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Brussels and Bruges

8/11/2015

Brussels has one central area, which itself is very touristy. Many big wide courtyards (most of which seemed unused) and tall older buildings. While Brussels is more French-speaking, there is still a lot of Dutch for those who live in the north.

I came here mostly to find one of the newly minted 2.50 euro coins depicting the battle of Waterloo. I went to a bank to find one. They said they aren't distributed to banks and directed me to a money exchange/pawn shop. The exchange place said it's a collector's item. Then the coin collector's shop didn't have any. I ended up at the EU Mint, who told me to look online. They were sold out online.

Bruges is a beautiful authentic town to the west. It has canals going through it, moreso like Amsterdam than Venice. If Brussels is touristic, then Bruges is indescribable; tourists were littered all over the town. I felt bad for the locals, really. There didn't seem to be any particular landmarks; instead, it was more of the architecture that people were interested in. That, and boat rides through the canals or just sitting outside with a beer. While originally I was going to stay for a night in Bruges, I opted for a day trip from Brussels instead.

On my last night, I visited Brussels' Angoleiros do Mar capoeira group. During the summer season, they practice in the park, which was really fun. I haven't played capoeira since getting to Europe, and I was starting to feel a bit out of shape.

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Let's talk about Eurostar

8/8/2015

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Trying to leave London for mainland Europe by train?

Consider any other option.

Eurostar seems to be the only train company offering routes to Brussels or Paris. In fact, I don't even see any other international train companies. So, there's that issue of a lack of choice.

A two hour train ride to Brussels costs 107 pounds. Now, it is international, I get that, but if you book a flight early in advance, you can easily pay LESS than this train. And I don't think I could imagine a train's operating costs being less than an airplane's.

So, after exhausting all other options to get to Brussels (the last-minute plain tickets came out to be more), I decided to bite the bullet and buy a train ticket. Now, it doesn't seem like there should be a problem during the purchasing process. I find the ticket, click, go through everything up to payment.

Then comes payment. There's a 4 pound fee for using a credit card. I'm sorry, this isn't Joe's Gas Station, or POS Corner Store. This is an international train company whining about the marginal fee that comes with using a credit card for a purchase. And I -highly- doubt the fee comes out to be a ridiculous 4% of the purchase.

So, I pay by debit, which has no fee attached. Click submit.

Sorry, eurostar.com is down. Like right now. Well okay then. I feel like this would have been important to know beforehand (I checked my account, I wasn't charged).

So next morning, I go to buy the ticket; this time the website miraculously is up. During this process, I opt not to buy insurance, because I have travel health insurance already, and I can and have make it to each location on time (click on March 2015 and reread what ended up happening in Trang, in transit to Koh Sukorn, to get an example).

I've been told to get here 30 minutes ahead of time, so I do (33 minutes to be exact). Clearly, this advice was delivered by narcissists, because as it turns out the UK's emigration process took me 29 minutes. So it sounds like you make it there as the doors close, right? Well no, it's never specifically mentioned when doors close. I'm looking at the departures and my ticket right now, and I see no indication of when the doors close. So, I get past security at 8:54. Departure is 8:58. Doors are closed. I'm sorry but this isn't like at airports, where part of the takeoff process involves actually taking the plane to the runway.

Now, I've since worked out cheaper ways to get to Brussels, so I wanted my money back. Not an option. And of course while trying to reason with this guy there's meanwhile a line of other people who missed the train to Brussels. -Clearly-, something is amiss. If it's just me missing the train, I get it. If there's at least 20, well something went wrong in the process.

The guy at the desk points out I checked in at 8:25. I confirm with him that the minimum recommended time is 30 minutes. So someone check my math here but I'm pretty sure 8:58-8:25 = 33 minutes > 30 minutes. I cannot be given any reason this is my own fault besides what equates to "You should have gotten here earlier; 30 is the MINIMUM amount of time". Right, so how many minutes early? Clearly not 30. I upheld my end of the bargain, you did not hold yours. This is what generally allows for a termination of contract to some degree.

I can't claim to have ever crossed borders by train before, and even if I had crossed EU countries before, the UK is a special little snowflake who has their own non-schengen immigration process.

So, no refund, just a change of time. I mean, in the grand scheme of things I know it isn't the end of the world, but it's clear I'm not paying for the service I'm receiving (and what if I had a meeting to go to in Brussels?). I'm hearing there isn't wifi or outlets on this train (there certainly doesn't seem to be an outlet in the station, though yes on wifi). My trip from Scotland at least had that much.

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London

8/8/2015

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London in some sense just feels like a New York, but not in the same interesting way I found Buenos Aires to be. Hard to really articulate the reason why.

As with Scotland, there remains a lot of architecture far older than the US as a nation. When on my own, there wasn't a lot I did particularly of note besides rent a Boris Bike around the city. Boris Bikes are rental Santandar sponsored bikes under a program implemented by the mayor, named Boris.

Oh and incidentally, the tubes went on strike while I was in town, so I got to experience the double decker buses in ridiculous traffic. In hindsight, I don't feel like being on the second floor was particularly worth it, as everything worth seeing is on ground level.

Of interest is that a good friend of mine from Kansai Gaidai (Jessica) happened to be in town for a few days too, so we went around to the tourist areas including Big Ben and Tower of London. Her experience with travelling to/from England is just about as bad as mine, so it's not just me!

I also met with one of my dad's friends (Mihir)/a relative of one of my dad's good friends. Went with him to get some good Pakistani food, which included some amazing east/west fusion lamb chops.

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Glasgow and Edinburgh

8/2/2015

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Montevideo

6/30/2015

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Considered one of the safest cities of South America, Montevideo is home to most of the Uruguayan population - the capital megacity, in the same way as Paris or Seoul. It's also my last stop here in South America, and as of writing this sentence, only 2 hours until I have to leave for the airport.

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Colonia

6/25/2015

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A small town not far from Buenos Aires, back in the colonial days this was used as a port for smuggling goods into Argentina, before many of these goods were legalized.

Despite being one of the three most touristy places in Uruguay, there's little to see here. There's the lighthouse, and if you trek out of the centro a bit there's an abandoned bullfighting arena (which you can't even enter :[). The town itself is pretty cute, and if you look hard enough you'll find locally made cheeses (my second night's dinner was in a wine and cheese place, though I skipped the wine for mate).

I met a girl here who came to Uruguay specifically to see an abandoned pie factory in a small town with very little else three hours from here. No intention of seeing Montevideo or the beaches. I hope it goes well for her. I mean, I've been known to seek oddly specific things in obscure locations (izakaya in Utsunomiya with a monkey waiter), so I get it.

In general, the sentiment I've been hearing in the hostel here is people came here simply because of the ferry to Buenos Aires. I'm no exception.

Tomorrow, I'm taking a bus to Montevideo, my final destination in South America.

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Buenos Aires

6/23/2015

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Buenos Aires is easily my favorite major city so far in South America, and along with Cusco and San Pedro, one of my favorite locations. I tend to compare cities to New York, in the sense that in New York you can find something everywhere. There's few places that feel like you're not in a city (such as the Sunset district of SF).

Buenos Aires, and Argentina in general, has a large Italian population and Italian influence (probably adding to the New York feel). I can identify older people's Italian accents, despite largely not speaking Spanish. Incidentally, I've found the most English speakers here compared to the other major cities (though I hear Lima has more than what I experienced), but the surprising part is that they don't have strong accents when speaking English (to me) even if they only speak a little more than I speak Spanish.

Food here is all Italian. I really struggled to find a place that didn't serve pizza and pasta. I eventually gave in.

Florida street has all of the cambio places, and as always trading money on the black market is the best way to go. Some locals are sometimes willing to buy your dollars; I met an Armenian (from Turkey) who was able to trade dollars with locals in an Armenian church for 13 instead of the black market's 12.50 rate.

Buenos Aires is home to the Caminito La Boca area, where houses were painted wildly different colors by the first Italian settlers. Seeing pictures of this in the video Where the Hell is Matt 2008 (go watch it) was the first inspiration I had to come to South America and specifically Buenos Aires. It did not disappoint.

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Cordoba/Villa Belgrano

6/21/2015

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I didn't spend much time in the city of Cordoba. I met a few guys in the hostel and we went to a touristy little village nearby. Cute town, kind of reminded me of La Serena. Interestingly, some (domesticated?) local dogs took interest in us and followed us around for the entire day. There was a mountain trail nearby where we hiked up to the top with these dogs.

I did also fall and hit my knee on some rocks while there. I've been unlucky with trails before, but right now the injury is numb. I'm hoping this goes away soon...

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Mendoza

6/17/2015

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The first city after coming from Santiago is Mendoza, east of the Andes mountains. I was convinced by someone in Santiago to stay here two nights instead of just one, so I can explore so parts of the Andes. On the second day, I went out for a half day hike and rappel trip. For those who don't know what rappelling is, think of those action movies where guys are jumping down cliffs jump by jump with a route for support (except they also gave us a harness). Overall a good experience, bit I'd take the mountains around Quito, Cusco, or San Pedro de Atacama any day.

The to-eat food here is barbecued baby goat... It was expensive and only okay in my opinion. Empanadas in Argentina are also much smaller than in Chile. In Chile, one or two is enough, but in Argentina they're about the size of perogis. Culturally and in their cooking, there's a string Italian influence in Argentina; many people here are ethnically Italian. They taste better here too. I can go on about how much better food has been in Argentina so far, but with Chile it doesn't really have any competition.

Argentina is a relatively expensive country, not unlike Chile. For foreigners, the secret is you need to exchange cash (preferably 50s or 100s) on the black market. It sounds shady, but it's pretty well known among locals, and the police let it happen.

The black market currency exchange is mutually beneficial for locals and foreigners. Foreigners traveling through Argentina are best off buying pesos from there black market, because the official exchange rate is a ripoff by design (presumably as a way to bring wealth into the country). To put this into numbers, the official rate is about 9 pesos to the dollar, while the so-called blue rate is about 12 pesos. That's a HUGE difference. These change daily, so check dolarblue.net to get the current exchanges.

So why do they buy dollars? To sell them to locals. Local Argentines want dollars for two reasons. The first is when they want to travel, the government only lets them exchange for a certain amount of dollars, and its not enough to travel through the US. The second is personal investment, as the Argentine peso fluctuates wildly, while the dollar remains relatively constant in value. Having dollars insures their savings are safe.

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To Argentina

6/17/2015

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Buses run from Santiago to Mendoza from 7:30 to 12. This is likely because this passes through the Andes, the second highest mountain range in the world.

And naturally I decided, why not wake up for the earliest bus? Because that's a decision I have not come to hate myself for in the past. So, here I am on a 7:30 bus to Argentina. By the way, the guy on the lower bunk was snoring like no other this morning, do I'm running on maybe 4 hours of sleep, and cold buses are not somewhere I can sleep. Still managed to sleep for an hour though.

The bus trip takes us high into the Andes mountains. There's really no other way. My nose and ears felt congested once I was up there. For the first time this trip, I even saw some snow (on the ground, not falling).

The Chile-Argentina border is a lot more organized than Peru-Chile. Instead of driving to two separate offices for each country, both Chile and Argentina are in the same office. Each desk consists of one representative from each country; you go to one to leave their country, and then the other to enter. It's worth noting that as a US citizen, I have to present a proof of payment voucher saying I prepaid an entrance tax to Argentina. Because we require visas from their citizens, they have policies in place to make our lives just a bit more annoying. It's the only entrance fee I'll have to pay this entire year.

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