie, doesn't it? Actually, for some poor bloke in Canada it was real (check the news from two weeks ago). Anyway, I am not going to relate my bus experiences here because that would take enough space to fill a totally new blog. I am only going to try to summarize what I have been doing for the last weeks. I must say, although I said it before, it is not easy to find an Internet cafe in the States (and I don't mean a cafe with wi-fi, I mean a place with computers!).
Well, after the 15 days adventure with the Japanese who couldn't speak English but who didn't complain about driving 4.000 miles, I ended up back in Flagstaff, Arizona. Took the fast dog (Greyhound) to Austin (Texas) , can't remember how many hours, but many. Obviously, the bus was delayed a few times and lucky enough in one occasion it got delayed in Dallas, so I went to explore the city. A short walk from the bus station in downtown I found the place where Kennedy was shot. And that is about all I saw in Dallas. Ah, lots of skyscrapers and it was very hot.
In Austin I couchsurfed with two really nice guys, Alejandro and Benjamin. They showed me the city, which is very interesting because it is the capital of Texas but it is very liberal, they say it's like an oasis in the middle of the dessert. It's got a huge university and the capitol, which is bigger than the one in Washington DC (and they are very proud of that, of course, in Texas everything is BIGGER). In Austin I also got to see a very cool blues performance in an old shack, very hot and humid, lots of people drinking beer and dancing in a very tiny space, very genuine, I loved it!
From Austin I took the bus to New Orleans, la Belle. Well, I don't know if it's called The Beautiful, but it should. It's got so much character, it's so special, even though you can still see the damages from the Katrina hurricane (3 years later!!!) it's just stunning. Specially the French Quarter. Lots of music, lots of American tourists, tons of charm, the buildings are so cute, and it's easy to move around, on foot or by tram. I loved the food down there too: the jambalaya, the gumbo, the mint julep, yummy! all this Cajun influences. I visited a few cemeteries too, because they have sad intriguing statues and obviously they are quiet and a bit mysterious.
New Orleans is with Santa Fe one of my favourite cities in the US, so glad I went.
From there yet another bus ride to Memphis, where I did couchsurfing too and I stayed with a group of college students that were hilarious and we had a great time together, we even played pool, ate popcorn and listened to Elvis songs, but we didn't go to Graceland. We past through though and I could see it was a big mansion. Memphis is very run down, it looks like nothing happens there but all around there are plenty of these incredibly big mansions that look like the one in Gone with the wind.
From Memphis, Tennessee to St. Louis, Missouri. The people's accents start to change... a little bit. It was so hard to understand them in New Orleans, but now I am getting used to that southern drawl.
St. Louis, a typical city in the Midwest. But with the BIGGEST arch. Very impressive, very big. I did like downtown a lot, lots of old red brick buildings, but it seemed like ghost town, nobody on the streets. Such a shame. My hosts also told me that some places I shouldn't walk because it's the most dangerous city in the US (!!!!).