Contiki in the Mediterranean PART ONE!

Europe
September 30th 2009

Published: September 30th 2009

... as opposed to those virtual palaces! Nah, its spanish for Royal. This is Jane and I curtseying in front of the palace. It seemed an appropriate pose, and actually I blame Jane cos it was her idea

On Saturday 29th August Tim and I parted ways in Madrid, and I made my way to the hotel where the Contiki tour was going to start that night. Once I checked in and found my room I pretty much crashed and slept for a couple of hours. When I woke up I discovered I had a room-mate, Jelena, who was also napping. We wandered downstairs at about 6pm to meet all the other Contiki-ers and our Tour Manager. Thinking back to that evening, I remember looking at all the strange faces and wondering who people were, where they were from and whether I was going to get along with them. Now I know that 20 of them were from Australia (and 5 others from Western Australia, wooooo), some from the US and Canada and one from South Africa and they were all AWESOME. We really had a great group of people on the tour, thank goodness! The tour went for 13 days, from Madrid-Barcelona-Avignon-Nice-Cinque Terre-Pisa-Florence-Rome; we went to a lot of places and saw a lot of things in a very short amount of time! So I probably won't mention everything we did - not only because it will be

meet eric, my travel mascot in squirrel form

He is on my shoulder, in case you are having trouble seeing him. There is a close up later...

a lot to write but also because I can't remember some things very well...

Madrid
After filling out a bunch of paperwork we met later that night for dinner in the restaurant at the hotel. The food was pretty average, but we were amused by the fact that if you asked for wine (as your included drink) you got given a whole bottle... So, dinner involved a lot of wine and a lot of talking, working out who people were and getting to know them. After dinner we went out to a little bar, the name of which I can't remember, and drank Mojitos and cheap Tequila shots. The next morning we went for a tour around the Royal Palace, which was the first of a LOT of very impressive/ornate/ridiculous buildings that we have visited. The next structure would probably have to be the most impressive of all, as far as I'm concerned. We went to visit a church in a place called “The Valley of the Fallen”, which was built under the instruction of General Franco, as a monument to remember those that fought and died during a Civil War in Spain (and its also where they are

Valley of the Fallen monument

This cross is MASSIVE and you can see it from very far away, as evidenced by this photo, which was taken from very far away. This is the mountain/rock into which the amazing church I have mentioned is carved. The cross sits on top.

buried...). I'm really bad with history, so I don't remember details about it, but i think it was fairly recent. Anyway, this church was built into the side of a mountain - carved into the rock. And its MASSIVE. We were told its actually longer than St Peters Basilica, but that they had to make the first part into a separate sort of chamber so the 'actual' church was shorter than St Peter's. But anyway, its really hard to explain the experience in words (and we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, not that they would have done it justice anyway), so you'll just have to believe me that it was amazing. And if you have the opportunity, definitely go check it out! Its worth it.
That afternoon we got a bit lost, after trying to find some museums (one didn't seem to exist and the other was closed, dammit!) and ended up back at Atocha Renfe railway station, where Tim and I had been a few days before and discovered the indoor rainforest. We'd seen it on a postcard, so wanted to check it out. It kind of reminded me of that movie Biodome, or whatever its called... you

They do things differently in spain

need I say more.

know the one, where they have this whole little ecosystem inside a dome... yeah aaaaaanyway, it was a bit surreal and weird. A nice place to wait for a train though, cos Madrid is HOT and under the trees was quite cool. And if you like mass-turtleage, this is the place for you. SERIOUSLY. So many turtles. Maybe they were tortoises. I always forget which is which. Check out the photo and tell me, please?

That night our tour manager took us to a place that played “spanish music”, which promised to be a nice change from the typical club music everywhere else. The place was almost completely empty when we got there - those crazy Spaniards don't seem interested in going out until after midnight. So anyway, we went and sat down and within a few minutes were approached by some...er... older men, asking us if we wanted to dance. Jelena was the first to give it a go, and did an excellent job of impromptu Salsa. It was pretty funny, being taught a dance by someone who you couldn't talk to (they didn't speak much english, and I certainly can't speak Spanish), but we gave it a

Eric is indecisive, like me!

He likes white wine better though.

go, and it was a fun night. Guess dancing is a bit like music, one of them universal languages ;-)

Barcelona
The next day we left for Barcelona - 8 hours or so on the coach, and by the time you include lunch and toilet stops it was pretty much the whole day gone. We checked into our hotel, waited for dinner (they eat so late - 9pm!) and then Silvia (tour manager) took us down to the party precinct to Olimpic Bar, where Contiki-ers got cheap drinks, and we danced the night away - showing off great moves like the shopping trolley and sprinkler. And I tried to teach some ignorant sydney-siders (haha jk Jane!!) big-fish-little-fish-cardboard-box, which apparently they had never heard of.
Next morning Jelena and I woke up fairly late, as neither of us had set an alarm. I had been meaning to explore the city with Jane, but she had already left so Jelena and I stuck together. Barcelona is famous for some crazy modernist artist - Gaudi, who designed a few residences in the city (oh yeah, and some massive church - the Segrada Familia) and also this big park place - called Park

Park Guell

written on the wall outside!

Guell. This was our first destination, as it was near our hotel. Trouble was we couldn't remember what direction it was in. Luckily, saying “Park Guell?” and looking lost was enough to get us pointed in the right direction, and we were there soon enough. This place was awesome! You'll see from some of the photos. Beautiful, crazy architecture and decoration - lots of mosaic work. It was very cool. We wandered around here for a while, and walked up to a balcony type area where we could get a good view of Barcelona. At this point I found out Jelena is afraid of birds (the pidgeons seemed to gravitate towards her), which was funny given I am the opposite...

We visited another amazing Gaudi construction - Casa Battlo - a place he designed for the Battlo family to live in, or something. That WOULD explain the name, right? But i don't really remember the details... According to our lovely audio guide, Gaudi's inspiration for this place was nature. And he tried to light it predominantly with natural light - so there are all sorts of skylights and massive windows. And a really cool ventilation system, built in to

Park Guell 2

the wooden doors, that looks kind of like fish gills! See, nature! :-) It was a very beatiful house and felt very peaceful/harmonious. Would love to live in a house like that!!

That night our contiki dinner was at a place with a live Flamenco show. And yes, this meant Flamenco guitar!! I was pretty excited about that, and also interested to see flamenco dancing. Oh, and the bread at this place was AMAZING. Jane and I may have had a slight bread obsession, and rated it at each restaurant. This was good bread. And we were kind of ecstatic when we finished our rolls and they came and offered us MORE!! awesome. But anyway, back to the Flamenco, yeah? I realised I wasn't really sure what to expect, from the dancing. The first thing I noticed was the dancers looked really angry, which was a bit scary. And it was very noisy, with all the stamping. But it was very impressive, and damn, it must hurt their feet... Jake, I challenge you to stamp that loudly in jive class. But you'd probably break something. Anyway, the Flamenco guitar was totally awesome and I'm jealous. You should have seen

Park Guell 3

Me with a cool mosaic lizard

his hands- amazing!! Long fingers must be so very helpful for being an awesome guitarist... All the nights are mushing together and I can't remember what happened when, but on one of the nights in Barcelona we went to the beach late at night to you know, sit there and stuff. Its got nothing on Brighton beach (or Scarborough or Cottesloe or City Beach or... you get the point). The sand is a weird brown colour and there are no dunes, just goes straight to a concrete wall and then to restaurants and clubs. Go Australia!!

The next day we left Barcelona to make our way to Avignon. Two days is definitely not enough time in Barcelona - perhaps I will try to go back there some day, but I'd like to learn some Spanish first... On the way to Avignon we stopped FOR AN HOUR in Aix-en-Provence, some little village place in France. Not much to say, we got lost trying to find the market but found some tasty food (French patisseries, how could we go wrong, really?). And on the way back to the meeting point we walked past a band playing outside, playing 'Oh Sister' -

Park Guell 4

I'm pretty sure this is the roof, and some more awesome mosaics!

by Bob Dylan, i'm pretty sure - that my brother Bren used to play a lot (does he still??) and taught me. So that was random and cool.
Nothing much happened in Avignon, so we had some time to rest in preparation for our party nights in Nice.

Nice
The first day in Nice was pretty uneventful - we had to do some boring chores like washing clothes and checking email (and I had to buy presale tickets to southbound, before they got taken away from me!!) - but we did have an exciting time at McDonalds when we discovered fig and crumble sundaes, something different to the usual chocolate, caramel and strawberry... That night we had a bit of a drama when some people were late showing up to the lobby to meet for our special dinner. We were heading to Monaco and the Monte Carlo casino. On the way we stopped at Fragonard perfumery, where we had a quick explanation tour thing of how they make their perfumes and perfumed items and then our noses got shown some of their most popular scents. Pretty sure at this point the guys were quietly dying in the corner, or

Casa Battlo

view from the street.

had actually already left to wait outside... Anyway, after sniffing a few perfume stick things my nose was pretty confused and ready to give up, so I gave it a quick break and then decided on a scent I liked and bought some reeeeeeeeeeeal perfume. The drive up to Monaco was spectacular. Pity we were on a coach (except that otherwise we'd be walking... or something...) but what I mean is it would be nice to have been able to stop and get some pics, cos there were great shots of cliffs and little harbour things and beautiful ocean. I think I got ONE half decent one through the window of the coach, I will try to find it. Anyway, dinner was very nice and we had lots of wine, then walked to the casino (or did we get on the coach? I have no idea anymore). I have to say, Monte Carlo was much smaller than I expected, but I have no idea why I thought it should be big. It was very fancy and beautiful inside, but actually kind of boring because we were not gambling and I really didn't have much idea what was going on on

Pretty blue stained glass...

... or is it? From the other side it looks a different colour. I have no idea how but it was cool! This is inside Casa Battlo

the tables where other people were gambling. We were only there for an hour anyway, so soon it was meeting time and we were back on the coach and back to Nice for party time! We had a bit of a bus party on the way, but they damn well cut off 'Video killed the radio star' about 5 seconds before my favourite part...!!!! but I'm over that now, I swear... Now, I think this was the night that we went to an Irish pub and the boys started doing crazy gas chamber type shots - don't remember what they are called. But it was white sambuca, flamed and warmed, the fumes caught in an upside down glass and sucked up through a straw, shoot the remaining sambuca except for a drizzle that you snort up your nose through the straw. VERY classy. Well done boys. We had the 'girls version', which was kahlua, baileys and cointreau, all nicely layered, lit on fire and sucked up through a straw (from the very bottom). It was a delicious chocolate orange flavour but felt uncomfortably like it burnt your throat (in a heat not alcohol way) on the way down. But they

ceiling in Casa Battlo

Don't know abuot you, but it reminds me of a shell

were fun :P
When this place closed we went to another place, that had something to do with devils (in the name), and they sold 'Giraffes' of drinks - like a metre or so of drink in a big tube thing with a tap at the bottom (sorry, i'm getting a bit tired, my ability to use english words is deteriorating...). Anyway Jane and I got one of Tequila sunrise, only they ripped us off cos we didn't get the big tube thing, just got big pitchers. THEN we found out the place was closing in 15 minutes and we had better finish our drinks!! Oops. We had a bit too much alcohol to be just casually finishing our drinks... but we tried, and gave a lot away to the other contiki-ers. Then we all walked back to the hotel, which was probably an EXCELLENT idea, to sober us all up a bit. Only I don't think it worked that well for some of us, because someone sparked a surprise 'underwear party' in our hotel room that night. This was a little annoying for those of us who wanted to sleep (me!) but it was hilarious enough to make up

Beautifully carved wooden doors

... in Casa Battlo

for it, and I got some pretty funny photos (should I put these up on facebook, contiki crew?? :P)

Our second day in Nice was LOVELY and relaxed - the plan was to sit on the beach pretty much all day and do sfa, cos we were all a bit stuffed from the previous days of the tour. Little did we know that the beach wouldn't end up being all that comfortable. The beach here was a 'pebble beach', but we found out this means sharp rocks, not the nice smooth pebbles i was actually imagining. Oh well. I sat on the beach whilst the others went in the water for a swim. But first they had to get past what I considered to be the 'waves of death', especially when combined with the lack of balance I had on the sharp rocky ground. But anyway, we then walked up some stairs of death (there were just a lot of them...), to a place where we had a nice view of Nice and the beach, and we took a million photos. We also did some line dancing up here. Don't ask me why, I really can't remember, and its

Where's Gaudi??

There he is!

possible there was no reason. The beach looked AMAZING from up high (and because the wind had died down) so we wandered back down there and went for another swim. Yeah yeah, I went in this time. We also made time on this day to get some good ol' French crepes (or craps, as they pronounce it :P ). We eventually found a take-away crepe place on the side of a footpath, and also encountered the French arrogance we had been warned about. I'm sure there are a lot of lovely French people (in fact I think the second woman at the crepe stand was one of them) but the first woman was NUTS! At first she refused to serve Jane and I (we THINK its because we had some paper bags from another patisserie in our hands, perhaps just because she hated us) and then she made Jane pay for Blake's crepes because he didn't have any change, just notes. Weird.
That night we went to a little bar that had a live band (with an Aussie guitarist woooo) that played awesome rock covers - they kind of music I like to hear and sing along to when I

view on the drive up to Monaco

I think this is the fluke half decent shot I got from the coach

go out or have a party. So that was pretty awesome. And they have all these long tables in the area in front of the stage, that they make everyone dance on. It was a very fun place, and the band were great! Excellent night. And to top it off we encountered another nice French person (presumably French anyway....). I was inexplicably craving icecream the whole night, and accidentally found a shop that sold it, that was still open at whatever hour it was that we were walking past. Anyway, long story short, cute probably-French boy at the shop gave me more icecream than he should have. And it was watermelon flavour and it was soooo good.

You know what, this is ridiculous. So far this is nearly 3000 words or something, and I don't know if you guys are getting bored, but I'm getting sick of typing- especially on this tiny eeepc keyboard. I'm going to split this into two entries, so I can buy a bit more time to finish the last 6 days of the contiki blog. Next entry- Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence and Rome. And perhaps Venice with Mum, just to keep all of Italy