Ola from Barcelona

Yesterday we finished arrived in Barcelona and it is nuts and I love it. However before coming here we visited the Salvador Dali Art Gallery in Figuieres. The art gallery is truly unique and stunning. The gallery was designed by Dali and each of the rooms are like his paintings - surreal. Some of the rooms there were random pieces in the room and you have to look through a giant magnifying glass to get the whole picture. His art was made up of his sketches, paintings and sculptures. In addition the jewellery Dali designed was on display which was very unique.

 

As I said we arrived in Barcelona and we dropped off in the city on market day and there also happens to be the week long La Merce festival on. There are people for Africa. After quite a long walk lugging our luggage to the B&B we had a long siesta.

 

Last night was one of the most memorable nights I have ever had. The host of the B&B was tellling us about a Monster Parade that was worth visting and that we would need to take old clothes because of the fireworks. Sal and I thought whatever as we have been to lots of firework presentation before and never been burnt. The parade was nothing like I have ever seen before. There we groups of people drumming and with each of these groups there were children dressed up in uniforms. These children had a stick with a firecracker on top which spun around shooting sparks over the crowd. Audience members would run out and dance around with these children. The firecracker when it run out let off a loud bang which sounded like a gun shot. The kids would then reload. There were hundreds of childrwen doing this.

 

Along with the children shooting sparks, there were numerous dragons doing the same but they were shooting much deepr into the crowd. Sal and I thought we had a good spot standing on a raised step infront of a shop. The dragons would aim their sparks often in our direction. It was crazy, When the dragons fired everyone would duck and scream. When the dragon was gone then people would stand up laughing ready for the next one.

 

Damage Report of Steve and Sal - one hole in a cardy, one hole in a handbag and one burnt elbow.

 

We then moved away from the parade and went and saw some spanish bands with spanish dancing. Also we saw this multimedia presentation where they projected lights/images onto the front of an old buidling. They did it in such a way that the images followed the contours and shape of the building - it was awesome. Just an amazing evening!

car problems

Yesterday morning was a great day as we visited a small intact medieval village and we visited the old roman and greek city of Neapolis. Neapolis was great as many of the huge mosaics that the ancient romans and greeks used to decorate their floors were still entact. Very impressive. I was going to put a photo on the blog of one of them but I forgot my camera. Yesterday afternoon wasn't so good as we had some "car problems". Sal and I are fine and the upshot is that we had to get a new car. We visited Girona today which is the major city in these parts and we did some shopping and wandered around.

ola from Spain

Sally and I have arrived in Spain and it is great - but more on that latter. I can't go any further without talking about our stay in La Force in Southern Spain. It is a very spectaclar part of the country with bright yellow fields with sunflowers in them with bright green fields with other crops. The place where we stayed was great and they had an old king charles cavalier much like Elvis. Which was great as we are missing him very much. Carcassone was the undoubted highlight. It is an old medieval city that was a haven for the cathars in years gone past. It is now full of restaurants. Some of the english translations were quite funny on the menus - muff of duck was an interesting one. We also had a spectacular drive through the pyrennes with jagged mountains and old cathar chataeus in very remote places.

 

We are staying at Palermos in the heart of Costa Brava in Spain. It is much hotter here with stunning beaches. Like anywhere in the world with great beaches there are lots of high rise apartments and hotels. I am struggling with the spanish at the moment as I keep going to say french things. Today we cruised down the Costa Brava which was very pretty. Last night we went to a quiet place for some food and all of a sudden they put on a soccer match and the place went crazy. Soccer is very exciting to watch when the commentators speak spanish - gooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll. I still have no idea who was playing but the score was 6-5 to the team in white. I think that´s about all.

 

Oh yeah go the warriors!

 

And for the record we didn't have muff of duck but a woman near our table had it and seemed to  enjoy it!

Rocamadour

Yesterday was an awesome day. We visited Rocamadour which is an old town built long ago where pilgrims used to go to seek protection - looks like something out of a fairy tale. It was great walking around the old streets and up alot of stairs. Also yesterday we visited Gouffre de Padirac which is a collasped cave that goes down underground for several hundred metres. While we have seen lots of amazing man made stuff on this trip this has been the highlight so far. We travelled down into this big hole in the ground via a series of lifts. We got to walk around and go on a raft on the underground stream. There were many large stalligtites (75 m) and crystal clear water. It was amazing!

Greetings from Sarlat

Just finished a 15km canoe with Sal down the dordogne river amongst all of these really old chateau - awesome. This area of France is amazing and very laid back. There are many old chateaus around here as this area has been the seen of many battles between the english and french. Yesterday we visited one of them and it was great as they had all of the orginal furnture in it so it was very easy to imagine; Yesterday we also visited Lascaux which is an underground cave which has huge paintings of bulls, bison and horses dating from around 17,000 years ago - thats before the ancient greeks and romans. We also visited Domme which is a neat little town on a cliff - see the video for the view. Unfortunately we got a flat tyre and the french folk found this very amusing as they were constqntly walking past and laughing and making comments. The B&B we are staying at is the kind of place that has so many rules (including how much toilet paper you can use) that you just wanna brek them. On the upside is that the owner is a fantastic chef and he cooks us 5 course dinners every night.

its been a while

We have now arrived in Sarlat and it is raining - the first day of rain. It is taking a long type to type as french keyboards have the letters in different places. Last week we were in provence which is in southern France. It was nice as it has lots of jagged cliffs and old cities. Provence is known as the agricultural hub and most popular holiday placze for the french. We stayed outside a town called St Remy which was very picturesque. Every road leading into St Remy is lined with old oak trees with over hanging branches over the roads. While we were staying in provence we met up with a young belguim couple who we often stayed up long into the evening chatting to (they were big music fans too). Driving has been interesting here. I thought all of the crazy divers lived in NZ and french sign posting leaves a lot to be desired as we have frequently got lost.

 

I am really looking forward to today as there is a massive market in Sarlat and we are going to be wondering around the inner city which was buit in the 1500s and has been kept intact apart from the sattelite dishes. The B&B where we are staying is very nice as it is on a farm with lots of donkeys and the place was buit over 2 hundred years ago.

 

I have included a picture of a preserved mummy from 5000 years ago from a fabulous museum in Turin.