I heart Barcelona

This blog is in no way comprehensive of our travels... i just can't type it all quick enough.

Thursday 10th June
Arrive in Barca and head straight to the very very beautiful Park Guell which is only 10 minutes walk from us...up a very steep hill! But it was worth it. The view was incredibile, over the whole city right down to the sea. It was like being in a totally different place with all these exotic flowers and giant palm trees. The walkways take you further and further up the park!

Friday 11th June
Got a bit lost today looking for the main street in Barcelona. Ended up first at a cathedral where there was a little 'flea' (expensive antique) market, then it poured with rain and we had no trusty umbrella!
Went through a great food market where everything looked so delicious except the pig head on the butcher stands.

For lunch we stopped on La Rambla...total rip off. We asked for a beer and got served a LITRE at 12 euros! we didnàt want a litre! the paella was also horrible and when we complained we were told we didn't complain soon enough... great
anyway moving on.
We walked along the sea front and found a shopping centre where Rob got his haircut very short. Then we went to the beach which was nice after a long day walking around.

Saturday 12th June
The Sagrada Familia is a fantastic cathedral and when it is eventually finished it will be even better. We went up one of the towers and the details of the carving is incredible! To get back down you go down a tiny spiral staircase which made me feel pretty dizzy and got pretty dark in places too!

Photos

Madrid RainBy the sea in Santander

Massive Candyfloss

ESPANOL

Thursday 3rd June and onto Bibao. A large town on the North Coast of Spain.

The best part was the amazing Guggenheim museum which we went to the nect day. There was a really good Richard Serra exhibition and some odd Anish Kapoor sculptures as well as a puppy made of flowers!

After Bilbao it was on meant to be onto Madrid however we could not find any accommodation for the weekend so on Saturday the 5th we took a very very long train the all through the mountains to Santander... We thought we would spend all weekend on the beach as it is really a beach resort but guess what? It rained.

Santander = BOring

We did find a festival of Spanish culture where some men were dressed as sheep and jumped up and down ringing bells...not sure the significance of that though but it did make the place more interesting.

Monday 7th June

Up mega early at 5 to catch the train to Madrid, on the trains in Spain they x-ray your bags, it's like being at the airport.

We got to Madrid and it was so hot! The room at POP hostel was basic and the bathroom a bit dodgy! However it's in a pretty cool area with lots of narrow streets and individual shops and restaurants. we even manged to find an English bookshop with a full bar. On the ground floor there were literally 20,000 books and above a bar! So we had a couple of drinks and bought a couple of books...

Tuesday 8th June

So hot again. We went to the Prado museum which wasn't my cup of tea, lot's of old religious paintings...very beautiful but there are only so many you can handle in one day.

Then we had lunch where Rob sampled the menu del dia and i opted for chicken! The second museum we went to, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, was much more my thing. They had Paintings of all styles and from all time periods. You weren't just looking at the same thing over and over again. Artists included... Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Manet, Monet, Mondrian and some really Early Van Goghs which you would not recognise to be his at all!

Wednesday 9th June

All morning was spent at the station trying to sort out our train tickets to Barcelona then Milan. When we got there the ticket number was A150..ours was A178! It rained all day so we had to use our 'Paris' umbrella...hmm. Looked around the outside of the Palicio Real then headed to the Bernabeu stadium where we spent ages in the Shop!

Hola Spain

Wednesday 2nd June.

Today we left France and headed across the border to Irun where they didn´t even bother checking our passports. Again the train was travelling a bit to fast to really take in the french landscape...it all looked green, however we did go through Biarittz and it was really sunny with a bright turquoise sea, oddly enough when we got to Spain it was cloudy!! From Irun we got another train to San Sebastian. Here we stayed for a night before heading to Bilbao. San Sebastian had a really long, sweeping, sandy beach with an Island in the middle of the Bay that reminded me of the island in Mamma Mia with the chapel on it! Sleep time and Pension Easo was spotless and it had a tv, Rob did attempt to watch some football but the signal was a bit rubbish. The shared bathroom was also spotless and we never had to queue!

Bordeaux

...by the river in Bordeaux there is a water square that every half and hour or so creates a mist!

Bye Bye Primark Pumps

I am afraid that after 8days of wear my 2pound primark pumps are NO MORE... They had to be thrown away, first because they were falling apart and second because they really really smelt! lovely. The moral of the story is don´t wear primark pumps for walking! Therefore i had to go into a french shoe shop and get some replacement footwear...My french is pretty poor and after trying on a few pairs of size Trente-six (36 or size 3) in the adult section i admitted defeat that they were all to big and went to the childrens section.
The 15 euro beasts....they have given me blisters!

Bordeaux

We took the superfast 3 hour TVG train from Paris to Bordeaux which was kind of a blurrrr. Then we got a tram to somewhere near our hostel no sorry ´Hotel! Whenever I have to walk with my rucksack on it´s a painful process, basically i´m too short for the stupid thing to fit me right and it has to much stuff in it! On first impression i would say Bordeaux is like bath - elegant and relaxed. It´s such a contract from hectic Paris where everything is go go go 24/7.

Tuseday 1st June
Our lunch for 12euros. We didn´t have a clue what we were ordering and to our surprise we got a Massive plate of mussels as a starter. I have never had mussels but i found them delicious so a good choice!
The View from our table

The Mussels!! or Moules plaucha.

Bye Bye Paris, Hello Bordeaux

Paris,
On Sunday we visited the Musee d´Orsay and queued for ages to get in, and it rained...but we had our 5euro umbrella to see us through. It was pretty good to see all the impressionist paintings and the Van Gogh section. My favourites were the Edgar Degas pastel pictures and the Toulouse-Latrec sketches. At lunch decided to eat in the rather pricey Musee d´Orsay restaurant as a treat - Big mistake... again we had to queue for a table as it was so busy and when we eventually got out food, the special "fish and pasta",which was a slab of salmon and a slab of what looked like bass on some pasta it was cold...nice. hmm 20euros well spent i think NOT.
We crammed so much into our 5 days in Paris that it was time for something a little more relaxed - Bordeaux here we come

Bordeaux

So on Monday it was time to bid a fond farwell to paris and make our way down South.

Paris

Paris

Continued....

Next we visited the Musee de l'armee hotel national des invalides which is the french army museum. All the museums in Paris seem to have a scheme running where it is free if you're a student from the EU.

The Ceiling above Napoleon's tomb was actually way more interesting then the tomb (below) itself, however i'm not sure which Napoleon it was?! The poor guy was in five successive coffins which all seems bit excessive for one body!

Thursday 27th May

Day trip to Versailles and it poured down with rain and ever the sensible travellers of course we didn't have waterproofs! So a 5euro umbrella later and we were sorted. When we got there the Palace was closed so we had to trudge round in the rain, but the gardens were lovely. Despite the rain the gardens were the best part of the day because in some parts it was so peaceful and tranquil that it felt you were the only people there.

Our lovely lunch... Rob had Carpaccio de boeuf, raw beef slices and i had linguine tomates yum yum. This was in a quiet part of the gardens in Versailles in a beautiful restaurant called le petit Venise, it must of once been an old barn because all the walls were exposed but it had modern glass tables and candelabras.

The Famous hall of mirrors..If i had moved the camera a few centimetres lower all you would see is a sea of people.

Paris

Monday 24th May

The longest coach journey in the history of the world and a bottle of water leaked in my bag at Exeter so i had to leave my Henry James novel behind -what a shame! The Ferry arrived an hour late at Dover so we didn't board until 01.30 instead of 00.30 so a lovely sleepless night on the ferry, i couldn't even tempt myself with any duty free.

Tuesday 25th May

Arrive in Paris and made our way to Alys' apartment (Thank you Alys) in Michel bizot, we hope we didn't scare Kathy (Alys' flatmate) to death by just turning up at about 9 oclock in the morning when any sensible student is still wisely asleep.

Today all we did was sleep, the coach left us too knackered to do anything else.

Wedesday 26th May

The first day in gay Paree! That means we walked up the Eiffel Tower...and all the way back down again.

The view from the first level looking over the whole of Paris.

Shame about the millions of street sellers or 'the lucky lucky man' as Rob calls them. They wouldn't take no for an answer even if Rob said"Espanol, espanol". Walking definitley gave a whole new experience to the Tour Eiffel, my feet are still dead and it's Sunday. Rob on the other hand is as fit as a fiddle. Must do more walking when i get home. Being underneath the Tower was really impressive, you just don't appreciate the scale of it until you are right next to it!