I’d like to say I was awakened yesterday morning by birdsong and the slim shaft of light seeping through the skylight in my room, but I’m afraid the truth is it was a phone call from Chenbl. Still, one can pretend.

It was another brilliant day out, cold but not a cloud in the sky. We walked to a nearby cafe for breakfast, a place called “Zeluan” where the combination of smells, of coffee, food, cigarette smoke, wood, leather and other things all mixed together in a very appealing way. Spaniards, like the Japanese, have no problem with smoking in restaurants. One woman at the next table was even balancing a cigarette in one hand and a baby in the other. Everything on the menu came with chocolate, even my ham-and-eggs crepe, but somehow it went together very well. The dark wood paneling and gilded chairs were alleviated by the strong light coming in through the windows.

In point of fact, Granada smells wonderful. Just walking down the street, as we did after breakfast, one gets whiffs of meals, incense, bread, whatever. We followed “Teahouse Alley” behind the main stretch, heading towards Alhambra. The shops, many of them Arab-run or Arab-themed, slowly opened their doors as we passed. Some sold clothes, some hookahs, incense and food. The sunlight hadn’t really hit the street levels yet.

I took off on my own when Gordon and Ray decided to sit in the sun at an outdoor cafe for a while, passing a visually arresting construction scene where something was burning, shafts of sunlight piercing the smoke. Nobody noticed when I walked onto the site with my camera and took a few shots. A block later I passed a Dunkin’ Donuts and decided to get a few to see if they were as lame as they are in Taipei. Result: they are delicious, as sweet as in the U.S., but the flavors have been changed to fit local tastes.

Back at the café, we tried to find a bus to take us up the mountain to Alhambra, a fortress built on a finger of the neighboring Sierra Nevadas that dominates the city in the valley below, not unlike Tolkien describes the city of Minas Tirith in The Lord of The Rings.

We ended up taking a taxi up through hillside neighborhoods. Once at the ticket center, we got some audio guides and headed into the complex. Apparently we did it backwards, because the audio guides’ first message didn’t make much sense. I’d thought it would be practical notes, little details, but instead it was someone who sounded like a young Peter O’Toole playing the part of Washington Irving, who stayed at Alhambra for some time in the 1820’s. He wrote a book of stories based on what he imagined life was like there in previous centuries, so the guide waxed romantic on the environs. It was actually quite emotive, and made me think of all of the things that had happened on any given spot within those walls over the centuries.

We entered on the heels of a large, loud tour group, and I straggled behind to get away from it. An old white cat lounged in the sun on one of the benches, paying no mind to anyone who approached it. We walked through a garden maze and then up through the old sultan’s quarters, then back around to the military fort and its three towers. The view of the sunlit city and the valley beyond from the towers is incredible; it’s not hard to imagine it back in the days of the Sultans. The tops of the Sierra Nevadas were solid with snow.

The palace portion of the tour was the most amazing. Fountains running through the rooms, intricate carved ceilings, marble columns, tile baths and courtyards; you really have to walk through it to appreciate it. At one point the narrator of the guide pointed out that we were in his room, i.e. the room Irving stayed in when he was there, the palace more or less abandoned and left to the public. The baths were huge and ornate, and my imagination ran wild coming up with various scenes that had happened there over the years. Another room had blotches on the ceiling; stories went that they were the blood of a family who were slaughtered there. The ceiling, however, was a good 30 feet up, and though I’ve seen some fairly egregious spurting-blood situations in various horror flicks over the years, I have no idea how blood could have gotten all the way up there. It turned out to be rust, the guide then explained.

The tour took an hour, and the sun was setting as we walked out of the complex. We caught a bus back down to the city to the sound of three American girls who tried to sound streetwise as they talked about seeing some guy in a club “totally do lines.”

Back in town, we found a Middle Eastern restaurant in Teahouse Alley for dinner. People here eat later at night, so we were only one of two parties in the entire place. I had chicken couscous, which was good but way too much, and Moorish mint tea to wash it down.

After walking back to the area of our hotel, we waited outside another hotel for a minibus that would take us up the Sacremonte to see a Flamenco show. I originally hadn’t wanted to go, but Gordon and Ray insisted. The bus ride was interesting in that I could see more of the city and regular people’s houses along the way. The show itself, at a whitewashed hillside cafe called The Cave, with wooden chairs and a low stone roof, was less than brilliant. The musicians were enthusiastic enough, particular the bearishly cute guitar player who was really into the performance. The dancers, three women of widely varying ages and layers of make-up, looked pained and, in some cases, epileptic. I was actually worried for one of them, an older woman in red, as she was shaking in a slightly alarming fashion. The younger one did a better job, but all of them looked like they could beat the shit out of any man in the room. The dancing itself had a tap-dancing feel to it; I wished Slim were there to see it.

After the show we were led up the road in the cold and dark for a bit for a lecture on gypsies living in caves that we never asked for. We then rode the bus back down the hill, three Spanish women in the seats behind me singing and clapping the whole way. I didn’t mind; they were happy.

We were planning to have a look at the huge cathedral downtown today and then check out and travel to Almeria area, but I’m not sure if we really want to leave Granada so soon. I rather like this city and wouldn’t mind seeing some more of it.

In any case, it’s morning now, and rain has started pelting down on the skylight. Somewhere in the city, I imagine, the guitar player is making the transition from sleep to the day’s hangover in a rumpled bed next to a pile of black clothes he wears at shows to hide his growing heft. He sighs at the ceiling, listens to the rain outside and wonders how the band is doing these days, especially after that one really good dancer left, and the other singer; the junior dancer is now singing, and he’s sure he’ll get better if he just gets the chance. But the gig is getting old, the dancers stiffer and the audiences smaller and less enthusiastic than the old days, when Manuel was still around and Pablo hadn’t cut his hair.

I didn’t want any more last-minute rushing around this morning, so I was ready and checked out in the lobby at exactly the time we had agreed upon. Gordon was already conducting business on his mobile, telling someone off about something. The weather out was clear and cold as it has been the past few days.

The high speed train to Madrid is about as fast as the one in Taiwan, speeding along as around 300kph. I got a window seat, but the sun was shining on that side more or less the whole way, making the view difficult to see at points. Still, after all of the messy factories were left behind, amazing scenery began to appear, hills and mountains, scraggly bushes and trees, fields plowed to resemble zen rock gardens, crops of olives. Each little town had a tower or church at its center. We passed a huge, fire-belching oil refinery, painfully beautiful in the sunlight and clouds. The larger cities were industrial and ugly, the smaller towns picturesque. The weather changed many times, going from sunny to cloudy to rain and back again in the space of a few minutes’ time. And the rain definitely does not stay mainly on the plain.

We reached Madrid in about three hours, the train sliding into a long berth under a modern station roof. Freaky giant baby heads at either end of the platform greeted us as we looked for the car rental area. One of the places had a suitable Volkswagen Golf, so we piled our stuff in and were off, though Gordon stalled the car a couple of times in traffic.

We hadn’t eaten yet, though, so we picked a nearby Ecuadorean restaurant at random, sitting in the basement with low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised, though; the chicken and potato dishes I had were delicious.

Then we were truly off, finding the A4 south. Gordon was still talking on his mobile, and a police car pulled up beside us, the officer inside flashing his badge at us. Apparently it’s illegal to drive and talk on your phone here. I wanted to write a quick “Gracias!” on a piece of paper to show the officer through the window, as Gordon actually needed all his attention on driving an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar city.

Not long afterwards, however, Gordon got tired, and I took over the wheel as Ray doesn’t really drive standards. It had been quite a long time since I drove any car, much less a stick shift, but it all came back fairly quickly, and soon I was driving down to southern Spain, seemingly alone as both my traveling companions were soon asleep. I grinned to myself as the scenery floated by at 120kph outside; one of the things I’d missed living in Taiwan were long solitary drives on straight highways that vanish in the distance. This was just the thing to scratch that itch.

The weather was still being capricious, raining one minute and blazing sun the next, forcing me to learn all of the wiper and light controls very quickly. The VW was very pleasant to drive, smooth, quiet, stable at speed and powerful. I drove in silence as the sun began to set over the approaching mountains, casting dramatic shadows and then leaving only massive silhouettes with a frosting of lights showing where small towns were located.

We got to Granada about 9 p.m. or so, managing to get lost and enrage a fair proportion of the driving population with sudden U-turns, stops and other insane maneuvers as we tried to find the hotel. Eventually we managed; parking in their little underground complex required automotive acrobatics on a level I haven’t used in a long time, but I managed to get the car into the stall without any damage.

The Abadia Hotel, where we’re staying, is an old building nestled in the warrens of the older part of town, with a courtyard garden in the center. Our rooms, big with double beds and carved adornments on the (admittedly thin) walls, are on the top floor, in what was the attic, so the ceilings slant and we have skylights for windows. The satellite view shows all the buildings in this district have a similar layout, but you couldn’t tell it from the narrow alleyways. Granada looks like a very old town, but so far I get the feeling that it is a friendly place. We wandered around a bit, having dinner at a restaurant near one of the many squares. Our talkative young waiter had immigrated to Spain from Argentina only a year and a half ago.

Tomorrow we’re planning to look around the city, especially the main feature, Alhambra.

I must be the only person in Paris wearing red, I thought as we walked down to the metro through the crowd of people dressed in blacks and browns yesterday morning. Eventually I did spot another, but it was a bike courier in uniform.

We took the subway to the oldest square in Paris, where Victor Hugo lived and wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It is located, as is everything else in the city it seems, in a neighborhood of confusing streets lined with crème-colored five-story houses. The covered sidewalks downstairs of the buildings surrounding the square only lacked ten thousand scooters parked there to look like a scene from Taipei. That and rusty metal doors. I’ve also noticed that Parisians use the sidewalks for business too, but in a much more regulated manner than people in Taipei. Behind the buildings were little courtyards.

We walked around a bit in the rain. I was beginning to get the feeling that I didn’t need to see what was around the next corner because I already knew: more creme-colored buildings. We had some drinks at a restaurant, sitting out on the street watching people go by. When I asked for no ice in my cranberry juice, the waiter stared at me in disbelief. “But it will be too warm!” he exclaimed.

“You’re fighting the culture,” Gordon warned me. “Don’t fight the culture.”

Lunch was at a place near the Bastille area, another large roundabout named after a building destroyed in 1789. The food, some kind of bone-less fish, was good, and the waiter attentive but with just enough boredom and eye-rolling to make him believable.

We debated what to do next in the time remaining before our flight, wasting most of that time in the discussion. We ended up going back to the Eiffel Tower, dodging past the female beggars (“Do you speak English?”) to find another long line to go up to the top. I had to take a piss and assumed that there were restrooms in the metro, but alas no; I had to go out and borrow one at a nearby shop and come back. When I did, however, I found that my ticket no longer worked, so Ray activated the exit so I could slip in, narrowly avoiding getting caught in the doors, which knew something was up and tried to trap me. An alarm went off. “Here come the gendarmes,” Gordon said, and we rushed up the stairs to board the waiting train.

It was a mad rush back to the motel to get our luggage, and then back to the metro again, which by this time was packed with rush-hour commuters. We had to force our way onto a succession of trains to the airport, and when we eventually got there, of course the Security Show was still playing. The woman at the inspection area took a special interest in my camera. “Do you like it?” I asked. “Maybe I could set you up. What would it take to send you home with a brand-new camera?”

Needless to say, I was delayed. As I ran down the terminal, I head myself being paged. “I’m coming!” I yelled at the Voice, gaining me many suspicious looks. This time, I was last on the plane, a small Airbus that the pilot flew like a Taipei taxi. I got the impression he was trying to make up time, rushing right through turbulence instead of going around. We were being tossed around all the way up to the landing in Barcelona, where we got to disembark, presidential style, on a stairway down to the waiting bus that would take us to the terminal.

We’re staying at the Hotel Principal in La Rambla, which is supposed to be the most popular area of Barcelona, at least for thieves and pickpockets. The weather seems warmer, which is a welcome change, and the sky is blue outside of my hotel window. I have no idea what we’re going to do here; I know very little about this city.

On the way to Notre Dame, I noticed that the Paris subways often require the passengers to open the train doors. I realized this about five seconds after I should have after staring dumbly at strangely non-opening doors of a train on the platform, only to have someone do it for me. We bounced over a trampoline-like moving sidewalk between stations and finally up to street level at our destination to find a bit of sun in the sky and many people on the street, unlike the area around our hotel, which is usually deserted.

Notre Dame looks huge from far away, not so large from across the street, and impressively large from the courtyard in front. As I approached a woman in a headscarf approached and asked me if I spoke English, handing me a card with some cause written on it and asking for donations.

The facade of the church reminded me of those Chinese Hell Rides, where hell is depicted and all of its levels and punishments. I was so busy looking at the statues of saints standing on people carved on the facade that I failed to notice that Gordon and Ray had already gone inside, and the line suddenly grew to meet wherever I was standing no matter how I tried to avoid it, which I figured meant I should go inside.

The more I looked at it, the more amazing the construction of the cathedral seemed, especially considering how long ago it was built. The light inside is wonderful; I could spend quite a bit of time in there taking pictures of people. The music being sung was very nice as well. The priest was dressed in the same shade of blue as in the religious paintings at the Louvre.

Back outside, I walked around the outside of the building by the riverside, noting some of the more intriguing details such as what appeared to be gun slits in the side of the structure’s rectory. When I approached the square again, another woman in a headscarf approached me and asked if I spoke English. “No, I don’t,” I replied in Russian, and she let out a stream of what sounded like swearing in some language I didn’t understand.

We had lunch at a small restaurant just across the bridge on the neighboring island in the Seine, an Italian restaurant called Sorza. Although we kept having to get up so that the extremely thin and agile waitress could get to the wine/coatroom, the food was delicious. Gordon said it was the best meal he’d ever had. The gnocchi I ate were certainly the best I’ve ever eaten, and the tiramisu unlike any I’ve ever had, crunchy and crisp. I also had a view of the kitchen via the window, and even the chefs, one black and the other Filipino, were handsome. One thing I have to say about Paris, is that it is very ethnically diverse. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a city with so many different kinds of people. The only kind of person I didn’t see represented in any great number was the obese.

We took the subway to Monmartre, where what sounded like a junior high-school band stood in the cold playing good music with questionable technique in front of the hillside tram. At the top, it seemed colder and about to snow on the view of the city; a few flakes drifted out of the sky, but it soon turned to rain, and we took refuge inside the magnificent stones of the Sacre Coeur Basilica, where the choir was singing beautiful if somewhat repetitious hymns. We joined the congregation and sat down, stood up, sat down, stood up, etc., getting some rest in between movements.

Back outside, we walked around the back of the church on a street I recognized from the famous race-across-Paris video made in the 70’s by a fellow who strapped a film camera on the front of his Mercedes, drove across the city on an early morning at very high speeds, and ended up meeting his wife in front of the church.

Behind the church is an artist/tourist area. “Artists” approach people walking down the street, a blank sheet of paper and pencil in hand, saying “Wait, wait” and looking like they’re about to draw something profound without making a mark because they don’t want to ruin the paper. Beyond this gauntlet was a structure that looks like a lighthouse with no windows at the top and a square where a young French trio was rocking an acoustic set with just guitar, stand-up bass and mouth organ.

We took further refuge in a local piano bar, which looked nice enough outside, and drank hot tea. After a few song selections by Queen and various musicals, followed by thump-thump dance music, I noticed the excessive amount of tinsel and began to wonder if we’d stumbled onto a gay piano bar.

Night was falling when we made our way back to the bottom of the hill, and the not-very-good band was still playing, hours later. Points for endurance at least. I tried not to make eye contact with the hawkers, even though some of them are really quite good looking.

Gordon and Ray wanted mussels for dinner, so we took another series of subways back downtown. Another things about the subways; the tickets are just used to get inside; once you leave you just walk out through doors that open when anyone approaches, although I like to pretend I’m using The Force when I do this, waving my hand as I go through.

The seafood restaurant was empty when we arrived, not a good sign I thought, but Gordon said Parisians just eat late. I just had a salad, still surfeit with the excellent lunch earlier, on an inverted flying-saucer plate with a hole in the middle that encourages the diner not so spill anything. Sure enough, as we ate, more people came in, and the place was full by the time we went back out into the rain and into the subway. I tried to take a picture of the guy at the ticket window, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled about it.

Gordon and Ray had tickets to a cabaret show on Champs Elysees near the Arc de Triumph, but I was less than excited about what seemed like a long, extravagant titty show and decided to walk around the area for a couple of hours in the rain and cold instead.

After they went inside the theater, I walked up the street to the huge Arc and around the massive roundabout, surrounded by stolid old official-looking buildings that could have been and probably were embassies. The lone exception to this was lit up in a brilliant pink and emitting blue light from the interior. Expensive cars surrounded it, and the sound of well-insulated thumping dance music could just be heard.

I kept walking around the circle and back to the Champs Elysees. The rain was coming down harder, and I ducked into a FNAC store to look at their selection of old samurai movies, which I came very close to buying when I remembered that in Europe you need to supply your credit card PIN, which I didn’t realize until after I’d arrived. How tourists from other areas buy things here, I have no idea.

Usually, I like alleys, but the alleys and streets around Champs Elysees didn’t particularly interest me; they were too clean and unadorned, like a model of a city instead of a real one. So I walked past the group of exclusive-looking people knotted around the Aviation Club of France and returned to the theater, sitting on the pavement in front of the Mercedes-Benz store to wait, earning a few strange looks from passers-by until the show let out. Ray confirmed that it had, in fact, been a titty show, though the people exiting the theater seemed rather pleased with themselves, as if they’d been enlightened as to the mysteries of life.

Today is our last day in Paris; we’ll be taking a flight at 7 p.m. down to Barcelona, where we’ll be staying for a few days before traveling further south. It’s cold and gray outside once again; you can tell it’s a Monday by the shoulders of people walking on the sidewalk downstairs.

I was feeling tired and a little cranky as we walked out of the metro and onto the huge courtyard of the Louvre palace yesterday morning. It was cold and unexciting. I snapped a few shots, but my heart wasn’t really in it. Paris is already beautiful, I thought to myself as Gordon and Ray took pictures of the palace a short distance away. What’s left for me to do? Anyone could take interesting pictures here.

Gordon wanted to go into the museum first, while Ray wanted to stay in the courtyard and take more pictures with his new G10, but I didn’t want to do either, so I just wandered out through the opposite gate of the palace and found myself on the bank of the Seine, the city stretching out in both direction along the bank.

Now this was more like it! All my imagined trips to Paris have had a common theme: walking along the Seine and standing on one of the many ancient bridges watching the boats go by. I did this now, and seeing the city’s spires and domes and hearing the bells ring, my spirits rose immediately. I crossed the bridge in front of the Louvre and walked down the ramp to the path by the river, looking up at the curious small rooms at the top of the nearby buildings. I’ve always been fascinated about those little extra bits of buildings, the cupolas and domes and the like, what kind of rooms they are used for, etc. In fact I’m kind of staying in one now, as my room was obviously some closet or other
out-of-the-way space when this building was first built.

Some empty boats were tied up on the bank, most likely restaurant boats. One of them had a statue of Monkey on the bow, looking ahead for
signs of trouble as he did in Journey to the West. How a statue of Sun Wu-kong came to be on the bow of a Parisian boat on the Seine is
puzzling at best, but it was nice to see a familiar face.

My teeth cold from grinning, I crossed the metal pedestrian bridge back to the Louvre, where I crossed another huge courtyard, thinking:
This was someone’s house! My mood was much improved, though, and I met Ray just inside the museum ready to see some artwork.

As a photographer, even an amateur one, I could spend weeks in the Louvre just examining and appreciating the artists’ use of composition,
color and light alone. It’s true that for many of these works, seeing the original is far more emotionally satisfying than seeing pictures of
it in books. The Mona Lisa, however, is not one of these, at least not in my opinion. It is cordoned off and covered with glass, a small and
indistinct thumbnail surrounded by people trying to take pictures of it with their digital cameras, as if nobody would know what it looked like
otherwise.

Many of the religious-themed paintings feature the most beautiful shade of blue. In fact all of the colors are striking and well-used.
Combinations of color that should be riotous, clashing messes somehow fit together perfectly.

The statues section was much more monochromatic, yet interesting in that each work is viewable from all directions and angles. I was ready
to be as unimpressed with the Venus de Milo as I had been with the Mona Lisa, but I found that in person, she holds an attraction I’d never
noticed before. I think it might be the asymmetry of her face, which makes her seem more like a real person. Whether this was on purpose or
by accident nobody knows, but it’s more than a little spooky.

It was early afternoon by the time we had to leave and get some lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant downstairs. My chicken couscous
was delicious. We then walked back to the river to look for a boat tour, something I wanted to do, particularly as I missed the last boat
tour in Osaka last month. The first dock we found closed, but there were obviously many different companies plying the river, so we just
walked along the river towards the Eiffel Tower looking for one. The sun had come out, producing a bit of warmth and wonderful light as we
walked by triple-parked boathouses and under metal bridges.

Eventually we found a riverboat company; the next tour was in 45 minutes. The interior was warm, so we got on the empty vessel and
enjoyed the heating for a bit. Gordon and Ray lay down on the seats and took naps, which was fine until a huge Japanese tour group all boarded at the same time.

The boat departed at 4:45 p.m., and I went up top to watch the buildings slide by, as well as the bottom of the bridges we went under.
It was a fine thing. People on the top of the bridges and along the bank waved at us; I wondered if there was some celebrity along for the
ride, but it seems that people just do this for some reason. There are so many boats I’m surprised that they are not just ignored, yet people
still wave. Maybe they’re also tourists who can’t find the dock and want to know where we got on board.

The boat traveled past the Louvre again and up around the main island of Paris, the site of the original city apparently. The Notre
Dame slid by, and then some modern buildings the recorded announcement described as a “beautiful examples of modern design” but looked downright ugly next to most original Parisian buildings. In fact, a lot of Paris seems to be slight variations on a theme, buildings all about the same shape, size and color, a restaurant with red signage on the corner, cobblestone pavement roads that make the cars sound like passing
trains. I’d think it very easy to get lost here as so much of the city looks so similar.

The sun was sinking in the sky as the boat turned around and headed back, the tops of the buildings on the Eastern bank of the river bright
yellow in its light. The wind kicked up as we changed direction, and at once it became noticeably colder. Taking out my camera to take pictures became more hurried as my hands got cold very quickly. By the time we passed the Eiffel Tower, the sun had set, but the sky was still light. The lights of the tower came on just as we docked, a striking sight against the skyline, tiny silhouettes of trains crossing the river
below it.

The tower was our next destination. It began to sparkle as we approached, in a display uncomfortably similar to the approach of a
migraine. It might have set one off for me, as my head began to ache shortly afterwards. Or maybe it was just the cold. The Tokyo Tower is
modeled after the Eiffel Tower and is the same size, though the Tokyo version looks tiny as it is surrounded by taller buildings. The Eiffel
Tower looks impressive because all the buildings around it are about seven stories high. I wonder if the people who live next door ever get
tired of the view.

We’d wanted to go up to the top, but the line was a daunting prospect. Gordon had already seen it and waited for us at a nearby bar,
so Ray and I walked along the bridge nearby. Annoying hawkers tried to press little lit-up models of the tower on us every few feet. I stopped
on the bridge to take pictures of passersby. If I had more time I could take more pictures, but it seems as if we are always on our way
somewhere.

Gordon wanted to go to a follies show later, so we walked back through the park to the bar to meet him. A metro station was supposed
to be five minutes’ walk away, so we set off. Ten minutes later we were told it was “five minutes away” and five minutes after that we heard
the same thing. It turned out to be fortuitous that we walked to that station, though, as we didn’t have to make so many transfers to Cadet
Station. The Paris Metro feels a bit like a roller coaster, going up and down and making many tight twists and turns along its path, and the
passageways between stations are labyrinthine. I love it.

When we found the follies theater, however, it was shuttered, closed for the season. I didn’t particularly care one way or the other as I am
not interested in them. In fact, I had planned to just walk around the area taking pictures while Gordon and Ray watched the show. We took one of the most odiferous cabs I’ve experienced in many years to the Moulin Rouge, but it was sold out. No follies for us, we walked to a nearby restaurant, the Buffalo Grill, for dinner.

I hadn’t had a bad meal in France yet. This was to be the first. I suppose it’s probably a bad idea to try pseudo-American fare in Paris
in any case, but the steak was tough and chewy and refused to be defeated by a mere five minute’s chewing. It was like abandoned bubble
gum in both texture and taste.

Today we’re planning to go see Notre Dame up close. Gordon wants to attend the apparently ongoing mass they have there in his Notre Dame
(Fightin’ Irish) shirt.

I got to the airport in Taoyuan at 5:40 a.m. after three hours of sleep and a quick drive down the dark, wet highway. As traffic was light, I was surprised to find the check-in area crowded with long lines of travelers, most of whom had carts full of packages and other luggage. Is the economy really all that bad, I wondered, looking at the crowd of people taking trips abroad for the Chinese New Year. As I waited for Ray and Gordon (they were taking their own taxi) near the foot of the growing check-in line for our flight to Hong Kong, I saw an anxious-looking woman lift the rope and cut in line. None of the people seemed to notice.

The line was moving slowly, probably due to people cutting in, so when Ray called and said they were almost there, I got in line. A few minutes later, the woman in line behind me cut a row ahead, dodging under the ropes. “Christ, I can’t believe this, you’re cutting in line?” I said, aloud. “Where are you from, China?”

This was a rather unfortunate wording, as the woman was apparently actually from China, as were many of the other people in the line. When Ray and Gordon showed up a few minutes later and I allowed them to line up with me, the man behind me let me have it: “You think you’re so high and mighty, yet you’re letting people cut in line with you!” he charged.

“That’s different; we’re traveling together!” Ray said, but the man was not to be assuaged with such petty distinctions.

In the meantime, the time of our departure loomed, and the line was still not moving. Eventually the airlines staff called everyone on our flight to the front of the line, and we ran through customs and immigration to the departure lounge. Actually, I ran through, getting the empty gate first and stalling the staff there with amusing army stories until Gordon and finally Ray could catch up.

Strangely enough, the plane was mostly empty, and we all had entire rows to ourselves all the way to Hong Kong. The Air France flight from Hong Kong to Paris, however, was an entirely different story; it was packed full. The worst part was, despite being promised a window seat by the check-in lady, I found myself facing the next 13 hours in the dreaded middle seat, my elbows and knees tucked in, neither armrest truly mine, nothing to look at and nothing to lean on to sleep. Bastards!

The flight attendants walked up and down the aisle spraying cans of something in the air. I hoped it was knock-out gas, but no such luck; it was just air freshener.

After a noisy take-off and the dousing of the seatbelt sign, I got up and went to the rear of the plane, where I could at least stand and look out the bulkhead window, helping myself to water and juice. I spend the majority of the flight there, chatting with Ray and others. Gordon gave me half a sleeping pill, but I decided to tough it out and sleep in Paris.

Below us were the deserts of western China, then Siberia, a vast white cake world interrupted by well-organized white villages and black cracked rivers. The Red Elvises floated through my head. The windows frosted up and I tried to sleep, only managing to get a half-hour in before the awkward position awoke me.

We got two meals, the last one just as we were over Germany. The food was good, something I would expect from Air France, and the beer and wine flowed as freely as one could want. I talked a bit with the Taiwanese-American man next to me (Heineken) and the woman from Hong Kong on the other side (red wine in little bottles).

We descended through the Bespinesque skies above Paris at sunset, and arrived in better conditions that I had expected. The sun sank below the horizon as we approached the terminal, which was such a long way from the runway that I thought the pilot had to get out and ask for directions at one point. Charles de Gaul International is huge, in any case, and he was probably just driving around waiting for a parking spot to open up. The airport is also well-designed, with nice aesthetic touches everywhere. Luckily for us it was also uncrowded, and customs and immigration were a snap.

After the clean airport, the dirtiness of the subway into the city surprised me, as well as the garishness of the yellow/red/blue design under all the grime. It was empty at first, but at the first stop we came to a deluge of laughing, expressive, stylish party people washed onto the train, making me wonder if a gala ball had just ended nearby. An accordion started up somewhere down the train, and I thought, you’ve GOT to be kidding me. I turned around, half expecting a guy in a striped shirt and beret, but it turned out to be a portly husker singing Italian opera for change.

We dragged our luggage through a few stations and trains, up a long series of escalators until we emerged on the streets of Paris. I don’t know if it is a cliche, but “Holy Shit Look at Those Buildings” was my first impression of the streets, all lined with beautiful old, well-lit edifices and the occasional huge cathedral.

Despite the success of the movie series, taxis in Paris seem quite scarce, and we eschewed the long line of people waiting, preferring instead to walk to the Hotel d’Argenson, where I am now, typing this. It is the strangest hotel I’ve ever stayed at, and my room, apparently the only single room, is a strangely triangular affair tacked on to the end of the blue hallway. All of the wallpaper, curtains and carpet are floral patterns of various hues, the radiator clicks and the floorboards creak underfoot. The upstairs rooms are reached via an ancient one-person elevator crammed into the middle of the circular staircase.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant down the street, delicious food after a long day. I was exhausted, and went to bed immediately after getting back to the hotel and waking up soon after with a Charley Horse full of particularly exquisite cramping resulting no doubt from the long plane ride, walking and kicking the tightly ensconced sheets from the confines of the mattress.

It’s about 9:30 a.m. now, and I just finished the hotel breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate served to each room. Nobody is on the street outside. We’re thinking of going to the Louvre.

Today was my last day of work before the Chinese New Year holiday. My government vouchers are spent (on a new camera, of course), my time card’s filled out, and I’m pretty much packed up, except for a few small things. Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Paris, where I’m going to spend a few days before going down to Spain for a couple of weeks. I’ve never been to Europe before and don’t really know what to expect except for a really long flight. I’ll try to write in this account each night, but I have no idea what the wifi access situation is going to be, so no promises. It’s getting late, and after staying up until 2 a.m. the other night watching Obama’s inauguration, I need as much sleep as I can get before my 4 a.m. alarm.

So see you in Paris, hopefully.

I met an old college friend, Xiao Bing, for a lunch of beef noodles in an alley off Chongqing South Road earlier today. The cold temperatures of the last week had relented to the sunshine, and Taipei seemed somehow cleaner for it. Fewer people out on the streets, walking more quickly because of the cold, hands in pockets less likely to discard trash, perhaps.

Xiao Bing works for the post office and has for the past 17 years or so. He told me that they had used stick-on posters that read “Taiwan Post” on their little green trucks when the DPP changed the name from Chunghua Post, as they knew it would probably be changed back soon. I told him that I had finally sold the motorcycle I bought from him so many years ago, and he didn’t believe that it was still working after all this time. The motorcycle, like our friendship, is about 20 years old, and I remember when he got it, brand-new. He was too short to ride it properly and sold it to me. “Xiao Bing” means “Little Soldier” -the nickname resulting from the fact that his gun was nearly as tall as he was when he did his army service. His son, in junior high school, is already taller than he is.

I’m feeling somewhat in between things these days; I’ve come down off the movie thing, I think, but I haven’t quite set things up for the next stage, whatever it turns out to be. I’ve got some new trappings, a new camera, possibly a new computer around the corner, but nothing seems set. As for what’s next: Working more on photography, rewriting my book, more video projects (much smaller, of course)…beyond that it’s hard to say. It might be simply because this is the strange time in between Christmas and the Chinese New Year holidays, the transitory nature of which I’ve only managed to exascerbate by planning two long vacations on either end. After I return, perhaps I’ll feel more ready to start into this new year and all that it holds.

I showed up early, for me, for my first class of 2009 at the park. Only a couple of students were there, but Teacher X, Mr. V and Qingfeng showed up later. It had been so long since I practiced that I lost my place a couple of times while practicing the sword form. The empty handed form is feeling better, though.

An older guy came up and introduced himself as being from Yuanshan and wanted to practice tuishou with us. Teacher X said ok, and the guy started to practice with Mr. Hu. Next he practiced with me. He was very soft on the outside and rigid inside, and we soon began to do moving tuishou instead of stationary for some reason. I could smell some kind of alcohol on his breath and wondered if it were medicine or just booze. He got weary of pushing at me with no real results; I was disappointed when he began resorting to quick, violent shoves. Still, it was interesting to practice with someone outside our group.

I then practiced with Qingfeng, who is really into researching and thinking about tuishou. He is the hardest of anyone there (besides Teacher X, of course) for me to push. I then practiced with Mr. V, who has given up on the quick shoves but is still convinced that rigid, unidirectional power is the way to go. I got pretty tired as I’ve been out of things for a while for various reasons, but it was good to get back into it a bit.