¡Un Poco Loco!

Barcelona

Well we’ve been looking forward to Spain for a while and we finally made it, first stop Barcelona. The first hostel we stayed at was madness, felt like a massive Saturday night every night of the week. No wonder really, since a litre of beer was €1.50 during happy hour at the hostel bar. Spent a few days in an apartment (for hostel prices!) after that so we could get some chill out time.

Barcelona is one of the least Spanish cities in Spain but it’s a great place all the same. It’s been the food highlight of Europe, a great place to party and perfect for strolling round the many sights. The jamon (basically the Spanish equivalent of proscuitto) here is phenomenal, as are patatas bravas (slightly spiced fried potatoes covered in allioli). It’s popular in Spain for restaurants to offer a “menu del dia”, which is a set menu that often changes daily or weekly, depending on what is available. They’re great value as they normally include a starter, main, bread, dessert or coffee and a glass of beer or wine for under €10! The best part is that the food is amazing at some of them, especially one we found in Barcelona.

A lot of the popular sights are architectural works by the renowned Antoni Gaudi, whose style is a weird mix of Disney and the Bible. The most impressive and well known is La Sagrada Familia, which was begun in 1882 and is planned to finally be finished in 2026! Unfortunately, it’s surrounded by cranes and lots of other building equipment so it’s hard to get a decent photo. Other places of note were the 1992 Olympic Village, the main street (touristy but still quite cool) and the two ports. We also had a great couple of days with Loic (Frenchy in UK) and his mate from France. Chériiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Valencia

Next stop on the “can’t wait for Alicante” journey was Valencia. This city had a great feel to it and lots of cool things to see. It’s full of a range of really nice architecture, some of it as weird as Gaudi’s stuff but a lot nicer to look at. The “City of Arts and Sciences” has the coolest buildings around but the more traditional stuff in the old town is also pretty impressive. Checked out the bull ring too, which is quite a cool building.

We visited the science museum, which is one of the amazing buildings in the “City” I just mentioned. It was full of interesting info and aimed at kids so everything was interactive. Kept us entertained for hours! We also went to a special exhibit on the Titanic in the same complex. All good stuff.

We spent a day down at the waterfront too. Wandered down the nice beach and checked out the headquarters for our failure to regain the America’s Cup. What a great year for NZ sport! The Cup Village was quite nice though, must’ve been going off when the racing was on. Unforuntately we didn’t get down here in time for that and we were a week early for the final round of the Moto GP so we didn’t get to see that either. Next time, eh…

Alicante

This is where we finally stopped travelling (for now anyway), and have been living for just over a month. It appears to be one of the few places in Europe that still has sunshine and beach weather in the "Winter", and has some of the cheapest wine and beer on the continent - we´re pretty happy with that. The main part of the town is actually pretty small, towering over it is this hill with a medieval fortress on it with some pretty mint views of the area. There´s also (of course) the beach and a marina with some pretty expensive looking gear in it. For nightlife there is the infamous "Barrio" which is a maze of streets in the old town which is jam packed with bars - from hazy memories this is usually pretty fun...

Our apartment is pretty mint, only a stones throw from the seaside and not more than 5 -10 minutes walk to anywhere in town. After 9 months on the road it's been pretty good to have our own rooms and a kitchen and a bathroom and a washing machine... - all the things we took a bit for granted back home. We also have an awesome balcony that looks out over the street and gets uninterrupted sun for most of the day. Two weeks in we were joined by Fran and Ellen from home, and since my birthday party have picked up one more flatmate in our old pal Scotty.

The downside is that while this place is pretty touristy in the summer, there´s not a lot of work in the down season, hence we are all officially unemployed, bar Marcus´s few hours a week teaching English! In fact a typical day goes as follows:

9:00am - Get up and go for a run, then a swim in the sea, followed by some "Maori Gym" at home.

10:45am - Make breakfast, by this time the sun has hit the balcony so sit out there, drink coffee and read a book/do sudoku/play guitar.

12:00am - Leave the apartment and do some activity that justifies our existence (e.g. go to the beach, do some emails, go to the supermarket)

2:30am - Think about lunch, have lunch, talk about how good lunch was, think about dinner, more reading/sudoku/guitar, have a siesta if last night was a big one.

6:00am - Start talking about dinner, maybe go for a stroll down the marina, go down to the shops to buy some more beer.

8:00pm - Watch Walker Texas Ranger (in Spanish) and cheer for Chuck. If you are Marcus go to work.

8:55pm - Watch Family Guy (also in Spanish!).

9:30pm - Have dinner followed by cards, misc games, drinking

Midnight - Go to bed, it´s been a busy day.

Benidorm

This place really sucks. Dont go there.

Madrid

Because we figured out how to ride the French rail system for free (email us if you want to learn how) we had a few trips left to use on our Eurail pass so decided to go to Madrid for a few days. In fairness I think Madrid was a pretty nice city with a lot to see, but it was $*%&&% freezing! We left our cosy wee beach side apartment and 25+ temperatures, for daily highs of 8 and overnight lows below freezing! Not cool man. In fact we were so cold (we dont own many warm clothes), and our hostel was so unexciting that in the two days we were there we watched three movies at the cinema, just to get out of the cold! When we did venture out we saw some pretty cool old churches, the royal palace and the train station which has this cool indoor jungle. Then we went home.

Birthday Surprise!

Well, as most of you probably know, Kev is now 25!! Happy Birthday buddy!! Somehow he didn’t manage to find out that I’d organised a surprise party for him. So he was in an absolute state of shock for about 30 mins after opening the lounge doors to find a room full of Kiwis and Norwegians! Top notch. Big thanks to those that made the trip, it made for an awesome night. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a great memory for Kev too… at least up until the Aquavit came out! Any guesses for who was first to bed!?!

Sacre Bleu!!!

Belgium in Brief

After Holland, we headed south to check out Belgium for a few days. Brussels and Brugges were our only stops here and both towns seem like there was a bit of an architect battle going on back in the day. Each amazing building looks like it's been built to outdo the one next door or across the street. Not much happening in either place really but the cobbled streets and interesting architecture made for a nice bit of wandering round. Bit of a shame about the grey skies and cold temperatures though.

Being a nation of foodies did make for a few tasty treats as well. We had a goose pate with a fresh baguette that was phenomenal. A couple of the local specialties, steamed mussels with pommes frites and, of course, Belgian waffles really delivered too. Surprisingly, we didn't actually sample many of the local brews however.

Nice Times in Nice

We were originally planning on touring around the north of France for a bit after Belgium, before meeting up with a few mates in Paris. However, the cold weather really wasn't agreeing with our preferred attire of shorts and jandals. So instead, we shot down to Nice for four nights to get our first look at the Med.

The weather down there was brilliant, as was the hostel we stayed at, so it turned out to be a great choice. One of our days was spent strolling around the old town and along the beach front, just taking in the sights and enjoying the warm sun. Went for a swim just round the coast at Cap 'd Ail too. The water was so clear and nice. The good food also continued, no surprises really. Lots of different cheeses and treats from the multitude of boulangeries and patisseries made for good eating throughout our time in France.

On another day we caught the bus to the hilltop village of Eze to check out the view and the cool little winding alleys up there. After that we continued on to the mega rich playground that is Monaco. The boats, cars and other obvious displays of serious cash are mindblowing. We managed to spend an hour just wandering around the harbour. Took me a while to pick out the one I want.

Also had a couple of good nights on the booze since our hostel had 500mL beers for €1 and cheap wine and sangria too. The hostel was actually a few kms back from the center of Nice so instead of heading out, everyone just stays there and gets on it. Good times.

Paris

Well Paris was pretty amazing, it has to take the award so far for the city with the most things to see and do. Most European cities might have a couple of impressive churches and a museum or two but Paris just kept on giving! On our first day we probably set some sort of walking record, walking around the city from 9am to 9pm with only a couple of stops to eat and to go into places. Although it felt like it was nigh on freezing outside it was an awesome day weatherwise so we got round most of the main sights like Sacre-Coeur, Notre Dame, Champs-Elysees, Saint Michel, Arc de Triomphe... I wont go on about each one but they were all awesome, spectacular and any other adjectives that come to mind. On another day we went to the Louvre which was also verycool, you could literally run round that place and it would still take hours to see everything.

Im no art critic, in fact I think I was officially the worst in my class in 4th Form art, but Im going to have to say that the Mona Lisa turned out to be a bit overated. Yes it´s a lovely painting, prehaps has some mysterious message and certainly puts my faunicating stick figures to shame, but at the end of the day its probably the smallest painting in the Louvre and personally I think there were some much nicer paintings in the main galleries. Same goes with the Venus de Milo, nice but it doesn't stand out any more than the rest. Shows what I know about art I spose...

Le Rugby

The main point of being in Paris at this time was to watch the All Blacks win the Rugby World Cup. But as most of us know all too well that didnt eventuate, so on the night of the final we went with Scott and Fran to watch it on the big screen by the Eiffel Tower. We were cheering for South Africa but were probably out numbered 20 to 1 by English supporters. It was a good atmosphere but turned a bit crazy after there game, as you can imagine after thousands of drunk Englishmen watch their side go down. The riot police came out in full kit, someone somewhere has a good photo of us just about to wear a batton in the face. There was also a 100+ man game of drunken rugby that started nearby that we got involved in. Good times.