Mr. Fan has already provided a nice account of our weekend in Montreal, so I'll try to mostly fill it in with some personal observations.

On the way up we hit heavy snow in the Adirondacks, and it was not just heavy but in large flakes. At a gas station stop, I appreciated for the first time the intricate patterns of the snowflakes. For some reason I've just never really seen them myself before, always too much in a hurry or seeing snow more as a collective lump than as individual pieces. But the dark roof of the car, with a light coating applied while we got snacks, was the perfect venue for observation, and they were quite exquisite. I even found that I could watch the falling ones closely and catch fleeting glimpses of the shapes. When later a very nice flake fell on my coat, I enjoyed watching the shape gradually disappear as I breathed on it.

Walking around Montreal was indeed very challenging, as literally every sidewalk was covered with very smooth ice, and even patches of soft snow were a welcome reprieve. But I always enjoy seeing a city and this was a nice one.

In the language department, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Rather than having forgotten it, my ability to use French naturally in conversation actually seemed to have improved significantly since I stopped studying it at the end of 2000, the same time I went to France and had my first real chance to try it out. I believe that studying Japanese so much helped my French in a totally indirect way. This is in support of a theory of Hofstadter that I wrote about a few months back, that the mind has some sort of general foreign language circuitry that's getting exercised whenever you have to think with a non-native language. I heard more French than I had expected to, and understood the speech of the natives pretty well. I didn't have any deep conversations, but had a couple of meaningful exchanges that went smoothly.

There's also something that happens when I'm studying a language, where I somehow think that using it when I don't have to (i.e. with a friend who's also studying it but speaks English perfectly well, or in a bilingual place such as Montreal) is somehow tacky and undesirable. This is a really damaging perception, and I don't know the real root of it. The result is that I don't get enough practise, and when I want to use the language, with natives, I'm not good enough. But somehow, now that I'm on Japanese and it's been a while since I studied French, I've lost this feeling to some extent with French. I still felt weird about using it in Montreal when it was clear that the person spoke English, but that's because it's pretty embarrassing if I try to use French when I don't have to, and then don't understand something and have to go back to English anyway.

Oh yeah, so the trip. As Mr. Fan has told, but I will repeat here for context, we were stopped at the border coming back into the US and pulled over later, the first time our car searched by Customs agents and a drug-sniffing dog, the second time stopped ostensibly for a loud exhaust, then threatened emptily with the dogs being on the way. Both times it was made pretty clear that they expected to find drugs in our car, with no official probable cause for such a suspicion, but the obvious unofficial reason that we are young.

In a sense it was interesting to feel what it's like to be profiled, since it hasn't really happened to me before. Sure, they are just doing their job, and the only harm to us is inconvenience, although in this case the delay was a pretty bad thing with the long drive Mr. Fan already had to endure. I wouldn't say they treated us disrespectfully, except in the subtle way that our age and appearance (though it's hard to see how our appearance hurt us) made us suspects. But if this were to happen any more consistently than this possible coincidence, there would definitely start to be a sense of having to justify our mere presence on the road. In other words, what a lot of black people have to deal with every day!

Peter noticed an interesting feature of the Customs office that must be repeated. The counter had three large posters on it, explaining the Customs agency's purpose and duties and statistics in English, French and Spanish. Standard enough, but there was an alarming degree of difference between what the three signs said. The bullet points were largely in different orders, which didn't make much sense at all since it doesn't take a very different number of words to say the same thing in these three languages, so reformatting didn't seem necessary. But far stranger was the presence of a clause in the French and Spanish versions that was entirely absent in the English version. It read (translated) "We take our responsibilities very seriously." Peter interpreted this, correctly I think, as saying subtly 'don't bribe us.' To some extent it's understandable, since in many parts of the world bribing the authorities is still standard procedure. But as Peter pointed out, one wouldn't think it legal for them to put such differences between sets of signs that are clearly meant to be equivalent. So in conclusion, don't trust the Man.

P.S. Much thanks to Mr. Fan for his driving prowess and endurance in making these thoughts possible.

For the past three days our company has been in southern california showing off our robot to the Army and a whole lot of MDs, PhDs, and in several cases MD PhDs. Some stories:

We anticipated having to pay some fees for taking our 7 huge boxes of robot parts on the plane. But a curbside check-in guy walked up to us quickly and said in the most suspicious way possible "if you work with me, I'll work with you." As he confidently put our boxes onto a cart, we all wondered whether he had any real power to decide what was checked baggage and what would be considered excess baggage and slapped with fees. He also assured us that taking 2-3 bags each as carry-on wouldn't be a problem. In the end all we could do was hope for the best, as we 'worked with' him to the tune of $20 (after handing him $15, he assured us "that's not gonna do it"). Fortunately, we got through unscathed, so it was a good deal after all.

We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant the first night, and when the waitress came up she said "wow, this is going to be a big bill!" She wasn't wrong, but I've never heard a restaurant employee comment on that before. I suppose parties of 4 are not very common. When she brought us the check she made another comment, this time "hey, I guess you didn't spend too much after all." I for one appreciate her financial candor.

One of the exhibitors is a pair of scientists from Kodak, presenting a stereoscopic image system. Apparently the benefit of it is that one doesn't have to wear goggles or special headgear to view it. Of course, one does have to put one's head in front of a giant plastic case that contains two LCD monitors, with the whole setup inside a black-walled enclosure to keep out reflections. But hey, no goggles! One of my coworkers got a 'special' demonstration of the system that featured stereoscopic images of nude women, which he described as 'kind of disgusting.' Science, huh?

There are a couple of other interesting/bizarre exhibits that I would not be doing justice if I did not wait until I can upload and include photographs of them.

Today another attendee who spoke at length with us told me of a project she had worked on which sounds to me like the hardest natural language processing task I've ever heard of, to an extent that it is nearly unfathomable. It was a telephone intepreter system, in which one user would speak into the phone in english, a speech recognition system would take the speech to text, a machine translation system would translate it into japanese text, and then a text-to-speech system would speak the japanese text to the other user. In this way, each user would be carrying on a conversation in their native language. So this includes two NLP tasks that are incredibly challenging (the STT and machine translation), one that is not too hard to do, but very hard to do well (TTS), plus it's using English and Japanese, two very difficult languages to translate between in about 100 different ways. For one, there is the problem of information being left out. The complete Japanese sentence "ikimashita." literally means "went," and the machine translator would somehow have to know who went to include it in the English version. Meanwhile, the English would contain no information about the relationship between the two speakers, except in very subtle ways. This might not be a barrier to understanding for the Japanese speaker, but it might leave them a bit shocked. The difficulty of these issues alone is insane, and as this woman told me, basically requires the software to have a knowledge base including everything about both users and their respective cultures. But it's cool that it was even attempted nonetheless.

In fact one cool aspect of this conference is seeing that women are breaking into science and heading up some of these projects, and that they have more degrees than the temperature in new york right now. When I last saw my stepbrother the philosophy professor, he asserted that philosophy, not computer or any other science, is the most bereft of women at high academic levels, but that no one seems to care!

Here now, the promised pictures of a couple of the other exhibits at the conference.

This first one isn't all that amazing, I just wanted to have more than one.

This dummy's having a bit of trouble with his leg. The tank sort of visible at right was providing simulated breathing. This was a US Army exhibit. Also note the macs running it. Ugh, have I become a mac person? No, I don't think so. Just pointing it out, that's all.

Now the piece de resistance.

If you have a sick mind, the thing coming out of this machine at left is exactly what you think it is. This is an advanced ureteroscope something-or-other, so the idea is it teaches you to stick a tube up that, and then the screen presumably shows you what's happening. I didn't get a chance to try it, but it was making beeping sounds throughout the conference that made it seem like I was in an arcade. Surprisingly and perhaps disturbingly, the one person laughing the whole time at this was my boss, a doctor. It was he who demanded I take a picture of it. He found it particularly amusing when the two women presenting it had to wheel it down the hall from one room to another, and one of them seemed to be walking with the express purpose of covering up the embarrassing part. As he said many times, "they didn't have to make it look like that!"

Finally, while we're on the topic of photography and juvenile humor--sometimes you don't have to leave the country, or buy anything made outside it, to find some amusing misuses of the language.

Most people don't know this, but Californians are quite kinky when it comes to snacks. Also, I think they mean yogurt covered pretzels. The genetic engineering of pretzels to taste like yogurt is at least a couple of weeks away. There was also a Mexican brand of snacks called "Bimbo." One of their products was called "Pinguinos," with an umlaut over the 'u.'

On Friday we drove through LA and up to Santa Barbra, experiencing the Friday afternoon LA rush hour first hand, and had the honor of meeting with one of our few fellow small surgical robotics companies. Actually it's the company run by the former runner of one of the first surgical robotics companies. The new company isn't so much surgical. They make a robot that is piloted by a doctor sitting in their office. The robot has a camera, and a screen which shows the doctor's face as captured by a camera above the doctor's computer. This allows the doctor to make rounds and observe patients and such without leaving the office. Ater being around for just a few years the company has about 100 times as much space as ours, and a lot more robots, so it was inspiring in that respect.

Sleeping on the street was strange, but probably not as strange as it could have been. A policeman walked by, but appeared not to notice me. There was someone who jogged back and forth a few times, making a quick hissing sound as they breathed which I was able to hear from afar before I heard their footsteps, and that was a bit creepy. I fully awoke at about 3:30am with an unpleasant chill, and realized I had to get going if I was to make it to Tsukiji on time.

I had already walked back to Ebisu along the tracks, the stop where I had intended to transfer to the Hibiya line, so that meant following these tracks was no longer going to take me where I needed to go. It occurs to me now that I didn't think about following the Hibiya line tracks, but it might have been a subway anyway. I was still in an area where using my map was really not an option due to the lack of signs and landmarks. I knew that Tsukiji was still quite far, but I was feeling better and thought I just might be able to make it on foot, or at least make it a significant part of the distance so that a cab would not cost so much.

Reluctantly consulting that stupid map, I saw that Tokyo Tower, the city's rather pathetic smaller recreation of the Eiffel, was almost directly between me and Tsukiji, and since it was only half as far and probably still pretty tall, I might be able to see it from here and use it as a landmark to get at least that far. To look for it I walked up on one of the tall pedestrian overpass footbridges that were way too common and made it even more tiring just to walk around. I did some shaky calculations with the map about which direction it might be in. Sure enough, there it was! Well, it didn't seem quite right...it didn't seem bright enough. But surely this was it. Probably they turn off some of the lights late at night so as not to disturb people's sleep too much. So I headed on in that direction.

After several blocks I realized that the tower was a lot closer than I had originally thought. When I came upon one ridiculously long block I accidentally walked past it in that direction and had to double back. But these trifles didn't bother me. Not until I came to the tower a lot sooner than I had expected, and realized that it was not the tower at all, not even close. It was more like a very narrow smoke stack, a slim cylindrical pyramid, gray, with maybe 6 rows of lights at regular intervals going to the top. The building it was attached to was wholly unidentifiable, but I don't think it looked very industrial.

Why did I think this was Tokyo Tower? I was delirious, of course. Obvious, but it's not often that one gets to experience this combination of delirium and sudden awareness of it. I did some more shaky and desperate calculations with the map and figured that I definitely had not gone in the right direction, probably somewhere between 90 and 180 degrees off. Heck, perhaps I'd gone in a circle, the way one supposedly does when in the desert, and like I did in Central Park on the day of the blackout last year. The important thing was, I was rational enough to realize there was no fucking way I was making it to Tsukiji on foot. My mind and body both were drained, and the pain with each step was not diminishing. A cab really felt like the ultimate surrender, aside from probably being expensive. But after all Tsukiji was the one thing I had really come here for tonight, and what the hell else was I going to do?

I could swear the cab meter had an acceleration to it. It stayed at its initial setting for an incredible interval, but by the end of the trip the slightest movement seemed to be setting it off. The cabby was talkative and we got along pretty well with the I-speak-Japanese, he-speaks-English thing. The ride came to $30, more than I had spent to get to Tokyo, but oh well.

Right away it was obvious that Tsukiji was quite a place. I got there at about 4:45 and it seemed I had made it with plenty of time. All the fish vendors were still setting up their stalls, arrayed in a huge grid within a quarter-circle shaped building. Lots of people drove the goods around on these strange little vehicles, carts that had their whole mechanics contained within a cylinder near the front, behind which the driver stood, steering with an amazingly flimsy plastic wheel that was on top of the cylinder. It sometimes seemed like these drivers were maniacs, but after a while I realized they were quite expert at this specialized task, and they were patient but efficient when someone or something got in the way. Deep-frozen fish were cut on bandsaws. This was all pretty cool, but what I had really come to see were the tuna auctions.

After walking around pretty thoroughly I found them, in a closed section next to the last aisle of the main market area. There were small, dirty plastic windows in the cloth walls that closed it off, which allowed me to see what was going on and snap some poor pictures. In full effect were the rows and rows of giant tuna, deep frozen, and buyers walking around inspecting them. I was surprised then when a midwestern American woman with her son tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I knew how to get in there. I said I didn't think we could, but she then completely showed me up by asking a nearby market employee and being let in; I followed her.

Being there was quite a different experience from looking in. It also turned out to be the greatest concentration of tourists that I saw the whole time I was in Tokyo. I guess the word is out on this place. In any case, it was fascinating. There were hundreds of tuna, all in this one long hangar-like area. The frost created a mist over the floor. Each tuna had a couple of cuts in the same place so the flesh could be inspected. The buyers walked around with hooks used to slide the fish around, turn them over, and sometimes apparently just to see how it felt to jab them in. They got down close with flashlights and stared intently. Sometimes they picked out some flesh from a cut near the tail and rolled it between their fingers, and a couple of guys even chewed on it for a bit.

They called the auctions by ringing a bell, and the auctioneer would get up on a little stool and everyone casually gathered around, all standing between the tuna. I don't imagine it went too differently from auctions anywhere, but this was great to watch nonetheless. Each auctioneer had his own style. One did something I think I'd heard about, where the price calling was like a rising melody, punctuated by high notes at each change, resolving itself as the final price was called. Another flailed about so much that it was hard to imagine how he could see the subtle signals from the bidders, and used a lot of guttural grunts that gave the whole presentation a rather epileptic feel. It's always tough to know what a number means in these situations, whether "one" is one hundred, one thousand, one million. But I think I heard prices ranging from $100 to $1000 and probably more. The bidder signals varied as well, sometimes taking the form of thumbs up, sometimes turning the hand around, sometimes seeming to grip or tweak an imaginary small object. The coolest part was how they all looked at each other instead of the auctioneer. Everything seemed to be pretty routine, I didn't pick up on any of the dramatic reactions I'd read about when bidders did well or poorly. I was suitably careful in raising my camera, but I got the feeling they had no trouble distinguishing me from the participants.

The pleasantness of Tsukiji having met my expectations made me feel a lot better, despite the fact that I'd still been basically awake and walking for the last 14 hours, brief rests aside. I found the energy to do things properly and eat at one of the sushi places around the market, and it was tasty indeed. After that it was a half-awake drift across some of the Old Tokyo and Ginza area to the Yamanote line that would take me to the bus back to Kofu. I had one last bit of trouble as I attempted to walk around Shinjuku station to where I had to get the bus, and ended up walking in some kind of outward spiral with the station getting bigger and bigger. Finally I realized I'd gotten completely turned around again, and made it. I collapsed appropriately in bed upon my return.

As a New Yorker I don't like to take it lying down when a city threatens to overwhelm me and swallow me up. I haven't felt such a threat for as long as I can remember. But Tokyo, with its neverending nameless streets and vast array of neighborhoods, seemed to accomplish it effortlessly. I actually enjoyed being among the huge masses of people in Shinjuku and Shibuya, feeling less alone and, having no particular place to go, not being inconvenienced by the crowd's density. But they do all disappear somewhere at night, and then it's just you and the city.

On Friday, after returning from Tokyo and sleeping most of the previous day, I was to visit Hokuto High School, where Amanda teaches. On the way in I took off my shoes and got a pair of school-issue slippers, which were approximately 6 sizes too small for me. Walking around in these was difficult enough, with my heels almost entirely unsupported, but ascending and descending the stairs was a positively acrobatic maneuver. Most of my attempts at this were punctuated by either the painful stubbing of a toe or one of the slippers flying off into a hallway.

After checking out the classrooms a bit it was down to the staff room for the morning meeting. Everyone stood and a bunch of stuff was said in Japanese, with plenty of honorifics and such. I could instantly sympathize with Amanda's complaint that she rarely knows what's upcoming and going on around the school, that was apparently the content being spoken here. My presence was announced and explained, and the 80 staff members applauded me and my omiyage, a surreal moment. Then there were some smaller group meeetings, and Amanda kindly arranged with some other teachers for me to observe some classes.

For the first two periods I was to watch Amanda's English classes. So far I hadn't seen any students, but this was it. As they started to come in, reactions ranged from head-down obliviousness to mild bemusement to near mental breakdown. Amanda left the room for a long minute and I was left to explain myself to the obvious alpha girl, who skidded into the room and stopped short, shouting "WHOOO AH YOU?!?!" I uttered my catchphrase of the day, "Amanda-Sensei no tomodachi desu" (teacher Amanda's friend). At this she skipped around the room, saying "tomodachi tomodachi" several times. The classes consisted mostly of games involving vocabulary, along with the usual, boring, kids running back and forth between this room and the next one as fast as possible to memorize sentences written on cards and write them down.

After that I watched a music class. It was mostly independent study going on, so I spent a lot of time standing around trying to look interested. One student had been introduced to me by Amanda as a particularly cool kid. He was on the guitar, but after a few minutes had his head on a desk, taking a nap. When the teacher noticed this she said something to him, but the brief exchange that followed seemed entirely too relaxed. In general, the atmosphere was surprisingly relaxed--I didn't sense any of the fear or competition that I remember at times of high school. But I had been told that the students were separated by the 'track' they were on, academic, business, or, well...service sector? so this may have been one of the less 'serious' sections. Eventually Junpei, done with his nap at the guitar, started strumming Green Day's "Basketcase," and I considered that enough of an in to start up a conversation. His English skills were extremely impressive, and we had no trouble communicating.

Next was science class. At first Amanda accidentally brought me to the wrong room, which was full of even more surprised students. Just before we realized the mistake a husky student with very short hair turned to me and said, after some thought, "YOU AH GOOD-ROOKING GUY."

When we got to the right room for science class, I was surprised to find only 4 students. I was also surprised when the teacher walked up with a big smile to show us a bag full of pig's eyes. At that point Amanda decided to leave me to it. It was dissection time, and I was given my very own eye. Normally I would have no real problem with this, but it was rather unexpected, and there's something about seeing eyelashes out of their usual context that's all the more disturbing. But I had almost been waiting for a time when I'd have to suck it up and do something very much out of the ordinary for me, so I dove in. Or to be more accurate, I began tentatively poking at it with the little spear and forceps, trying to separate the surrounding tissues from the eyeball. This prompted a fatherly talk from the teacher about how "hand is the best tool." Point well taken. Next we had to cut off the resilient layer from the front of the eyeball. I responded by cutting out the entire front, cornea, lens and all. The other students were trying to help me, but it was not of much use. The teacher took it in stride and used it as a good example of what not to do. He was an extremely nice guy and really tried to teach me someting, even writing out the vocabulary in romaji. So if I ever need to discuss the cornea with a Japanese fellow, I'll know to say "kakumaku." We played around with the lenses for a while, observing the magnifying effect, and the teacher offered one to me to bring home as omiyage.

After a tasty lunch, Amanda had some work to do and I was advised to make myself visible, apparently to create the impression that my visit had some sort of a purpose. But I must admit I came to dread the hysterical reactions of the students, and found myself running away, or trying to in my tiny slippers and failing miserably, when I heard their giggles echoing throug the halls and stairwells. I'd also found it rather unsettling when I noticed the Playboy Bunny icons decorating many of the girls' otherwise staid uniform socks. When I passed a classroom with a view to the hallway it was near chaos. Then I saw sitting on a locker a wooden practise sword, and performed a couple of Kill Bill thrusts and swings before pausing to think about the potential for embarrassment.

In the afternoon Junpei came to the English lab for some conversational practise. He played some songs on his guitar, showing himself to be far more skilled than I. At the end of the school day the kids all cleaned the premises for 10 or 15 minutes, and I should mention the school was utterly spotless and extremely nice and modern. We said goodbye to the teachers who had been my guides, and I tried to express my appreciation, saying "totemo omoshirokatta" 'it was very interesting' and hoping that didn't have the same connotations of strangeness that it has acquired in English. And then my brief look into the life I could have had was over.

It's well past time to write about our trip to Spain in August.

We flew to Barcelona and stayed there for six days, then took the train to Valencia for five days, then took the train back to Barcelona for a final day before flying home.

If I learned anything from the trip, it's that Maya and I have rather different styles of travel. When I'm traveling somewhere for the first time, with no specific purpose other than to absorb the place, a typical day for me goes like this:

• Wake up, stuff some gummi bears in my mouth, drink something, and head outdoors.
• Walk, observe, take photographs, walk some more. Walk until I can walk no more and my stomach has begun to eat itself.
• Decide that it's time to eat something. Obsess over finding an eatery that is authentic yet accessible to a non-native, quality yet inexpensive. Ending up eating fast food or something from a convenience store. Tell myself this is authentic for people with poor diets.
• Walk more, until my feet ache unbearably and I crash for the night, in some cases on the street.

Maya, on the other hand, subscribes more to the idea that a trip should be relaxing. She insisted on activities like sitting down in cafes, and on eating something substantial before starting out for a day of walking. In Spain the two went hand in hand, as there wasn't really any food available from street vendors or 'to go.' I tended to strain at the proverbial leash on these occasions.

I prepared for this trip more intensely than ever before. This involved studying two languages as well as researching restaurants, hotels, and sights, all of which I will talk about more in the entries to follow.

I didn't always prepare like this, except for the language part. I can scarcely believe now how spontaneous, and sometimes foolish, I was on previous travels--arriving at one end of a country and improvising my way to the other, or arriving in a city with no place to sleep. At some point I got wrapped up in the idea of transcending tourism by knowing as much as possible about the place ahead of time. I half-joked before this trip that I wanted to be able to give street directions by the time we got there. I am still a tourist, of course; I can't deny that. I am there to see the sights and get to know the place. I have no official business there. But I do like the idea of being able to go beyond the version of the place that has been readymade for tourists; the sights that inspire awe and appreciation without requiring any knowledge of their context, and the buses that will take you between them without requiring you to explore any alleyways or side streets, or deal with any uncertainty other than where the next bathroom will be.

This is the travel philosophy espoused on Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations, and I embrace it. But Bourdain has 'fixers,' local guides that show him what's good and translate. The rest of us don't have this advantage, especially if we don't know anyone who lives there. It can be very intimidating, even when the people are friendly, to walk into a restaurant that clearly doesn't cater to tourists, that has no English menu. Community travel sites help us break down the barriers, but sometimes I worry that all the user reviews and study are taking away the mystery and the spontaneity of the experiences. In this case though, I felt the preparation paid off and gave us some experiences that we never could have had just by wandering.

I like to use trips as a reason to learn a new language. I studied Japanese in preparation for my trip in 2004, and tried to study Spanish before going to Puerto Rico in 2006. The second effort didn't go as far, because the trip was only planned a few months ahead of time, and most everyone there preferred to speak English to me anyway.

It's a bit of a scandal that I can't speak Spanish already, considering that the neighborhood I live in, Inwood, is about as Spanish-speaking as Puerto Rico. But for some reason being surrounded by a language every day mutes my interest in studying it, while the idea of a trip to an exotic place motivates me powerfully. I picked up my effort again when we started planning to go to Spain. I tried out many different study materials and techniques during this span, and I've had a blog entry in my head for quite a while in which I go through the strengths and weaknesses of each, but that will have to wait for another day.

Some time in the winter of 2006/2007, I told a friend about our plans and my studies. She had been to Spain and speaks the language quite well. She told me that if I really want to make the locals happy I should learn a bit of Catalan. I did want to make the locals happy, to convince them I was better than the average tourist. I got a used copy of the 1975 edition of Teach Yourself Catalan (reprinted in 1993), after reading that the newer version had been dumbed down in many ways. It appears to be the only readily available book on the subject. I figured I would just get as far as I could.

Catalan is spoken by 9 million people in Catalonia (the autonomous community of Spain that includes Barcelona), Valencia, the Balearic Islands (which include Ibiza), the small country of Andorra, and part of the Italian island of Sardinia. Its use in Spain was largely proscribed under Franco, until 1975. This means it was still forbidden when my textbook was written, but there is no commentary on it. I guess the book itself is commentary enough.

I was a pleasantly surprised at how my Catalan studies went. The vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar seemed in many ways to be a mix of Spanish and French, fitting to its classification as a 'Gallo-Iberian' language. Compare the phrase for 'Please' in Catalan: si us plau to French si vous plait. Also the silent 't' at the end of words like quant 'how much.' Ironically, one of the features I found most challenging was also a way in which Catalan is closer to English than to other Romance languages. In short, unstressed 'a' and 'e' are pronounced like 'uh', or the schwa. I found this extremely difficult to get used to. In every foreign language I've studied, 'a' is pronounced 'ah'. That had become a characteristic of all foreign languages in my mind.

I also used several web sites for this effort; again I will probably have to save full descriptions for their own entry, but for now you can see a list here.

I ended up speaking a fair amount of Catalan in Spain, but the results were not exactly as I expected. Very few people spoke it back to me; they usually just spoke Spanish. And no one looked surprised or delighted to hear me speak Catalan. They reacted as though it were completely normal. By the time we got to Valencia, I mostly stopped speaking Catalan, as it simply didn't seem necessary and my vocabulary and grasp of grammar was still greater in Spanish.

I am glad I studied it though. For one thing, as a practical matter, it enabled me to pronounce all the Catalan names of places and food items correctly. If I didn't at least know the pronunciation well I probably would have been much more afraid to have the conversations that tourists typically have--talking about where we are going, ordering dinner, and so on. Words are often easier to pronounce than they look. For example, passeig, meaning avenue or boulevard, is pronounced almost exactly like the English passage. It's really a nice language and I'm glad it doesn't seem to be falling prey to endangerment any time soon.

Food was a major focus of my preparation for our trip to Spain. As usual I got a lot of my information from eGullet. I visited the sites of individual restaurants and consulted this Spanish Food Dictionary when necessary. I made some use of CitySearch-type sites and general travel sites, but I find those are best utilized when you already know what you are looking for.

For me it's pretty intimidating to call a restaurant in another country from the US and try to make a reservation. Not being face to face, the person on the other end has no way of knowing what language I might speak, and we can't use gestures to get by. Someday I'll get the hang of it, but right now I really appreciate it when restaurants offer online reservations.

The other challenge was that our trip, from August 5th - 19th, was forcibly timed with the European peak vacation season, and in Spain at least, restaurants and other businesses close for anywhere from a day to the whole month of August. This seemed to reach a defined peak on the 15th, when Valencia became a ghost town and I had to confront my fears by calling at least a dozen restaurants to ask if they were open. (Usually if they picked up the phone at all the question was already answered, so there wasn't as much pressure on the conversation.)

I ended up making two online reservations for dinner in Barcelona before we left, one for Cinc Sentits and one for Comerç24. Some of the eGullet people make reservations for nearly every lunch and dinner on their trip, which I think is insane. I wanted to keep our schedule open in case we had jet lag troubles, and there were budgetary limits of course. Cinc Sentits ("Five Senses" in Catalan) is widely regarded as one of the best restaurants in town, with a fairly international style. Comerç24 is a more experimental place that flirts quite a bit with molecular gastronomy. Many eGullet reviewers say they are inconsistent but can be very good. We had fantastic meals at both, but I will have to save full descriptions for their own entries to keep this to a reasonable length.

My friend Ed warned me before the trip that although there is good food to be had in Spain, it isn't "in your face" the way it is in many other places. Boy was he right. One reason Maya usually won the argument about whether we should sit down in a restaurant to get breakfast or lunch was that there was simply no other way to get food. There are no street food vendors. The closest thing would probably be ice cream shops, and ice cream makes an odd breakfast to say the least. There are a few food chains similar to Au Bon Pain, but even at these, you will usually get your food on ceramic dishware. "To go" is either not an option or just not seen as the thing to do. Even in Paris, the land that takeout forgot, you can at least walk around with a baguette under your arm.

I also saw exactly one of what we would call a supermarket. Even discounting size, there were very very few retail food shops. I really have no idea how the people that live in these cities get their provisions, unless they always go to the central market (shamefully, we never made it there). The only convenience store chain we saw was Opencor, owned by the equally ubiquitous department store El Corte Ingles. I was thankful for its late hours; their idea of 24/7 is 18/7, but that's still pretty revolutionary for Spain. We made several trips there for Fanta and gummi bears and bottled water, among other things.

I would like to bring attention to what I shall call the chocolate and churros fallacy. Many web sites and travel books propagate the notion that after a night of clubbing, Barcelonans like to go to cafes around 6am and have hot chocolate with churros, which are rod-shaped sugared pieces of fried dough--they sell them from street carts in my neighborhood at home. The churros are to be dipped in the thick hot chocolate. Gridskipper provided an extensive list of Xocolaterias. We didn't do any all-night clubbing, but I assumed that if they were open at 6am they would also be open about 11pm. Not the case! The latest closing time I could find was 10pm, and most restaurants didn't even open for dinner until 8pm, so we were never done eating before 9:30, and nothing was ever in walking distance. Of course now I can't even dig up any links that make the claim about late-night churros, so perhaps the myth has died.

The hours kept by restaurants in general were troublesome to us. Most of them close between the lunch and dinner hour, roughly between 4pm and 8pm. We often didn't get up until noon or later, and we always ended up ready for lunch at right around 4. One day we were desperately walking along a row of restaurants on the beach in Valencia, getting these comical "Nooo...."s and "X" arm gestures from each place, until finally one agreed to feed us. The most ridiculous instance was the day we spent at the amazing Oceanografic aquarium. This place had 3 genuinely good looking restaurants and cafes, rare for an amusement park, and they all closed as soon as we were ready to eat. We're a captive audience here! Who's going to leave the aquarium for a siesta in the middle of the afternoon? The only nourishment left to us was the concession stand at the Dolphinarium. Fortunately it turned out to be not all that bad.

I intended to include capsule reviews of the restaurants we visited here, but this is already too long, so that also will get its own entry.

Without further ado, remarks on some of the places we dined in Spain.

Barcelona

Neyras
Via Laietana, 41
We wandered into this place on our first night in town. It turned out to be a perfectly serviceable tapas restaurant, and a very satisfying meal after the exhausting flight. Our eyes were a bit bigger than our stomachs: we ordered a paella for two, buñuelos de bacalao (codfish fritters), mussels, calamari, a salad, and the local staple pan amb tomaquet (bread rubbed with tomato).

Hostal de la Rita
Arago, 279
This one was recommended by a friend, and has good reviews on VirtualTourist. It was clearly popular and we waited about 15 minutes for a table. The menu was only in Spanish and Catalan, but I enjoyed the challenge and the authenticity--the crowd seemed entirely local. When we ordered the waiter asked if it might be too much, but before I could respond he said "no, ees okay." We had gotten into the whole tapas thing, you see, but it turned out that this was not actually a tapas restaurant. It gradually became clear that we had ordered four appetizers and three entrees. We made the best of the situation and ate at least some of everything, and all of some things. We had tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, an asparagus dish, an arugula salad, a tuna steak, a 'filet iberic' with patatas bravas, and a beef steak "paris style." The food was good enough, but it was in a very international style when I was looking more for cuisines unique to Spain.

Taxidermista
Plaça Reial, 8
This was a desperate move. We were walking up the Ramblas after a frantic final day in Barcelona, very tired and hungry. The Plaça Reial was pleasant at dusk and the Taxidermista was a familiar name from my readings. It's right next to Les Quinze Nits, which regularly draws insane lines that stretch halfway across the plaza. This easily avoidable situation is clearly perpetuated by the restaurant, catering to people who have come to expect that everything they do on their trip should require a wait in line. Taxidermista is then presumably a barnacle on its hull, absorbing those defeated by the line. We had lamb and roast duck, neither of which was very good.

Tapaç24
Diputacio, 269
On our last night before coming home we decided to try Tapaç24, the newer and more casual restaurant from the proprietor of Comerç24. It was extremely popular and we were lucky to be seated quickly. The menu, printed on paper bags that held napkins and silverware, along with a chalkboard of specials, was the most indecipherable of all that we faced, for not only was it in Catalan, but it followed the trendy practice of giving the dishes smart-alecky names that do not always tell you much about what they are made of. The waitress was willing to answer questions, such as "what is this?", but she was so busy that there were a limited number we could ask before she zipped off again. Here are the names of the dishes we ordered, and explanations: Croquetes de pernil iberic (bread stuffed with ham and cheese), Bombes de la Barceloneta (codfish fritters--Barceloneta is the old fishing village by the port), Bikini Ç24 (triangular ham and cheese sandwiches), Tomaquet amb "huevas" de Tonyina (tomato with "eggs" of tuna), Pebrots Padron (fried hot peppers), Calamares (whole grilled squid from the day's catch), Coca Tomaquet (something with tomato, I have no memory what). Some of the dishes were more pedestrian than their names suggested, while others were amazing, in particular the Bombes, the hot peppers, and the squid. Some of the menu items we didn't try: Tapa d'or, McFoie Burger, Russa amb "regañas", "Boquerones al limon", Truita de trempo. It's hard to know what to make of the scare quotes.

Valencia

Casa Bodega Montaña
José Benlliure, 69
This was the essentially the best restaurant in Valencia that was open during our trip. It's a small place not far from the beach, with beautiful décor and a casual atmosphere. We ate there once for lunch and once for dinner. Among other things, we had: Salmorejo, an awesome cold tomato and bread soup; Lomo, paper-thin slices of pork loin; Torta Serena, melty cheese on a slice of baguette; Chorizo chunks in cider; Clochinas, steamed small mussels; Boquerones, or anchovies, three ways: fried, in vinegar, and whole; and more whole grilled squid. Our meals were uniformly excellent. It perhaps bears mentioning that these boquerones/anchovies are nothing like the ones we get on pizza here. They are marinated in a mixture of olive oil, white wine vinegar, garlic, and other spices. A packaged version imported from Spain has been available at Zabar's on Saturdays for a while now, and I'd been enjoying them tremendously for a few months before the trip.

Rincon Gaucho
Conde Altea, 51
This was the best surprise of the trip. Almost nothing else was open, so we weren't expecting much. The atmosphere was casual and unfussy, just a nice neighborhood place. I'd never been to an Argentinian steakhouse before, so excuse my naiveté, but goddamn do they know how to cook steak! We weren't familiar with any of the cuts on the menu--every culture does it a bit differently I gather--so we asked the waitress for guidance and were not disappointed. The steaks were brought on little mini-grill boxes to keep them warm. They had a much more naturalistic shape than the flat slabs we are used to. They were perfectly cooked and had an amazing and intense flavor. I've been meaning to find out how they do this. My only guess is that it involves a lot of marination and precise management of heat.

Italo Spagnolo
Corregeria, 7
This place had some good reviews on the web, so we tried it for dinner, though it took a few tries to get there when they were actually open and serving food. The concept is innovative tapas and a combination of Italian and Spanish, but the execution is lacking. Most of what we had was just plain weird. This included a dish with avocado and apple slices--an unfortunate mix of textures--and an entree of cod with way too much honey. Plenty of other people there seemed to be having a good time, so we concluded one might have to be a regular to get the most out of it. That, or just drink a lot.

Comerç24 is a restaurant in the modern Spanish trend of experimentation and presentation, but the menu is mercifully light on foams and airs. These descriptions of the dishes are from my notes; I won't be able to write very detailed reviews because the meal was months ago, but I will comment to the extent that I remember.

Getting there was a bit tough. I chose a walking route from the hotel that looked like the most efficient, but the map didn't show the claustrophobic and confusing nature of the curvy and narrow streets of the old city. To Maya it was an exhausting trek, and by the time we got there she was in no mood for experimental food (to be fair, she was also still jetlagged). Fortunately, she was soon won over. We got a testing menu called the "Menu Festival."

Complements: Breadsticks, Pork Cracklings, Parmesan Cups, Olives & Anchovies, golden Macadamia nuts. These were fun, though the pork cracklings were so loud as to be slightly embarrassing.

Sea bass ceviche with peach ice cream, spicy sauces. This was an incredible combination of flavors, one of the high points.

Tuna tartare with caviar (pictured above). More basic but very tasty, with nice little pieces of fresh herbs.

Foamed Melon, frozen melon w/ thin-sliced Jamon interleaved w/ melon. One of their signature dishes and a technical marvel.

Cuttlefish Ravioli w/ mushroom and squid ink. Good, but not spectacular.

Hake w/ green apple sauce and spring onions. Perfectly crisp skin and tender flesh, and the green apple sauce was a great tart counterpoint.

Duck rice and foie gras. Hard to go wrong with foie gras, but I don't remember the rice being particularly great.

Oxtail w/ cauliflower and potato puree. The low point. Too much muddle in texture and flavor.

Coconut yogurt drink. Very refreshing, despite my aversion to coconut.

Yogurt custard with mango, berries, pecans, basil & crunchies. Sounds pedestrian, but it was wonderfully colorful and deliciously varied in texture and flavor.

Quad dessert: chocolate ganache w/ salt, olive oil, and bread; chocolate brownie; orange muffin; pineapple on biscuit w/ singed cream. A great presentation, but the ganache, salt, and olive oil, with an insanely thin slice of toast, really stands out in my memory.

Comerç24
Carrer del Comerç, 24, Barcelona
+34 93 319 21 02
Online reservations accepted

Cinc Sentits is one of the best-regarded restaurants in Barcelona. It has the atmosphere of a temple of gastronomy: hushed, with few tables. At one point a cook walked out the front door and took delivery of something in a bin, bringing it back through the restaurant. We only caught a quick glance, but it was something big, possibly a whole skate. We had preordered the 8-course chef's tasting menu, and decided to get a bottle of their cheapest Cava to go with it. The same caveat applies that since this was months ago, my memories have faded a bit.

Amuse Bouche: shot of canadian maple syrup, cava sabayon, cream foam, and sea salt. This tasted like butterscotch liquid. A great start for someone with my sweet tooth.

Deconstructed Gazpacho: cucumber jelly, tomato ice cream and tiny tomato ice bits, bread. I'd heard about this dish, and it was extremely tasty and refreshing. Note the recurrent theme of micro-thin toast.

Mackerel Escalivada: roasted pepper, eggplant, romesco sauce. Escalivada is a very common dish in Spain. I enjoyed it but it didn't reach the heights of many of the other dishes.

Shrimp, melon cubes, cold raw almond soup (ajo blanco). A great presentation. Shrimp are one of the great local delicacies in coastal Spain and this one was perfect. The almond soup had the most wonderful salty flavor, cut by the cubes of melon.

Foie gras torchon with glazed leeks, sugar crust, and balsamic reduction on the side. The crust on this was amazing, and all the elements complemented one another perfectly.

Mediterranean sea bass with orzo and pesto with mascarpone. This was certainly nice but it doesn't stick out in memory quite as much.

Iberian suckling pig with apple and balsamic reduction. Their signature dish, with a crispy crust and incredibly tender meat, and a carmelized slice of apple. Extremely rich and delicious.

Cheese course: La Cresa (or something like that) sheep's milk cheese, with orange and carmelized fennel.

Lemon dessert: lemon cake, lemon foam, lemon ice cream, and shaved vodka ice. A nice refreshing dessert with a great combination of textures.

Chocolate dessert: chocolate and nut mousse cake and hazelnut ice cream. Not the most adventurous dessert, but very well executed, and we didn't mind at all.

When we decided to order coffee and tea we got a bonus course: a chocolate drink with olive oil, caramel and sea salt; and a shortbread cookie with violet marmalade and blackberry.

The service was flawless and though it naturally was expensive, and it's a cliché to say so, it seemed like a bargain for what we got. In fact, leaving the exchange rate aside, this place is really not that expensive at all for the level of the food, and it's an experience we'll always remember.

Cinc Sentits
Carrer Aribau, 58 Barcelona
+34 93 323 94 90
Online reservations accepted

The streets of Barcelona's Eixample (expansion) district were laid out according to a master plan by Ildefons Cerda. Their most striking feature is the chamfered octagonal blocks, creating square spaces at intersections, as seen above. These are intended to let more sunlight and air into the streets, and they do an excellent job of that, but I have two problems with them. One is about walking. Whenever we were walking a diagonal 'up and over' route, requiring some zigzagging, we would tend to get to a corner before realizing which direction we would cross in first. In New York you can stand right on the corner and make such a decision based on the timing of the traffic lights, but in the Eixample you have to walk a good fifteen feet to get to the next corner of the octagon and cross the other way. Even when walking a straight route, the diagonals add some Pythagorean distance to the journey. It may sound nitpicky, but during a whole day of walking I think it contributes significantly to fatigue. The other problem is reading street signs. The signs are on the buildings, on the long sides just off the diagonal cutout. They're pretty small. As you are walking up one street toward an intersection, it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to see the sign for the cross street, until you are about to cross it. Since you have to walk along the diagonal to get to this point, it aggravates the first problem. It's rather ridiculous to try to describe all this geometry in words, but hopefully if you visualize walking along the sidewalks you can see what I mean.

* * *

Several times I found that people in Spain working what we might consider to be menial jobs were incredibly happy and friendly, and not in an artificial way. At OpenCor, the only 7/11 style convenience store in town, an employee on the late shift in Valencia struck up a nice conversation with us and told us that he had lived in Madrid for several years. At the Oceanografic aquarium's concession stand, the cashier burst into laughter when she realized she had no idea which of our sodas was the diet one. We were also astonished to see a conductor step out of a subway train looking as youthful and clean-cut as any of the passengers. I hope no one will take offense at the idea that most New York conductors and operators could be described as "grizzled."

* * *

This is the municipal swimming pool at Montjuic, the huge hilltop park at the southern end of Barcelona. It was used for the 1992 Olympics, and is still sometimes used for competitions, but for the most part is open to the public for a few Euros. We had no idea it was there until we found it while exploring. We had quite an adventure attempting to actually swim there, involving confusing signage, a second swimming pool, and bathing suits left on funiculars, but finally made it, and it was well worth it. When do you ever get the chance to swim with a view like this without being friends with billionaires or belonging to an exclusive country club? If I had to give one tip for anyone visiting in warm weather, this would be it.

* * *

The City of Arts and Sciences is reason enough to visit Valencia. It's an amazing piece of architecture and urban design, and the open space, pools of water, and harmony of shapes make it a very soothing place. As Maya put it, you just can't imagine something like this existing in New York City; we can't have things this nice because we would wreck them.

Maya and I spent a week in Paris in March. It was my third time there and Maya's first. My first time, in junior year of college, was spent mostly shuttling between museums and churches in the cold of winter, and it was still pretty great. I didn't eat any French food, but we were there during the transition from the Franc to the Euro, causing us to accidentally order a 60 Euro bottle of champagne on new year's eve. The second time was with my friend Jordan (previously known as Mr. Extreme Sloth), who had no interest in museums or other tourist attractions. We ate a lot of French food and I did a lot of preparatory research for the first time. This trip was something of a mix of the previous two, activity-wise.

The travel itself was a trial; in both directions, our initial flight was delayed, while our connecting flight was not as delayed, forcing us to sprint through Heathrow and delaying our checked luggage. Then some things happened that we won't mention, like going to wrong airports and booking hotel rooms for wrong days. Moving on!

The Rodin museum was one of my favorite places. The Hôtel Biron, where Rodin lived for quite a while, is a great building, the grounds are pleasant and immaculately manicured, and the sculpture is just amazing. At first I had trouble understanding why he was such a controversial figure in his time, but a biography that Maya picked out from the gift shop has helped. More on that in a future post, I hope.

We hit up Pierre Hermé, one of the foremost patissiers in town, on Macaroon Day, which I had been lucky enough to hear about. They had a vast selection of flavors, many of them quite unusual, as well as the ones that have made them famous, such as the sublime Ispahan. The deal was 3 free macaroons of your choice, plus an extra one of a flavor specially made for the day, for a donation to a charity. I chose white truffle hazelnut, vanilla & olive oil, and Campari & grapefruit. The first and third were interesting but not perfect, while the vanilla and olive oil was revelatory. Maya chose Ispahan (rose, lychee and raspberry), Mogador (chocolate and passion fruit), and caramel and sea salt. We ate them on a bench in the adjacent Place St. Sulpice.

This was a stupendously inspiring experience for me. I felt lifted by the evident passion and perfectionism that had gone into crafting these cookies. Their colors and decorations were vibrant and unique, and the way such disparate ingredients had been incorporated and combined was masterful. I wanted nothing more than to return home and start baking and experimenting on my own, if nothing else to try to replicate what I had eaten so that I could have it more than once every several years. Of course I didn't do that, because I have seventeen other obsessions piling up in addition to my full-time job, but I will get to it when the time is right. We went back the next day and bought two dozen more macaroons which we painstakingly brought back for our friends (they are exceedingly fragile).

On our last day in town, we decided to make an attempt at visiting the boutique of Rick Owens, a fashion designer whom we had just read about in The New Yorker (abstract only). The store was located in the Palais Royale, a huge rectangular frame of buildings lined with stores, with a park in the middle. There was a map where we entered, but much of it was helpfully obscured by some paste-up. A fence made it all but impossible to identify the stores unless walking right alongside them, meaning that we might have had to take the whole circuit to find it. We did not have the energy to do this, and how sure could I be that I would recognize his clothes? After some amount of wandering, I found a security guard's office and he pointed us in the right direction.

The boutique's door was locked, but there were some clerks inside. It took about five minutes of ambivalently peering in and trying the door before someone finally let us in. I couldn't really blame them; I'm sure we didn't look like anyone about to drop twelve hundred Euros on a leather jacket. But I'm glad we braved a place of haute couture. We saw the anatomically correct wax statue that Owens had commissioned of himself, now wearing a black curtain for at least one type of modesty. We saw his "mega turbo boots"; I'm impressed that any independent designer can make his own sneakers, as they seem like a definitively mass-produced object. And we saw many amazing creations, in feathery and exotic fabrics, that showed the immense skill the New Yorker had described in sewing to manipulate shape. Some of the features reminded me of the minimal surfaces seen in the science of topology. We contemplated buying something, but in the end, the minimum expenditure of a hundred and sixty dollars for a distressed tank top that looked like it could fall to pieces at any moment was too hard to justify. Maybe when I'm a rockstar.