Lisbon – Part 3

Santa Justa Lift 

Santa Justa
Lift
Carmelite Convent 

Carmelite
Convent

On our fourth day in Lisbon we started the day with the Santa Justa lift. It’s this really old tall lift made out of iron that gives an impressive 360 degree view over Lisbon. It’s about 30 metres high and is not for the faint hearted up the top. I especially loved the one way tight spiral stairs when some lovely persons attempted to go down the stairs in the wrong direction when you and others were half way up 🙂 There was one set of spiral stairs to go up and a different set to go down. The stairs provided a see through view to the ground below and at that height Rach and I preferred to look up than down.

The lift leads to the Carmelite Convent which is the ruins of an old gothic church that has now become a Museum. The old look of the arches and old brickwork that make up the building looked pretty cool.

Continue reading “Lisbon – Part 3”

London

We arrived unwillingly in London after a great time in Portugal and of course great weather. We were in for a rude surprise to hear the weather in London would be 18 degrees, windy and cloudy. I guess we’d better get used to this, as there’s much more of this to come.

We spent our first three nights in a budget hotel, which was definitely budget. It looked like an old hospital or mental home. The price was expensive too.

We spent the first few days looking for a temporary shelter over our head for the next few weeks so we could just relax and get on with doing the important things e.g. looking for work and a more permanent place to stay without the worry of not having a place to stay.

Our Room

Our Room
The View

The View

We ended up being recommended to a place that specializes in people like us. People who are looking for a place to stay with no commitment and for short to medium lengths of stay.

I’m not going say how much the room is per week but let’s just say when it’s converted to Australian dollars that it’s probably more per week than any one you know paying rent in Australia and that would be for a house too 🙁 The room has what we need and will do for the short term. It has a great view out on to the major park in the area. It’s close by to a tube / metro stop. It’s close to the high street (the street with all the good shops) and last but not least it’s close to Johanna’s home.

Any way, I better get back to looking for work.

Ps. Keep checking back for the rest of Lisbon and Portugal.

Lisbon – Part 2

On our third day we had arranged to meet with my aunty Cidalia who lives in Portugal. She was going to take us around to a few of Lisbon’s sights. We were supposed to have my sister there to translate for us, but she bailed on us and left Lisbon the day before. My aunty only knows a tiny bit of English and I knew even less Portuguese. My sister said that we’d have a real difficult time communicating with her. I had also sent my aunty an SMS in Portuguese and received an English reply that was in an interesting form of English. Rach and I were both heaps worried about meeting up and to tell you the truth I was trying to get out of it.

jeronimos-monastery

Jeronimo’s
Monastery

I was having a shave before our meeting time and just before I started there was a knock on the door and to my utmost surprise it was my aunty. Our first encounter was a bit shaky but we managed to understand that she’d be waiting down stairs. My aunty was armed with an English to Portuguese dictionary and a Portuguese to English dictionary. I had my thin Portuguese phrase book and a few words up my sleeve. We headed off for lunch close by and between us we could ask basic things like how old are you, where do you live, how old are you kids etc. Often we’d both be looking in our books to try communicating further. Most of the time we spoke in English and overall it was OK, enough to understand. We got very good at sign language, reusing simple words in both languages and we had lots of laughs trying to understand each other, getting across what we were trying to say. As the day progressed we got better and better at talking to each other.

Continue reading “Lisbon – Part 2”

Lisbon – Part 1

Lisbon has been great. There are so many things to do here. The surroundings are very different in that lots of the buildings are very old and nearly all the paths and streets are cobble stones, all laid one by one.

Rach wasn’t feeling that well on our first day so we didn’t do any major sightseeing. We just had dinner and went for a walk around a few parts of the city and of course had a delicious serve of ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s.

Water Park 

Water Park

On our second day we headed to Oriente. Oriente literally meaning “east”. We went there for the oceanarium. Along the way we passed the largest casino in Europe and as you can imagine it’s quite large 🙂 We also walked through the water garden that had these volcanic like water fountains that were quite pretty and impressive when they let off a burst of water, just like a volcano.

Continue reading “Lisbon – Part 1”

Madrid

Park Retiro

Park Retiro
Madrid at Night

Madrid
at Night

Our hostel was located pretty much in the centre of Madrid so there were lots of places to eat and drink around us. The street our hostel was on is also the local hangout for prostitutes so it was interesting to watch them, they were mostly VERY unattractive! A lot of them were quite young as well which is a bit sad. We saw a few old men go up to them and negotiate a price and then walk towards an alley!

We were told by our guide on the bus on the way to Madrid that we had to go to dinner at this place close to the hostel that looked really expensive but was heaps cheap and the food was great. So we decided to check it out on our first night and it was great! It was so good we went there every night! Because it was pretty cheap we were able to get entree and mains and every night we left so full that we had to go for a walk so we didn’t feel so full.

Park Retiro

Park Retiro
Fountain
Park Retiro

Park Retiro
Pond

Our second day we checked out a park called Retiro it was really nice with a huge pond in the middle that you could hire boats to sail around. It was so hot that day about 30 degrees plus with what felt like 100% humidity so we just sat down under a tree for awhile. That night we were trying to find an internet place and stumbled across this square filled with people sitting down in front of this huge screen so we decided to sit down and check out what they were watching. We figured out that they were showing the international photography festival finalists which was pretty cool to watch. They showed photos from different photographers from all over the world.

Apart from the park we didn’t check out any other sights (cos they were mostly museums) we just walked around the city lots. We walked down this street called Grand Via which is apparently equivalent to one of the biggest streets in Manhattan, New York. It was filled with lots of shops, restaurants, cinemas etc.

Ibiza, the magic white isle

Airplane

Jet Over Apartment

Woo hoo! We finally made it to Ibiza. Flying in over and around Ibiza is a magnificent sight all by itself. The water is so blue and you get a good view of all the huge resorts and areas that make up the island.

On Friday we stayed in the area known as Ibiza town. This area is known for its many cafes, bars, restaurants and fashion stores on every street corner. Of course it’s also known for its night life. We were still a little tired from our night in Barcelona so we didn’t do much on our first day. We weren’t worried cause we knew what was ahead of us over the next couple days. We went for a short walk around Ibiza town at lunch and it seemed very quiet and not exactly what I expected. I assume this is because we didn’t walk around enough. We went for another walk around after dinner and this freezing wind came in quickly and knocked any motivation out of us. So unfortunately we didn’t get to experience what Ibiza town had to offer.

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Valencia

Valencia was always really going to be a stop over on route to Ibiza. We never planned on any sight seeing. We didn’t have much time either. On arrival into Valencia on our first night, we were hung over and tired from the previous night out in Barcelona with my sister and boyfriend. We didn’t get home till after 3 am then our alarm went off at 6 am to get ready for the bus. Neither of us were feeling too great so as soon as we got to Valencia we just slept. We had dinner slept again and before you know it we were off to sunny Ibiza the next morning.

So that’s it for our first night in Valencia. Valencia seems like a nice place to live. It has about 700,000 people living there and is famous for it’s Valencia oranges. Yes that’s where the name Valencia orange juice comes from. Next time you see a bottle with it written on the label, then it should of come from Valencia, Spain.

Valencia is also famous for its annual tomato throwing festival. Approximately 30,000 people come to the tomato fight, and 110,000 kilos of tomatoes are used.

Barcelona

Group Shot

Group Shot
Park Guell

What a great place. Barcelona would have to be the coolest place we’ve visited so far. To sum it up really quickly it’s because of the night life, the atmosphere and all of Antonio Gaudi’s works.

Now for the longer version. You better get a drink because this is a long one. I really hope the length of this doesn’t deter you, but please read on 🙂 We liked Barcelona so much that no doubt Rach and I will both return again. The streets of Barcelona are always bustling with people and there a city life atmosphere in the air. The main streets are lined with restaurants, bars and more. All with table and chairs facing the road or walk ways. Most people don’t eat till after 9pm. Some restaurants even continue to serve dinner past 11:30pm! It’s definitely a party city with loads of places to sit and chill for a drink or have a large one.

Continue reading “Barcelona”

Nice

Beach

Beach

Well I’m finally getting around to writing about Nice. Like Adrian said we went to Monaco on our second day to check out the F1, that was pretty exciting even though the qualifying had finished there were still heaps of people around and we got to check out the track from seats that probably would have been 300€ or more to sit in. Monaco is really beautiful, the train ride from Nice to Monaco was great checking out all the beautiful beaches along the way.

Beach

More Beach

I decided to stay in Nice on our third day while Adrian went to check out the race. I’d noticed all these cool shops the day before and hadn’t really had a chance to go shopping until now so I was really looking forward to it! So when Adrian left for Monaco I headed for the shops and I was devastated to find they were all closed! It was about 11am on a Sunday so I thought they might just open a little later on Sundays so I headed to the beach and on the way found a little market but it wasn’t really the type of stuff I was after. I sat at the beach for a while (not very comfy cos its pebbles!) and took a few photos and thought I’d try again to see if the shops had opened but they didn’t. There really isn’t much to do in Nice other than go shopping and to the beach so I just went back to where we were staying and had a nice relaxing afternoon reading a book by myself 🙂 So thats my Nice story not really exciting! I would like to go back there though and spend more time at Monaco and the surrounding islands.

Nice but more Monaco

On the way to Nice after Pisa we travelled along the French Riviera. This is a massively long route that runs along the east coast of Italy into France. The scenery was quite amazing looking at the nice blue ocean disappear into the horizon through large hills and mountains. The roads along the way are well built for the journey. We travelled over so many massively tall bridges linking one large mountain to another and went through many tunnels cutting through the inside of the mountains. It was easily the most amazing scenery we’ve seen on a bus so far.

Monaco

Monaco

Just thirty minutes from Nice we started to head into Monaco. The land of the rich, famous and loads of hot super cars. On the way there, three red hot Ferraris blasted past us making a lot of noise. I was excited already. We were in the mountains creeping up to Monaco and popped out looking down on to the major port of Monaco. Wow oh wow. What a fantastic place. The view on top of the Monaco mountains looking down into the main port is just unreal. Amazingly blue water into a port full of huge cruise liners and tall apartment buildings. All on a very steep hill. I should note that the picture in no way does it’s justice at we were far from the port and I was on the bus when this was taken. I’d love to live there if it didn’t cost 1,000,000 euro non refundable application fee for residency. Madonna and Michael Jackson were refused residency and lost there one million euro application fee. Ouch. Continue reading “Nice but more Monaco”

The leaning tower

Pisa - Rach

Pisa – Rach

On the way from Florence to Nice we stopped at Pisa. Of course to see one of the countries most famous monuments and to see all the other tourists doing the holding up the tower photo 🙂

According to our tour guide Pisa is a hole and he thought that of the hour and thirty minutes we were there that it was an hour and twenty too long. Even our Lonely Planet travel guide noted that there was no reason for an extended stay. If they say this about Pisa, I wonder what they´d say about Canberra 🙂

Adrian & Rach

Adrian & Rach

Of course we had to get some holding or pushing the tower photos 🙂 I felt like the biggest cheeser doing it but I had some comfort knowing that a hundred other people were doing it.

The tower is really on a lean. It used to lean even further every year but in the 1990s they worked on fixing the unstable ground below it (which caused the tower to continually keep leaning further. The tower was not built leaning. It was once straight).

Pisa - Adrian

Pisa – Adrian

Apparently the works down have also correct the lean to an angle back to what it was some time ago so it´s not as far leaning as it once was.

It was hard to work along the main strip without getting asked to buy a watch or an “original” Louis Vitton bag 🙂

All in all the tower was impressive and a must see and the grounds and grass area around it are kept in top condition.

Florence – Our last day

At our last city in Italy there was no way I was going to leave with out seeing something of Leonardo Da Vinci. If you didn’t already know then shame on you, but this guy was a genius.

Models

Models
Da Vinci Expo

Da Vinci Expo

In fact if you look up genius in the dictionary you will find a picture of him. Anyway, so on our second day we went to an exhibition on Leonardo Da Vinci. It was a display of real life models of his inventions and other works. A lot of the models were interactive so we could have a go and see what they did. A lot of things he invented and concepts he created works for are things we use every day and take for granted. It was a small exhibition but I’m glad we went. (Click the link to the right –>) Continue reading “Florence – Our last day”

Florence

We originally had only booked our last nights accommodation in Florence because we were just going to wait till we got there to book something in the city but decided the night before we left that we’d just book the other 2 nights at the busabout drop off point. Anyways we got there and said we have a booking for 3 nights and the lady said no its only for 1 night and we’re like no we booked the extra 2 nights last night if you let us get onto the internet we can show you the confirmation number etc, she said that they didn’t have the internet available for us to use. Adrian was getting quite cranky by this stage 🙂 We then said we booked it on gomio.com or hostelworld.com and she said we’ll you couldn’t have cos we don’t use those websites! Then it occurred to us that we’d booked the wrong place!! Luckily they had space there cos we couldn’t be bothered carrying our bags around looking for the other place. That’s our first stuff up for the trip! Wasn’t too bad it the scheme of things 🙂

Oh yeah and the accommodation is in cabins not tents thank god. But the cabins don’t have water hooked up them so you can’t use the toilet or shower in them you have to walk about 200m which a pain when you really need to go to the toilet at 3am! (Click the link to the right –>) Continue reading “Florence”

Rome’ing around

Yeah like Rach said yesterday we seriously walked for well over six hours with only a lunch break for a stop. We covered a lot of things and a large area in one day with no public transport except for on the way back. We walked from the Vatican city in the north west of Rome right down to the Colosseum in the south east. I’d love to know how many kilometres we walked in total.

The one thing about Italy is all of their monuments are just huge, very tall and very detailed. It must have taken ages for them to be built. So much effort and attention to detail went into them.

Today was a much light day. Both of us were keen to retire earlier than the other days. We first headed for the Sistine Chapel but the line was massive. I’d say close to a kilometre. So we headed back to the Colosseum for another quick look. As well as another look at the Roman ruins on the way back from the Colosseum. We then began our walk to the Piazza Navona (a piazza is a square or public place). It’s home to the Fontana del Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of Four Rivers).

Roman Ruins 

Roman Ruins

After that we headed back towards the Sistine Chapel to have another go at the line and this time around there was none, which was great. The path to the Sistine Chapel goes through many other corridors, rooms and large halls. I’d say we walked at least a kilometre on our little trip. So many of them had fantastically detailed walls and roofs with paintings of all sorts of the things. A lot of sculptures around the place and the one thing we noticed was that a lot of the male statues had their private bit broken off them 🙂 But the ones with leaves instead did not. After a good half hour of winding corridors, rooms and large halls we finally got into the Sistine Chapel. Well Michelangelo was really an artist. The paintings are so detailed and cover a massive amount of space. There are lots of separate large paintings that apparently tell stories from the bible. Again like all the other Italian monuments, it’s huge, very tall and very detailed. Unfortunately they won’t allow photos (like in Paris with the Mona Lisa, hence the post card shot 🙂 ).

We ended the day at that as we’re both still a little worn out from the day before. We headed back to our place for a swim and spa. Relaxing….

Tomorrow I think we are headed for our worst accomodation. Tents! This’ll be character building 🙂

Hanging with the Pope

The Pope

The Pope

Well today was the hugest day ever! We must of walked for seriously over 7 hours. We left at 11am and didn’t get home till almost 7:30pm and only sat down for lunch for about half an hour.

St Peters Basilica

St Peter’s Basilica

Our first stop was Vatican City. The were literally thousands of people gathered in St Peter’s Square and after a while we wondered why they were all faced one way and then we realised that the Pope must of been making an appearance and sure enough he did! At 12 o’clock he appeared in his little window. It was a pretty cool moment but not being able to understand what he was saying and not being religious people, we quickly got over it and shortly left to go into St Peter’s Basilica itself. That place is huge and very beautiful another amazing building to add to my list that I’ve seen so far 🙂

Trevi Fountain

Trevi Fountain
Pantheon

Pantheon

We then went to the Spanish Steps. They are just like the name says a set of steps nothing that great about them really. I’m sure they have some great history behind them but just to look at they weren’t that spectacular.

Our next stop was the Trevi Fountain. I was expecting this little fountain but again it was quite big and very pretty also just way too many people around which was quite annoying cause there was limited space to stand or sit around and just look.

Colosseum

Colosseum
Colosseum - Inside

Colosseum – Inside

We then checked out the Pantheon and you guessed it, it was huge! We’ve discovered the Italians love building big stuff!

Our last stop for the day was the Colosseum. We did a tour of the inside, the guide thought he was pretty funny but I didn’t think he was! He did give us lots of interesting history though, like the floor was built of wood and they just covered it in sand. I thought that was a bit strange, it no longer has a floor because of the numerous fires you just look down at this maze made of stone. Our ticket lasts until 1:30pm tomorrow so we’ll probably go check it out again.

Vatican Guards

Vatican Guards

Tomorrow I’m keen to take it a bit easy, there’s still a lot to look at but I think we’ll catch trains around instead of walking 🙂 The Sistine Chapel was closed today so I want to go check that out tomorrow hopefully there won’t be as many people around either because its a Monday.

Buon giorno

So I’m finally in the fatherland 🙂 Our propellor plane in here was quite scary. At one point Rach and I looked forward at my hand gripping the chair in front and saw perspiration from the nerves in droplets on my fingers. We spent the first day here at the camping resort. This place is heaven compared to a hostel. Lots of nice trees everywhere and a pool, restaurant, shops and bar. We spent a fair bit of the afternoon in the spa just relaxing getting ready for the foot pounding over the next two days.

Carnevale

Carnevale

Anyway, we headed into Venice (the locals call it Venezia) and took a vaporetto (water bus) all the way from the top to the bottom down the grand canal, the main canal that seperates the main area of Venice. Well what can I say other than wow. It’s a spectacular ride and goes under the famous Rialto bridge. This is one of few places we’ve been too where I could just sit back and watch. The place is really quite amazing and looks stunning in many places. Seeing all of the buildings end and drop straight down into the water everywhere is just very different to every where else. I’ve taken so many photos over the last two days. More than at the Star Wars exhibition 🙂

Gondolas

Gondolas

One thing I wish we could see is the Venice Carnevale. The masks and costumes that go with it fascinate me so much. They look unreal. Unfortunately the carnival is in February. I would love to come back and see it. For some photos of what I mean check out:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=venezia+carnevale&m=tags

Rialto Bridge

Rialto Bridge

All in all, we didn’t do much sightseeing at all but it felt like we did heaps. We did loads of walking around and weaving in and out of the hundreds of alley ways. On our way home to day we managed to walk from the bottom to the top of the main area of Venice and walked through areas where there was not a single tourist in sight. Today the vaporettos went on strike, luckily we caught the last one to the bottom of Venice, San Marco. This was good because the St Marco Piazza square which on our first day was full of people meant that today it was much quieter. It was also bad because we didn’t get to go to the glass art making island of Murano, where they make lots of stunning glass pieces.

Venice

Well what can I say Venice is such a beauitful city 🙂 You could sail up and down the grand canal all day and not get bored.

The first thing we did on our second day was catch a water bus to San Marco, there were hundreds of people there and even more pigeons! We pretty much spent the whole day walking around San Marco looking at all the little stores and yes Jo the jewellery was pretty impressive! And I liked all the Murano glass stuff too. I must of went into 50 stores even though they were all selling almost the same thing, I could look at it for hours.

Pigeons

Pigeons

We thought it looked like fun to buy some corn kernals and feed the pigeons and oh my god they love it! It was kind of strange at first having all these birds all over you but you get used to it. We got lots of cool photos of that.

We then caught the water bus to an island called Lido but as soon as we got there we realised we had to be back in an hour to catch our shuttle bus back to the place we’re staying at so we pretty much had to leave as soon as we got there but it is still nice to ride on the water bus and look at everything.

Basilica

Basilica

Today we went back to San Marco and went into St Mark’s Basilica. It is such a beautiful cathedral. I still find it hard to believe that all these amazing churches, buildings, castles etc we are seeing were built hundreds of years ago without machinery. They are so huge and have so much detail, every one we see I’m just amazed by.

Oh and today when we went to catch a water bus and realised that they were on strike! But luckily Venice isn’t that big so we were able to walk to nearly everywhere we wanted to go. Except we weren’t able to go to Murano to see the glass making 🙁

We had lunch at a restuarant in San Marco, it was 15€ for a 3 course meal but it was pretty crap I thought. I must say the food I’ve experieced in Venice is pretty average, I’m hoping Rome and Florence will be better.

Small Canal

Small Canal

The place we are staying at is great. Its about 15 minutes out of Venice but its really spaceous which is great cause we’re used to being confined to a hostel room. They also have a pool which Adrian managed to get me into yesterday!! I’m sure he’ll mention his disatisfaction about the time the pool closes 🙂

We fly out to Rome tomorrow, our shuttle bus leaves at 6am which I’m not very happy about! That means we have to get up at 5.15 noooo!!!!

Praha… As the locals call it.

As Rach said, we stopped at a concentration camp used by the Nazis.

Terezin Court Yard

Terezin Court Yard

It’s called Terezin and is about an hour and a half away from Prague. It was mainly used for Prisoners on route to other destinations. It was not like the other larger camps where mass gassings occurred. Prisoners were sent to other camps for this. The people mainly died from the appalling conditions. The picture of the court yard shows a sign which means “Work makes you free”. Apparently this slogan was used throughout the majority of concentration camps.

Solitary Confinement

Solitary
Confinement

Only three people escaped from Terezin. They used a ledge which wrapped around the outside of the building. After the escape, part of the ledge was removed to prevent further escapes. We got to see where they escaped and where the ledge was removed. For more info on Terezin check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp_Theresienstadt

A few things on Prague, the beer here is dirt cheap. Too bad I’m not a big beer fan. And when I mean cheap I mean cheap. For top quality beer you can get half a litre for anywhere from just over $1 – $2 aussie dollars.

I must say it’s about time that I walk into a public place and find the Ice Hockey on TV! And not the stupid football! The Czechs are big on their hockey. There is a big arena and hockey shop right next to our place. The first night we were here, we walked into an Italian restaurant and what do you know? There was a Czech vs Canada game on the big screen 🙂 A couple of the staff sat around an watched it instead of work. Today we went to a net cafe and on the wall was a widescreen plasma and the guy turned it on and what do you know? Czech vs USA was on. Currently the world championships are being played Latvia and the teams are stacked with NHL players.

Continue reading “Praha… As the locals call it.”