Isn’t it Nice…

Ciao everyone!

Zevi will love the title of this entry, I’m sure. I’ve been throwing out the Nice puns left and right ever since we got here yesterday, and he has been less than impressed, although secretly I think he’s just jealous he didn’t think of them first!

As usual, there is so much to blog and so little time, so I’ll try to go through some of our recent highlights without missing anything important. We’ve done everything from attempt to climb an active volcano, to become immersed in over 2000 years of visible history, to eat the best pizza on the planet, to ride in a water bus, to visit the smallest country in the world, and much more since I last wrote an entry, so I’d better stop dawdling and get started!

After our two day sojurn in Siena, which was the site of my last post, we made our way to Rome. Once there, we met up with Alanna, who was visiting from her temporary home in Lyon, and began our exploration of one of the most amazing cities I have ever visited. Rome is one of those cities where, even though it is completely full to the brim with tourists, you can just wander around for hours in complete awe of what you see. It has enough sights to make all of the other cities we have visited, except Paris, perhaps, bury their heads in shame, and each is more awe-inspiring than the next. The first night we arrived there, we wandered around for a couple of hours and marvelled at everything that Rome has to offer, including the towering Spanish Steps, the impressively lifelike Trevi Fountain, and the amazingly well preserved Pantheon. To add to the drama of the evening, while we were standing at the Trevi Fountain a bride in a huge white dress and her new husband appeared to have their photographs taken among the throngs. The wonders of Rome never cease!

The next day was spent exploring the Colosseum and Palatine Hill. We decided to shell out the big bucks for a guided tour of both areas, and the wealth of information provided by our interesting and knowledgeable guides made it well worth the hefty price tag. This was especially true on Palatine hill, as our guide was able to transform what looked at first like just a jumble of ruins into a a picture of ancient Roman life. The Colosseum itself rises above the ruins like a giant among men. It is amazing to think that at one time it was much bigger than it is today. On our final day in Rome, as Zevi and I were making one final round of the city, our eyes were constantly drawn towards the ancient stadium, and we spent quite a long time simply admiring its grandeur.

On our second full day in Rome, Alanna, Zevi and I visited the smallest country in the world – Vatican City. We marveled at the gigantic collection of art housed in the Vatican museums, from tapestries, to intricate mosaics, to countless statues missing various appendages… but all very impressive nonetheless! I must admit that the Sistine Chapel was a bit of a letdown for me, and whether that was from an overdose of hype about it beforehand, the huge crowd of onlookers filling the room, or the fact that I had seen enough art to satisfy me for a few weeks to come I’m not completely sure. There’s no denying the mastery of Michaelangelo, though, and I managed to snap an illegal photo of “the painting where those two people are reaching towards eachother” (insert the actual name here – shows what I’ve learned about art in Europe!) before being pushed out of the exits by more tourists trying to catch a glimpse of the famous ceiling. After mailing some postcards to our family via the Vatican postal system, and visiting St. Peters Basilica along with the huge groups of Canadian children we saw over and over again in Rome, we said goodbye to Alanna and, soon after, bid farewell to Rome. It was great to see Alanna for those few days, and we’re really excited to see her again tomorrow in Lyon!

Against the advice and warnings of many, we decided that our next stop would be Naples, the birthplace of pizza. We were a little nervous coming into the city, as we had been told to watch our belongings closely for fear of mugging and to look into nearby windows lest there be a member of the mafia lurking with a gun (I kid, but, seriously, there are over 100 mob-related murders a year in Naples), but we soon found southern Italy to be a place of warm friendliness, and great pizza, where our only real fear was of being hit by a rogue scooter while crossing a busy
street. As Canadians, we’re pretty used to just moseying across the road without a care in the world, but we soon learned that in Naples most of our street crossings (and sometimes even walking on the sidewalk – there was at least one specific instance where we were forced to dive out of the way as a girl on a scooter plowed her way down a crowded sidewalk) would leave us feeling like we were putting our lives on the line. Happily, we made it out alive and with all of our limbs intact.

After spending a day wandering around the city, our first day trip was to Mount Vesuvius. We did some internet research, and it sounded like this active volcano would be no big deal to climb, and we figured that we could use some serious exercise, even though we both only have what can only be termed as city shoes. So, at about 11:30, clad in our jeans, sneakers and with one measly bottle of water, we began our trek from Herculaneum, feeling confident that we’d easily be able to reach the top of the mountain and make it down before sundown. Let me just sum things up by saying that if we were keeping score, it would be Italian Volcanoes 1, Heather and Zevi 0. At 2:15, exhausted, thirsty, sore, and disgruntled, we were about to turn back unsuccessful, when a bus driver with a completely empty bus drove by and decided to stop and save us from ourselves. This man was the best example of the kindness we encountered in the south of Italy. He drove us up as high as vehicles are permitted to go, giving us a guided tour in slow Italian all the way up. When we got to the top we found that they were closing the walkable part of the crater so we were unable to actually reach the top, but our bus driver, aka the Neopolitain Knight in Shining Armour, tried to argue with the staff so that they would let us go up. When that didn’t work, he took our picture in front of various other volcano-like areas, and, finally, drove us all the way back to Naples even though his bus was only supposed to go about half of that distance. When we told Claudio and his girlfriend this story, she said “this is why Italy doesn’t work, people are always breaking the rules to do things for other people when it doesn’t make sense”. Needless to say, we were very appreciative of this nonsensical behaviour. I can’t speak for Zevi, but after that experience, I don’t think I’ll be climbing another volcano any timne soon.

The rest of our time in the south of Italy was spent marveling at the ruins at Pompei, a city that was hit by a huge eruption from Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and was very well preserved under volcanic ash, visiting the cute tourist town of Sorrento, wondering why our beautiful, big hostel was so empty, and eating pizza. Now this wasn’t any old pizza that we were eating. This was Neopolitain pizza, which is about 50 levels above any other pizza I have ever tasted. The best of the best, which we sampled on three different occasions, has an incredibly thin crust, amazingly fresh-tasting tomatoes, and delicious mozzarella cheese, all blending together to create a flavour that can only be described as a little slice (or, in this case, an entire pizza) of heaven. Naples has ruined pizza for me, just like pasteis de nata ruined my love for other pastries. I guess these are the perils of eating wonderful food!

This entry has gotten impossibly long, and you still have Zevi’s to read, so I’d better end it here. Italy was absolutely jam packed, and Nice hasn’t been any more relaxing, and that, combined with many nights of less than stellar sleeps, has left us feeling pretty weary. We’re trying to enjoy Europe to the fullest right now, though, because we’ll be back on Canadian soil before we know it!

With much love,

Heather

Venice

Well Hello Again. It has definitely been a while since my last (and only) blog entry. I guess its about time I shoulder some of the responsibility of informing you of what we’ve been doing. In the interets of saving time on the computer, I will be writing a bit about what happened after we left Naples and found ourselves heading back North.

True to form, heading North brought cold weather and when we arrived in Venice after an arduous overnight train journey, we were glad to have our jackets with us. Oh wait. I have mine, but where is Heather’s? As we found when we were attempting to leave our bags at the luggage storage at the train station, Heather left her jacket in the dark train compartment when we changed trains in Bologna at 5:30am. Not only is it cold outside, its also raining fairly hard. Thus, our adventure in Venice begins.

Venice is a fantastic city to visit in terms of being a tourist. Its small enough to walk around the entire city, the transit system is excellent (and, being boats, quite novel), and unlike Napoli, there are no swarms of scooters making you feel like you have a large target painted on you. In fact, in the city of venice proper, there are no cars whatsoever and goods are brought to the various stores by men with large carts. It makes navigating the city a real pleasure.

We began the day by looking for a replacement coat for Heather. We got into the city at about 8:30am and were not to meet up with Carlo (a long-time friend of my mother’s), who’s house we were staying at, until after 5pm. Going shopping actually provided us with the perfect excuse to wander most of the city and by the end of the day, not only had we found her a new coat, but we had seen many of the sights that we had heard about.

The main sights to see in Venice are, of course, the canals. Venice is actually a series of hundreds of tiny islands that are now so built upon that it looks as if the buildings are simply rising out of the water. The Grand Canal, the remnant of the river that created the islands, winds its way through the city and is the largest canal by far. Many boats cruise this canal and the vaporetto, the bus/ferry system is based along it. The majority of the gondola stops are also along there and the men are quite serious about this business. We had already heard about the high prices of rides so did not even bother, but I was surprised at how many people were taking the plunge, so to speak, and paying up to 200 Euros for it. There are only three bridges that cross the Grand Canal, so at various points, if one is so inclined, you can take a traghetto, an old gondola that is no longer being used across the canal for about 50 cents. They pile as many people as possible into the gondola and then paddle across with everyone standing. The trip takes only about a minute but is quite the experience and highly recommended.

The final sight to mention is St Mark’s Square. You might have heard that Venice experienced record flooding last week. This happenned on Monday. Luckily, we arrived on Friday. Everyone was still talking about the fact that the sea level raised by over 1.2m. Regular flooding does occur in Venice but it is not of that magnitude and they have sirens that alert shop owners about 2 hours before so they can take the necessary precations. Another thing that happens with the sounding of the alarm is that raised walkways appear and make it possible for the lower areas of Venice to be navigateable with a good set of gumboots (or plastic bags over your shoes, available at your nearest random guy on the corner for a ridiculous price in times of need). Luckily, we missed this event by a couple of days and we able to witness a relatively flood-free Venice.

We met up with Carlo at about 7:30pm at his house on the Lido (Lee-Doh), one of the two islands that protects the lagoon of Venice. To get there is about a 45min ferry ride from Venice central and enables one to see the majority of Venice. The Lido is an island of about 20,000 people and has cars and proper buses. Carlo’s house was quite near the ferry stop so it was easy for us to get there with our packs.

Carlo was an incredible host. When we got there, he immediately set us up in the guest room and made sure we were comfortable with a glass of wine while he set about preparing a fantastic pasta dinner. He made the sauce with very few ingredients, mostly olive oil, cherry tomatoes and garlic. Hungry and tired, it was a fantastic dinner for us and set the tone for Carlo’s cooking over the weekend.

The next day, Carlo took us on a tour of Venice, showing us the highlights in his own way: the Gastronomic Tour of Venice. We saw a couple of really nice churches and some out of the way spots that we would never have been able to find on our own (Venice is the most maze-like city I have ever encountered). We also had a baccala pate on fresh made bread with polenta on the side and a glass of wine, we had a fresh piece of fried mozzarella with anchovies at a place that has been around since Carlo’s grandmother took him there as a kid, and we had a cup of the best expresso (machiato) that I had in Italy. We also visitted the fish and vegetable market with him to get the ingredients for that night’s dinner, one of my most memorable of this entire trip. The first course was octopus served the spanish way with smoked ground red pepper. The second was tuna sashimi (much to Heather’s delight) with some sort of spice and oil on it. The third was a pasta with monk fish. All served with a very nice wine and Carlo’s neverending, very informative commentary on Venetian history.

We also did a fair amount of our own wandering and I found Venice to be one of my favourite cities we have seen. Our final day with Carlo, he toured us around the Lido but it was incredibly foggy. We walked along the beach at the southern end, attempting to find the end of the island, but the fog made that next to impossible and a very cold walk. He then took us to Padua, a University town about 40km away from Venice, where he lives with his family during the week. He walked us around Padua and showed us some of the sights (the University founded in the 12th or 13th Century and the incredible church with one of Donatello’s sculptures out front) and then we caught a train to Nice via a night with Claudio in Milano again.

Italy was an incredible country to see and I am sure I will return as soon as I can. The main highlight was the food but it included many ruins and incredible experiences. It was non-stop action from the time we stepped off the train in Milano to when we got back on at nearly the same platform three weeks later to leave for France. I was made to feel at home, both with family friends and at some excellent hostels. The North and the South are almost two different countries within the one and it seems as if they both don’t think much of each other, but if you get the chance, I would highly recommend you visit as much of it as possible.

Well, this entry has gotten about as long as it needs to be. Maybe I’ll get the chance to write another entry before we go home in a week. I can’t believe its almost over.

Thanks for reading.

Ciao,

Zevi

Bongiorno!

I’d love to tell you that I could write the rest of this post in Italian, but, unfortunately, my four to five word italian vocabulary prevents me from doing so.  I do love to listen to the Italians speak though.  The language has a beautiful lilting quality that I find incredibly expressive, and, listening to it,  I can understand why the italian culture has a reputation for being incredibly romantic. 

Our stay in Italy began in Milan at the house of Claudio Luzzetti, a friend of Zevi’s Mom.  It was so much fun to have the opportunity to stay with a native of the country that we were visiting, as most of the people we have met so far on this trip have been fellow travellers and, while that has been very rewarding and enjoyable, it’s not quite the same as getting travel advice from someone who has spent his whole life in the area.  Claudio cooked us some incredible meals, including an amazing artichoke risotto that I am determined to try to make when I get home, although it may involve smuggling some Italian artichokes back with me, and regaled us with stories of his own travels, which have been fairly extensive from the sounds of it.  His tales of Japan made me want to take a side trip there from Italy!  Claudio’s hospitality was incredible, and we are very grateful that he allowed us to invade his home for two days.  Milan itself was a little underwhelming, as shopping at the many designer boutiques that fill the centre of the city didn’t quite fit into our budget. 

After Milan we arrived in Florence, or Firenze; I like the Italian name so much better!  Our hostel was a very small one, which made it wonderfully charming and almost felt like we were staying at someone’s home once again.  The owner of the hostel, Lorenzo, cooked us breakfast and wonderful dinners every day, and bid farewell to me with a hug more suggestive of someone I had known for a year rather than a few short days.  One of the highlights of FIrenze was seeing the David, Michaelangelo’s breathtaking marble masterpiece.  It held our gaze for minutes on end; and I hardly wanted to leave the gallery with the knowledge that I would no longer be able to look upon David’s exquisitely carved figure.  It alone was more than worth the 10 € we spent to get into the gallery.  The leaning tower of Pisa was another fun stop. 

Today and yesterday have been spent in the beautiful small town of Siena, where we viewed what was, in my mind, the most incredible building we have seen so far, the Siena duomo.  I’m running out of internet time, so I don’t have time to explain it in detail, but suffice it to say that I was frozen in shock and awe when I stepped inside the door.  Absolutely marvelous!

Tomorrow we will go to Rome!  We’re both pretty excited about that. 

Thanks for all of your comments.  We’re thinking about all of you back home, as always.

Love heather

Hello from the south of Spain!

It’s been a while since my last post, but, not to worry, my neglect most definitely does not come from lack of adventures.  Since my last entry in Porto we visited two cities in Portugal and are now in our third of three destinations in the south of Spain – Málaga.  We just arrived here a couple of hours ago so there isn’t too much to report thus far, but it seems like a lovely seaside city where we will probably do a fair amount of relaxing before starting our journey towards Italy in a couple of days.

Lisbon was the second city that we visited on our whirlwind tour of Portugal.  With it came the best accomodation we have stayed in so far, and some of the most amazing pastries I have ever tasted.  I said in my last post that our Porto hostel was the best so far, but Rossio Hostel in Lisbon went far above and beyond that (and was a lot warmer, too!).  The free breakfast in the morning consisted of either scrambled eggs and toast or crepes prepared by a wonderfully kind woman whose slight lack of mastery of the English language made her all the more endearing.  The kitchen and common room were great, and we enjoyed meeting some Canadians who put our cooking skills to shame.  As for the pastries, we had read about them in our Lonely Planet book (otherwise known as the bible these days) and decided to go seek them out at a cafe in Belém that supposedly had the most tasty ones.  They are called pasteis de nata (which translates roughly into cream pastries… I think… although my skills in Portuguese are sorely lacking).  They are incredible.  As soon as we ate our first bite of that first warm pastry with cinnamon and sugar on top, a love affair began that lasted all through the rest of our time in Portugal.  After we ate that first one we got two more each “for later”, but later ended up being about five minutes and 50 steps later when we couldn’t bear the temptation any more.  They don’t seem to have them in Spain, but I still catch Zevi wistfully peering into store windows of patisserias, hoping to catch sight of those little round pastries… sigh… I’m getting a little carried away.  

On to our next destination – Tavira, in the south of Portugal.  Tavira was a lovely relaxing break from our backpacking lifestyle.  Zevi had secretly booked a hotel for us to stay in for 3 nights, and we spent some lovely sunny afternoons lying by the pool and relaxing.  We were in Tavira for my birthday, so Zevi funded my very first massage (which, let me tell you, will not be my last massage.  It was more glorious than I ever could have imagined.) and we splurged on a nice restaurant that amounted to almost an entire days worth of euros in our normally ultra-tight budget.  I have never been so excited about having a bathroom to myself as I was when I arrived in our hotel suite in Tavira; it’s funny the little things that you realize that you take for granted when you share rooms with two to six strangers for three weeks.  We were suprised at how much we did miss the hostel lifestyle though, and especially the ability to cook for ourselves, so it was nice to hit the road again and get back into the backpacking swing of things.

Seville was our next destination, and from the second that we set foot in that city it captivated me.  I’m not exactly sure what it was that drew me to it, but Seville is a city where I could have stayed for much longer.  When we stepped off the train in search of our hostel we were met with the breathtaking site of the overwhemingly beautiful cathedral surrounded by fountains and orange trees heavy with fruit.  The whole cathedral area is lit up at night, giving the area an almost-otherworldly glow that never gets hard on the eyes.  Its old Jewish quarter is a mess of skinny streets and alleyways that wound and twisted enough to trip up even Zevi and his infalliable sense of direction.  Seville also struck me as a city that is full of life, with hoardes of partiers flowing out from bodegas and tapas bars even on a Sunday night.  Speaking of tapas, we have found none better than the ones we sampled in Seville, including my personal favorite –  deep fried camembert cheese doused in raspberry jam.  Perfect for all of you out there trying to watch your cholesterol… but then again, most delicious things are.  As you can gather from my glowing descriptions I became quite enamoured with Seville, and I was surprisingly sad to move on, much moreso than I had been from any other city.  I definitely plan to return some day.

Our trip is halfway over, and I can hardly believe it!  The time has flown by, although, looking back, we have seen and done a lot.  We are very excited to move on to Italy in a couple of days, and to actually get a chance to stay with some native Italians!  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to update this more often when I’m there, because I feel like I left so much out!

Hope all is well wherever you are.

Love Heather

Black and White and Cold All Over

Hello everyone!

I’m writing to you from Porto, the biggest city in the northern region of Portugal.  I must say that I didn’t really know what to expect from this relatively small city, and I don’t think that Zevi did either, but I’m enjoying my time here even more than I expected to.  Zevi and I have enjoyed the fact that it seems to be a bit more laid back than some of the larger cities that we’ve been in.  In my opinion, Porto is a city filled with romance, one where you can eat dinner on the banks of the Duoro river whlie looking out at the spectacularly crafted Dom Luis Bridge, crafted by the same man who designed the Tour Eiffel, or simply ramble among the old buildings covered in beautiful azulejos, which are the blue tiled designs often depicting intricate scenes that cover many buildings.  The Sao Bento train station has an especially gorgeous collection of these designs.  Throughout this trip I have often marvelled at the amount of detail work that was put in to the finishing touches of these buildings.  Each building in the old city, not just in Porto, but in most of the other towns we’ve been to as well, has it’s own unique and beautiful flair that makes them so exciting to look at.  It often makes me a little bit sad that our great great great great grandchildren won’t be able to see that type of craftsmenship as an artifact of our time…

But, anyways, back to Porto.    We’re staying in a hostel here called the Black and White hostel, and this is certainly not a misnomer, as almost every area of the hostel is decorated in those colours.  It actually makes for a pretty neat atmostphere.  Beyond the colour (or should I say shade?) scheme, this hostel is probably the best one we’ve stayed at so far; it has excellent kitchen facilities, the staff are very friendly and helpful, the bathrooms are clean, the location is good, there is free breakfast, and it is reasonably priced (something that is becoming increasingly important to us as we have begun to count every penny that we spend, and cringe when the Canadian dollar loses more value in comparison to the Euro).  We couldn’t help but laugh when we got here, though, as it looks like the owners of the hostel went to Ikea and grabbed every black and white (and sometimes silver, when black and white weren’t available) item they could find and used them to furnish the building.  I pretty much feel like I am part of a living Ikea commercial.  I can’t complain, though, as I am writing this on the communal computer with free internet access.

Today we went on a tour of a port wine cellar, and I tried port for the first time.  The jury’s still out for me on whether or not I liked it.  Maybe if I had some cheese to go along with it I’d be convinced.  Another highlight from the past few days was going to Segovia, a small town near Madrid.  The weather was dreadful, so cold that even Zevi was uncomfortable.  Being cold has become something of a norm for me lately, but I know that if Zevi is cold too, things are getting serious.  However, it was well worth the visit, as we saw an amazing aqueduct, the cathedral, and the alcazar, where Zevi rediscovered his hatred for spiral staircases as we climbed many steps up to get a magnificent view from the top tower.  We also spent an afternoon walking around in Madrid’s Parque del Retiro, which is a huge park in the middle of the city filled with statues, a ‘palace’ (which was really just a glass building filled with a whole lot of air… I’m not really sure what sort of kingdom was housed there), and many runners, bikers and people trying to earn their keep playing instruments from the saxophone to the accordian.  It was a fun place to be.

We’ve also done a lot of waiting in train stations lately, and I’ve managed to fill most of that time doing crosswords and playing scrabble games with Zevi on the travel scrabble board I bought right before we left (most definitely the best $30 I’ve ever spent).  I think my Grandpa would be proud.  We dream about scrabble these days… but maybe I wasn’t supposed to admit that.

Anyways, I hope everyone had a happy halloween.  If anyone has any good tips on how to stay warm, feel free to pass them along! I’m sure Zevi would appreciate it if I stopped complaining about being cold all the time.

Much Love

-Heather

Well, it’s approaching that time again, that time when we have to lift our extremely heavy bags and carry them like pack horses on the metro and other similarly busy places.  Moving days for me are a mixture of dread and excitement, of nostalgia and relief – I’m sad to be leaving this place that I know so well now, but more than ready to explore a new city.  I think that by now we have seen almost everything that Barcelona has to offer, and we’re ready to move on to new things.

I came to Spain with the expectation that I would be able to have a pretty good grasp on the language, forgetting that in this Catalonian city of Barcelona the principal language is, in fact, Catalan, and not Castellano.  Thus, the language barrier that Zevi talked about is there for me too, in a way, although most people do speak the Spanish that I’m used to as well. 

The FC Barcelona game that we went to last night was pretty incredible.  The game itself was a bit of a joke; Barca (pronounced Bar-sa) completely dominated Almeria and made them look like a team from an inferior league, but the experience was still an awesome one.  The stadium is enormous!  If we think that the Saddledome is loud when everyone is cheering at a playoff game, I can’t even imagine how loud it would be with 120 000 FCB fans cheering at a game that actually mattered.  Seeing the skill of those football players up close was also pretty marvelous.  As Zevi said while we sat awestruck watching the warm-up, I can only hope some day to have a tenth of the skill that those players have.

On Friday we made a day trip to Tarragona, a town filled with ancient roman ruins.  It is about an hour away from Barcelona by train, and it was a nice change of pace from the hordes of tourists that congregate in the Barcelona city centre.  The old town of Tarragona is absolutely beautiful; rows of old buildings with wrought iron balconies line skinny winding streets, and remainders of relics are visible as you sip coffee in the square.  Among other things, we saw a cathedral from 200 AD, and amazing amphitheatre.  I guess this gives us a bit of a preview of what we’ll see in Italy!  On the opposite end of the spectrum, we also went to the mall.  It was a long day, but an very interesting one.

We’ve eaten some great food while in Barcelona.  The other day we went to a restaurant in the Gothic Quarter where I probably ate the biggest meal I’ve eaten on the trip so far for only 8 Euros.  I ordered the menu del dia, where you get to choose two courses as well as dessert.  My first course was an amazing seafood paella, and both Zevi and I were sure that I had misunderstood the ordering process, as I was extremely full after eating it.  However, a second course did come, and I managed to force some of it down before I was offered dessert.  Needless to say, I was ready for a long nap after eating all of that food.  We’ve also been cooking a lot; the hostel we’ve been staying at here has a great kitchen so we’ve been having eggs for breakfast every morning, and last night we made a delicious stir fry.  I’m pretty sure we’re making everyone else in the hostel jealous; in fact, I’m sure we are, as we frequently receive covetous looks and remarks from other people staying here.  It’s really nice to be able to cook, as it saves us a lot of money and it means that we can still eat quite well!

Well, I must go.  I hope you are all doing well.  We miss you!  Thanks for your comments… keep them coming 🙂

Much love

-Heather

Barcelona

No Hablo Espagnol (Heather actually had to correct me on how to say that…)

Yes, Im actually writing a blog entry… surprised? I am.

The phrase above probably sums up my time here quite effectively. I was definitely a lot more comfortable in Paris than I am here, but aside from the language barrier, Im finding Barcelona a fascinating city that is really different from anywhere I’ve ever been before, but we’ll get to that later.

When we last left you, we were sitting in an Internet Cafe before getting our bags from the hostel and heading to our train. We arrived at the train station in plenty of time and we tried to change our tickets from couchette to just plain seats but found that the train was full so we were out of luck. Oh well, its an expensive lesson to book sooner. We shared our couchette with two girls from California who regaled us with their adventures in the Catacombs of Paris and filled us in on tips for backpacking. Shortly after, the train attendant came by and made our seats into beds (magically, i think). Let me tell you, they did not build that train for anyone over 5’6″. It was a terrible, expensive night’s sleep. We arrived in Barcelona at about 8:30 the next morning and set out exploring the second city on our trip.

So far, some of the highlights for me are seeing the Sagrada Familia (which I am unable to pronounce properly) and visiting the huge outdoor market in the Gothic Quarter which reminds me of Granville Island, but with at least 10x the pork. We also spent our first day on the beach here in Barcelona. It was about 24C and after the fog cleared we actually found ourselves sweating a bit under the heat and went for a swim. Thats right, its October and we’re swimming in the ocean. Jealous? You should be.

The hostel here is infinitely better than the one we stayed at in Paris. It is a bit more out of the way but the train station is still close and we’ve met a lot of people. We met a couple of Aussies and just tonight, met a girl from Quebec. The first night here, we met a guy from London, but he’s actually originally from Victoria and we know a few of the same people (He graduated from Mt Doug High in 2001). The more I travel, the more im impressed that this world can be both big and small, depending on the situation.

We’re here in Barcelona until Sunday night when we’re taking a bus (saves us 20 euros each) to Madrid. We’re planning on some more time at the beach, heading back to Parc Guell (designed by Gaudi… its crazy!), hitting up the market for some fresh meat, and on Saturday, we’re going to try to go see FC Barcelona play!!

Ok, well, its time for us to go find some dinner and grab some wine, which is extremely cheap here (1.50 Euros/Bottle).

Hope everyone is doing well back home,

Zevi

La vie est belle…

Bon soir!  I guess over there it would still be bon apres-midi, so I hope that everyone is having a nice, relaxing Sunday.

Zevi and I arrived in Paris after about 14 hours of travelling on Thursday afternoon, and got to our hostel around 4:00.  We got right into the Paresian swing of things after checking in and dropping off our mammoth bags by finding the nearest boulangerie and purchasing a still-warm baguette, and then going to the grocery store and getting some sort of incredibly rich cheese to go along with it.  By the time we managed to get the cheese I had already polished off about a quarter of the baguette, much to Zevi’s chagrin, but if you were holding a fresh loaf of french bread (and that’s genuine French bread, not that imitation stuff Safeway makes) you would do the exact same thing.  Trust me.  Needless to say, we have had our fair share of bread, butter and cheese related products since arriving here… croissants for breakfast, baguette sandwiches for lunch and crepes for dinner.  C’est delicieux!

We’ve seen all of your average touristy Paresian sights, and, I must say, I’m a much bigger fan of Paris this time around than I was when I was 14.  On Friday we walked all the way from the Arc de Triomphe (which I didn’t dismiss as unworthy of my time, as I did 8 years ago) to Esplanade de la Defense, which was definitely one of the highlights of our time spent here.  The amazing modern architecture of La Defense made up for my sore and tired feet in spades.  What an incredible place.  Today we napped in the sun on the lawn in front of la Cathedrale de Sacre Coeur after taking a walk through the eerie confines of the Catacombes.  Contrasting scenes, but both beautiful in their own rights.

We are off to Barcelona in a few hours!  I hope that life is treating you as well as it is treating us.

Much Love

-Heather

5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Hi!

I can’t believe that we’re only 5 days away from leaving on our European adventure.  This is a trip that I’ve been wanting do to for as long as I can remember, one that I’ve been planning to do for a year, and one that I have been looking forward to more than ever ever since Zevi told me that he would be coming with me a few months ago.  Even though I’ve been counting down the days for at least the past week, the fact that we are actually doing this becomes more and more surreal with each passing day.  It’s amazing when something that you’ve been talking about and thinking about and telling people that you were going to do becomes a reality rather than just a fantasy.  We’re really going to get on a plane in 5 days and see all of the amazing things I have always wanted to see.  Wow.

Zevi and I decided that instead of sending mass emails we would set up this blog and write about our adventures whenever we have a chance.  We’ll try to post some pictures on here too if we can.  

Enjoy!

-Heather