Spain reloaded 2: GoCars!

            Started this day off with a tour of the Petite Palace Opera Gardens hotel right on Las Ramblas.  Highly recommended, the rooms are good, the hotel modern and the location could only be beat by the hotel I was staying in.  Then came the part I had been really looking forwards to, the half-day city tour.  I love these things, and try to do one in every new city I visit, as it gives you a great overview of the attractions, and your guide fills in all the cool local tidbits of information you’d never get from a guidebook.

              Headed right up to Park Guell, Gaudi’s acid-trip wonderland, as did every other tourist known to man, apparently.  A highschooler tourist propositioned on of my coworkers by waving a hundred euro note at her and promising he was good. Damn, they learn young in Europe!  She didn’t take him up on his offer, murmurring something about finding out what legal age was in his country as she ran away.  It was hysterical.  The park, aside from having some of the best photo ops in the city, also had great souvenir shopping.

        Let’s just get this out there: I love tacky souvenirs.  I am taking steps to quell this addicion, but in the meantime, please enjoy your Paella fridge magnet.

            Onwards to La Segrada Famillia, where we didn’t get close to it, but our guide did take us to the perfect position for us all to get the stereotypcal ”me and my cathedral” photo.  Then we went into the Barri Gothic, which, because out hotel wasn’t that far away, we’d all walked through every night, and got a picure with another cathedral.

            The last stop was Montjuic mountain and the Spanish Village, which had been the Spanish pavillion during the ‘92 olympics and is a recreation of a traditional (say it with me now) village.  Plus, they have free bathrooms.  Did some more good souvenir shopping, and my roomate spent over EUR$200 on Sangria and olive oil to give as gifts for people back home.  She then had to carry the bags around for the rest of the tour.   I need to warn everyone, olive oil is not a good idea to bring back home, as it can be classified as a “dangerous good” and banned.  Please check with your airline so you can avoid pouring good money and oil down the drain as she had to!

            Woo hoo!  Now we got to finish up our trip to Barcelona with free time.  If you’re ever in the city and want to explore, but don’t want to take a tour (and are ready to giggle like an idiot for a few hours), you have to take a GoCar (www.gocartours.com).  This was wet-your pants fun, and it still makes me laugh just thinking about it.  You get into this tiny three-wheeled car-meets-moped, do your crash helmet, plug in your GPS and go.  As long as you follow one of four pre-determined routes, the car talks to you as you go, telling you about the sights as you pass them, and even telling you when you need to change lanes.  As the car said, “trust me, I’m a local”!  Taxi drivers were laughing at us as they blew past, and behind La Segrada Famillia a group of Japanese tourists ran out into the crosswalk to take our pictures.  Hey, I’m going to be big in Japan! 

            But seriously, if you can GoCar, do it.  It’s worth every penny.  And if you’re lucky enough, you too can wear the helmet with the bunny ears on it.

Tags: Barcelona, BlogSherpa, city tour, gaudi, GoCars, Parc Guell, Segrada Famillia

Hola from Barcelona!

Wow, it’s hard not to make the title sound like a ‘wish you were here’ postcard  

So, it’s day three here in Spain (or four, it’s all running together), and this is the best work week I think I’ve ever had.   Landed at 7am on Saturday and got to our hotel to find it wasn’t ready, so we all ditched our stuff and, because this was really our only free time in Barcelona, (screw the jet lag!) hopped on the hop on hop off bus touristic for an overview of the city.  Saw all the main sights, Montjuic, the Port Olympic, Colom, Barri Gotic, etc, but honestly it will be easier to remember once I’ve had the pics developed because i’d been up for more than 24 hours at that point.  The goal was to stay awake to get onto local time and, with the help of caffine and lots of aimless walks down the Ramblas, I made it until 11pm before I crashed. 

So far I’m really loving this city.  Staying at the beautiful Catalonia Duques du Bergara hotel beside the Placa Catalonya, it’s a perfect location with great ambiance and an incredible amount of marble.  Barcelona is a city for wandering, and eventhough I’m a total Spanish newbie, I feel totally comfortable here.   The first vibe you get from a city makes a huge impact, and this one is great. 

Yesterday we started the working part, touring the Norwegian Gem and Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas cruise ships.  Really impressed with the Voyager, if I sailed that’s the one personally I would choose.  Loved the central shopping promenade, it looked just like a mall.  The Gem was good, but most people found the gaudy coulour scheme jarring.  I loved it, but then again I am twenty years younger than most of my co workers and I my tastes are a bit out there on a normal day!

Got finished with work about dinner time and wandered back up Las Ramblas,  finding the coolest bar on the planet along the way, right by the wax museum.  I think it was called el bosc de les fades, or the magical forest, but I’ll double check my Spanish later.  It was filled with trees, even coming out from the table centers, the bar was all carved out of fake rock and there was a blue grotto waterfall/fountain in one area.  I have never been in a more family-friendly bar in my life.  It was so funny watching everyone’s faces as they walked in,  looked around in wonder and then started taking pictures.

The metro here, and in any city, is a thing of beauty and for 1.35 Euro we were at the incredible La Sagrada Famillia cathedral in less than ten minutes.  Grabbed a nice German tapas (meatballs, beer rings, wurst and pizza, I don’t get it either, but it was good) dinner on the Place du Gaudi, seated at one of the sidewalk people-watching tables.  It was a great location for under $12 a person, drinks included.  Saw the lights of the cathedral go on at 10pm, and it was cooler than I could have imagined.  I mean, really, what was that guy on when he designed it?  There amongst the prerequisite saints and  angels there are carved frogs and a christmas tree covered in doves and a pile of oranges.  WTF ?  But most importantly, now I feel I’m truly in Barcelona, now that I have seen the one place more than any other that differentiates this city from any other.

Loving this city so far.  I’m not actually going to see any of it today as I have 12 hotels to tour (oh my god! This one has a sink too!), but a job is a job.  I wanted to get a bit of an overview posted, but hopefully I’ll get to blog tonight about all the cool little things that have happened, like the naked bike people with the pool noodles….

Tags: Barcelona, BlogSherpa, cathedral, city tour, cruise, hop on hop off bus, hotels, public transportation

Finding Pura Vida in Costa Rica

              I admit it, I’m a city traveler.  London, Paris, Los Angeles, I love the hustle and bustle, and as long as there’s a gift shop I’m happy.  So, for me a twelve day vacation to Costa Rica was my test, to see if I could break free of my department store box and truly embrace what the local Ticos call Pura Vida, the Pure Life.

Within hours of landing in the capital of San Jose I was whisked off by minibus to the small but charming city of La Fortuna, at the foot of the active Arenal Volcano, four hours away.  The entire country feels vertical, and my ears popped every half hour as we drove up, down and up again the tiny one lane roads that cling to the hillsides like mountain goats. From here day-long canyoning, hiking and ATV tours are all at your disposal, but I selected a SkyTrek zipline canopy tour.  During a torrential rainstorm I flew along quarter-round steel cables as much as 660ft above the jungle below, suspended by nothing but my harness, while trading grunts with a troupe of howler monkeys.  It was incredible!  I couldn’t get the smile off my face for days.

After a few days there, it was time to move on to the Monteverde cloud forest.  Here the roads are not only vertical, but unpaved, and a drive that looks tiny on a map can take hours.  It gives you a bit of an Indiana Jones complex, and only serves to add to the adventure.  Rain here sneaks up on you, and in a matter of seconds a flawless sunny day can become a downpour, turning all the roads into muddy slip-n-slides with potholes the size of VW beetles.  The hanging bridges are not to be missed, and the hummingbird garden at the Selvatura park has dozens of species buzzing past only inches from your head.

The town of Quepos and the famed Manuel Antonio national park were my third stop, with postcard-perfect views and a relaxed beachy atmosphere.  By far the hottest and most touristy of all the cities, the park is the whole reason to stop here and is well worth it.  Our guide hauled a four-foot telescope the entire hike just to give us the best views of the two-and-three toed sloths, monkeys, birds and even a banded anteater that his well-trained eyes could (unbelievably) spot. The Rainmaker adventure forest, with it’s 190 ft high suspension bridges, is so much more fun than it looked on the Amazing Race: Family Edition, and a mangrove tour got us so close to a troupe of wild whitefaced capuchin monkeys that at one point they even jumped on the roof of our boat!  Leaving there was hard, and after a few final days in San Jose to see the stunning Teatro National and the Gold Museum (and shop), it was back to reality. 

Costa Rica surprised me in many ways, from the diverse climates to the awesome animals, but most of all the incredibly welcoming people.  It leaves you with the warm glow of adrenaline-and-sun fueled enjoyment, combined with the faint scent of coffee. Pura Vida.

- As originally published in the Vancouver Province

Tags: BlogSherpa, city tour, Costa Rica, monkeys, museum, national park, published, rainstorms, volcano, zipline