Barcelona & Madrid Spain: The Highs and Lows of Backpacking

Greetings From Barcelona and Madrid Spain!

I left Paris for Barcelona, and after a debacle of trying to find where my flight was leaving from it was a quick and smooth trip to my Barcelona hostel. The Paris airport has zero signs to where the different flight companies are and has two different terminals for departures. Luckily I had shown up very early so after walking around terminal 1 for over half an hour and not finding any sign of the airline I was flying with I asked the information desk. It turned out that the airline was in terminal 2, across the airport from where I was in terminal 1. I had to the shuttle across the parking lot, which was a surprisingly long time before making it to terminal 2, I'm pretty sure the shuttle was going in the opposite direction I needed to go and really I was only one stop away. Once I was at the right terminal it was all smooth sailing, or flying.

Ariel view of the coast while flying in from Paris.

For going to Madrid it was an easy bus trip, the only thing was I was really doped up in the morning so catching the city bus to make it to the bus to Madrid I was seriously scared I was going to fall asleep and miss my ride. After an awesome day out in the sun and sleeping in a cool night breeze I woke up sick beyond belief. Cool nights always mess with my respiratory system with hot days but this was worse than I've got from too much sun and a cold night ever. After going to a pharmacy and being told only to take 1 a day and before bed because it makes you sleepy I consulted my friends on Facebook to find out exactly what it was I bought I decided since I was really sick I'd take 2 before bed. The thing is I had to get up pretty early to get ready for my morning bus to Madrid. I had not slept the medication off yet. It did however make for an interesting trek to the bus station and a very sound sleep during the bus ride to Madrid. I wish I could say I woke up feeling great and ready to train, and for the most part I was better, but my respiratory system was still wrecked and I couldn't roll during Madrid, but I get manage to get out and train, until another hiccup got my held up with issues to deal with.

I woke up at pit stop on the way to Madrid and thought I was about to be in  Spaghetti Western. 

The Sights!

I spent a day running around seeing the sights in both Barcelona and Madrid each. In fact in Barcelona I spent a walked around a few days just to get the views in, Barcelona is a beautiful city to walk around and downtown is big enough that it'll take you a while to but not too big that you'd need to actually take the tour bus to see the sights or jump around from stop to stop on the subway.

Catedral de Barcelona

Fira Barcelona Montjuïc

In the evening one night I went down and watched the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc. It's pretty cool, watching the light show with the changing water fountain patterns all to music. It's quite popular as the place was packed, I stayed back and watched and took photos from a distance, not wanting to get into a packed crowd at night, prime place pick pocketers (They're bad in Barcelona, long story short a pair tried to make me a mark on the subway down to the fountain, my Spidey senses kicked in and I noticed them before anything could happen, I stared them down until they left.)

Madrid is the same thing, you can walk around and see a lot of the sights in the city without hoping around taking the transit, I didn't do as much sight seeing for Madrid as I was recovering form the cold and then dealing with credit card fraud as it seems my card got swiped in Barcelona.

Part of the Royal Gardens

Royal Palace of Madrid

Plaza Santa Ana

Every tourist takes photos of this building. I would pass it every day and there was always someone taking a picture, so I did too.

Dealing with Credit Card Fraud

I watch my expenses quite closely, I have for some time now, years even. There are several reasons for this, like making sure my bills are paid, that I know how much I have free to spend and keep track of my budget, and that I don't get screwed over with fraudulent charges. Credit card fraud is something I figured would happen on this journey, one of the several travel fears that are bound to happen eventually that no one wants to deal with. This happened on one of the last days I was in Barcelona , I caught it mid way through my stay in Madrid, and by the end of my stay in Porto it was resolved, so I was lucky to catch it early and get things settled and it really wasn't so bad looking bad, but during the whole event it was a bit stressful. When I first found out I wanted to get to bottom of it instantly it and skipped on training one day. I saw extra charges from Air BnB and Expedia. I went to both those sites and punched in the reference numbers for the charges, for both sites they came up as not from my account so I couldn't cancel them but I did change my password for the accounts.
The next thing to do was call my credit card and flag the charges to get them reversed. The problem is I didn't have the ability to make long distance calls on my phone and you can only make international calls on certain phones in Spain. After asking the hostel and going to the Police station I found out that these international phones are only at post offices and chat cafes. I wasn't about to go to place and get charged per minute to call an international long distance call that's supposed to be toll free. The charges would be way too much for that. So I started looking for other ways to contact the credit card company. I saw that I could put flags on the charges and online, and get that, but wanted to speak to the person and see what my full options were and how I could resolve this easiest.
After speaking to friends on Facebook and getting some ideas to try out I found out that I can call toll free numbers using Skype and it would just use data. So while using the hostel wifi I made the call and talked to a representative. By this time I was in Porto and it took a few calls, and talking to people online and sort everything out but eventually I had it all planned out. Unfortunately I would have to get the current card cancelled but a new card would be soon on it way to me and the fraudulent charges would be investigated and reversed as soon as possible. In the end the card never made it's way to me, that's a completely different story for another time, but the charges were all reversed within a week and I was back to normal on my way, just with no back up credit card now.    

Templum BCN

When I first started planning out my visit to Spain and Portugal Shannon's name came up on the BJJ Globetrotters Facebook group and the gym he trains at, Templum BCN as a place to visit. I contacted him to get the information for the gym and we planned to meet up, unfortunately our meet up never worked out but I did get to make it out to the gym. Templum is in an MMA gym and the Jiu-Jitsu club had a fair sized mat space, next to the cage where kickboxing was going on. There were some weights in the front and from what I could see there was a yoga or aerobic room in the back a level above that overlooked the front of the gym. It was a nice place to train at and there were some monsters on the mats, as would expected with Yan Cabral training everyone. Yan was there that night too, he was teaching a kids class when I showed up but then went off to do his own training and then run a MMA class. I would have loved to be a class with him or at least get a photo with him but I also didn't want to bother him and he seemed pretty busy.

A brown belt, who's name I forget but he was a super nice guy and a spider monkey when we rolled, took over class and taught us some cool attack from the opponent being turtled up, some of which I've added to my game and have been working on ever since. The class was cool to train with, everyone gave me a lot of help if I needed it and we made all the techniques shown work. Sometimes I take a few extra minutes to get the technique working for me, I drill it a slowly a few times to figure out all the body movements, sometimes I need to look at the positions I end up in and need to change some things so I don't end up putting myself in a bad position. Long story short I like to troubleshoot new techniques when I'm learning them. I had no problem doing that and got all the help I needed when drilling with this class. When it came to rolling time they weren't so nice, maybe it was me still not used to the heat, or just not being as athletic as these guys, but I got steamed rolled by everyone there except the brown belt who just toyed with me and floated on me the whole time. It was a good night and I definitely earned those new moves after those rolls. Thanks guys!

Gracie Barcelona 

I originally didn't know about Robin Gracie being in Barcelona, I somehow missed that place when looking. When I put another post on the Globetrotters group listing all my stops in Spain and Portugal several people told me to check out Robin Gracie's, so I look them up and went. At this point Paul from Paris was also visiting Barcelona and decided to meet up with me and check out the Gracie Academy Barcelona with me. It was a little hard to find the place, there was no sign out front, and with construction on the road it was really hard to look for the address. Luckily as I was walking down the street looking around another student saw my Jiu-Jitsu bag and offered to show me where it was. I would have never the guessed from the outside it was a Jiu-Jitsu gym inside, it looked like another apartment building like the rest on the street. Once I made it in and changed I made sure to contact Paul and wait out at the front door to wave him down on the street. Apparently he passed the place a few times having no clue it the gym was inside. That being said it's a nice gym, nice size clean mat space with showers in the change rooms, and not sharing space with loud cross-fitters, it was a good hidden place for Jiu-Jitsu.

Robin Gracie himself was away doing a seminar somewhere so the class was more a study group with us going over some different areas to work on that people were wanting to train. It was a fun class, really chill with everyone seemed to really be into learning and working on different things. I showed Paul a technique I learned the other night that I figured he would really like and he showed the guys there a cool technique that worked with what we were covering. Rolling with everyone was another fun experience, some seemed to roll a bit harder with me, Paul and I made the joke later that it's the curse of being a big guy, people just want to take it to the big guy, but seriously it was a fun time, too Robin Gracie wasn't in town for us to meet though, maybe next time!

After class Paul and I hung out at a cafe, where was ate some cheesy covered hotdog that we were way too happy to try after a good Jiu-jitsu class, they were not near as good as the pictured showed, but still good enough to devour, although again that could of been the post Jiu-Jitsu class appetite, hahah. We hung out and chatted for a long time, a few hours anyways, it was a great time, I would have loved to film it as a video for the blog but I didn't having my camera on me at the time and going to get it would have been a bit out of the way. Anyways, we must have talked about everything possible for traveling, training at visiting gyms, and Jiu-Jitsu in general. It was a great afternoon after a good class but I think I caught too much sun and got sick, a heavy price to pay for good conversation, but still a great time hanging out with Paul, until we meet again buddy!

Ricardo Oliveira Jiu-Jitsu

Now I was at Madrid, fighting off the cold but not yet dealing with credit card fraud. I had been referred to Ricardo and we had been talking a short while online. He was a really nice guy from our messages and I was looking forward to meeting him and his school. I only managed to make it out once, dealing with everything else held me back from training much, but it was a great time. The Jiu-Jitsu club, Ricardo Oliveira Jiu-Jitsu (ROJJ), is in a gym Athlos Training Center. The gym is pretty small, I would say half the space or more is mat space for Jiu-Jitsu and other martial arts classes with a small area for working out in the front. The whole place seemed very new, like it had just opened recently, if not they've kept it very well and clean.

The class was small and everyone there was very happy to have a visitor, I got asked quite a few questions about traveling and visiting clubs. Ricardo himself was a very nice guy and made me very comfortable to be visiting his club. Class was relaxed, drilling on things at our own pace and working on getting the mechanics of the technique. This is good for me because I was still dealing with my respiratory system, my sinuses and throat felt like they had been burned out so it was hard to breath while doing anything too active. I couldn't roll that night because of this but sat back and watched, they were a very technical group of people so it was very interesting watching them. It's too bad my trip to Madrid was plagued with problems but I very much enjoyed meeting and training with Ricardo's club, thanks guys!

 

Until next time,
see you on the mats!
OSSS!!

WAYS TO SUPPORT PANDA'S ODYSSEY!

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Paris France: RNK Paris and Arthur

Greetings From Paris France!

I had a quiet morning train to the airport and flight over to Paris. Getting to the hostel was a different matter. I had no problem using the trains in Paris and no problem navigating around the streets, but first I had to get a ticket for the trains before anything. At the train station there was a line up to get a one way ticket from a machine. There were 2 machines and just before I got to the use either one they both seemed to break, only one of them would even take change. I had credit cards and Euro notes but no change, so I switched lines for the customer service desk. After getting to the front of the line and asking for the week pass now, since I spotted that they had one, I was told I would have to now go get a photo, attach it to the pass, and sign the back. The photo booth was on the other side of the station and had a line up of other tourists doing the same thing. I stood back and I read the side of the booth for instructions and watched everyone trying to figure out how to use the photo booth and pick the right option for the proper picture. Once I got into the booth it was easy enough to figure out to pick out the right option. The thing is you get a sheet of small pictures and you need to cut one out for the train pass. Luckily I came prepared and had a pair of scissors, and a pen to sign the back too.
There was a girl from Canada in front of me who wasn't prepared for this, she had to ask for change to break the Euro notes she had, and borrowed both my scissors and pen and even needed me to help her figure out how to get the right picture option. I figured she was totally lost and had no clue or anything planned for her visit but after talking to her she seemed to have a whole trip planned out, at least for the bigger picture. She was visiting a few places across Europe and had all her places booked and plane tickets bought and a list of the sights she wanted to see, she just didn't think of the small details like city transit. I hope her trip went better than getting her train pass went, but learning the train system may have caused her some problems. By now I've found I can figure out pretty much any transit system pretty easily. After visiting so many cities and finding my way around, especially after my week in Tokyo a few years ago and more recently London, transit maps are easy enough to read, even if they're not in English. The Paris trains take a few minutes to figure out but it was easy enough to my hostel and settle in.

My hostel was right on a canal, cool view.

As soon as I settled into the hostel I had a few things to pick up, like a new hair trimmer, my old one died in London (I blame the adapter) and more importantly, a pair of shorts. I had been wearing a pair of pants all this time and that was ok when traveling through Canada during the winter and not a big deal when traveling through the UK in the spring but now I was getting into warmer places and a warmer season. It's only going to get warmer as I travel on, so I was going to need shorts. I have brought with me my no gi training shorts but they don't have pockets and I need my pockets! With a run to downtown and an adventure looking for a hair trimmer I was good to focus my time on sight seeing, making friends and of course training.

Not the best picture but these stores are massive and I run around for an hour looking for a hair trimmer, it was across the street in the 3rd building..

I finally have shorts! I was supposed to get my pair mailed to me but it's so expensive to send parcels from Canada. 

Making Friends and Seeing Sights

Seeing the sights, or some of them anyways, was definitely on the list, after all how could I pass up the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe or Versailles? In total it was 2 full days of walking around to see the sights in Paris that I did see and I have many, many photos of them. I've picked some of the best ones and posted them here, for the full photo stream you'll have to head over to my Flickr account to see them all.

The view from the Eiffel Tower is pretty cool

I went by the Louvre as well, but I didn't go inside, I was just too tired from the past two days of sight seeing. Next time I go back I will definitely spend a day going through the museum. For now here's some photos of the beautiful outside of the Louvre and the surrounding area like the gardens.

I also made some friends while hanging out at the hostel, one was a fellow Canadian who after talking we realized we both grew up in some of the same ares and really should have crossed paths as some point before. He was making his way to the UK having come from Italy, almost the exact opposite direction of me. Another was a woman who was staying in my room who was in Paris for a marathon on the weekend, she travels around the world doing marathons at least once a year outside of Peru. We would talk about traveling, places we've each been to and places we each still wanted to go see, just about every evening and even went out to explore the neighborhood one evening and found a cool looking giant metal orb, the Geo-Sphere, and there was a submarine on display beside it too. There were others I met in passing, another Canadian who had gone to Versailles in the same group as me who was from Edmonton, some guys from Brazil there on business. It was pretty cool hanging out at the hostel and meeting people in the evening, it's been something reliable to look forward to when checking into the hostel, meeting people with cool stories.
       

Spotted by a fellow Canadian for my MEC backpack, it's a Canadian thing.

The canal is quite the hangout spot at night.

Alien spaceship!

My marathon running roommate from Peru. 

The 'alien spaceship' during the day.

Meeting Arthur and Paul

When I planned out my visit to Paris I had been talking to Arthur from the start, getting all sort of tips from him. Arthur is actually in Christian's Book, The Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Globetrotter, as one of the first guys Christian meets up with, so he's been helping fellow Globetrotters visit Paris for some time. Paul is from the UK and just so happens he and I were visiting Paris at the same time, as well as Barcelona afterwards. This gave us the opportunity for all three to meet and hang out together and train at Arthur's gym. We first all met at a cafe one evening. It was in the same neighborhood as Arthur's and the gym, and also the hostel I was staying at. After a quick coffee and introductions Arthur showed us around the area, there was a cool park that had a man made pond and island hill with a lookout point out and memorial on top. There was a cave area where they used to cut stone from, which is what this whole area was carved out for, a stone quarry. It was cool to see and I would have totally missed it had Arthur not brought us out to the place.

The park, quite the popular hangout.

Old train line that used to move the stone from the quarry and according to Arthur was used quite a bit during WWII.

The quarry where the stone was mined.

We hung out a few times while we all were in town. Grabbing drinks and burgers at bar in my hostel after class and talking Jiu-Jitsu until midnight one night. Relaxing another night at Arthur's talking away about our own travel and training experiences while his tiny puppy constantly attacked my toes, having a hatred for my socks for some reason. It quickly became like we were long time friends, meeting up and hanging out was very natural from the start. When you have a lot of common interests like traveling and training Jiu-Jitsu it's pretty easy to build on it and become good friends quickly. As the usual theme of this journey goes I wish we had more time to hang out, in fact I was having such a blast I didn't think of setting up a video of the three of us until afterwards. I having some our conversations of the different ways and reasons we started BJJ or thoughts of different game styles and experiences traveling would have been a great interview. Ah well, there's always next time I guess.

Arthur's attack dog, taking a break from my socks to attack my hand. 

Arthur, Paul and I after class.

Training at RNK Paris

Arthur Trains, and teaches some classes, at RNK Paris which has two different locations but for my time in Paris I just trained at the one near Arthur's place and my hostel. I had originally hoped to also look up the French boxing art of Savate but the schedule never worked out with my sight seeing hang out with the guys. RNK Paris from what I can tell is part of a bigger community of different martial arts styles under the same roof. From the pictures on the walls I could see there were also Aikido and Judo classes at the the location I was training at and at one point as BJJ class was ending a Jeek Kune Do class was starting. The first time I made it out Arthur was busy and Paul was just getting into Paris so I was on my own to meet the club. It was an open mat and I think it went on for 3 hours, with people slowly filing in as time went one, but I didn't stay the entire time. The black belt who open the gym, Prof. Akio Long, is a very chill guy and welcomed me in and introduced me to everyone. As the class went on I was a feeling aches and pains all over from traveling so much and he would always stop and make sure I was ok and didn't need any help. I rolled with him at one point and was utterly lost as he wrapped me up over and over again. As Arthur pointed out he has a very different style and tends to destroy everyone there, I which I had more time with him to figure out how he moves and sets up the things he was doing, it was such an intriguing style he had.
The next times I returned was Paul and Arthur and it was for class, we actually hit up 2 classes that day, both the noon time and evening class. By the end of the day we were tired and sore but it felt good nonetheless. The classes were with great people, Arthur's club has some really nice teammates, they all welcomed us to their mats and were friendly and helpful. Those who killed us in the mats were also killing their own teammates so it wasn't like they just wanted to take it to the new guys, seriously though the range of styles was so wide each roll was so different I felt the fact most of them have other styles they train in or came from really showed. It was a great time training with everyone, thanks again Arthur for helping me out with my Paris visit and bringing me to your gym!

My only picture from training, I had others but I can't seem to find any.

Game of Rolls 

While we were hanging out Paul pulled out a deck of cards to show us, it wasn't some magic set that he was going to do tricks with or a deck of Playboy cards with naked girls, no it was a BJJ deck of cards that while being designed into a very cool looking traditional deck of cards it's also a Jiu-Jitsu game called Game of Rolls. The idea is you have timed matches, the 2 opponents draw 3 cards each, keeping them to themselves, or only showing a judge if there happens to be one. each card is designed to either be a position card (mount, side control, honey hole etc.) or a trick card (blindfolded, hand armed, hand tied etc.) the idea is if you have a trick card you show it to your opponent and they have to play with that handicap on them, while the position cards to keep to yourself and look to get a submission within the match time from one of the positions you drew. The whole thing is a very creative way to get fun competition matches going on within the club. I think having a full tournament in this style would be a lot of fun to not only part take in but also watch as a spectator, and with the game designed as a deck of cards it's always good to have one on hand to play card with as well. Paul gave Arthur and myself each a pack and I've had it in my bag this entire time, pulling it out once a while while traveling. One day I will bring it along to a class and see if anyone is interested in playing during open mat. I hope this game catches on! Here's a video on how to play.

Until next time,
see you on the mats!
OSSS!!

WAYS TO SUPPORT PANDA'S ODYSSEY!

Sign up to the Panda's Odyssey Patreon Account.
Buy Panda's Odyssey Patches at The Gi Hive.
Buy the Panda's Odyssey T-shirt.
Follow me and other traveling Jiu-Jitsueros at the BJJ Globetrotters blog section.
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Check out my full photo albums for each article at my Flickr account.
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