So I'm a little bit late on this one, as we've already been in germany for about five days now but here is the update on Paris and Brussels.
As you already know we had to stay long in barcelona for unfortunate reasons, which cut down on our France stay substantially. We were originally going to have two days in Avignon and then five days in Paris, but instead we were stuck with only two days in Paris. Now I'm not saying its impossible to experience a city in two full days....but its Paris....in two full days...common. Now you're not going to get this reference unless you watch how i met your mother but... "Challenge accepted!!!".
We pulled in the first day to some light snow, and made our way down the street to our hotel. We were told before hand that the french were somewhat snobby but we were not prepared for what we were to encounter. Looking like "the albino" from the princess bride, (google it, I feel bad even saying it but its uncanny the resemblance) this woman at the reception continued to snoot and laugh at everything we would ask or any sense of miscommunication in the least. Finally after half an hour of arguing and phoning managers we were able to get ourselves our reserved room and get out to the city.
Thankfully aside from the people, paris had more than enough to offer. Our first stop was of course the Eiffel tower. The weather was supposed to turn gross so we thought we should get there first to ensure we see it in its prime. When we got there it was still daylight, and Im not saying I wasn't impressed, just...i can see why people say its more of an eyesore than a thing of beauty. Basically just a huge hunk of metal thrown together and propped up in the middle of town. The size of it was ridiculous though, I'll give it credit for that. To get that classic standing in front of the tower picture that everyone has you actually have to stand in the next city over it felt like. Once it turned to night though, you really could appreciate it for what it was. Glowing in all it's lights (except once an hour when they do a light show which is basically just the tower having a seizure), is when you really feel the magic of everything come to life. You begin to understand why the eccentric romantic Pepe Le Pue makes this city his home.
One of the funnier things about it though is these flocks of immigrants who make their living by selling cheesy little glowing Eiffel towers. Now we were used to these people as every city in europe has their own version, but what we hadn't experienced yet was what happens when bike police come cruising through. With one tug of a rope all their little models would be tied into a bag and within seconds twenty or thirty of them would be sprinting down the street, with the jingling of their toys on their backs. This would happen about once an hour or so, like a bunch of renegade Santa clauses or something.
The next day we decided to check out the louvre. Being basically the most famous museum in the world we felt we kind of had too. Not too mention kalia was more than stoked to see all the paintings from the artists that she had been teaching her kids in school, like van gogh, Monet, da Vinci etc... Now i won't get too into it but basically we had some major false impressions and realistically ended up paying twenty dollars to go see the mona Lisa. She was really cool too see though, had the same smirk on as usual and, as kalia loved, her eyes would follow you wherever you went.
Also that day we went and saw the champs elysees. Its apparently the second most famous street in the world next to fifth avenue in new York. It's basically a two km long shopaholics dream that starts at a main roundabout and ends at the 'arc de triumph' (which was also kind of cool, just a little too cold at the time to enjoy). Oh but when I say 'shopaholics dream' I of course mean the kind that wear fur around their necks and have twenty black credit cards to use, not two broke travelers including one who is used to shopping at army and navy. But nonetheless it was a great time for window shopping and pretending. It wasn't all a bust though, Kalia managed to find a beauty of a coat to replace the burlap sack that her previous coat had turned into.
At the end of the street where the roundabout is, it continued into their own version of a christmas market and this is where we experienced the sensation of the french crepe. Not a breakfast food as we have altered it to be, but a fresh off the pan, layered with nutella, desert from the heavens. Mothers, you have two and half weeks to perfect this by the time we get home...
The only other thing we really saw in Paris was the notre dame, which was pretty amazing. We've already had a few things be a let down throughout the trip, as they're so hard to determine in pictures, but I would say this one lived up. And don't worry I got tons of pictures of the gargoyles as I know this is what everyone like myself is actually interested in...
So that was pretty much it for Paris. From here we went on to Brussels, which actually came very close to not happening. When we were deciding way back when , we had the options of Amsterdam, Brussels, or stretching out France a little bit more to fill the gap until we got to Nuremberg. Thankfully we made the choice we did, as the city turned out to be one of our favorites. We had kind of felt like most of the cities had been selling out to the western ideals and losing their soul that made them each unique... mainly Spain and portugal. But Brussels felt like it must have way back when, except instead of a blacksmith and a butcher they now have a Footlocker and a Burger King which I will actually agree was a good upgrade.
But other than that, this small city was lined with ancient buildings, cobble stone roads, and chronicles of narnia looking lamp posts. We spent most of our days there just wandering the streets popping into any shops that looked intriguing, and strolling through the endless vendors of the Christmas market. Although none of these came even close to the best part of the town. Belgium beer. We found online this pub in a basement that contained a ridiculous two thousand different types of beer. Needless to say I attempted to try every flavor there, but came a little bit short......1996 flavors short actually. But it didn't matter, with those four flavors that we tried, our minds and taste buds were blown. Not even the infamous Sleemans honey brown came close. Not too sure what were gonna do when we get home, but Europe has officially ruined deserts and now beer for us.
Other than that belgium didn't have a lot of sights or anything, just a great little city to get lost in for a few days.
Until next time
g & k
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Spain
Well, Spain was interesting. Let's start at the beginning shall we?
Madrid is a very busy city. Everybody is on fast mode, they just done stop! Run to the metro, run away from the metro, its crazy! The roads are just packed with people trying to walk along the sidewalks, and the starbucks we hung out in for free internet was always crammed with wall to wall people trying to get seats. Mom, thanks to your lessons on stalking "those who might leave" in parking lots I was always able to sneak two seats and a table for us. It's an art form i think. On our first day we went and saw the Royal Palace; the biggest palace in Europe. It is huge! Goon As Graeme would say. It was so long with so many columns and all the lampposts in its courtyard were trimmed in gold. Each time we see palaces or "houses" like this we always go "Can you imagine this being where you live?". The next day we went and saw the Crystal Palace. This is not a palace that was lived in. Both the walls and ceilings are made completely of glass. It was so nice to have a completely clear day to this, so the sun shone through the glass and it was beautiful. That was such an awesome day. We sat on a bench looking at the palace and the pond, with the ducks waddling around, eating our delicious lunch of mandarin oranges and cupcakes. Mandarin oranges have become a staple us. We really miss fruit and fesh produce. On our third day we went down to the river and had another picnic lunch, and then walked along the shore to the temples of Debod; temples that the Egyptians built in 2nd century A.D. They had hieroglyphics all along the walls. I cant remember why they were built... Sorry :) information overload. Our fourth day was just a whatever day, we had seen all the big sights that you we ere supposed to see, so we just enjoyed our last evening in Madrid walking along the streets and drinking hot drinks.
Barcelona.... Well if you haven't heard yet, my purse was stolen the day before we were supposed to leace for France. It was really stupid of us, but we had everything in there; our passports, our debit cards, my credit card, my glasses, contacts, iPod, ect. So that little hiccup cost us 4 more unwanted days in Barcelona. Yes some would say that being stuck in Barcelona is not a bad thing, it could be worse, but after starting off the trip to this city with a walk through the suburbs looking for a hotel that didn't appear to exist and conveniently is nonrefundable, having to book a new hotel for the week onto of that one, and then the hotel in Avignon, France having to be charged because it was too late to cancel, we we were pretty ready to leave.
Before this all happened, Barcelona was pretty sweet. We really like cities that are on the waterfront. They just have a much nicer vibe to them, way less intense. Everybody just walks alone the walk ways having a good time, not rushing around. We loved hanging out by the water after sight seeing and such during the day. We went and saw the Sagradia de Familia, a very strange looking cathedral thats still in the process of being built. The guy that designed it, who seemed to design everything famous in Barcelona, definitely liked things to look different. It has like lizards crawling up the sides of the steeples. Graeme thought it looked pretty weird, beautiful is definitely not the right descriptive word for it. We went and saw the Parque Guell; a park designed by the same guy. Guadi is his name. The park theme was Hansel and Grettel. Everything looked like it was made out of gingerbread and gumdrops, a kids dream park. It was a beautiful park, with super tall palm trees all around. When do you get to walk through a park of palm trees? Not in BC thats for sure. We walked down to the beach one day, and the waves were huge. People were surfing, even though it was a pretty cold and windy day.
This brings us to the day everything was taken. So spain was kind of a hectic time, it kind of feels like a whirl wind. That unwanted experience didn't ruin our feelings to towards Spain at all, it just made the last few days a bit of a haze. We'll tell you more about it when we get home :) which is in 3 and a half weeks by the way, surprise! Can't wait to see everyone again, we miss you guys! Graeme will blog next on Paris and Belgium. Hope everyone is having awesome Christmas holidays!
g&k
Madrid is a very busy city. Everybody is on fast mode, they just done stop! Run to the metro, run away from the metro, its crazy! The roads are just packed with people trying to walk along the sidewalks, and the starbucks we hung out in for free internet was always crammed with wall to wall people trying to get seats. Mom, thanks to your lessons on stalking "those who might leave" in parking lots I was always able to sneak two seats and a table for us. It's an art form i think. On our first day we went and saw the Royal Palace; the biggest palace in Europe. It is huge! Goon As Graeme would say. It was so long with so many columns and all the lampposts in its courtyard were trimmed in gold. Each time we see palaces or "houses" like this we always go "Can you imagine this being where you live?". The next day we went and saw the Crystal Palace. This is not a palace that was lived in. Both the walls and ceilings are made completely of glass. It was so nice to have a completely clear day to this, so the sun shone through the glass and it was beautiful. That was such an awesome day. We sat on a bench looking at the palace and the pond, with the ducks waddling around, eating our delicious lunch of mandarin oranges and cupcakes. Mandarin oranges have become a staple us. We really miss fruit and fesh produce. On our third day we went down to the river and had another picnic lunch, and then walked along the shore to the temples of Debod; temples that the Egyptians built in 2nd century A.D. They had hieroglyphics all along the walls. I cant remember why they were built... Sorry :) information overload. Our fourth day was just a whatever day, we had seen all the big sights that you we ere supposed to see, so we just enjoyed our last evening in Madrid walking along the streets and drinking hot drinks.
Barcelona.... Well if you haven't heard yet, my purse was stolen the day before we were supposed to leace for France. It was really stupid of us, but we had everything in there; our passports, our debit cards, my credit card, my glasses, contacts, iPod, ect. So that little hiccup cost us 4 more unwanted days in Barcelona. Yes some would say that being stuck in Barcelona is not a bad thing, it could be worse, but after starting off the trip to this city with a walk through the suburbs looking for a hotel that didn't appear to exist and conveniently is nonrefundable, having to book a new hotel for the week onto of that one, and then the hotel in Avignon, France having to be charged because it was too late to cancel, we we were pretty ready to leave.
Before this all happened, Barcelona was pretty sweet. We really like cities that are on the waterfront. They just have a much nicer vibe to them, way less intense. Everybody just walks alone the walk ways having a good time, not rushing around. We loved hanging out by the water after sight seeing and such during the day. We went and saw the Sagradia de Familia, a very strange looking cathedral thats still in the process of being built. The guy that designed it, who seemed to design everything famous in Barcelona, definitely liked things to look different. It has like lizards crawling up the sides of the steeples. Graeme thought it looked pretty weird, beautiful is definitely not the right descriptive word for it. We went and saw the Parque Guell; a park designed by the same guy. Guadi is his name. The park theme was Hansel and Grettel. Everything looked like it was made out of gingerbread and gumdrops, a kids dream park. It was a beautiful park, with super tall palm trees all around. When do you get to walk through a park of palm trees? Not in BC thats for sure. We walked down to the beach one day, and the waves were huge. People were surfing, even though it was a pretty cold and windy day.
This brings us to the day everything was taken. So spain was kind of a hectic time, it kind of feels like a whirl wind. That unwanted experience didn't ruin our feelings to towards Spain at all, it just made the last few days a bit of a haze. We'll tell you more about it when we get home :) which is in 3 and a half weeks by the way, surprise! Can't wait to see everyone again, we miss you guys! Graeme will blog next on Paris and Belgium. Hope everyone is having awesome Christmas holidays!
g&k
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Portugal
First off I just want to thanks my parents, the funks, for the awesome early Christmas present that they gave us. I don't want to get into the whole Mac vs PC, or Steve jobs vs bill gates debate, because I know the salmonds are reading this and i don't want them to feel like they are winning this topic at all. But In case you didn't already know, we were given an iPad and I don't even want to imagine how this trip would be going if we didn't have it. I think we would still be trapped in italy somewhere flabbergasted trying to find available hotels. So thank you again!
We just ended about a week and a half in Portugal. Well...more like four days in portugal and a week in "little Britain". We booked this amazing four star hotel in a place called albufeira for a week, for only twenty dollars a night. All we saw were pictures of amazing beaches, pool side bars, and a ginormous room. Sounds perfect right? Right?? Wrong! A little bit of research probably would have shown us that being there you will experience as much Portuguese culture as being in britain, or Canada, or pretty much anywhere else in the world except for portugal. Our first clue was when we arrived at the hotel and we were surrounded by retired British people. Kalia refers to it as the Waikiki of Europe. We thought maybe if we went out into the town we could get away from it but no such doing. Every shop in a two mile radius was serving fried beans for breakfast, or playing some "blokes vs mates" football game. We did manage to get on a bus and get to someplace called city center where there were a bunch of shops where we could get some authentic Portuguese swag. Or so we were hoping. We felt like when joey from friends was in England and the vendor salesman convinces him all the locals wear the tall british flag hats.
Needless to say that was a painful week. We at least got a couple days of sun out of it and got to chill poolside for a few hours, but we were over the moon when we finally got to ship out and head to Lisbon.
Finding the Lisbon "hotel" gave finding the venice hotel a run for its money. We arrived in the city around noon thinking we would go drop off our things and head out onto the town and get a nice full day in still. What we weren't aware of though was that if the information people in Lisbon don't know where something is off the top of their heads you're pooched. We were basically running around town asking everyone in sight if they knew where the hotel or even the street it was on was, resulting in about twenty different ideas of where we should go. Finally we were able to find the street on a map and started our trek. After arriving at the address located conveniently on top of a giant hill in the ghetto, we discovered there was no place called residencial Alegre there, and were left running around for another two hours or so. To cut the story short, some other young people who worked for the "hotel" found us wandering and showed us that in fact we were in the right place but the hotel was actually just a spare room in their parents three bedroom complex. Kalia suitably calls this place "the room".
Enough with the venting though and onto Lisbon. The city is really quite nice. We arrived just late enough in november to see the city with all its christmas lights up, which of course makes any city look that much nicer. We spent countless hours walking up and down the pedestrian only streets looking at all the quaint jewelry shops, or chowing down on the most delicious tarts ever to have graced our mouths. I even ventured out to try a baked good called a brisa which is basically a brick of icing sugar, dough, and lemony goodness. Even though im sure I have severly damaged my insides it was oh so worth it.
Aside from the city center we also managed to check out the infamous jeronimos palace and Belem tower, which were no rome, but were definitely interesting seeing the different styles of architecture going on in the world hundreds of years ago.
Lisbon is also home to some of the coolest contemporary architecture out there, and thanks to the heads up from janaya we made sure we checked it all out.
One of the funnest things in the city that i forgot to mention was their epic trams. We managed to hop on one which is apparently famous as it was the first one ever in the city around a hundred years previous, and by the looks of it's wooden stature was probably the exact same one used back then. It basically went for a tour of the city ripping up and down steep narrow streets, taking you to all sorts of sights like st jorges castle that overlooks the city, or ancient churches which I have no idea what their names are but you know they've got to be important in someway so you take a picture and act like you know whats going on.
I think that's about it from portugal though, we just arrived jn Madrid today after another pleasant overnight train and look forward to seeing everything this city has to offer.
g&k
We just ended about a week and a half in Portugal. Well...more like four days in portugal and a week in "little Britain". We booked this amazing four star hotel in a place called albufeira for a week, for only twenty dollars a night. All we saw were pictures of amazing beaches, pool side bars, and a ginormous room. Sounds perfect right? Right?? Wrong! A little bit of research probably would have shown us that being there you will experience as much Portuguese culture as being in britain, or Canada, or pretty much anywhere else in the world except for portugal. Our first clue was when we arrived at the hotel and we were surrounded by retired British people. Kalia refers to it as the Waikiki of Europe. We thought maybe if we went out into the town we could get away from it but no such doing. Every shop in a two mile radius was serving fried beans for breakfast, or playing some "blokes vs mates" football game. We did manage to get on a bus and get to someplace called city center where there were a bunch of shops where we could get some authentic Portuguese swag. Or so we were hoping. We felt like when joey from friends was in England and the vendor salesman convinces him all the locals wear the tall british flag hats.
Needless to say that was a painful week. We at least got a couple days of sun out of it and got to chill poolside for a few hours, but we were over the moon when we finally got to ship out and head to Lisbon.
Finding the Lisbon "hotel" gave finding the venice hotel a run for its money. We arrived in the city around noon thinking we would go drop off our things and head out onto the town and get a nice full day in still. What we weren't aware of though was that if the information people in Lisbon don't know where something is off the top of their heads you're pooched. We were basically running around town asking everyone in sight if they knew where the hotel or even the street it was on was, resulting in about twenty different ideas of where we should go. Finally we were able to find the street on a map and started our trek. After arriving at the address located conveniently on top of a giant hill in the ghetto, we discovered there was no place called residencial Alegre there, and were left running around for another two hours or so. To cut the story short, some other young people who worked for the "hotel" found us wandering and showed us that in fact we were in the right place but the hotel was actually just a spare room in their parents three bedroom complex. Kalia suitably calls this place "the room".
Enough with the venting though and onto Lisbon. The city is really quite nice. We arrived just late enough in november to see the city with all its christmas lights up, which of course makes any city look that much nicer. We spent countless hours walking up and down the pedestrian only streets looking at all the quaint jewelry shops, or chowing down on the most delicious tarts ever to have graced our mouths. I even ventured out to try a baked good called a brisa which is basically a brick of icing sugar, dough, and lemony goodness. Even though im sure I have severly damaged my insides it was oh so worth it.
Aside from the city center we also managed to check out the infamous jeronimos palace and Belem tower, which were no rome, but were definitely interesting seeing the different styles of architecture going on in the world hundreds of years ago.
Lisbon is also home to some of the coolest contemporary architecture out there, and thanks to the heads up from janaya we made sure we checked it all out.
One of the funnest things in the city that i forgot to mention was their epic trams. We managed to hop on one which is apparently famous as it was the first one ever in the city around a hundred years previous, and by the looks of it's wooden stature was probably the exact same one used back then. It basically went for a tour of the city ripping up and down steep narrow streets, taking you to all sorts of sights like st jorges castle that overlooks the city, or ancient churches which I have no idea what their names are but you know they've got to be important in someway so you take a picture and act like you know whats going on.
I think that's about it from portugal though, we just arrived jn Madrid today after another pleasant overnight train and look forward to seeing everything this city has to offer.
g&k
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