city Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Up in the Nusair

Musings August 18, 2017

On Zaragoza

Note: Thanks to a bunch of terrorist douchebags, the chronology of this blog is a bit messed up. This and the next few posts were actually written before that whole fiasco, which is why this is written as though I’m still in Zaragoza.

I wound up in Zaragoza pretty much at random; the initial plan was to go to San Sebastian between Madrid and Barcelona. It turns out I’m a cheapo and can’t afford San Sebastian, so plan B it is: spending a few nights in Zaragoza, a medium-sized city about halfway between Madrid and Barcelona.

It’s not exactly the first place place you think of when you visit Spain (I hadn’t even heard of it until recently), but I’m actually quite enjoying my time here.

Porto Subway Oddities

So here’s a weird thing about the subway system here in Porto: it seems to be run on the honour system. There are no gates anywhere; there are machines to load up your swipe card with the fare for a ride, and there’s these little card scanners around each station that (I think) you’re supposed to swipe before you get on a train and when you transfer, but that’s it. I’ve never actually seen anyone confirming that passengers have paid their fare. It’s weird.

Hills are Jerks

So, here’s a fact: Lisbon is an extremely hilly city. Here’s another fact: those hills are jerks.

At first it’s like, “wow cool, look at all of that interesting hilly architecture! It really gives the city character! I wonder how they build everything on a slant like that!” Then you walk up your fifth or six ultra-steep incline of the day with the scorchingly hot Portuguese sun being as unforgiving as always and it’s more like “Hey hill? You’re a stupid jerk and you have a stupid jerk face and I hope you die.”