Following the Equator

Park Guell in Barcelona

EF Group Leader Jeremy Van Hof, whom we profiled back in March, writes the best group leader blog that we've come across.

Jeremy, an English and newspaper teacher at DeWitt High School in DeWitt, Mich., is prepping his students for their EF tour this summer to Italy and Spain. His blog does a great job of providing not only tour-specific information to his travelers but also interesting insights about their destinations: Rome, Florence, Barcelona and Madrid.

In the past week, Jeremy started a series of posts called "What We'll See" to "detail some of the amazing things that we'll see on this trip." Today, Jeremy posted this video about architect Antoni Gaudí's famed Park Guell in Barcelona:

If you have a blog for your own EF group that you'd like to share, we'd love to know about it. You can post it in comments below or just email me.

More on Plaza de España

Want to see more of the Plaza de España in Seville? Check out this nice panoramic video:

You also can see the plaza star in Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones on YouTube.

Friday Fun Fact: Plaza de Españaboo

When Sevillians built their Plaza de España for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, they were likely hoping to attract a few hordes of Latin American admirers; they probably didn't appreciate their creation for the intergalactic stage it would later become. 

In 2002's Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker (aka Darth Vader) and Padmé (unwitting Mrs. Vader) glide into the plaza on a spaceship and walk around its huge half-circle portico. The sequence is only a few seconds in total, but it's long enough to appreciate the computer-generated effects that add a touch of Naboo to one of Seville's most prominent landmarks.

Photo: yellowkamper via Flickr

Friday Fun Fact: Spanish languages

Rebajas. Rebaixes. Rebaixas. Beherapenak. Big Spanish clothing stores such as Zara announce their sales in multiple languages, and it’s all for the home crowd: Spain has four official languages.

Spanish, as we know it, is technically classified as Castilian (castellano), and 74 percent of Spaniards speak it as their first language. Spain’s northeast corner, Catalunya, is home to the 17 percent of Spaniards whose first language is Catalan (català), a mix of Spanish and French. The northwest corner, Galicia, adds 7 percent whose first language is Galician (galego), a mix of Spanish and Portuguese. Finally, in the Basque Country (north-center, near the Pyrenees), the mosaic is complete: 2 percent claim the mother tongue of Basque (euskara), an ancient language with myteriously unknown origins.   

Travel Tidbits: Navigating the Louvre

The Louvre in Paris claims to be the world's largest museum. With more than 35,000 works of art and more than 652,000 square feet of exhibition space, it's easy to get lost among the masterpieces.

Globespotters recommends a handy solution to navigating the paintings, the sculptures, the treasures: a new multimedia gadget called the XP-vision.

The device, which was introduced last November and can be rented for six euros, includes a small video screen and headphones. You can choose various tours, or even customize one, through the vast collection. One of the best features is a virtual map, which helps you find your way through the maze of rooms.

Read on for more Travel Tidbits ...

Read all about … newspapers

When I was a student journalist in high school, I collected newspapers from around the country and around the world. Even now, as a former newspaperman, I still love getting the papers wherever I travel.

It could be my hometown Chicago Tribune or The Philadelphia Inquirer or even La Repubblica in Rome (and I don't even read Italian). There's something fascinating about reading (or just seeing) what's news and how it's presented in different cities.

Now, though, I can get my daily newspaper fix online. The Newseum website offers front pages from newspapers around the world every day. Today, there are 565 front pages from 55 countries, including Málaga Hoy from Spain (above).

Travel Tidbits: Shakespeare marathon

Are you ready for some Shakespeare?

If you're like my father (a high school English teacher and devoted student of Shakespeare), you can't get enough of William Shakespeare. So here's an unprecedented opportunity: The esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company is performing the Bard's entire, eight-play History Cycle in order.

The Histories cover 100 years of English history and nearly 1,400 minutes of viewing time. That's more than 23 hours to you and me. The RSC is performing all eight plays in the order that Shakespeare wrote them (and his audiences would have seen them): Henry VI Parts I, II & III, followed by Richard III, Richard II, Henry IV Parts I & II and finishing with Henry V.

The epic undertaking is believed to be the first time one theater company has staged the entire History Cycle. It has taken more than two-and-a-half years to produce.

There's a lot of good information at the Royal Shakespeare Company site. But  Globespotters has some impressive figures: 34 actors play 264 parts, each part is understudied, which means a total of 528 parts have been rehearsed. The production also includes 210,000 spoken words, 800 costumes, 40 wigs and hairpieces and—get this—more than 15 liters of stage blood.

The Histories are running through Sunday at the RSC's Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and then the performances will run from April 1 to May 25 at The Roundhouse in London.

Meet Greg Watts

Regular followers of Following the Equator may have noticed a new writer on our blog this week.

Greg Watts, an EF veteran, has joined the blog as a regular contributor. Among his varied EF experiences is tour directing; Greg has led EF groups throughout Europe.

A Massachusetts native, Greg has spent most of the past decade living in Europe. He currently lives in Málaga, Spain, with his wife and son.

I thought it'd be a good idea to formally introduce Greg in this space. We chatted for an hour the other day. Of course, I was in Boston, wishing for spring, and Greg was in Spain, gazing out his window at the blue skies and terracotta roofs.

Adams on Europe

If the president of the United States goes on record to praise a tour destination as beautiful or amazing, I would be inclined to mention it on tour.

So as the EF Tour Director for a group of fellow North Americans, it was from that angle that I introduced our imminent visit to the Alhambra—the 13th-century Moorish palace built into the hills overlooking Granada, Spain. 

Microphone in hand, I readied an excerpt from Bill Clinton’s My Life (my group was Canadian, so I felt relatively assured that a mention of Mr. Clinton wouldn’t spark a partisan flare-up on the bus) and unleashed the following quote on them:

"I never got over the romantic pull of Spain, the raw pulse of the land, the expansive, rugged spirit of the people, the haunting memories of the lost civil war, the Prado, the beauty of the Alhambra. When I was President, Hillary and I became friends with King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. (On my last trip to Spain, President Juan Carlos had remembered my telling him of my nostalgia about Granada and took Hillary and me back there.  After thirty years I walked through the Alhambra again, in a Spain now democratic and free of Francoism, thanks in no small part to him.)" [Clinton, My Life, 172]

The group perked up, either owing to the content of the message or the fact that I delivered it in my best Bill Clinton voice.

Group Leader Spotlight: Jeremy Van Hof

We've come across several EF Group Leaders who write their own group blogs, passing on information about their tours to their travelers. But I haven't seen any better than the one Jeremy Van Hof writes.

Jeremy is an English and newspaper teacher at DeWitt High School in DeWitt, Mich., and he maintains a blog for his tour this summer to Italy and Spain. Not only does Jeremy's blog include important information about his group's meetings and tour specifics, but it also includes interesting posts and video about his group's destination, and even general travel details that others might find useful.

We first found out about Don't Forget Your Toothbrush on Jeremy's blog. And, this past weekend, Jeremy had a couple interesting of posts on how much spending money to bring on tour and a link about the euro.

Jeremy also plans to blog while on tour. He did the same thing two years ago on an EF tour to London and Paris.

Jeremy is currently featured in the Group Leader Spotlight in the March issue of the EF Travel Tribune, our online magazine. We asked Jeremy some specifics about his blog and even blogging on tour. There are excerpts in the Travel Tribune, and you can read the full interview with Jeremy below.

If you have a blog for your own group that you'd like to share, we'd love to know about it. You can post it in comments below or just email me.