When you’re wandering the world, you never know who you’re going to meet.
FIVE TIMES DAILY
Life in the Muslim world just sounds different than it does back home. Give a listen.
THE CROSSING
From the moment we thought about the trip, we imagined crossing the Straits of Gibraltar to be this grand romantic moment — moving from one continent to another across the sea. But the more we read about the logistics of actually schlepping to the boat, getting tickets, the horror stories about the buses and taxis we’d have to take, we tried desperately to find another way to cross (i.e. Google “Direct flights from Lisbon to Tangier”). At the end of the day, we remembered our original romantic ideal and we committed to the crossing. It turns out it’s a helluva lot easier than the internet makes it sound.* Here is our ode to crossing from Europe to North Africa by ferry — an hour and a half journey that truly transported us into a different world.*Here’s the easy way to do it. After a comfortable stay in Seville, take a quick taxi to the train station (about 6 dollars), rent a one-way car to Algeciras from Eurocar or Hertz (about 28 dollars), then take the gorgeous two hour drive through Southern Spain, passing the churning wind farms by the coast, drop off the car right outside the ferry dock, walk-up to the ticket booth, pay 10 Euros each for the one-way crossing, and marvel at how remarkably close the two continents actually are to each other (less than nine miles).
LISBON GALLERY
Though we tend to favor the moving image, sometimes stills tell the story even better. These are some of the treasures we discovered during our four days in Lisbon.
Above is the Alfama section of the city in late afternoon light. In the gallery below you can click through to find the Alfama cable car, one of several ways to climb the steep seven hills of the San Franscico-esque city. The Carmo Church, which lost its roof in the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, is so unique that it is officially Franny’s favorite church we’ve seen anywhere in the world. The most striking thing about Lisbon hit us standing in the sand at the western most point on the European continent. It’s no wonder that the horizon, so vast and mysterious, beckoned generations of great Portuguese explorers like Vasco De Gama. In Belem, we stood in the shadow of the imposing Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) with Henry the Navigator standing at the pinnacle.
We actually stayed in Sintra, just north of Lisbon with Mark, Andie and Savannah Miller, another family from L.A. also taking a year abroad. As opposed to our traveling roadshow, the Millers have put down roots in Portugal, where Savannah is spending her eighth grade year at an international school. Franny was able to attend school one day where she was reminded (in a good way) of the joys of being part of a community of kids her age.
Many of the photos were snapped by Mark Miller, making him AYTT’s first official guest photographer. Here he is with Andie and Finn in the Inverted Tower in the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra. Thanks for letting us gaze through your window onto this beautiful edge of the world.
LET THERE BE LUMIERE
If the Lumière brothers — the visionary fathers of cinema — hailed from anywhere in the US, there would be a giant amusement park erected in their memory. But in Lyon, France, there is just the elegant Institut Lumière — one of the most enjoyable and fascinating museum visits we’ve had on our trip so far.
A DOCTOR IN LYON
Today, in our ongoing quest to learn more about the world, our new friend Jean-Michel participates in “Take Your Middle-Aged Friend With A Camera To Work” Day.
GOREME DUET
Not every thirteen year-old girl would happily agree to practice guitar with a total stranger while her father filmed them. Definitely not our thirteen year-old girl.
IN PRAISE OF FRIENDS OF FRIENDS
As we travel, many friends back home have sent us gifts. These gifts have come in the form of introductions to their friends in faraway places. These “friends of friends” we’ve met along the way have provided some of the richest experiences on our journey.
In Barcelona, our friend Kate told us we had to meet Carlos who we would love. We met Carlos and his wife Ane for dinner in their neighborhood, a great authentic place we would have never found on our own. He invited us to join them and their kids a few days later for the Festival of the Three Kings, and then we all returned to their house for a home cooked dinner. Finn hit it off with their son, Franny formed a fast bond with their daughter, and well-after midnight we had to drag them out of there. The next day, Franny met their daughter Nerea after school and they hung out alone together in Barcelona. Thanks, Kate, for sharing your friend with us.
When we were in Vietnam, our friends Tina and Karl back in Los Angeles (you might recognize Karl as our #1 Fanny) told us we should look up Thaiha who they had met when she was a film student at USC in Los Angeles. Franny and Mark met Thania and her friends for dinner in Ho Chi Minh City — and we would be surprised if there is a hipper group of young people in Saigon. They were all young up-and-comers in the Vietnamese film community, and after dinner they took us to a modern dance performance at the National Theater in the heart of the city. Thanks, Karl and Tina.
Our friend Tony in Detroit told us about his friend who lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife and two kids. The Masons invited us to stay in the three bedroom apartment on the ground floor of their home, giving us a lovely comprehensive tour of the city. Emma, their eldest daughter, even took Franny to school with her one day so Franny could get a glimpse of school life in New Zealand. Thanks, Tony.
Tuang is the rare friend of a friend of a friend. We got to Hanoi before Ho Chi Minh city and Thaiha wrote to us and said we must meet her friend Tuang. Tuang, without knowing us at all, joined us for dinner twice, and took us to lunch at the best and most authentic Pho restaurant in Hanoi. He also took us to a fascinating festival of short films make by Vietnamese filmmakers. These were all glimpses into the culture that we could never have gotten on our own. Thanks, Thaiha.
Special thanks too to Unjoo, Xinhua, Robin, Yoko, Anthony, Jacqui, Alex, Nancy and all our other friends who have provided introductions. The true gift of these “friends of friends” is an extraordinary lesson in generosity that we will reciprocate for the rest of our lives. These relative strangers treated us as if we were family (probably better than family) and they created a model for how to treat the “friends of friends” who cross our doorstep in the future.
THE PLEASURE OF BEING KNOWN
When the road is your home, the restaurants of the world end up being your kitchen. Eating only in restaurants actually grows quite tiresome after a while. On our first night in Bilbao, we arrived late and the owner of the apartment we were renting pointed us to a neighborhood joint that he loves. At the next table sat an elderly couple from Geneva. We struck up a conversation. “How long have you been in Bilbao?” we asked. “Three days,” the wife replied. “Where else have you eaten?” we asked. “Only here,” she answered. Her explanation was succinct. “The food is quite delicious here, the people are friendly, so all three nights we said let’s go again.” At the time, this sounded odd. Four days later, we understood exactly what she meant.(The restaurant is named Artxanda. Click here for a link to it on TripAdvisor. You will notice there are only three reviews and the third one is ours.)
ARCHITECTURAL PILGRIMAGE: BILBAO
Back in 1997, before we had kids, we bought a slightly neglected three-story house in the Hollywood Hills that was designed by an architect on the brink of becoming a superstar. Our house, the one where Franny was born (or at least the one she arrived at when we returned from Cedar-Sinai) was one of Frank Gehry’s lesser works. It had been built the same year as his own much more famous Santa Monica residence. After a few years, we realized its concrete steps and open catwalks were far too dangerous a place to raise a toddler so we sold the house in 2001. But because of our brief intersection with Frank Gehry we always felt a bond with the architect. So while our family huddled in Barcelona in early January plotting our itinerary for the second half of the trip, we knew we had to make the five-hour pilgrimage to Bilboa.Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao opened its doors to the public in October 1997, just a few weeks after we moved into our Gehry house. The museum has single-handedly transformed what was once a sleepy Basque industrial city into a global center of culture. One of our Spanish friends said, “The city made an enormous bet on the Guggenheim, and they hit the jackpot.” Bilbao has subsequently drawn countless other architectural gems and hordes of sophisticated tourists. It has become a world-class city — and one of our favorite and most-underated destinations on the trip. We were going to stay for two days, but we ended up staying for four — spending most of our time admiring the museum, climbing in the playground beside it, and photographing the titanium building in every possible light. From these moving images, we constructed a video about a museum built by Frank Gehry built on a poem by Lemn Sissay, the poet laureate of the 2012 London Olympics. We no longer have our Gehry house, but we’ll always have Bilbao.