Barcelona.. Sun, sand, and wintertime!

I had never really considered going to Spain while I was here, but when a friend suggested going for the weekend, I decided.. why not? And I am So glad that I did, Barcelona has been one of my favourite cities so far!
Last Friday morning, we escaped the cold and rain of Grenoble, taking a 1hr bus to Lyon, then only another hour onto Barcelona! Easy. And the views were beautiful on the way!

And I was so excited to see this out of the window of the plane!

And after an easily navigable journey through town (thanks to the intricate instructions of the youth hostel) we arrived at our home for the next three nights! It was amazing, definitely the best youth hostel I have been in so far (including Switzerland's at quadruple the price).
The common area was really nice, and the whole place was skate culture themed, because apparently Barcelona is one of the best places in the world for skateboarding, I had no idea!

After dropping off our stuff, we decided to head out to see the Sagrada Familia, the most famous church in Barcelona. The hostel was actually in the district, so we only had a ten minute walk before we were there!

It looked amazing from all sides, and even though we didn't go inside due to an exorbitant entrance fee, seeing the outside was definitely enough. This church was the first that we learnt of Gaudi's work in Barcelona, and over the next few days we heard a lot more about him. 

By the time we got back from the Sagrada Familia we were starving, so we went via the supermarket across the road to get some food for dinner. After wandering aimlessly for a while, we (I) decided on having Indian from a Pataks jar, the kind of Indian that even Pam's makes in NZ, but along with most other asian food, seems extremely rare in Europe. I've been missing Indian a lot, so I am very pleased we decided to have it!

And it was so delicious, this is my friend Ting from Taiwan with our meals.

After a massive delicious Indian meal, we joined the hostel on the free pun crawl that night, which was a great opportunity to meet the rest of the people in the hostel, and see the city at night! I’m sorry to France, but the night life is definitely better in Spain!

The next day we went to see a famous market on 'La Rambla', the main street in Barcelona, apparently it's on every day of the week.
Of course we had the obligatory gelato stop on the way, yum!

As we were walking along, I noticed a building that I had seen on a postcard, so we went for a look! It turned out to be another one of Gaudi's famous architectural works, it was a really interesting looking building. Note the 20degC blue skies!

Then we got to the market. I absolutely love markets, as you may have noticed from previous blogs, but I can honestly say that this is the best food market that I have been to, and I have been to some very good ones! It is a feast for the eyes, with all the different colours everywhere.

The food was all displayed so beautifully, it looked like each stall couldn’t possibly take any more piled onto it! There was all types of food, Massive amounts of fruit and vegetables, chocolates, lollies, meat and Mediterranean seafood. It was a shame we had decided to go out for dinner that night, or we could have bought some lovely fresh food for dinner! 

The absolute highlight (which we had actually been told about) was the 1 Euro fresh fruit drinks that they served on ice, of any flavour you could possibly want! We couldn’t decide! I love coconut, so I had almost decided upon that, when a Pina coco (pineapple coconut) caught my eye, and I couldn’t not try it!

They also had delicious looking iceblocks, which I wouldv'e tried if I hadn't been so full of freshly squeezed pineapple and coconut!

Then we came upon the meat stalls, which put us right off our drinks. Chickens still with heads, rabbits still with teeth and eyes. And then we came upon this.. notice in the background there are actually pig Faces being sold! Disgusting, I have no idea what you would want with a pig face for dinner.

To take your mind of that horrible picture, here's a nice picture of me with giant lollipops. I'm pretty sure they were real!

And for dessert, some chocolate! Europe really knows how to do good chocolate.

After leaving the market, we continued on down 'La Rambla'. Unfortunately, some good looking clothes shops caught our eyes, and our sightseeing was temporarily suspended while we checked out what Spain had to offer in terms of clothing. We weren't disappointed! So cheap, and such good quality and variety, NZ is really lacking!
Two hours and over 100 Euros later.. we finally left the shops to continue down to the harbour. It was really beautiful, with picturesque blue sky and blue water. We stopped for a snack and a much awaited sit-down, and admired the view.

After a short break, we continued around the harbour, and came across a massive mall. We told ourselves that we would just have a quick look to see what it was like, which turned into a quick look around one of the shops that we thought looked quite good.. which then tuned into this...

Believe me I looked the same. Note how it is now dark outside! Oh well, we had a great time in there! 

We decided that as it was nearing evening, we should probably head back. As we were walking along, we noticed how beautiful the harbour was in the evening light, with just a slight breeze off the sea.

As we were in Spain, we decided that we just had to try Paella, a Spanish speciality that everyone knows. We went back to the hostel to get changed, then asked at the front desk where a good place would be to go for Paella for dinner. We were almost laughed away, as we were told that absolutely No One would be out at a restaurant eating dinner at 7pm! But we were hungry, so off we went anyway, to a little restaurant just around the corner.

After tentatively walking into the completely empty restaurant, a waitress appeared, looking mildly confused at our presence. But at our request as to whether we could eat there or not, she led us into another (empty) room, turned on the lights, and told us to sit wherever we wanted. It was all very odd, as I'm sure you all know in New Zealand this is prime restaurant time! We were actually the only ones there the whole time we spent there! But we had a great time! 

We ordered Paella (of course), one Pollo (chicken) and one seafood, which is the traditional way to have it. They were delicious!

For those of you who don't know, Paella is a sort of rice dish, always cooked in a special pan, usually a massive one sometimes as big as a table, where everyone can share it. It looks as though these were individually cooked in their own special pans. 

After dinner we walked back to the hostel, had a cup of tea, wrote some postcards and went to bed, as we were so tired from all of our shopping! (And sightseeing...)

The next day, we planned on going to the beach, which was some distance away, then going to the other side of the city, taking a specially designed tram up the big hill to the top, where there apparently was an amazing view of the city. On the way to the beach we stopped at the main museum to have a look, there was a massive hours long line of people lining up for something beside the museum, we had absolutely no idea what but we definitely did not want to join them. It could perhaps have been the Olympic stadium or something, we weren't sure. But this is me outside of it!

We wandered up many stairs to the museum, and had quite a good view of below us, and the ‘Magic Fountain’, a massive tourist attraction at night which lights up amazing colours and displays. It looked as though it would have been really nice, but during the day it wasn’t quite so spectacular.  

This is outside the museum, it was a really impressive building with a massive lead up to it as you can see in the previous picture!

Alongside the museum is a park, and from the park we could see across the whole city! Note the Sagrada Familia being the dominant building in the skyline.

Panoramic view!

We then headed to 'Forum', an area/public space that we didn't know quite what it was, but it was beside the beach and we had heard that it was good for skating, which we thought wouldv'e been cool to see the professionals.

It was really interesting, just massive open spaces on a slight decline, with lots of things put up for skaters to go along and jump over etc.

We walked along this path, which was beside a small marina, see how it curves up like that? its all for skating, unfortunately there was no one but us trying to get to the top that day! We were hoping that the path would finally take us to the beach, and it did! But unluckily, after 10 minutes of walking across a massive deserted concrete space, we ended up on the wrong side of a huge fence separating us and the golden sand of the Mediterranean sea. 

But being the good travellers that we were, we overcame that obstacle without too much hassle! It was just a bit awkward that it was right beside an intersection, so everyone had some great entertainment as we struggled to make our way over!

But we were rewarded with our efforts! Finally at the beach! We sat down, and had something to eat as we watched the waves, with the giant high rise buildings behind us.

As you can see, it was a lovely warm day, although the Spanish were looking at us like we were crazy, in their huge winter coats and scarves!

Our next plan was to go and visit the Picasso museum. The museum was in a part of Barcelona that we didn’t even know existed, much like the ‘old towns’ of France, with beautiful small cobbled back streets between high old buildings.

And as it was free on Sundays after 3pm, we managed to get there at just the right time! To a huge long line.. 

But nothing can get as long as the waiting times for the Vatican Museums, so we stood patiently until we could get in, and it was really impressive inside! I even managed to get this, before we were swiftly told that no cameras were allowed!

We left the museum slightly later than planned, as we wanted to catch the sun before it went down, so we could watch it go down over the city. It was unfortunately a bit too late for that, as the sun was quickly descending and we still had a metro, train, bus, and special tram thing to catch before we finally could make it to the top! After catching 3 out of the four modes of transport successfully, we got the the special tram station all ready to make our final ascent, to find out that it was in fact, broken. All that way for nothing!

There was a bit of a view from where, we were, but nothing like I know it would have been if we had been able to get right to the top! This is the view from where we made it to.

So we decided to just go back to the hostel, where we spent a nice evening making dinner and packing for our early flight the next day.

I absolutely loved Barcelona, and I definitely recommend it to anyone! I hadn't even considered going there before it was mentioned to me, but I'm so pleased I did, as I have so many fun memories from it!

On Friday I am going to Amsterdam for the weekend!! Which will be an entirely different experience, so if you want to hear about that check back next week! :)

Birthday Raclette

Raclette is a speciality dish from around this area, and along with fondue was one of the main dishes I wanted to try when I was here! And instead of paying a lot of money to go to a restaurant, I decided to have a dinner party where I went and bought all of the ingredients, and everyone came along with 3 Euros, amking it a great deal for everyone, and a really nice shared dinner!
The dish is boiled potatoes, which you cut onto your plate, and then put sliced deli meat on top, like salami and thinly sliced bacon. Then scatter on some 'cornichons' (little pickled gherkin things), and some tiny pickled onions. While you are doing this, there are a ring of small shovels with one slice of cheese on each one, put in a raclette machine under a grill, getting browned and bubbly.
Once the cheese is all melted, you slide it off the small frying pan/shovel and onto your potato and meat , and then enjoy!
All in all, about 20 people came, and amazingly, I managed to cater for everyone! I thought I would have bought way too much, with 5kg of potatoes, 800g of cornichons, 1kg of pickled onions, 4 baguettes (in case people wanted snacks), 500g of cream cheese, and almost 4kg of special raclette cheese!!
But amazingly, the potatoes ran out before everyone had had their fill, but there was still heaps left of everything else.. so people had to have cheese on top of baguette, which all got used up too!
Unfortunately, the cornichons, onions, and cheese didn't get used up, so its been a very cheesy pickly week for me trying to use up everything.
If this all seems like a total mystery, here is a picture to fill in the blanks!

There is a plate in the middle with it all made up, yum!

Tomorrow I have decided to go to Barcelona! So there will be a massive blog post about that coming soon!!  I have a very busy week next week though so I'll try and upload about Barcelona next week, but we will have to see. Until then!

Versailles!

Ever since I took a university paper on 17th century France, I have always been so excited to go and see the real Versailles, where Louis XIV lived and created an amazing Palace! And even though it took over an hour to get there, partly because we couldn't work out the right way to go, it was most definitely worth it! Even as you arrive, you can see the golden tops from very far away, as I'm sure that was the point!

Sorry about the weird woman behind me!
It was a freezing day actually, but amazingly enough, even after all the warnings that I had had from friends and guidebooks about the queues, we managed to stroll straight in, and even got in free thanks to my current European residency! So that was a great saving of an hour and 15 euros!
I had planned on buying an audio guide once I got there, as this was the one place that I really wanted to know everything about, so we walked up to the counter.. but before I could even get my money out one was just handed to me! I was very pleased, as this was the once time that I decided I needed an audioguide.
It was very useful too, as I know exactly what happened in which room, instead of wandering aimlessly like I seemed to in the massive Vatican museums.

This is the palace chapel, which was well used by the whole court. Yet more gold! You can see the organ right in the middle, at the time we were there there was a student practising on it, which made for a nice atmosphere. Louis XIV was an incredibly extravagant king, and this shows in all of the architecture and artwork he commissioned throughout the palace.

This is a painting of the first Versailles, before the many additions to the castle, but much of it remains the same. You will see in upcoming pictures that the massive man made lakes and gardens that are painted here are all still there today!

This is the man himself! Apparently he was painted in a much more complimentary way than he actually looked, and about a foot was added to his height in each likeness made of him!

This is one of the many highly decorated rooms in his expansive château, I've noticed a trend with old European important places; they love to cover every square inch of the entire room with some sort of artwork. 

This is the famous hall of mirrors, with us getting a photo in them! They reflect the view out to the lakes and gardens, and the whole hall is just covered in mirrors.. it's really quite nice to walk along, with a view on each side.

As I was just saying, every spare centimetre of wall spaced is used up with artwork, and this is nowhere more true than in the bedrooms! These are the King’s and Queen’s bed chambers, and with all that luxurious gold and painting everywhere I don’t know how I would be able to sleep!

As you can see I've taken full advantage of the panorama feature on my phone! The top photo is the king's bedroom, and the bottom is the queen's.

This is the view of Versailles from the gardens side of it, with my back against the lakes and gardens. It actually stretches a lot wider than this, with two wings out to the side that were added on after it was built. I would love to live in such a grand place! At least for a while anyway.

And this is the magnificent view out to the gardens and lakes! They are absolutely massive, this area is actually relatively urban but you feel like you're in the middle of the wilderness with all these plants and trees everywhere! This is what I was talking about earlier in the painting, and also the view that the hall of mirrors reflects. The king's bedroom also looks out onto this, which is how he designed it. I can imagine it would be amazing in the summer, further down the paths there are houses for the courtiers, functioning restaurants, and even boat hire for the lakes! Unfortunately it was a bit too cold for that while we were there.

After a stroll (or more of a long trek) down to see the lakes close up, we decided to go warm up in a café with something to eat. Even though we went to one of the first little cafes we got to, which is apparently a terrible idea in such a touristy area, we had one of the best lunches that I have had so far in France! I decided to get a savoury crepe, with my choice of toppings for a set price. So naturally I got all of them. My crepe with cheese, onion, tomato, ham, salami, chicken, plus much more was the most amazing that I have ever had, I couldn't have asked for a nicer birthday lunch!

And after that, it was time to make the hour long journey back to Paris, to commence my 6 hour long journey in the car back to Grenoble. That part of my birthday wasn’t so exciting, with my birthday dinner ending up being a baguette spread with Nutella along the way. So finally I arrived home at 9.30pm, feeling mildly ill from so much bread and chocolate, and exhausted after such a big day ending in a 20min walk up a steep hill to our own personal castle, Rabot. As I was walking down the hall towards my room, I was sad that my birthday was over for the year, until I looked up at my doorway, and saw this!! What an amazing surprise to come home to, and some happy friends to greet me as I arrived home!

I am very lucky to have such thoughtful friends, and believe it or not the (majority) of the balloons are still up, over a week later! So I get to see this every day :)

Later on in the week I had a special birthday dinner where I invited a few people over for a French speciality, Raclette, which I absolutely loved! I will update about that very soon, so keep watching :D