I actually failed this time.

Dear Kat,

See post title.

Regards,
Fuddle

P.S. Okay, I'll make a compromise - Weekdays only.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 7: BarceloNA? How about BarceloYEAH!

I promise I'll stop making puns on city names soon.

So today was the day in Barcelona. Which, by the way, is a really nice city.

We were dropped off in the middle of the city at the top of La Rambla, which is kind of a big long street with lots of shops and whatnot. Having seen the outside of Gaudi's church - La Segrada Familia (or The Sacred Family), we then decided to head off to see the inside.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

We took the metro to the church (and here's a good time to point out that Barcelona's metro system is surprisingly easy to use. Although that's to be expected. if it were hard to use, nobody would use it), and when we arrived, well... Take a look:

This is the outside of the church from the walking tour around it the previous day:

Actually wait, first. A bit of an explanation. As the name implies, La Segrada Familia is a church dedicated to the family of Jesus Christ. However, that's kinda irrelevant to the point I'm getting at which  is the fact that the outside of the church is divided into three facades, each representing a different part of Jesus' life: The nativity, the passion, and the glory - birth, death and resurrection, in that order.

So here we go, starting from the Nativity facade, and working our way anti-clockwise through the facades:

The Nativity Facade:

The Back. Nothing much to see here:

The Passion Facade. This is the side that has the ticket booth for entrance to the church:

Aaand the Glory Facade:

Did I mention the Glory Facade is still under construction? It's going to be the biggest and well, glorious of the three facades, and it still isn't complete despite the fact that construction started on the church in 1882.

So there you have it. you have four sides, each with a wildly different architectural style, with the Nativity opposite to the Passion, and the Glory at the front.

So here's the sight we saw when we came out of the metro station:

That's one the side of the Nativity Facade. Remember when I said the ticket booth was on the Passion Facade side? Yeah. that's the same line. 

So we then decided to head on back to La Rambla. Not wanting to waste a perfectly good €2 worth of metro ticket, we decided to take the opportunity to walk back. Noting to ourselves that this particular Barcelonian (Barcelonan? Spanish.) monument was actually off the map we were given. So we promptly got ourselves slightly lost (but not too lost!) and ended up back where we started with little gained but some exercise. Which we promptly remedied by eating lunch at McDonalds.

So with our bellies full and balance restored to the universe, we - 

Wait, I've forgotten something.

BEFORE we decided to waste our time at a church we didn't get to enter, we were taken on a nice little tour of Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. it's a nice place - lots of winding streets with narrow passages, easy to get lost in. We walked past the place where Christopher Columbus first unveiled American Indians to Europe, and sooner or later ended up in a very nice little square somewhere.

It was a very nice square:

Peaceful, even:

Well, that is, until you saw the bullet holes:

Turns out this particular tiny little square was the site of a brutal scene from the Spanish civil war. Unarmed civilians were lined up against the walls of the church, and shot in cold blood. The height of some of the bullet marks suggest that even some children were present that day. Although the height of the others suggest that they just weren't very good shots. Or perhaps some soldiers intentionally aimed high to avoid having blood on their hands. I'll probably never know.

So back to the present, and we are now walking down La Rambla. It's an incredibly busy street (and you'd better keep a close eye on your possessions) but for some reason today there weren't quite as many street side stalls as there are. I mean, there were still a lot, but I wasn't accosted to buy something or other every ten steps.

We ducked out of the street for a bit to look through a bunch of covered markets, and for a while we just wandered around in there, looking at everything there was:

It was while we were here that we were stuck in the middle of a very Spanish peculiarity: Siesta.

Now don't get me wrong. The idea of Siesta is pure genius. Have lunch, close the shop, go the fuck to sleep for two hours, wake the fuck up, and get the fuck back to work. What more could you want?

Well, at least, that;s the point of view from the people actually taking the Siesta. As a tourist, all you get from this experience is two hours where you can't buy anything, and the slightly odd felling of standing in a crowded market, and suddenly realising that not only are three quarters of the shops around you now closed, but there is suddenly a lot less people around. Like so:

No wonder their economy is so messed up.

So we walked out from under the covered markets (without buying anything on my part) and casually strolled down to the beach, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. The beach in Barcelona is one of the rarest sights in Europe: An actual, proper, SANDY BEACH.

Well, scratch the "actual" part, because the beach is entirely fucking FAKE. 

Yes, that's right, it's an entire fake beach. They opened most of the beaches in Barcelona when they hosted the Olympics in 1992. They also ship stupid amounts of sand from somewhere each year to replenish the sand lost due to storm erosion. Of course, it's all worth it because of the ridiculous amount of people that go to the beach every day.

Take a look:

If you look closely (or at all) you'll see that there are more people on that beach than there is actual beach. It's insane.

So we chilled out there for a while, went swimming for a bit, and pretty much everything else that happens on the beach. I should point out that it is a REALLY nice beach, with amazingly clear water - warm too, and the only problem is that the biggest wave is about twelve centimetres high. But you learn to deal with it.

...Aaaand then we went home, after several hours of the beach in which I got more sunburnt than I can ever remember being. Which was kinda stupid on my part. I was peeling for weeks.

Oh yeah, and on they way back, I saw this sign, which kinda cracked me up:

(I'll make it big so you can actually see it)

With that note, I'm off. Tomorrow is another travel day, to the French Riviera!

I failed.

Dear Kat, 

I failed. 

Well, that is to say, I would have failed, had I not decided to write this post telling you that I failed.

Life's weird that way. 

Regards, Fuddle

 In other news, I'll probably get back to the typing and the clicking and the blog posting soon. And by soon I mean tomorrow.

NOT the Contiki Chronicles!

Well, it looks like I made it to 8 days. That's a personal best! But.. yeah. Sorry for not continuing on with this. I will finish the Contiki Chronicles, I just, uh... had to go on hiatus. Yeah. an impromptu, unexplained, unplanned and indefinite hiatus. That'll do it. "Hiatus" is like a general cover-all for laziness, isn't it? So I'll be back. When I feel like it. Which could be very soon, but probably won't be. See ya!

Contiki Chronicles, Day 6: Some things that happened in Spain one time

So yeah. The next morning we all shook off our raging hangovers and ended up driving West, towards Barcelona. Before we got there, though, we stopped off in the town of Zaragoza (or Goya, I'm actually not entirely sure which). Honestly, there wasn't a whole lot there, but I got some photos anyway:

My entire time spent in this town consisted of walking up a street, buying some Churros, walking a bit further, walking back, buy a shot glass, and then going back to the coach. Good times.

After a bit more driving, we arrived in Barcelona, our stop for the night. And also the night after that. It was kinda late, but we still did some things, like went up the hill to get some pretty nice views of the city:

We also walked to, and around La Sagrada Família, which is a big-ass church. But more on that tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, that's it for today. These travel days aren't really all that particularly interesting, are they? Well, day 7 is tomorrow. How about that.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 5: Surf, Sand, and BULLS

Oh boy, now THIS was an interesting day. It rained again in the morning, but after breakfast we were once again on the coach and on our way.

We stopped in the town of Biarritz, on the coast near the Spanish border. And let me just say, it has a rather marvellous coastline (and one of the few sandy beaches we found in Europe). Take a look:

Pretty, huh? There was also some kind of church:

After a swim, some lunch, and a game of touch on the beach, we boarded the bus again, and left for our final destination for the day, across the Spanish border: Pamplona.

Now, some of you may know this, but Pamplona is the city where one of the worlds most famous (and dangerous) festivals is held: The Festival of San Fermin, better known to the rest of the world as The Running of the Bulls.

I mentioned yesterday that today would be Bastille Day? Bastille day is Sunday 14th July. The Running of the Bulls is a week (and a bit) long festival, beginning on the 6th of July and ending on... the 14th. That's right, we were there for the final day of the Running of the Bulls.

Of course, we arrived far to late to compete in any of the running, but we were there for the much safer and much better part of the day - the afterparty.

Before I get into that, though, a couple of words on the Festival of San Fermin. While most cities in Spain do indeed celebrate Saint Fermin, Pamplona has by far the wildest festival. The origin of the Running is kinda unclear, but it's known that during the festival, the farmers would run their bulls through the city streets to the bullring, where they would eventually be killed off by a matador, and the bulls could then be used for food. At some point, though, people started running with the bulls, and this grew and grew every year until it became a major part of the festival.

There are a few restrictions on competing: Firstly, you must be over 18 years old, you have to run in the same direction as the bulls, not incite the bulls, and not be under the influence of alcohol. Ultimately, this means that for a heard of stampeding bulls, it's surprisingly safe. Of course, that's all relative. Since record-keeping began in 1924, only fifteen people have died: All of them were Spanish, save two, and all were killed by goring save two (a different two). Those two were killed when one was suffocated by being pushed up against a wall by the crowd in 1977, and when the other was hit bull the horn of a bull (which somehow constitutes being different from goring, according to Wikipedia) in 2003.

Even so, the bull running is a major part of life in Pamplona. On one of the main streets, coming up to the arena, they've even erected a rather disturbingly gory statue of the bull running:

(That's me on the back of the bull.)

So that's the history over and done with. And now, on to the main attraction: The massive piss up/street party that was the afterparty for the Running of the Bulls.

...Well, I'd tell you if I could remember it. Truth be told, my rationale for that particular evening was that A LOT of predrinking would be required. So in the hour or two before we got on the shuttle bus into town, I drank a litre of Sangria (fruity-type wine, about 7% alcohol), drank a bottle of red wine, and about half a bottle of white. The rest of the night was kinda a blur. After we got off the shuttle bus, I remember falling over backwards and fucking up my wrists (they still hurt a little bit) and breaking another bottle of wine I had in my backpack. I remember swapping hats with a lot of people, to the point that I lost my favourite hat EVER. I remember randomly dancing on the street in front of a club with a new hat in front of me, on the off chance that I'd make some money (I made 50c). I remember having a swig of absinthe that I'd bought in Biarritz, before realising how disgusting it tasted and passing it off. I never saw the bottle again. I remember going into a random souvenir store and buying a shot glass (which I didn't discover for about four more days). I remember ordering a JD & Coke from a bar, having about twi sips, and the putting it down. I remember breaking off from the group, walking about on my own, and eventually meeting up with them again in the main square. And I remember most of everything after that, including what were, at the time, THE WORLD'S GREATEST KEBABS. And, among other things, I remember eventually taking the taxi back to the campsite, and passing out in the tent.

It was a good night.

Tomorrow is day 6. Is anybody excited?

Contiki Chronicles, Day 4: Rain! Travel! Rainy Travel!

Have I mentioned that it rained for most of the time we were in Paris?

Well, I just did. And it also rained for most of the next day, when we were travelling from Paris to a small town outside Bordeaux, St. Emilion.

That wasn't really a particularly interesting day. It rained when we got there, we had to set up tents in the rain, and when the rain stopped and we decided to go out for a night on the town, we discovered everything was closed because the day after was the French national holiday, Bastille Day (in commemoration of the day when the French stormed the Bastille during the French Revolution).

So... yeah. Nothing particularly interesting there, although there was some minor trouble with the coach in the morning - the engine had cut out, and we couldn't figure out how to pull the battery out so we could jump start it. Still, it all got sorted out.


So... yeah. That's it for today.