Chomping on churros

Europe ~ Spain ~ Girona, Barcelona & Madrid

Getting here turned out to be harder than we thought… Cast your minds back to a week ago, when poor, exhausted Bobbi and Tash stumbled out of bed to catch the 4am bus to the airport. What really happened is we got to the bus station at 4.05am, consequently missing the bus. The next bus didn’t leave until 5.30am which meant we would have missed out flight. As there were no other busses or trains to the airport, we were just about to catch a taxi (would have been about $280 AUD) when… a Swedish girl rocked up to the bus station with her parents, to find out she’d missed the bus also. So, in return for the money we would have paid the bus driver, they offered us a ride to the airport, and we all caught our respective flights. Looked bleak for a moment there though…

Arrival in Spain went really well, considering how much trouble we had just getting to the airport in Sweden. We spent our first two days in Girona, a small town about an hour and a half north of Barcelona. We were lucky enough to find a bed at the first place we looked – a pension run by an motherly Spanish woman. A pension is basically a flat that the owner has opened up to guests – for a double room (with bathroom, yey yey yey) it turned out cheaper than a hostel would have been. We spent our first day seeing the sights of Girona (cathedrals, river, Arab baths) and our second day bathing in the beautiful Costa Brava – the Spanish sea. We lathered ourselves in sunscreen and ‘baked’ away for 5 minutes – and got sunburnt in the weirdest spots. I got burnt in two places on the small of my back, whilst Tash has bright red ankles.

Standing in the entrance to our pension in Girona

Standing in the entrance to our pension in Girona

We rocked up to Barcelona with the intention of buying a ticket on the night bus to Madrid. Which we did. Kinda. Having brought the ticket, we spent the rest of the day wandering about, idly looking at hostels for when we returned to Barcelona later in the week. It wasn’t till about 8pm (our bus left at 11.30pm) that we looked at the tickets and realised the bus left the following night. Whoops. Rushed down to the station to attempt to change the tickets, but quickly realised there was no hope, so concentrated our efforts on finding somewhere to stay. Did I mention that Barcelona was in the middle of a fiesta (festival)? Luckily, we once again found a bed at the first place we looked, so it wasn’t all bad. We were able to spend the second day seeing the sights of Barcelona (mainly Gaudi’s cathedral – La Sagrada Familia and some of his other buildings), wandering along the main street of Barcelona and watching the going-ons of the festival.

We spent the better part of 3 days visiting our cousin, Katy, in Madrid. She’s over here improving her Spanish (not really sure how, it seems pretty fluent to our ears!) and is really living it up the Spanish way. She took us around town, showing us some of her favourite haunts. One night was spent in a hookah bar, where we used a giant pipe to smoke flavoured (in our case, apple) tobacco. Very laid back, cool atmosphere. Katy also took us to the big park in Madrid, where, on a Sunday, everyone congregates to dance, fire twirl and play bongo drums. Once again, fantastic atmosphere, everyone really gets into it. We went to the Sunday market (so many people, luckily our experiences in Asia taught us how to act in a crowd) and tried chocolate churros. Yum – you’re served a big plate of churros (long, Spanish donutty things) and a mug of thick hot chocolate, used to dip your churros in. Mmm.

Katy, Tash & I trying hookah

Katy, Tash & I trying hookah

We spent last night on a bus from Madrid to Barcelona, arriving here in Barcelona at 8am. Tonight we are camping out at the airport before our 6.30am flight to Italy. Traveling is fun, but I sure do appreciate a bed!!!
Take care peoples, let me know how you’re going,
luv bobs

Seeing the forest from the trees

Europe ~ Germany ~ Cologne, Bonn & Freiburg

Germany is a really green country. I don’t know if that surprises you, but it sure surprised me. Of all the images I had concocted of Germany, green forests and luscious fields wasn’t one of them. We were happy with our flight over here from France – on Thai Airways when you finish a flight, they pin an orchid (their symbol) onto your shirt. German Wings gives you a bottle of neon orange Schwarzkopf hair dye. Woohoo!

We’ve been enjoying ourselves the German way, spending a lot of our time and precious money hanging around beer gardens. So many varieties of beer to sample – only so much time to do it in! My friend Andy took us out for a night on the town, German style. When he told us he was taking us to a ‘rock club’, I never expected that the German word for rock translates roughly into the Australian word for heavy metal!!! Inside we found guys with long hair head-banging along to Rammstein and the like. A completely different experience – very different from Brass Monkey back home!!! Typically, we ended up stranded before the night was out, but eventually caught the 4.30am train home…

Tash and I decided to take a weekend off – from world travel – to Black Forrest travel. We headed out towards the Black Forrest via the train system, leaving our big packs at the hostel in Cologne, along with our common sense and our Lonely Planet. After missing trains and getting off at the wrong stops, we ended up in a little town on the edge of the Black Forrest 8 hours later. We spent 2 and a half hours wandering around the tiny town of Baden-Baden, attempting to find a hostel. Eventually I gave up and wandered into a fancy hostel and asked if they knew of a hostel in the area. The guy behind the desk wrinkled his nose in disgust at my traveling cloths and informed me that there were no hostels, and furthermore (if we even had the money) every hotel in town was booked. There was some kind of festival for the rich and well-to-do folks on. Ahh, that would explain all the Mercedes and BMWs whizzing past us. We gave up and headed to a bigger town and fell into the last two beds available late at night. We spent the next day exploring Freiburg, a town in the middle of the Black Forrest. Didn’t find any trees, but did have some lovely Black Forrest Ice-cream. Still traveling first and foremost for food!

Tash and I, on our train trip

Tash and I, on our train trip

Cologne has been heaps of fun to explore, it has a HUGE Dom (cathedral) that overlooks you right as you come out of the station. It really looks like some-one has painted over the landscape and just plonked the Dom right there. Impossible to get a good photo – you just can’t fit the damn thing in one picture. We’ve also gone and explored the chocolate factory (YUM!!!) and the eau de Cologne store. Bonn (where Andy lives) is an interesting town too. It boasts that it is the birthplace of Beethoven, and has every single thought-of Beethoven attraction dotted about the town. Now we’re busy planning our next travels – watch out, people of Amsterdam!
xo me