Overseas travel - 2009

So I know you're supposed to do these things whilst you are travelling but I struggled to find the time and with barely a single day under 35 degrees it was far too hot to sit on a computer typing all day. So here is a snippet of our first overseas trip for a while (and probably the last for a while)... retrospectively...

All photos following were taken during the trip.

The Itinerary

Me, Cheree, 3 weeks, 3 countries, hot weather, no phone, no work, good vibes (hopefully).

The Flight

Melbourne to Barcelona, a leisurely 27 hours in transit flying first to Singapore, Milan and the finally Barcelona. I've never found long haul flights to be that great an experience. The first couple of hours tend to deceive you into thinking it's fun but I figure that's actually more about the fact that once you finally take your seat and are taxiing down the runway, there's absolutely no way that you can do anything about the work that you've just left behind. After the first movie, and first dodgy meal it all becomes pretty uncomfortable so to keep it brief and in case Steve Curry reads this ala ´The Castle´ the first movie was 'push', second movie 'taken', both were average. Reading Richard Branson's Business Stripped Bare helped although the several stories relating to poor quality airlines that skimp on maintenance were a little ill timed.

Barcelona

Having visited only a handful of other European cities including Rome, Sienna, Florence, Amsterdam and some of Turkey, I don't have heaps to compare Barcelona to, but it is a city I feel that I could spend plenty of time in. The lifestyle is the first thing that you notice, late mornings, afternoon siestas, and very late dining which takes some getting used to, especially with a Melbourne body clock. I can't help but feel this is a city that rates stress fairly low, and focuses on good times with good friends - perhaps we can learn something here!

Unfortunately Spain has been hit pretty hard by the GFC and unemployment is currently up around 18%.



Some places worthy of a mention:

• Chic Basic and Born: Our hotel which has some pretty weird but stylish rooms - completely white with colored lights that continuously change. Free internet, very helpful staff, in the Born district which is very cruisey - highly recommended.
  
• Re-Pla: We had tapas here for lunch on the day we arrived, awesome bravas and calamares (calamari)
• La Pizza Del Born: killer deep pan pizzas - we went there twice!
• Esglesia de Santa Maria del Pi: a beautiful Gothic church just a short walk from our hotel
• La Sagrada Familia by Antonio Gaudi: quite eccentric architecture for a church which started construction in the early 1900's and won't be finished until around 2030. We also went to Guell park which has several Gaudi architectural pieces, maybe it was the heat or the fact that my foccacia lunch fell out of its bag onto the footpath as we arrived (no ten second rule here kids) but the park didn't have such an impact to us...

• UBJK, Pedro Collares: Some great muso's playing jazz on the Hang Drum and Soprano Sax - bought a cd, good stuff
  

Granada

Granada was our second destination for 2 nights, a magic place in the south east of Spain. Everything appeared to operate just a little bit more slowly than in Barcelona, and just as well as it stayed well above 35 the 2 days we were there. Highlights:

• Churros: for breakfast everyday at a little place in Plaza bib Rambla - can't remember the name of it but they made excellent Churros (I do think they are hard to get wrong) and one of the strongest coffee's I've ever had.
• The Alhambra: originally a fortress from the 9th century the Alhambra evolved into a palace during the 13th and 14th centuries. Over time it's undergone many changes including having it's mosque replaced with a church after the Christian conquest, being abandoned to thieves and beggars during the 18th century, and now it's a world heritage site.

• Casa del Capital Nazari: An old reinnassance palace built in 1503 which was abandoned and occupied by squatters for some time before being restored into the hotel it is today. Great location below the Alhambra with ultra helpful and friendly staff.

• The Albayzin: Granada's old Muslim quarter which sits opposite the Alhambra is a neighborhood maze of cobblestone streets that twist and turn in, out and back on themselves.
  

Cordoba

After a short bus trip ~ 2 hours we arrived in Cordoba which was at one time the biggest city in Europe which is quite hard to believe when you are there because it actually looks pretty small. Highlights:

• The Mezquita: A piece of Islamic architecture that is a mosque with huge 16th century cathedral plonked right in the center. It was founded in 785 and underwent significant expansion in the 9th and 10th centuries. This place is surreal and has to be seen.

• Hotel Mezquita: Good hotel with friendly staff right next door to the Mezquita

• La Tranquera: It's only been open a couple of months but this place will stick around. The owner is an Argentinian that has recently moved to cordoba and the menu is a fusion of Argentinian and local flavours. The empanadas here were the best meal of our trip!

• Ceramica Elhumo: We spent a small fortune on the ceramics put together by artists Jesus Rey and even made a special trip back to Cordoba from Seville on our way to Madrid after we procrastinated for too long before we originally left. We managed to get several boxes of this stuff back to Melbourne in 1 piece after a quick check by security that one of our ceramics wasn't a gun. If we were closer to the end of the trip I think we would have bought more of this stuff.

Seville

A couple more hours in the bus got us to Seville, a city with roughly the combined population of Granada and Cordoba. Due to the heat and a debacle buying our train tickets through to Madrid we didn't really get time to do Seville justice although we did manage to check out the real Alcazar, the cathedral, and have a general wander around the city. We also had one of the most informative discussions with a guy working in a smoothy bar just around the corner from the cathedral. We never did get his name, but it was a great overview of why Spain and in particular Seville was how it is today. My favourite quotes from him once he found out we didn't want to go to a bull fight was 'good, bull fighting is just for old people and fascists'.




Madrid

Our last stop in Spain was an overnight stay in Madrid. We didn't plan on doing much here, we were actually talking about just having a night in but after a quick chat to Luca (one of the most friendly and helpful people we met on our trip) at our Room Mate hotel (one of the best places we stayed at), we did a few hours walking around the city and finished with a great meal at the Sushi Club. With the benefit of hindsight, we should have spent a few nights in Madrid.




Malta

Malta is a truly intriguing place with one foot deeply entrenched in a fascinating culture and history heavily influenced by epic wars and religion, and the other foot riding a wave of rapid tourism growth which appears to be consuming it. It seems that this tension is only a problem for some people - a walk along the waterfront from St. Julian's back to Sliema is the best example of this contrast as a parade of kids (16 is the legal drinking age in Malta) not wearing a whole lot make their way towards Paceville, with the old Maltese gentlemen and ladies just sit, watch, and chuckle to themselves late into the evening. They really don't seem to mind although our cabbi on the way out of Malta certainly was concerned that the 'old Malta' was starting to disappear.

Some amazing facts on Malta (thanks mainly to lonely planet):

• It is suggested that Malta was once linked by a land bridge to Sicily and southern europe, with it's earliest inhabitants said to be around 5200 BC
  
• Malta has the oldest known surviving freestanding structures in the world - megalithic temples about 1000 years older than the pyramids.
• The Nights of St. John, warrior monks made up of European noblemen arrived to Malta in the early 1500's and battled to victory during The Great Siege of 1565 against ridiculous odds (Maltese forces comprised 700 Knights and about 8000 irregulars and mercenaries vs approximately 30,000 Turkish troops).
• After the Siege, Napolean invaded and took over, promptly abolishing Maltese aristocracy, defacing the coats of arms, desecrating churches and closing monasteries. He left with a ship full of Maltese treasures (which was later sinking to the bottom of the ocean when the British destroyed the French fleet) and around 4000 French troops stayed in Malta only to be defeated by a spontaneous uprising of the Maltese people. With some help from the British, Malta was out of French hands by 1802 and back under the Order of St. John.
• During WWII, Malta was a strategic holding point for managing supply lines through the Mediterranean. As a result, in 1942, Malta was subject to with approximately 154 days of continuous bombing 6700 tonnes of bombs being dropped on the Grand Harbor in a single month. The entire population nearly starved but persisted and was awarded the George Cross - Britain's highest award for civilian bravery.
  

We stayed in Malta for 3 nights, it easily could have been a week. Some highlights:

• Valletta: Malta's capital - we spent a day just wandering around and eating pastizzi's (I haden't had one since I was about 10 years old when my Nanu (grandfather) would make them, these things are amazing!). This first photo was from our balcony at our hotel - nice!

• Mdina: The 'silent city' - very few cars and it really is quiet...
  
• The Kitchen: we had an excellent meal here, one of the best of our trip
  
• The Palace: a 5 star hotel that we splurged on for 3 nights which has a brilliant rooftop pool with 360 degree views of Malta. The hotel was unfortunately let down by unresponsive staff. Our air conditioner was broken and only worked in two modes - off, and hurricane. After asking for something to be done every day we were there and not sleeping for two nights as we were either too hot with the air con off, or getting blown away with it on we were offerred a room fan on the final night).

Pisa

Pisa was another of our overnight stops on our way to Florence. We didn’t do much other than check out the leaning tower. We also resisted the temptation to join the thousand odd other people taking cheesy photos pretending to hold up the tower. We stayed at a great hotel - nh Cavalieri right next to the train station - highly recommended.




Florence

We were initially pleasantly surprised with a very cheap train trip from Pisa for about 2 hours to Florence. After paying about 60 euro per ticket to get a train from Cordoba to Madrid in Spain, at about 5 euros a ticket, this was a bargain… Ahhh, no air-con, nowhere to put your bags, quite a smelly and sweaty experience...

Florence has some great art and architecture and was a nice place to start winding down our trip. We stayed at Hotel Universo which was pretty good.

We bought a few pieces of artwork from a great artist Vitorria Scaffidi as gifts and contemplated a bigger piece that she was working on when we were there. Eventually our procrastination meant we missed out on getting it...



Sienna

One of my personal favorites having been here before, Sienna is a quaint little gothic inspired city with a maze of streets that you can get lost in all day which is pretty much what we did. Unfortunately we didn't manage to find any inspirational food here (figure that one out) but I recommend not eating in the Piazza del Campo. As you'd expect this area is just rigged up for tourists and as such, service and food quality is sketchy at best.

Make sure you get a gelati, no one place to recommend, it's like Starbucks before they busted, one on every corner.



So that was 3 weeks away, and the 35 odd hours in transit on the way back has meant that our body clocks are completely out of whack now. Reflecting on the trip I think Cheree and I both agree:

• We'd both go back to Spain in a heartbeat - friendly, beautiful people, and a great entertaining lifestyle. Whilst language wasn't really a problem, a few lessons wouldn't hurt when going to a restaurants - a basic food cheat sheet would do.
  
• We should have spent more time in Malta to really get into the food and history, 4 days was not enough.
  
• Whilst cheap - I don't think Ryan Air is worth the hassle - see an upcoming post on this one...

If anyone want's any further info feel free to email or tweet at me...

Cheers,
Rod