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Published: August 25th 2007
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Silly Pisa Photos
Everyone does it, but it has to be done.. ;) Well we have seen quite a bit since our last update. We are now in Italy and have spent a lot of time on the road travelling from Spain, through France and finally into Italy.
In Spain we did end up seeing the Alhambra (in Granada) which was amazing. It's basically and old Islamic complex full of Islamic architecture in the form of palaces, forts, gardens and other buildings. The biggest wow factor mainly came from the uniqueness of the buildings compared to others that we have already seen a lot of (Roman, Greek, Renaissance, Gothic, etc). However the intricate wooden and stone carving that adorned many of the walls took the cake.
From Granada we headed straight for the coast which took about a day driving. We then followed the coast up past Torreveija where Aunty Eileen and Uncle Angelo had a holiday house that I went to when I was young. I couldn't really remember the place but the water was so warm and it was nice to cool down from the mediterranian heat. It took us about two days in total along the coast to get up to Barcelona but we were rewarded with more beach
Michaelangelo's David
Well the replica anyway... for some stupid reason you are not allowed to photograph the real one... :( and a prime parking spot to leave the car and travel into Barcelona.
In Barcelona we arrived at our hostel to find out that we were it's first guests (no hoohar or anything) it had just started to receive guests and you could tell it from the last minute work going on and the smell of new paint. Barcelona was quite nice but it's biggest drawcard appeared to be it's architecture. There were many unique creations by Gaudi and others that were quite interesting. We spent a day exploring the main tourist strips, Las Ramblas and the beach before catching a movie (the Bourne Ultimatum - which was really good). Our second day we did a self guided walking tour to see the city's architecture that interested us. This included the bizzare La Sanagra Familar, a Guadi version of a cathedral, plus many other quirky little buildings. Our last day was spent at the beach just having some timeout. Holly's got the flu and so a day of rest came just in time. After the beach we had a quick siesta before heading into town for a tasty dinner. We saw the place on a previous day and it
Zona Sensible
You are now entering... the Sensible Zone... had a line up to get in, after checking the menu and price we knew it had to be a good feed. So we got in about 30mins before it opened and there were already a dozen people waiting in front off us (by the time it opened we estimated the line went back about 50m. The food was good! We had a mixed tapas like entree then a mixed paella (all kinds of meat and seafood) for 2, washed down with a jug of sangria, tasty!!!
We then made it back to our van and said farewell to Spain as we crossed the border into France. Our time in France was also limited and we mainly spent it passing through as we headed to Italy. We had some interesting driving along the Azure Coast, which has the famous towns of Nice, Cannes and Monaco. We didn't really have time or the desire to stop and the beachfront was so hectically packed that it wasn't really a choice anyway. Driving through it was crazy enough only matched by a similar stretch of coast in Italy.
From our experiences with the packed coastline in France we decided to head
La Sagrada Família
The strange Barcelona Architecture Tour begins... inland to cross the border, little did we know that this meant crossing the border through the alps. It did give us a nice change of scenery but I'm sure the van wasn't too happy negotiating so many hairpin corners and cliff hugging turns. Anyway we eventually made it over the border into Italy.
Once over the border we headed east until the coast met up with us. If you thought driving through the Azure Coast in France was bad, the Italian Ligurian Coast was so much worse. It could have been attributed to the crazy Italian drivers who appeared to think that they were driving large scooters instead of cars. We quicked decided to cough up the dosh and use a toll road to get down to Pisa otherwise we may not have got there at all.
Pisa was good although we were only there for a morning. We parked just outside of the main town and walked in to the leaning tower and main plaza area around it. We took many a stupid photo with us and the tower before the heavens opened up and we headed off. We drove to Florence parking in a little
Alhambra's Insides
Contained some amazing Islamic architecture. town just outside called Lastra-a-Signa where we caught a train the last little leg into the city. We headed straight for the Galleria Dell Accademia which houses Michaelangelo's David and some other art. David was quite amazing but there wasn't really much else to see. The gallery also had a stupid no photo rule which appeared to be so you would buy more merchandise on the way out. After seeing the Lourve and being allowed to take photos there (and of the Mona Lisa) we found this rule quite pointless and many people were just taking them slyly anyway. We finished up our day in Florence with a yummy Italian dinner which we have been craving for a while now but were saving ourselves until Italy. Bruschetta, Pizza and Pasta washed down with some local white wine, perfect!
Tomorrow we'll make another trip into Florence before making our way down south to Rome, where we have already booked our accommodation.
Cheers,
Lew and Holly
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