¡La Vida Loca!

Road Trippin'

Before leaving Alicante, we decided to go for a road trip down south to see a bit more of Spain. With the the car packed, the tunes pumping and the sun shining, we headed for Albuñuelas, just outside Granada. After a pretty uneventful journey, we found ourselves in the coolest little Spanish village. It was just like we’d imagined Spain to be, white-washed buildings nestled up the side of a valley, with steep and narrow cobbled roads heading off every which way. The surrounding slopes were covered with olives, almonds and oranges and the view down the valley was fantastic.

We had no worries filling our days with activities while down there. Went for an 18km trek in the hills surrounding our village. Spent a day out at Almuñécar, on the coast, enjoying the sun and taking in the sights. Then from the warmth of the coast, to the snow of Sierra Nevada, where falling of sleds and snow fights were the order of the day. Also had a day wandering around Granada, which is a really nice old city and not just because you get free tapas with your drinks!

The most well known highlight of the trip was Alhambra, the famous palace in Granada. Ancient and impressive, it easily filled in our activity for that day. The grounds contain several fascinating buildings and the surrounding gardens make for a great place to stroll through afterwards...

And Fran also managed to hand squeeze eight litres of orange juice! It also cost us nothing, since we just nicked a few bagfuls of oranges from the masses of trees around the place...

Christmas / Navidad

We spent a good part of December with at least four or more people in the Alicante appartment, which was good times, unfortuately though it emptied out a bit towards the end until somehow it was back to just the two of us. While we're fairly used to each others company by now, Christmas just isnt a two player game, so we packed in Alicante and headed up to Barcelona to hang with Fran, Elen and a nice young Australian guy who turned up somewhere along the way... For an Xmas away from home we did pretty well, we all managed to buy presents, make Xmas crackers and as we had hired an appartment with an oven, Marcus proceded to whip up an amazing Christmas dinner! We even made it down to Church in the morning, but couldnt quite follow what was going on, something about this guy called "Hey Zeus"??? Then we went to the zoo on Boxing Day.

New Years / Años Nueva

We were contemplating staying in Barcalona for New Years, but had the offer to go up to Pamplona to meet some dutch friends. So we did. Pamplona is famous for the running-of-the-bulls, but outside of that there isnt much to see as a tourist. It was a nice city however, lots of "old world charm" as they like to say, and the people there were noticably much more polite than other Spaniards we've met. We spent New Years in a small village nearby called Tafalla with only 11,000 people, staying now with friends of friends who made us feel very welcome.

Now the drill for New Years Eve for the last few years in NZ has consisted of champagne for breakfast, eating and drinking for a good part of the day/night, making it to midnight then partying on for a few more hours. It's a bit different in Spain however. Nothing much happened unitl around 9pm when we sat down for an awesome dinner of Spainsh meats followed by Stam-pot (basically pimped out mashed potatoes) made by the dutch contingent. The Spainsh family we were with also put some wine on the table that was older than I was! The tradition in Spain is to eat 12 grapes with the 12 chimes of the clock at midnight - this brings you good luck for the next year, and having completed this I feel confident that absolutely nothing can possibly go wrong for me in 2008. Nothing.

We rolled down to the bars at 1am, which were pretty quiet... beacause we were early! By 1:30am the place was packed and going off. For a tiny town we managed to crawl through six or so bars (and there were plenty we missed), all packed to the gills with young people. Madness. For those of you from NZ reading this, imagine trying to do that in a town the size of Oamaru, I just cant see it happening. Im not sure what time we got home, but we got out of bed mid-afternoon so...

¡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!?!