The New Italy

BZ is going to Goa. Maybe she'll take this boat.

It was discouraging to read, in today's food section, that as far as traveling goes "Spain has become the new Italy." This means that Plot and Duck need to find somewhere else now. Maybe India.

Well, not true. All you have to do is move one street away from the masses of tourists, or avoid the weekend. Trying to walk down a narrow cobblestoned street, built in 1350, on a Saturday afternoon on a national holiday in 2012, is perhaps not the best way to visit anywhere, including Heaven.

We also read that in Lisbon yesterday the subways were shut down and garbage pickup suspended, as well as most other services, due to a national strike, like the one that shut the trains down in Faro and the buses in Barcelona while we were there. Apparently, 50% of young people in Spain are currently unemployed, and evictions have multiplied, demonstrations are becoming more and more violent, and Spain is 'way better off than Portugal.

So, tourists, spend your money and spend it recklessly. They can use every Euro and centimo.

Euros eat up dollars, though. That brings Plot and Duck back to this hemisphere, preferably where they speak Spanish. Buenos Aires is wonderful, but the food is not so great. Mexico City is wonderful and the food is too, but there is a lot of unacceptable crime, though it's not as bad as Lima or Caracas, or the Prince of Darkness Guatemala City. We have heard a lot of good things about Bogotá.

Rio or Bahia sound terrific, though language is a very small issue, because if you speak music in Brazil you can pretty much figure things out.

You can get by in L.A. with Spanish, and the food is great, but it's L.A.

English works too. We haven't been back to NOLA in a long time, and you don't get food any better than that. Capetown is a long way from here. London is fun, but crazy expensive.

We know where this is heading: Havana. That has got to be next. Thank you USA for keeping Cuba easy to get to for everyone else in the world except us. Stay stupid another year or two, please, until we get our Rumba-Salchichón-Ropa Vieja-Mambo tour organized.