Barcelona and Valencia

Nat and I traveled to Spain so that I could test out the words I know in Spanish... Hola, and adios (Thanks Efrain)... Also, I know the words: "¡Ay, el estomago!" (Bumble Bee Man, Simpsons). We arrived in Barcelona and made our way to the Hostel we were staying in, which turned out to be some guy's appartment where he rents out his extra room. This was a bit weird at first, but luckily he was pretty cool. Unfortunately however I felt sick for the first day... "¡Ay, el estomago!" ...so I didn't do much but get a fever, and shiver in bed.

Barcelona is a pretty cool place because a lot of the buildings look like something out of Alice in Wonderland. An architect named Gaudi designed and built alot of different buildings around the city, and we visited quite a few of them. One of the places he designed is a Cathedral called the Sagrada Famiglia. Gaudi died while building it in 1926 and the building is still not finished today. There are still large sections of the building which are open to the outside. Apparently building giant churches takes a long long time.

We wondered through the Gothic Area of Barcelona which is full of narrow streets with cool looking buildings. And we met up with some friends from the school who were also in Barcelona for dinner...

The following day we spent a few hours wondering around Park Guell in the north of the city. The whole park was designed by the same guy Gaudi who created the cool looking church we had visited the day before. There were walkways that looked like you were walking through the curve of a wave. All of the buildings in Park Guell were different shapes. They were all built without a single straight line, which made them interesting to walk through.


Surfing in February...



Another one of the Alice in wonderland type houses we visited was one called Casa Milà, which was even more creative than the other buildings we'd seen... It was wide open in the middle so when it rains, it rains down inside the building... The apartments which are inside don't get rained on however. There were crazy looking chimneys on the roof of the building. Not one of them looked the same. Some were made out of clay (maybe?) and other ones were covered in what looked like colourful glass pieces. The apartments inside the building were designed in a way that natural sunlight reaches all of the rooms most of the day, because there is a hole in the middle of the building and there are windows on either side of the rooms and milky glass separating each room.

Tappas... Food in small portions, so you eat lots of little things... Goes well with beer...

We took a subway to go see this building called Agbar Tower... It was kind of neat to look at but everything around it smelled like poo.. (the quality of my writing is going downhill)

...So anyway... When we were done in Barcelona we headed off Valencia, but not before I caused us to miss our plane! Apparently if you set the alarm to PM it doesn't work the way you'd hope... Anyway our flight way supposed to be at 7:00 am and I woke up at 6:00 am... Then after the shock of not being awake in time, we tried to get to the airport anyway.. We paid 30 euro to get to the airport just to be told that they wouldn't check our luggage... So we took a train! Which was way better anyway...

In Valencia we stayed in a Hostel which had themed rooms. We stayed in the "Sexy Love Room" which had a disco ball, red feather things all over the place and a mirror on the ceiling. We were probably given the room because we were the sexiest couple (also there were no other couples staying at the hostel). But I'd like to think that it was because of the first reason.

We visited a church in Valencia which supposedly houses the "Holy Grail" however it was locked behind glass, and at a height where you couldn't reach it. So we weren't even allowed to have a drink from it. You'd think that if some knights spent years searching for, and then protecting this fancy cup that's so wonderful that they'd at least let you give it a try to find out what the BIG DEAL is... But they didn't so we'll just have to take their word for it... After looking at the fancy cup we walked up a tall tower attached to the church. Nat counted 204 stairs on the way up and 204 on the way down. However I distinctly felt like there were more on the way up...






One day we rented some bikes and biked from our hostel down through this park which runs like a river from one end of the city to the other. We biked past some cool fountains and under bridges and past some futuristic buildings that looked like they were from Star Trek (next generation not deep space 9). Then we continued on to the sea, and biked along a beach until we got hungry. So we ate some tasty Paella, which is a spanish dish with rice and chicken and rabbit and shrimp and whatever else is sitting around, apparently it was invented in Valencia.



The day before we left we saw lots of fish at the aquarium...



All our Barcelona Pictures
Map of where we went in Barcelona
All our Valencia Pictures
Map of where we went in Valencia

New Years in Ischia

After we got back from Amsterdam we took off to Ischia which is an island in the bay of Naples for New Years. We flew into Naples and then took a Hydrofoil to Ischia. We were staying at an apartment in the town of Forio called Villa Ravino. The hotel had a thermal bath which they would fill up with hot water from the sea every morning. So we would spend a few hours in the thermal bath every morning before doing anything. And most of the time we had the thing to ourselves because there weren't many people in the hotel over the holiday.


The town of Forio is the second biggest town on the Island, and isn't quite as busy. We walked from our hotel into town one day, it was a nice walk along the sea. We stopped along the way and took pictures of all of the volcanic rocks sticking up out of the water. Forio has a big church which was built in the 16th century and a large watch tower in the middle of the town, to watch out for pirates. The town is filled with tasty restaurants which are filled with tasty food. We had some tasty tasty seafood pastas, excellent pizzas and some veal thing in lemony-creamy-gravy sauce... (not all in one meal)


One day while we were out for a walk I noticed that you could rent scooters. When I asked at our hotel about it, we were told that renting one car is more cost effective then renting two scooters. So the next morning when we woke up we had a note on our door telling us our car was ready for us. So we toured the island in our little Fiat Panda. Driving on the island was easy once I got over the fact that the streets are often as wide as the car. The first stop on our driving tour was St. Angelo, a small fisherman's village. There is a very large rock sticking out of the Sea in St. Angelos which we climbed up.We found an old house about half way up that had been abandoned. It looked like it might have been a grotto carved by the sea at one point and people had just moved in.


After St. Angelo we headed to Ischia Ponte and visited The Aragonese Castle of Ischia. The Castle has changed hands and was rebuilt by the romans etc. There is a whole garden around the castle, several churches, a monastery, and a nunnery. It turns out that the nunnery was the most interesting part.
Heaven's Toilet
Not 'His and Hers' religious toilets... Instead Nuns would put rotting corpses on these seats and let all of their bodily fluids drain off into a pot below until there was just a skeleton left. And while the corpses were rotting away the Nuns would spend much of their day in there praying too... So guess what? The Nuns would catch a disease, and soon it was their turn to rot away on heaven's toilet too! The Castle also had catacombs, a destroyed church and stuff.


One day we took a cool trip to another island in the bay of Naples: Capri. Capri unlike Ischia is a Limestone island. Unfortunately at this time of year there are no boats running between Ischia and Capri so we had to travel all the way back to Naples in between. On the boat, on the way over, we were suckered into joining a tour which turned out to be a bit of a waste of money. We got a bus ride from Capri to Anacapri, some free time, then a bus ride from Anacapri to Capri then a 20 minute walking tour, then Free time! and it only cost 20 euro per person. It would have cost maybe $20 total in taxi fee's for the bus rides. But luckily Capri was cool enough that I didn't care we'd been swindled. In Anacapri we took a chair-lift to the top where the view was unbelievable. You could see Ischia, Naples and Mount Vesuvius. In Capri we had our 20 minute tour before we went our separate ways. Nat and I walked along a scenic route to find the Natural Arch which is an arch that had been slowly carved into stone by the sea. After that we watched the sunset before heading back to Ischia.


All of the wine made in Ischia is called Epomeo which is also the name of the Volcano. For our last full day in ischia we climbed to the top. We didn't have a car so we could only go as high as the bus would take us, and then we walked. It took about an hour and a half (Nat says 3 hours I suggest you take an average) to walk the all the way to the top and it was quite steep at parts. And just before the summit there was a small restaurant where we enjoyed a half litre of Epomeo wine to celebrate!

All of the pictures from this trip

A Map showing where all our pictures were taken