First Day in Italy: Ancient Pomeii

After some wonderful sunny weather in Scotland, having lived in Portugal and not been in proper heat for a few years – we were very ready for arriving in 30 degrees.

Or so we thought.

We flew easyjet with only hand luggage so you know the deal, wear as much as you can, right? That was fine in Scotland at 5am. We stepped of the plane peeling clothes off and cursing our hiking boots pouring in sweat at 11am in Naples.

There were no direct flights from Edinburgh to Catania so we decided to stay one night in Naples and fly to Catania the next day.

Our first impression of the city wasn’t a great one, I wont lie, it looked a total dump. Everything run down, peeling paint the least of anyones worries, windows were caving in!

Welcome to Andorra

Andorra is a tiny country in the Pyrenees between France and Spain where David’s older brothers live. It’s also where we had our first holiday together some 4 years ago.
It’s a beautiful little country best known for duty free shopping and skiing.

La Boqueria and the Backstreets of Barcelona

The other day Yoli (David’s aunty) and Manolo (her boyfriend) took is to the market just off the main Rambla. Ramblas are kind of like avenues where the pedestrians have priority on a big paved area with roads either side, like the opposite of a normal road with pavements.
This is the most touristic Rambla in Barcelona so its always packed with people, stalls and cafes.

Two Days in Paris: Our Last Day

We began our second day with a trip to the bakery. Needless to say we could have eaten everything in the place. It looked and smelt so good!

We settled on croissants, tart tatin for me and a lemon tart for David which we took outside to sit in the sun.
The croissants weren’t anything special which was a bit of a let down but the tarts were delicious.

After breakfast we headed to the Louvre. Like the day before we headed in the general direction of the river and landed up right outside the gates to the garden!
Those cars were for rent, at 89€ an hour! I mean, what would you do with a Ferrari in the middle of a city this big?!

I imagine the gardens must be spectacular in spring, but in winter there wasn’t much to see, except tourists. We got to the Louvre with the decision of going inside price dependent.

And then we saw the queues.

I think we really changed our minds when we realised it went all the way around the pyramid…

So we continued our journey through Paris using nothing but metro and bus maps. Note the iconic metro entrance ;)

Until we reached the sacre coeur.
Another stunning building!

Which was totally worth climbing up here for.

We sat in the sun admiring it before heading back down all the steps in search of the Moulin Rouge.
We went a bit off track and found this church instead. I don’t know what religion it is from (or for, I guess) but I have never seen such a colourful one and really liked it.

Shortly after we found the Moulin Rouge. I must say, it was considerably less impressive without the giant elephant!
We wandered into the foyer and the pictures of the shows look amazing. And I guess the whole thing is much more impressive at night…

Afterwards we headed home to have something to eat and pack our bags. I went out again and tried to do some drawings of the parisian buildings but they didn’t work out at all.
In the evening an old friend of David’s came round for a drink with her boyfriend. They are both portuguese and moved to Paris to have a better life, which they have financially but lack a social life. We got some take-away pizza and wine and stayed up way too late chatting away.
Its a shame they haven’t managed to find any friends there though. All his colleagues are portuguese and she works alone as a cleaner. I can imagine its difficult making relationships without a stable starting point such as I had with college when I moved to England. But it cant be impossible. I hope they work it out…

And so our brief stay in Paris came to an end the next morning when we got our bus to an airport in the arse end of nowhere (thanks ryanair!).

I can’t say it blew me away, to be honest I don’t really see what all the fuss with Paris is about. Very, very good marketing? The city of love, the city of light. I have never seen so many homeless and so many dodgy street vendors. Everywhere you go there is some guy trying to sell you a mini Eiffel Towers or bracelets. I don’t criticise these people because I know they wouldn’t be doing it if they had a choice. Some can be quite aggressive, we saw one guy literally grabbing onto a girls arm rattling Eiffel Towers at her.

There are whole families living in public parks. What kind of future are those kids going to have? Growing up on the streets. Used as pickpockets because the law can’t do anything with them. We all criticise these people and look down on them. But how can they do any better in a society that doesn’t let them?
Davids friend said that you see so many homeless people with pets because they can’t be taken to the homes with animals so they are left alone. They don’t want to be taken to the homes because there they are robbed and abused.
Can you imagine that being your world?

Two Days in Paris: the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame

So we woke up on our first day and couldn’t get out of the building. A great start to the day! We got out of the flat fine – thats normal. Climbed down the stairs:

Through the courtyard and into the foyer. Where there is a huge door between us and the world, with a little door inside it. Which we couldn’t open. We tried all sorts and eventually accidentally discovered a button (that looks exactly like the lightswitch) which opens it.

Out in the open we where greeted by the first of many space invaders :) spot some more throughout the post…

Paris is pretty. But it does look mostly the same. Its very elaborate, very yellow and tall. Huge buildings tower all around you unless your by the river. Obviously nothing compared to skyscrapers but I still found it a bit claustrophobic at times.

The traffic is crazy! There are so many motorbikes and mopeds. And they seem to drive on pavements too!! Just a bit scary.

Before we left our apartment we had looked for the nearest tourist info thingy to get a map. We managed to get to the square where it should have been, but never found one. Seeing as we had got that far without a map we figured we could make it to some top attractions and definitely find one there.
We would begin by heading to the river because David had an idea which direction that was in.

We made it to Pont Alexandre III! From which we could see the Eiffel Tower – our next destination!

We decided to keep to the river to avoid getting lost. As we where walking along I saw a ring on the floor at the same time as another guy, he picked it up and asked if it was ours as we passed, we said it wasn’t and where about to keep on going when he appeared to offer it to me. It was a horrid ring. But I didn’t want to be rude and accepted with a bad ‘merci’ and a smile. He nodded and turned away. Then came back and asked for money for “coca-cola” I faltered but David stood his ground. They guy asked for the ring back and walked away, only to make a U turn and join a girl who had been waiting up the road. It wasn’t a big deal, I hardly wanted the ring. I guess it was just disappointing to see what appeared to be a random act of kindness turn into a money scheme so quickly.

We made it to the Eiffel Tower which was under construction. Nothing major though so it hardly made much difference. At first I thought it was part of it! I had never never noticed all the swirly parts on the arc before.

We wanted to see the Notre Dame next, which is quite far away from the Eiffel Tower so we decided to walk through the city a bit, instead of sticking to the safety of the river.
On our way we found the building Napolean is tomb is in!

David and a tank from the 1st world war.

We came out by the river again and wandered by a public street game area. Nobody seemed to be using it but still a cool idea :)

A fancy gallery.

The Louvre which frankly kicked its butt.

A beautiful bridge.

Which turned out to be normal but covered in padlocks.

And we arrived at the Île de la Cité (the island in the middle of Paris) where the Notre Dame is.

Somewhere in between we popped into a nice little restaurant for lunch…

Anyway, we found the Notre Dame. God knows why the Eiffel Tower is the Parisian icon. It is amazing!

The amount of work that has gone into this building is insane. It took 200 years to build. Imagine that 200 years! You could just stare and stare at it, there is so much to see.

All of the gargoyles are different, maybe they where all carved by different people…

And if you thought it was all about the facade… Check out the back! I dont know which side I like the most.

Its free to go inside! We couldn’t believe it! My camera is so terrible without flash but you get the idea…

Bellow the Notre Dame is an archeological crypt which we also visited. It was great, it gave us an idea of why Paris is where it is and how it has changed over the centuraries.

There is an excellent interactive screen showing creation of the Notre Dame. Look at the dates!

To finish off our day we went to a Hannah’s house for dinner. A friend of mine who is studying in Paris. It was brilliant to catch up and see a familiar face!

Our Last Days in Belgium

They really snuck up on us this time. I don’t know where the last week went!

On saturday night Inne and I cooked a Thai feast. It was excellent. I can’t remember the names of everything we made though… There where two noodle dishes, a yellow curry with jasmin rice, asian greens and chicken satay with peanut sauce and baby cucumber salad. The photo doesn’t so it justice at all!
Mmmm-mm! There was way too much food!

That day we also finished painting the doors upstairs using crazy thai paintbrushes because we ran out of normal ones and had no turpentine to clean the others (Mie accidentally bought oil based paint). But they look cool, all in different shades of blue.

On Sunday we packed our bags. I can’t say I’m getting any better at it… God knows how its going to fit on a plane again. Davids really good at it though so hopefully he will help! I guess the fact I shrunk a load of his clothes in the dryer works to his favour in that case :/

We spent the rest of the day hanging out and I had a couple of skype dates. When it came to saying goodbye Mie gave us one of her lovely bowls! And Belgian chocolate! Its so sweet of her, and it was one of my favourites, I wonder if she knew…

We went with the girls to Louven, where they live and study, for our last night. It was funny visiting student accommodation again, it reminded me of my friends back in England. They live in a huge house, with 20 students! Its actually two houses that have been merged together… It was really cool, Coco came too and we drank belgian beer and chatted away. Inne told us about this bar where you get a boiled egg with your drink. We convinced Eirin to come too, even though she was in her pyjamas, but it turned out it was closed :( but we still had a fun night!

The next day Inne didn’t have to go to university until the afternoon so she gave us a tour of Louven :) Its a really pretty town. I’m going to miss the funny belgian houses. She took us to the university library which apparently is in the top 10 most beautiful libraries. I can believe that.

We went inside and it was like being in Hogwarts! With all the arched ceilings and the zig zagging stair cases which unfortunately didn’t move :(

One of the studying rooms. Unfortunately tourists aren’t allowed to go on the balconies…

Hiking up to the asian library…

Admiring the old books. Some were huuuge!

Spiral staircase reinforcing the Hogwarts feel ;) You have to book to go up it to the bell tower though…

Model of said tower. Isn’t it beautiful? People don’t have the patience for building things like this anymore…

Back outside, Inne showed us around the city centre which is also full of intricate buildings.

It was great having Inne with us, she’s so friendly and full of life. She gave us a great tour.

This street is literally all bars, one after another. Its called the longest bar in europe. And this photo is just a bit of it! At the bottom is a school!

We walked through a garden to the canal.

Where Inne told us how she and a friend floated around the city on a blow up bed. They plan to do it again once it gets warm and there are a bunch of other people who want to too. It sounds like such fun (Miranda reference ;p).

We headed home for sandwiches via this village which is inside the city!

And secret short cut ;)

We reached the clock just in time to see the little guy hitting the bell!

After sandwiches in Inne’s tiny garden it was time to get the train to Brussels and then the bus to Paris. Inne gave me a book for the journey.
I’ve finished it already, its a great book! Such a beautiful story.

We got the megabus for just over 10€ each. I had faith it would be a good journey, the last megabus I got in England was great! This one wasnt. It was super old and absolutely packed with people coming from Amsterdam. The couple in front of us kept chewing each others faces and the girl behind had her feet in my chair. Needless to say it was a relief to get off 4.30 hours later….

Ghent

We both really liked Ghent. Its a university city so its full of students on bikes. Really full. There are literally bikes everywhere! Its also like a huge real Bruges. By real I mean lived in. Not that people don’t live in Bruges, but it doesn’t feel like it, its like walking around a huge museum. Where as Ghent feels like a working, breathing city.

Its full of canals, ponds and gardens.

And ducks. Sometimes also found outside of the gardens! Just after we took this picture she proceeded to cross the road, startling many drivers and almost giving me a heart attack!

It has an actual castle! Its pretty small but still impressive. We where going to go inside but it was expensive and we weren’t mad about seeing a torture museum…

The Use-it map really hypes up the street art in Ghent, every street with graffiti is marked with a little spray can and they go on about how arty the town is. Needless to say we had expectations. Not massive ones, but we expected to see some good stuff. Especially on the street where its “tolerated”.

Said street:

And the photo makes it look better than it is! Just tags all over the place, some aren’t even attempts at looking good. Its a real shame, I have always thought that given the space and acceptance street artists can thrive and beautiful walls are the result. Not that it doesn’t work elsewhere that is. I wonder if its so bad here because its right next to a school so there is no respect and people gave up on making an effort. But thats not really an excuse either.

But it was enough of an excuse for us to persevere. We decided to trek to the industrial area across the bridge to see an abandoned factory which Use-it suggests as the perfect place to begin a graffiti walk featuring some of Belgians best street artist.

What a…..shame! At least there where some ok ones but nothing extrodinary. Hardly worth putting on a map!

We gave up on street art and went to the textile museum instead. Its a cool muesum, and only costs 2€ for under 25s. There is a good balance between general Belgian life through the ages and the evolution of textile production.

The only trouble was that the English guide was a bit out of date, it referred to parts that must not exist any more and left out others. But it wasn’t too bad on the first floor. But in the other floors had a different layout, more random, instead of a set path. One floor was kind of interactive with personal messages placed next to objects or pieces of writing describing working during the industrial revolution. Matching what goes with what was so dificult, and some stories seemed to continue through the exhibition… Its not the same looking through a book for the information…

Davids highlight:

We couldn’t really get a good photo because of the reflection from the glass, check out the jelly mould though! If you can spot it… And the piping bag!

We reached the end of the production of cotton as we know it!

On another note: 17th century hot chocolate ROCKS! Its tiny (my cup) but so incredibly delicious! David had a mixture of white and dark chocolate, a bit too sweet for my taste, his super cool mug kept it hot for so long we strated using my empty one to scoop bits out!

We walked to the various towers of Ghent… This one had just been through 50 years of renovations.

This one is paired with the controversial modern barn.

And this one will have to be for another time.

We where both pretty tired and decided to head back to the train station via the red light district – We had never been to one and were curious. I already knew I wouldn’t really like it, but it was horrible! So sad, all these beautiful girls, probably my age, behind glass. Well, for sale! Some just sat on stools, others chatted together, some made an effort and danced others just smoked and looked bored. I couldn’t look any of them in the eye, I could hardly look at all. A bit of a downer to end our day on…

A Trip Across the Harbour and a Night Out with the Family

One afternoon David and I got the little free ferry across the harbour to the slightly wilder side of Oostende.
Its where the fishing boats are and the fish is sold.

There are clear reminders of war here.

Including a bunker built by Napolean!

Which has been decked out with a restaurant. I mean, can you think of a nicer place to eat an overpriced dinner?

We went inside, a bit, because to go any further we would have to pay and David became very disheartened with the fake coin machine. It wasn’t one of the squashing ones :(

It was a nice day, so we wandered over the sand dunes and then checked out the fishing boats. I think somebody was getting a bit nostalgic…

On friday night we came here again as part of a demonstration against the proposal of pulling down the fish market to build more flats or holiday lets or something.

It would be a shame, Oostende has so little heritage left, you would have thought they would want to preserve as much as possible.

It took us a little while to actually find the demonstration, which is never a great start… There were quite a few people though, I’m not great at guessing, but I would say over a hundred. Which on reflection, isn’t that many really…

It was funny.
We all stood around for the speeches surrounded by people with glow sticks, lanterns and fire tourches. Which were almost burnt out by the end of the speeches. Then a marching band appeared! It drummed away and we watched, a photo was taken and then they walked off drumming until someone pointed out that perhaps we should follow them. We marched around, through the big corridor of said building, which smelt strongly of fish and amplified the drumming. I can’t blame Jorick for getting a head ache. We came to the end of our walk at a stool selling delicious fried fish simply on a bit of bread. Some kind of sole I think, there were no bones and mine was a little crispy which I liked :)

The next part of the evenings plan was to see a band at a little gallery near home but we turned up and it looked closed. Jorick celebrated, until we realised it wasn’t. Then there were no tickets left anyway, so he celebrated again. We wandered into town and place after place were closed. By now it became quite a joke that Jorick had put some spell on them. He wanted to go home.

But we battled on to the city centre, which isn’t far at all, like 10 to 15 mins walk, and found a great little bar with a huge mixture of music. Ranging from Manu Chau to Tom Odell. The whole family seem to know all the words to every song! Especially the daughters. They battle for the names of artists and often yell out names in unison.

It was such a nice atmosphere with everyone chatting away and guessing songs, which David and I were hopeless at, some dancing and lots of laughing.

It was about time we tried some Belgian beer. We already had french fries. Which are called that because apparently frying is also called frenching. Huh, spellcheck doesn’t agree that is a word… Well, thats what a belgian told me anyway!
Those who know me, yes because its not just friends and family following my blog anymore ;) will know I’m not a fan of beer. Which is to put it nicely. So Kris, the dad, chose me a girly cherry beer, which was pretty good, kind of similar to cider but more err… Full bodied? I don’t know how to explain it. David tried a few different beers, everyone did, like trying wines, everyone takes sips of each others and talks about them. They all come in different glasses, some remarkably like wine glasses down to the tall thin stem. I was surprised to find I quite liked a couple of beers. They are much higher in alcohol than what we are used to in the UK and Portugal, at about 9% and don’t make me feel so bloated. Some are even kind of creamy on the palet. There are hundreds of beers here, god knows how people can remember them. Then again, no different from wine I guess…

Our Last Day in Austria

I didn’t mention how we stayed at Clemen’s flat when we saw the classical music. Actually, I didn’t mention much at all in that post. So, I guess a little catch up is in order.
The whole thing came about because I wanted to see a friend of mine who lives in the south of Austria and we decided to meet in Vienna. Cle had previously invited us to spend the night at his anytime, so David suggested going to see a concert and making the most of his generosity. Anyway, we had a lovely time although we didn’t see an awful lot of him between Viky and the music. To make up for it we decided to pop by on thursday, the day we left, as our train wasn’t until 8pm. We would be arriving early with René for work and Cle invited us for breakfast.

We where up at 6.45, having packed our bags the night before there wasn’t much to do but double check we hadn’t left anything and strip the bed. We wanted a bit of time to say goodbye too. As I went into the kitchen I was greeted, as most mornings, by a grin from little Raphael. Its lovely to start the day with a burst of sunshine. Maybe its not quite so for his parents whose day begins at 5 am, but certainly for me. I fed him breakfast and practiced making funny noises with him and it was time to go. We bid goodbye to him and Elke, gave the cats quick cuddles (well, the ones that let us) and a quick treat for Benji, the pony. I never did let Nelly kiss me, bless her, sweet little dog.

We ended up saying goodbye to René on the tube, with squeezed hugs and our bags balanced at our feet. They have been so kind to us and we may never see them again. It’s curious. We have had a lovely time and felt so welcomed in their home and life. Like briefly being part of their family. Then again, perhaps we will stumble across them somewhere. Who knows? I think its part of the magic of Workaway and traveling in general… René told us about how he met the children he had known while travelling in Australia when they came to Europe years later, theres no chance Raphael will remember us though. Maybe we will find retired Elke and René in South America or somewhere else hot, haha.

We arrived at Cle’s beautiful state of the art rooftop flat to a delicious breakfast of warm bread, mushroom and spring onion omelette, variety of cheeses and cold meats. I love the breakfast culture here! It was great, we chatted for ages but eventually had to leave him to work. Following his suggestions we explored the other side of the city, we had planned to visit the Palace, but at this time of the year the gardens wouldn’t have looked great. We checked out this crazy building which kind of looked like a Gaudi rip off.

We wandered through a huge park and onto the brand new university campus which is very fancy. Full of crazy spaceship-like architecture.

Out the other side was an abandoned, or at least closed, amusement park. It was a little creepy, some parts looking really run down. The only thing that was open was the ferris wheel, which I eventually gave in to going on.
It’s really old, built in 1897, according to Wikipedia it was the tallest ferris wheel from 1920 to 1985. It even survived the war! There was a little museum like area before going on with moquettes of different eras in Vienna inside the old carriages.

As we waited for our turn (there was another couple on it at the time) we watched the carriages go by, so e of them had clothed tables with biscuits and others comfy chairs. Our graffitied carriage with a bench on it eventually turned up. You would have thought that they would put us in a nice one seeing as there was no one else around! We didn’t even see the options when getting our tickets, not that we were too bothered.
I felt quite sick as we where half way to the top, looking down definitely hadn’t helped. The views were beautiful though!

We found a bite to eat and walked along the river, then back towards the centre to visit Cafe Centrale where Freud used to play chess! It was just stunning inside and the cakes looked amazing although we were both full from lunch and couldn’t really face spending so much on a little cake… On reflection I wish I had just gone for it, who cares if I had felt sick!

After our coffee we headed to the shopping district, via the out of place spanish church, to find some shoes for David. We went in a crazy shop with two floors and two shop assistants, when we asked for David’s size in a shoe, to our surprise he simply yelled at the guy upstairs and eventually a box dropped into his hands! He was quite entertaining to watch, friends of his kept coming in and out, which he would greet with hand flaps and high pitched “ohhh”s. Amazingly the second pair of shoes David tried on were perfect! After visiting three shoe sops last time we were in Vienna, I was expecting him to give up and get some online! They were down from 80€ to 30€ too and made in Germany. Are shoes like cars?!

With his new purchase on foot, we headed back to Cle’s to collect our stuff and go for dinner. Cle had suggested his favourite indian, which sounded great as I have been craving a curry for a while now. But we were on a tight schedule and there was two big groups at the restaurant. We ended up in a very good and rather pricy traditional Viennese restaurant which was wunderbra! I had a delicious pumpkin, basil and mozzarella lasagne with wasabi cream (well maybe not so traditional), David had a Schnitzel with an amazing salad and Cle had chicken breast with lemongrass, risotto and some sauce. It was all beautifully presented and scrummy.
We finished just in time to dash to the underground and find our train in Westbahnhof.

Goodbye Austria, for now :)

P.s. I don’t know if this is totally true, but apparently the americans get mixed up between Australia and Austria (so if you send post here from America make sure to underline Europe) they would come here and look for kangaroos. As a result, you can find these everywhere!