Blog, Travel•
on February 3rd, 2010•
We are home. Back to reality. We left Barcelona in early January heading by train for Marseilles via Montpellier. From Marseilles we travelled through the French countryside to Paris, across to London and up to Ipswich. The snow was everywhere, especially in England where the temperature was -20C in places. We had prepaid accommodation booked in Dublin but flights were cancelled. It seems to arrange for a refund on the tickets that we can’t use from the cancelled flights we must pay almost the same amount. We didn’t want to pay for more accommodation in a frozen London so we headed for home via Los Angeles earlier than planned, staying at Santa Monica beach. This thawed us out and prepared us for a return to a New Zealand summer. And then there was the little adventure of a lost passport …
Blog•
on December 22nd, 2009•
December 21st. Let me tell you about our Barcelona apartment, our home away from home. To get to the apartment one must travel up in a one-person-at-a-time lift to the 6th floor. It is also a one-suitcase-at-a-time lift. You open the outer door, open the inner doors, then shut the outer door, then shut the inner doors. Nothing is automatic. When I step in, I step to the back, especially if I am stepping in at the 6th floor. The floor is soft and it feels like it is giving way underneath me at the spot in the front where everyone steps in. It feels like you take your life in your hands every time you go in the thing. The locals use the stairs a lot in this building.
There seems to be four apartments on each level but we can’t be sure as, for example, we share an outer door with another apartment, then we have an inner door to lock as well. There is also a gate that is locked at night for the whole block of apartments, so we feel very secure. There is even a grill on the bathroom window in case someone tries sliding across a piece of 6 x 2 and clambering across from a neighbouring building. Other windows have a wooden window which we can open, then a glass window behind that which we can open. The side where the washing is hung is six floors straight up, so no extra security needed there.
We have two double bedrooms (as in, a double bed just fits in each) plus a good-sized bathroom and a good-sized kitchen/dining room. There is also a tiny alcove off the dining area that is perfect for a mini-office. We have a microwave and two elements but no oven, a toaster and sandwich maker but no electric jug. We have a fridge and a washing machine.
When we arrived the apartment was freezing and took a lot of warming up. There are two pipes with a mesh over them to allow lots of fresh air in, no doubt an indication of hot summers. Once we had blocked these the place warmed up a bit (heat pump & fan heater but no electric blanket). A work diary wedged with a little stool makes a good hole-blocker.
Blog•
on December 21st, 2009•
December 20th. Barcelona. For two days we went on the Barcelona hop-on hop-off bus. It’s a chance to get a good overview of the city and plan what we would like to see, so we didn’t hop-on or off as such. Then today we went to Montserrat, about an hour’s train ride out of Barcelona. What a stunning day out – the best day since our time away. It was clear and cold (-2 C).
Montserrat is a more than 1,000 year old Monastery 3,000 feet up from the valley floor in an unusual formation of mountains. More accurately, after Napoleon had destroyed the monastery and plundered its assets in the 19th Century the monastery had to be reconstructed, and then more reconstruction was required as a result of the Spanish Civil War. Much of the monastery is closed to the public but the basilica is open, and this is well worth seeing. Smaller than constructions such as Notre Dame, it has a presence about it that makes one aware of the link to more than just us.
The surrounding mountains are what make this monastery so amazing, their jagged and column-like shapes. We wonder how the monastery was able to be built in this rugged environment, and how the railway leading up to it was built. The scenery is breathtaking.
Take the train from Barcelona. You then have a choice between the rack railway and the cable car to complete the journey – we took the rack railway. From the monastery you can take the funicular railway up higher and then walk (or climb) to greater heights so that you are looking down a thousand feet or more onto the monastery.
Anyone coming to Barcelona this is a must do, must see. Our video of the rack railway descent is too long for You Tube so check out someone else’s video from You Tube, it will give you an idea of the scenery, though their day is not as clear as ours was
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PErGKM-b60
Blog•
on December 20th, 2009•
December 19th. Joie de vivre! Joy of living! This may have been an expression invented by the French but it is practiced by the Spanish. The people of Barcelona seem to live life fully. They laugh and cry and argue, then laugh some more. They appear very happy, even when they are in the middle of a heated discussion.
It is interesting being an outsider observing how people behave. French children, including teens, are happy and well-behaved. Spanish children are happy, noisy and somewhat unruly at times. Young French women wrinkle up their noses and physically shrink from anything they consider unappealing, and this especially includes finding themselves beside a larger person on public transport, yet they don’t seem to even notice the amount of doggy do on the footpaths around Paris. More mature French women look pinched, cold, and dissatisfied with life. French men seem aggressive and demanding (perhaps this is why French women look the way they do).
Spanish women of all ages, on the other hand, seem to live, love and laugh much, and generally live life with gusto. Spanish men also seem to enjoy life in the moment, although a little more quietly than the women. Even Police in uniform can be seen wandering up the street chatting away to a colleague with a cigarette in one hand.
Blog•
on December 18th, 2009•
December 17th. Washing day.
But a washing day with a difference as we do it the way it’s done here. I don’t have to beat my washing upon a rock, there is a washing machine. But then to dry it we get to hang out the window and peg it to the clothes line on the outside wall – six stories up! If we drop anything it’s straight down – we won’t see it again as we have no way to reach it. I generously decided to let Ernie peg his stuff out first.
Blog•
on December 17th, 2009•
December 16th. Barcelona. We left a bitterly cold Paris at 2 ̊C and a bitter wind. We travelled down from Paris to Barcelona in an overnight sleeper designed for 4 people ….. allegedly! Ernie and I managed, just. Of course we had a collection of large bags (of the non-human variety) to share the compartment with us as we need enough clothes for business and leisure in a northern hemisphere winter. It was an adventure!
We are now firmly ensconced in our new home for the next three weeks. Our Christmas cards are on the little table in the tiny sun porch and food is in the cupboards. We have yet to go exploring, although shopping at the supermarket was an adventure. Ernie put a recyclable bag in the trolley to reduce the consumption of plastic bags but he got growled at and the checkout operator tut-tutted as she returned it to the stand. He will know better than to try that again. Bought the fruit that sounds like Chinmoyan but in Spanish it’s a Xirimoia.
Things seem marginally cheaper than in NZ, a welcome change from the prices of Tokyo, London and Paris, or Brussels or Amsterdam for that matter.
Blog•
on December 15th, 2009•
December 14th. Sunday in Paris. We went up to the highest point around, and one of Ernie’s favourite places – Montmartre. It offers fabulous views over the city. It is also where Sacré-Cœur looks over the city. We went inside the basilica and it is magnificent. The ceiling especially is well worth the visit, but it is so much more than that.
Today I spent several hours at the Louvre. The Palace of Napoleon III is contained within the Louvre and is elaborate to the point of the extreme. I would feel suffocated by such heavy, elaborate furnishings (and short beds!), objects and chandeliers. It looks stunning. It’s amazing that people lived like that, especially those who were part of a system born out of the overthrow of the Monarchy as a result of their excesses.
When I was in Venice some years ago and went into the old palace and saw the gold on the ceilings, huge paintings on the walls, the sculptures, I thought – ‘Here is the wealth of a nation.’ I had at that time recently been in Bangkok and had been amazed at the golden temples and statures. When I was on the Paris hop-on hop-off bus just last Wednesday we had pointed out some golden statues built in the 1930s, a time when the world was in a severe depression. I think of all of the money that goes into building the palaces, monuments, churches and statues of Europe and other places in the world and I wonder how many people’s lives could have been lifted out of abject poverty with that kind of money. What would the result of that be? How would our world be different now?
But then … we wouldn’t have all those magnificent buildings scattered throughout the world, and we wouldn’t be drawn to them, would we?
Blog•
on December 14th, 2009•
December 13th. On board the Thalys train somewhere between Rotterdam and Antwerp, on our way to Paris. 11.15 am and I have had a small bottle of Louis Montellier Bordeaux sitting beside my laptop waiting for a slightly more suitable time to drink it and I have waited long enough. There is something about thundering through the countryside at 300 kilometres an hour while sipping a Bordeaux. It’s the feeling of adventure.
Wandering through the tiny brick streets last night, looking for a place to eat (Argentinean? Uruguayan? Italian?) it became a matter of who had to best gift of the gab as to which restaurant we ate at. On the street in the Leidseplein waiters were out on the street to persuade you to come into their restaurant. They would promise you free this and extra that, “‘specially for you,” should you like to dine in their restaurant. We dined Italian.
The Mayor has had a clean-up in Amsterdam http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/182348 Gone is the red light district for which Amsterdam was famous.We also notice that the beggars and homeless people also seem to have disappeared. We hope they are warmly accommodated somewhere, I would not like to be homeless in an Amsterdam winter.