For the Benefit of Mr Kite

Antequera is a really pretty city. After almost four days here, it is
still nice to look around the city. Driving around the city is a bit
of a problem for Tomas as cobblestones don´t have the best grip but
he´s doing well.

On our first day here, we decided to take in the sights of the city.
Although it´s a really pretty place, there isn´t that much to actually
see and do. There are lots of churches and nice looking houses but no
museums in the actual town. The town has a bullring but you can´t walk
around it like you can do in Ronda. So we walked down to the bullring
and Vanessa and Tom has churros which apparently are delicious. I
tasted one and didn´t like it. After churros, we walked about the
town, looked at some buildings and walked up the hill to the fortress.
You can´t actually get into the fortress so we walked around it and
managed to come out right at our house. Of course this was a sign that
a siesta was reqiured.

The next day, we set out for Cordoba. Purely because it had the most
things open on a Monday that we wanted to see. Vanessa and Cameron got
to experience an hour long car trip with Tom and I. They are not
coming on a driving holiday with us again.

We had a bit of trouble finding a car park in Cordoba and after
driving around the city (small medieval streets and cobblestones as
usual) we gave up and parked at the shopping centre across the river.

Corboda isn´t a pretty city. It´s quite ordinary. However it does have
a huge cathedral. It used to the mosque when the town was occupied by
the Moors but then the Catholics recaptured the city build their
cathedral inside the mosque which was apparently very tolerant of
them.

We ate meat for lunch. Big plates of meat. It was a quite expensive
lunch but very tasty and the service was the best we have had in
Spain. Probably a good thing seeing as how the meal was over 100
euros.

After lunch we split up, Cameron was going to get his Internet fix and
Vanessa, her shopping fix. Tom and I had already made plans to visit
the Arab baths. We are so glad we went there. It was definitely one of
the highlights of the trip. We had a bath and a massage. The baths
were the traditional arab/turkish/roman affair of starting in the warm
bath. Getting in the hot bath for five minutes and then plunging
yourself into the cold bath for as long as you can stand before
repeating the process. The water must have had a very high salt
content as I could float around in the warm bath quite easily. Even
Tom who normally can´t float was floating a bit. After a few rounds on
warm/hot/cold we were called for our massage which was good and
followed by more bathing and dreaming about having a house that we
could have arab baths in. Eventually we got out of the baths and
headed up to the terrace for some delicious tea (I tried to buy some
Farenn but they didn´t sell it).

On the way home we stopped at the 'supermarket' for supplies. I bought
what we have affectionately called 'Melon Baby'. A giant melon. I´m
not sure what kind of melon it is, but I hope it is the delicious
melon I have been having all over Spain. I put it in the boot of the
car for the trip home but we had to rescue it after a few minutes as
it was rolling around int he boot a bit too much for my liking.
Needless to say, we haven´t massacred melon baby yet.

Decided not to eat dinner due to the large amounts of meat eaten
earlier in the day and had ice-creams for dinner instead which Cameron
very kindly went out and got for us.

Today we went to Ronda. Ronda is a pretty city. It is literally
perched on top of cliffs inbetween a gorge. We set of later than
normal and got there just before lunch so we had enough time to see
the bullring and museum before lunch. The bullring was very
impressive. You get to walk out into the ring and can climb through
the stands as well as see (and smell) the pens where the bulls are
kept. The museum was small but interesting.

After lunch, we headed to La Mina - the mine - which is a set of
Moorish steps cut into the side of the gorge. Apparently you walk down
60 metres to the bottom of the gorge. It didn´t really feel that far
on the way down, but on the way up I am sure there were more steps.
Tom thinks there were about 200 steps in all. It was very cool though
as you are literally walking down inside the rock. Only slipped once.

Saw some more arabian baths today except these ones were not actually
being used anymore.

Unlike Cordoba, there are plenty of places to park in Ronda and we
chose one of the first. It didn´t turn out to be the best choice
though as we had a little trouble getting out. Our car is a Peugeot
207 diesel so it´s a pretty grunty car - so grunty that I have
nicknamed it 'The Beast' or Beastie for short. Despite this power,
Beastie struggled to get up the ramp out of the car park. We gradually
slowed on our way up the ramp until about halfway when Beastie gave up
and stalled. In Beastie´s defense, the ramp must have been slippery so
I´m sure she had some trouble getting traction. Tom valiantly tried to
restart Beastie but she wasn´t having any of it. Eventually, everyone
but Tom had to abandon the car just so Tom could get us out. I blame
the meat from yesterday.

Depsite the carpark incident, Tomas and Vanessa are having churros
right now while Cameron and I are getting our Internet fix.

After at least three days without Internet, I have finally managed to
find an internet cafe. Thank goodness.

Barcelona: The rest of Barcelona wasn´t that exciting. We tried to
have dinner at two restaurants recommended by Lonely Planet, but one
was closed and we couldn´t find the other one. In general, food in
Barcelona was quite disappointing.

We also tried to go shopping in Barcelona. It has a lot shops but not
a lot to buy.

After Barcelona, we headed to Valencia. We spent about 20 euros in
tolls getting to Valencia but it was worth it. We enjoyed Valencia
much more than Barcelona. Again, we stayed in a really nice hostel.
This one had themed rooms. Ours was the country theme which doesn´t
sound very nice but was actually quite tasteful. Tom took a lot of
pictures but my favourite touch was the spoon towel hooks and the fork
toilet roll holder. Valencia had free internet and breakfast too which
was also very pleasing.

The big thing in Valencia is the Cuidad de las Artes y las Ciencias.
It is a big museum complex which happened to be just across the road
from we were staying. It was designed by a famous architect, Santiago
Calatrava and is quite impressive. We both loved the design of the
science museum - like the bones of a whale - but we weren´t so sure
about the art musuem - sort of like a flower. Tom of course took lots
of pictures.

We spent a whole day at the complex, the morning in the science museum
which was quite fun but half the exhibitions were being set-up,
dismantled or refurbuished. At lunch time (which in Spain is at 2pm
minimum) we thought we would head over to the Oceanographic (the
aquarium) for lunch in their restaurant surrounded by fishes but it
was all booked out for lunch and dinner so we didn´t get to eat there.
Had an ordinary lunch in the other restaurant instead.

The aquarium was also fun. Lots of fishes to look at. They had some
seals, walrus and two belugas too. We watched the dolphin show but it
wasn´t that great.

Our restaurant luck improved in Valencia - despite the aquarium
restaurant being closed) and we had two great and very spanish meals.
In Spain, lunch is at 2 as in generally quite a big meal and dinner is
much later around 9-10pm and a smaller meal. The way the ordering
works is that you order your salad or vegetables first as an entree
and then your meat at your segundo or main course. If you have room
after your gigantic plate of meat then you get some calcium but having
dessert afterwards. It took a while to get used to the timing and the
lack of vegetables but now we are experts at it.

We had better luck with the shops in Valencia too. We managed to
stumble across the shoe part of town and spent a while looking at very
nice shoes.

We decided to spend the first of our two nights between Valencia and
Antequera in Denia. A seaside town about an hour south of Valencia.
Again, stayed in a nice place but this one only had free breakfast, no
internet though...Had dinner at a restaurant run by a German women. It
was a very Australian meal - there were vegetables with our meals. Had
the most delicious pumpkin soup that I have tasted ever.

The night day we had a big drive (about 5 hours which is a long time
in Spain) to Lorca our next destination. We arrived with nowhere to
stay and thought it wouldn´t be too hard to find somewhere. The first
place we tried was full so I used my spanish skills to ask the spanish
man to recommend another hotel. He booked us into a place out of town
and gave us directions in spanish and scrawled the address
incomprehisbily on a business card. I suggested that we walk to the
place first to see if we could find it. Not such a good idea. We
walked for about 20 minutes and gave up and had to walk about 30
minutes back to the car. We got in the car around 5:30 and set off.
Unfortunately, the directions were not very helpful and without the
address I could not use my phone to guide us there. We drove around
town for about an hour before we stopped and I asked for directions.
Turns out it was amazingly simple to get there but we just never took
the turn. We were very exhausted by now so it was baths and then bed.

We set of for Antequera at 8:30 the next morning at which time, Spain
is still asleep - partially because the sun hasn´t come up properly
yet. With spain still asleep the trip was fast and I got to listen to
my favourite spanish radio station - Kiss fm - which plays a bizzare
mix of songs but there is not spanish talking. Stopped in a village
about 40 minutes away from Antequera and had a plate of ham for lunch
which was delicious and also the first real tapas that we had on the
trip.

Got to Antequera about 30 minutes after Cam and Ness but didn´t pick
them up for a while (sorry) as we were sorting out the house that we
are renting for the week. It´s a really nice place one top of the
hill. The hill is a little bit of a problem after a big meal like we
had yesterday but it´s nice to be able to have a little seista after
climbing the hill.

Hope everyone is having back home. Must go and join the others who are
all having cafes next door.

Barcelona is much like Paris except without the trees and the
atmosphere. It´s a big city but there´s not really a lot going on.

On the drive to Barcelona, we decided to stop in Girona for lunch.
Girona (the old part at least) is a pretty city. We got to Girona
aronud 3pm and it appeared that the whole town was on siesta. All of
the shops were closed and the all of the restaurants were very
tourist-y. After wandering around for a while looking at the two big
churches they have, we stopped for lunch in a forgettable pub. After
we had finished lunch, the town was beginning to wake up. On the walk
back down to where we had parked the car we passed quite a few
fishermen trying their luck in the river.

Once in the car we decided to switch the GPS on to navigate to
Barcelona. I punched in the address and Agnetha directed us to the
highway and along we drove. About 20 kilometres from Barcelona,
Agnetha told us to exit the main highway for the bypass around
Barcelona´s north and then promptly died. She had run out of battery.
Bit of a disaster as we had no other map of the city. We exited the
bypass drove around aimlessly for a bit and then decided we really
needed a map to get where we were going.

We parked somewhere in the north of Barcelona and thought that we
would walk to a newsagent or somthing similar to get a map. We ended
up walking all the way into the main city before we found something
that was open. Bought a map, discovered that the place we were staying
was only just on the map and a lot of the streets near there were cut
off. Soldiered on regardless, walked back up the hill to the car
(about 2kms away) and drove in the general direction of the hostel.

I give you all one piece of advice about Barcelona - never, ever drive
in Barcelona. It is impossible to get where you need to be. I had
managed to navigate us to either the left or the right of where we
needed to be, but I could not figure out how to get to the middle bit.
Eventually, after about an hour, we figured it out and got the car
somewhere close to where we needed to be. We then walked to the hostel
and discovered that we had driven right past it at one stage.

Luckily, the hostel was great. Really good staff and the room was
excellent and breakfast was included. It was a little way out of town
but the Metro was just as efficient as it was in Paris. After an
exhausting day of driving, we had a beer (tomas) and a bottle of water
(amanda) and fell asleep.

The next day we did the touristy things in Barcelona. Started off with
the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi´s great unfinished masterpiece. We got to
the church on the non-Gaudi side and I was confused as it didn´t look
anything like I had expected. It was much nicer. The facade was
covered in amazing sculptures but a Spanish artist that represented
the Passion of Christ. Inside was just as impressive. Loved the
staircases though you couldn´t go up them. There was a lot of
construction stuff but no construction being done. It was a Sunday,
but you´d think that if they wanted to finish the thing, they might
have to work on Sundays.

The church also has a good museum which really helped illustrate
Gaudi´s vision. He was clearly a man who loved materials (there was a
whole exhibition on the reasons behind the choice of stones),
engineering, and fanciful things.

Headed to Montjuic after Sagrada. This is where the Olympic stadium is
plus some of the museums. Walked around the stadium and peeking inside
at the nice green football pitch and the headed to the Calatrava
mobile phone tower. Had a drink, listened to the music from the
dancing festival that was happening somewhere below us and looked over
at the European Baseball championships that were in the stadium below
us.

More Barcelona adventures to come....

¡Buenas dias!

So, as I mentioned yesterday our border crossing into Spain was an
uneventful affair. As soon as we passed over the border (at the top of
a mountain) the condition of the road deteriorated and suddenly we
were coming down a mountain on bumpy roads with the mountain very
close to my side of the car and cars coming in the other direction.
Let me just say that I was gripping the seat quite firmly. Tom though
is a good driver and we made down the mountain, only to go up another
mountain.

After the border crossing I got my phone out to try GPS in Spain. I
had already used it in Paris a few times, but now we were going to
rely on it for navigating within towns. So, I punched in the address
for our next stop and we awaited further directions from Agnetha.

Our first stop in Spain was Castello d'Empuries a little town near
Figueres that was once the medieval capital of the region. After a few
hiccups with the GPS (I had it set to pedestrian mode, not car mode so
it was telling us to make funny turns) we navigated to the town via
the backroads. However, once we were in the town it was a different
story. Medieval towns has medieval streets. Tiny little streets that a
single horse and carriage can traverse. Driving though these streets
is not a pleasant experience, especially when they are a maze of one
way streets. Eventually though we found somewhere to park the car and
walked to the hotel.

The hotel in Castello d´Empuries was really nice, with the rooms
looking out over the town square to the very medieval ayuntamiento
(town hall). We ate at the hotel´s restaurant, which serves
predominantly traditional Catalan fare; we had gazpaxo soup, duck
casserole and would have had ´creme catalan´ if we could have fitted
it in.

Despite our Spanish classes, we really couldn´t really understand a
lot of what was on the menu or what people were saying, as Catalan is
really quite different to Castillian. Along with an abundance of X´s,
the language seems to substitute words randomly for French, or for
completely different words altogether.

The town itself wasn´t all that big. They did have two big churches
though and an abundance of street cats. I made the mistake of talking
to one of the these cats in the morning and he followed me around for
most of our walk around town. We eventually lost him when he was
distracted by some birds. I´m not allowed to talk to any more cats.

From Castello d´Empuries, we followed yet another windy road over the
mountains to the seaside town of Cadaques. Quite a few people, as well
as the Lonely Planet, said how great this village is, though on first
impression it seemed to be little more than shirtless middle-aged
English men on scooters. Admittedly it was overcast, and still early
in the morning (11am) so we decided to try to walk around the headland
to Port Lligat, Salvidor Dali´s home for many years. Unfortunately the
track only went three-quarters of the way around, so we had to turn
around and walk back. By this stage, the sun had come out and I could
see what people see in Cadaques; the white houses cascading down the
hill to the sea is definitely picturesque. The coastline is quite
spectacular as well. Big slabs of granite and slate that have been
uplifted by seismic activity.

After our hike, we were very hot and abit sunburnt so we got a drink
and jumped back in the car for the drive to Barcelona.

Hola,

We are currently in Spain where they have somewhat proper keyboards.
They have fullstops but I can´t figure out how to get the @ symbol. I
can see it on the keyboard but I can´t make it appear on the screen.

We left Paris on Thursday aboard the TGV to Marseille. The TGV was
really good. Very fast and the seats were actually quite accomodating.
No 'in-flight' entertainment but you really don´t need it on a trip
that is only three hours long. The people across from us brought their
cat on the train. I had heard that people take their dogs on the Metro
(although I didn´t see any dogs) but your cat on the TGV? Silly French
people.

Marseille is a very industrial city. There´s a lot of construction
going on in the city centre which I assume is a good sign. We didn´t
see a lot of Marseille as our hotel was out of town a bit. The hotel
is a famous modernist building. I won´t go too much into details, Tom
can do that later if he feels like it. However, we really liked it.

We picked the car the Marseille and promptly got lost trying to drive
to the hotel. It seems that sign placement is very different here in
Europe. They put the signs on the turn rather than before, especially
on roundabouts. Tom was initially very nervous about the driving but
he´s settled in. He even did some crazy french merging on the first
day.

Left Marseille the next morning and decided to stop in a town called
Arles. Interesting town with lots of Roman and Medieval stuff. This
was also the place that Van Gogh decided to cut his ear off so there
was also a lot of art stuff.

If you have ever been to a medieval town you will know that there are
a lot of little tiny streets that it is amazing that cars can drive
on. It was in one of these that I took my first major fall of the
trip. I managed to walk into a bollard. Most people when walking into
a bollard would stub their toe or bang their knee however, I went
flying though the air. Thankfully, I landed on my tummy and chest
which are both well padded and injuries were minimal. It was a little
hard to explain that to the French shopkeeper who came running out of
his shop to assist though.

Left Arles and headed for the French-Spanish border via a windy road.
Good views, but such roads make me nervous. The border was
interesting. A man with a tiny machine, lady checking our passports
and another policeman smoking next to the checkpoint. And so, we
entered Spain.

Bonjour!

(all fullstops in this email will be replaced with a colon because I
can't find the full stop key on the french keyboard and the colon is
where the full stop should be: The full stop isn't the only key to not
be where it should be so please excuse any letters that aren't right)

We arrived in Paris very tired. It was close to midnight when our
flight got to Charles de Gaulle: Luckly our bags arrived with us (they
had also been on three different planes) and we some of the first off
the plane: Amazing we navigated the metro and got the hotel in one
piece:

Hotel is nice: Very Parisian: To get to our room at the top of the
building, it takes 105 steps: I counted: I am always ready for a lie
down after that climb:

We have toured most of the sights of Paris - the Arc de Triomphe,
Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, La Dèfence - as well as most of
the suburbs: Our first day here was a Monday when most of the museums
are closed: Luckily the Musèe des ègouts de paris was open: The sewer
museum is actually quite interesting though you don't get to see very
much of the sewer system:

I hqve discoved why French women don't get fat: They wouldn't fit
through the metro gates if they were too large: The metro is
fantastic: It puts any other transport system I hqve seen to shame: We
have never had to wait more than 2 minutes for a train and it is very
fast: Apart from one hiccup with my ticket at rush hour, the metro has
been fantastic:

We have had cheese for lunch the past two days: Tom is in heaven: The
cheese is great, but the french clearly don't believe in savoury
biscuits or rice crackers: I haven't had too much trouble with food,
breakfast is my biggest problem: The french don't eat breakfast which
is fine by Tom but I get very grumpy around 10 if I haven't had
breakfast:

Right now, Tom is probably at a museum while I am getting my
technology fix. Will write more later, but I need to answer some
emails before my time runs out

Today is the day. Tonight Tomas and I fly out for France to start our 6 week holiday in Europe and the US. I'm very excited, not looking forward to immense amount of air travel required but excited.

We dropped Fenella off for her holiday this afternoon. We both felt extremely guilty about leaving her for six weeks, but I'm confident that she will be well looked after. She will probably have some cat friends to talk to and will enojy playing in the outside area.

We're almost all packed, just need to pack the toiletries. So once that is done, all we have to do is have dinner, wash-up and make our way to the airport.

Stay tuned for blogging from the other side of the world.