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Published: September 8th 2008
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Don Quixote
Statue of Don Quixote and his side kick in a park in central Madrid Madrid
In late May, Jo and I, accompanied by the ever reliable Penny, Stuart, and Duncan, flew to Madrid for a weekend. The weather was a little iffy for the weekend: spells of warm sunny weather interspersed with periods of heavy rain... Overall, it was hot and sticky, but a pleasant change from London.
We spent the majority of this trip taking in the sights. We spent a great morning at the Spanish Royal Palace. I especially liked the armoury, which had a great display of weapons and armour, including some fully armoured horses. The Spanish Royal Palace also had several Stradivarius violins and cellos (very cool!).
We also saw several art galleries. One of the galleries held Picasso’s Guernica, one of his more famous works. The Guernica was huge! About 2m tall, and about 4m wide... I don’t know where Picasso found time to paint it all!
We also took a cable car ride across a valley to a park a wee way out of Madrid. The view was excellent looking back at the city. The ride was fairly smooth, though it did rock a little in the breeze.
All in all, Madrid was nice and
worth a trip out of London for.
Venice
Ah Venice, city of love.
We had to postpone our trip the first time (Jo was sick), but it was well worth the wait.
We arrived late on a Friday night, and had to find our wee hotel in the dark, an adventure in itself... but we got there in the end and checked in to a comfortable, but dinky, little room.
The next day after a delicious Italian breakfast at our hotel, we set off to explore the twisty little lanes and canals of Venice. We started by catching the vaporetto (ferry) towards the Rialto Bridge, one of the most famous parts of Venice. We were astounded by the constant bustle of tourists and the beauty of the canals. The Rialto Bridge itself was spectacular, and the shops on the bridge were beautiful. Many of the shops were filled with Italian glass from Murano.
After seeing the bridge we headed towards one of Venice’s other great sights the Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark’s Square). Just as we arrive in the Piazza we were soaked by a deluge of rain, but even that couldn’t deter us
from exploring further. We took refuge from the rain inside a palace (as you do...)
The Doge’s Palace was sumptuously decorated, with gorgeous marble floors and fine art on all the walls. The Palace even included a small prison, which looked thoroughly miserable for any previous inmates.
After the rain abated and the sun came out, we spent the rest of the day meandering around soaking up the atmosphere.
That night we had dinner at a small pizzeria (it was Italy after all) and went for a walk around the city (following other tourists and staying to the well-lit areas). We walked for about 45 minutes before we realised we were no longer near any of the sights we recognised... after turning a few corners and checking the map, we quickly discovered... we were well and truly lost!! We had no option but to back track the way we came and find our way to the nearest vaporetto stop. We eventually got home a bit later than intended, and a bit more tired than expected, but in one piece.
On the final day we shopped around buying Italian biscuits and chocolates for the trip home as we
typically do. We rounded a corner not far from our hotel and stumbled into the square we had become lost in the previous night... the entire time we were not more than 5 minutes walk from our hotel (oooops)!!
Later on the final day we caught a vaporetto across the water to the island of Murano. Murano is the home of some of the most beautiful (and expensive) glass you will ever see. We had a wonderful, but careful, walk around on a pleasant afternoon before we had to head to the airport for the flight home. We needn’t have rushed, our flight ended up being delayed for several hours getting us to our home in London at roughly 2am.
Overall, Venice was one of our favourite destinations. The whole time we never felt rushed, and the best thing to do was just wander around at look at the shops and soak in the atmosphere created by the narrow lanes and canals.
Paris
Jo and I travelled to Paris for a weekend at the start of July to celebrate Jo’s birthday!
We left London at some God-awful time on a Saturday morning (I got up at
4:30 am and it was already light!), but fortunately the Eurostar was smooth and relatively painless so I got a bit of sleep on the train.
We arrived at Paris Gare du Nord after a short delay on the train and headed for our hotel to the south of the city on Le Metro. We arrived at Porte de Versailles and quickly found our hotel due to my map reading abilities (and because it was the flashest building around). The hotel itself was wonderful, and our room was truly beautiful (despite the fact our window looked at a motorway overpass!). Breakfast was great with many small pain au chocolat and escargot au raisin eaten over the weekend.
The major highlight was our trip to Palais du Versailles, former home of the king and capital of France. We chose to take a tour of the palace in order to avoid the 3 hour long queue to get in... Not the cheapest option, but well worth it! Olivier (our tour guide) kindly lead us around and gave us a great commentary in heavily accented English. Along the way we had little headsets so that we could hear what Olivier was saying
regardless of where we were in a room. It was a great way to take a tour. I imagine we would have looked pretty silly, if it wasn’t for the fact half the other people around us had similar headsets.
After seeing the fantastic sights inside the Palace (including Marie Antoinette’s secret escape passage and the hall of mirrors), we left the tour and headed to the gardens for a picnic next to the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal is an amazing piece of engineering. From the window of the palace it appears as a long straight cross-shaped canal. However, in order to make it look long and straight the sides actually taper outwards, making the canal wider at one end. Also, to help give it the appearance of length one end is actually higher than the other to make it look longer. The canal is apparently several metres deep, and at times had large sailing ships travelling from one end to the other, despite the fact the canal is only 2 miles long and doesn’t connect to any other waterways...
The following day, we amused ourselves by wandering the streets of Paris seeing some of the famous sights
again (it is our second trip to Paris after all), window shopping in designer boutiques (looking at €900 cardigans), and seeing some new sights like the Sacre Coeur...
That evening we jumped back on the Eurostar (after a short delay), and sped through the chunnel back to London again...
Paris is always spectacular so I’m sure I’ll be back again some time!!
Until next time everyone, stay safe
Nick
Check out the photos I've added to the previous entry
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