After breakfast the plan was to book the car hire so we could pick it up tomorrow. After a quick internet search we thought we'd found a decent deal, so we booked it online. Then the drama started. After entering our credit card details, attempting to complete the transaction resulted in nothing happening. So we rung the local number on the site - not connected. Alarm bells! Goolging for the site name and "scam" resulted in a few hits. Nothing that definitively suggested it was a scam site, but enough to cause concern. We spent the next half hour trying to [View Full Entry]

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Up at 6:30am for what was going to be a _very_ long day. This trip was going to be quite different from our last - after all, we had "Will & Grace" to watch this time rather than "King Of Queens"!!! Check-in, and I hoped this was a good omen for the whole trip - not only were we assigned the _two_ seats behind the emergency exit - we were upgraded to Premium Economy!!! Not quite sure what Business Class has over premium, but as far as any long-haul trip could be described as "pleasant" - it actually was!!! More legroom [View Full Entry]

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Today we booked a private guided tour of El Escorial & The Valley of the Fallen. Once Mikaley & Kyra were packed off to school our guides Penny & Talia drove us up to El Escorial, about an hour's drive from Aravaca in Madrid. The monastry, its gardens, and the view both up into the mountains behind and the sprawling city in the distance below are stunning. We took our time strolling through the gardens and taking it all in. Penny then treated us to some tappas (grilled muchrooms!!!) and an iced lemon drink which we sat and thoroughly enjoy [View Full Entry]

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No breakfast included - despite what we read on the internet - so we deposited our bags with reception and headed out to find something suitable. One thing we've found in general over here - some things seem incredibly hard to buy, at least when you don't know where to look. A simple bagette and a bottle of orange juice is all we wanted. After wandering for an hour we cut our losses and ordered a bacon and cheese bagette - made possible only because of a kind English lady whose partner spoke fluent Spanish who offered to help as we [View Full Entry]

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A relatively early morning as we had to get out to the train station to book our trains to Seville. It took us a little longer than planned to get out the door - Kyra just wouldn't let Aunty Karina leave - but we arrived at Atocha Renfe shortly after 10am hoping to get the 11am train. It wasn't looking too hopeful - after finally finding the right ticket office we found a huge queue of people waiting to buy tickets. I had #512, with more than 50 people ahead of me. I have no idea why some people take 10 [View Full Entry]

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This was a *real* sleep-in. We had been exhausted not only from last night, but the previous 3 nights in Barcelona, where we didn't get to bed before 12am and it was generally closer to 2am. As such, we finally awoke around 12:15pm! Che awoke from the lounge to make us waffles - and boy were they good! Penny had also laid on fruit salad and banana bread muffins - a very welcome change from our usual breakfast of the last 5 weeks! We spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the girls - painting and building a "yoghurt machine" [View Full Entry]

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Another travel day, so we could sleep in a little again. After packing our bags we headed down towards the hospital again for our usual breakfast. Then we lugged our suitcases the short distance to the station, to catch the metro to the Sants train station. We arrived at the station and I asked whether or not I need to validate our tickets. When the girl saw our tickets, she directed us to something called the "Sala Club". We found it, and after walking thru the sliding glass doors, we were in another world. We had been bumped from 1st class [View Full Entry]

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The breakfast plan was the same as yesterday, and then we walked down to meet the bus at the start of the red tour shortly after 9am. The bus was empty, and we got off at the Park Guell stop for the short hike up the hill to the park itself. Amazing, Gaudi was really tripping when we did his work! ;) Colour and wavy lines is his style, and there's plenty of both in the park entrance. The rest of the park is more reserved colour-wise, though the wavy theme is realised in abundance in every bridge, path, seat and [View Full Entry]

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With no breakfast in our room rate, we walked down the street to one of the many cafes that served "breakfast" and picked up some qiche and bread roll, orange juice and muffins, and ate it on some seats on via de Gardia which leads down to the Sagrada Familia. We then headed on the short walk to the abovementioned Sagrada Familia, which is an amazing sight and it's no surprise that it's the icon of tourism in Barcelona. Karina took plenty of pictures and then we bought our 2-day hop-on hop-off bus tour tickets and boarded the first of the [View Full Entry]

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A slower day today with nothing but a couple of long train trips with a 3 hour wait in between. I took advantage of the eggs again, and after packing we headed out on the short walk to the train station, this time getting there more-or-less just in time to board the train. The trip to Montpellier was completely uneventful, other than the "musical chairs" we had to play for much of the trip because our seats were faced backwards and Karina gets motion sickness. Fortunately the train was little more than half full and we had no trouble switching to [View Full Entry]

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