Looks like I have a place lined up in Park Slope (Brooklyn) from March 3rd to the 10th, so chances are good that I will be heading back early. I leave for Barcelona in at 6:50 (4 hrs from now), so I'm going to try to get an hour or two of sleep. I accidentally booked the trip backwards (leaving from Barcelona to Malaga tomorrow, returning Sunday), but I am pretty sure that I was able to get it sorted out despite some really bad Spanish on my part & bad English on the Spanair side. We'll find out soon. Making my way to the airport might be another challenge, as I'm in the part of town that is pedestrian-only so I didn't book a car. I'm hoping that I'll be able to find a taxi at 4:30/5. I leave NY for Austin on the 11th, so that will give me plenty of time to pick up my suitcase, get a haircut (it's in a bad state right now), and watch a show or 2 (Silversun Pickups and Muse are playing when I'm in town). I'm actually pretty excited about heading back.
Flight out at 7am tomorrow morning, to return Sunday at 9.30pm on SpanAir. The guy I'm renting from returns to Malaga on Sunday, so that will still give me a chance to meet him and if I really want to do Morocco or Madrid I may still have the chance if I go back to NYC early (which is looking more and more likely as I think about it).
I'm getting lots of work done the last few days, but I'm also getting a bit antsy. I wouldn't mind getting a chance to check out Barcelona, Morocco and Madrid. I've been looking at the 7-day forecasts around Europe and it's not good anywhere. The only place remotely close that is experiencing good weather right now is Egypt, but flights in to Cairo on short notice are in the $2,000 range - so that's a non-starter.
I had a bit of a brainwave, which was to change my return flight and come back to NY a week early. I've already considered scratching a return to NY out of my plans after checking out SXSW, and instead hitting up San Francisco and then possibly Maui. If I did that, then I would miss out on a couple of things on my to-do list for a return to NY. Namely:- having a caesar-making contest with some friends I met on the last night I was in NY.
- a couple of follow ups with some contacts I made there
- getting my luggage & selling my bed
- going to see a couple more bands
- go to a few more events where I can meet advertising and online marketing folks
As you can see from the above, these are high-priority activities. My biggest consideration is cost. I would be saving on my place in Spain, as I'm sure I'd get some money back on the place - however it will cost me about $260 to change my flight and I will likely need to stay in a hotel in NYC. Accommodations in NYC won't be cheap, but I think that I may want to try finding a place in Brooklyn for a change of pace. It will be way cheaper, plus any time I made it over to Brooklyn it was a great experience.
As you may know, I'm a single guy. So what am I all about? What do I look for in a woman? Well don't take it from me, the guys in this video sum it up pretty well.
It was a cold & wet day in Malaga today and I was pretty tired from getting in late last night... so aside from doing a bit of work in a cafe while I ate lunch, I didn't go out or get much productive done. I got caught up on last week's episodes of 30 Rock & Lost and watched the Fantastic Mr. Fox (which was great). I also downloaded & went through the 600 pics from my trip, and overall I was fairly disappointed with my camera work. Although I now have a pretty good collection of oranges, ducks, pigeon & castle wall stock photography, so there's that. I also did a lot of reading today & am finding that I'm starting to find politics more interesting then I ever had. I don't know why, but I think that's a bad sign.
I'm one of the few people leaving Cadiz tonight. People were streaming in from the train/bus station. Carnival is essentially a giant Halloween for adults and then some.
Everyone is in costume but each group has a theme where usually one person is the focal point and the rest support that person (ex: person dressed as an egg and 20 others dressed as penguins chasing him around). Also, each group seems to be prepared with chants, songs, and skits - so there's entertainment that spontaneously starts up all over the city. The more the day went on, the crazier it was getting and it was really entertaining by the time I left, so I imagine I'm going to miss some awesomeness. However, I'm tired and ready to head home. On the plus side, I refilled my prepaid sim card.
I couldn't find a place to stay in Cadiz tonight so I'm catching the last bus out of here at 8pm. At least I will catch some of the festivities. There's a great vibe in town today, I'm sorry that I'm going to have to leave early.
The weather is a bit nicer today. No rain, so I can carry my pack around town and not be miserable. It was warm enough that some people were surfing on the Atlantic today.
So I saw sweatpants in 2 different clothing stores today. The first was Zara, and then I saw them again at this other place and realized it wasn't a coincidence - it was an upcoming trend. At first I was amused and kind of disgusted - but now I'm kind of pumped. Could be a relaxing couple of years coming up.
However, since I'm behind on fashion and not really interested in leading the pack on the sweatpants trend - I bought a couple of pairs of jeans. One of them is a 31 waist... which I haven't fit in to since high school. I didn't even change the tags, a la Jerry Seinfeld. Also, the jeans were 80% off - so around 70e for both, so low risk if they don't fit tomorrow. Everything here is in the 50-80% off range... I'm going to try and buy shoes tomorrow.I was just buying some food from a street vendor (chocolate covered mini-donuts) and a group of Americans or Canadians walked by and a girl from the group stops, looks over my shoulder and says 'Yum! Those look really good!!'. I just smiled and said 'si', also with kind of a dumb look that spelled out I was a foreigner. Only when they walked away did I realize that they were speaking English and I could understand them. Idiot. I've been blank staring it or listening to broken English for so long, I'm not used to understanding. Again - idiot.