After a rather, shall we say, lazy couple of weeks dawdling around Cyprus and Greece it was time for us to get back in to travel mode as we hit Spain, our first stop Barcelona. It was also here we met up with Katherine's parents, Rick & Jo - awesome to see some family again as well as the delightful assortment of Aussie stuff they brought with them.
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| A care package from Australia - only thing missing is a can of West End Draught! Thanks Jo! |
Barcelona has not changed much since we were last here 5 years ago which is certainly is not a bad thing as it is still one of our favourite places that we have visited and we had an awesome time showing Rick & Jo the finer points of ordering tapas whilst flexing our newly learned and extremely limited Spanish vocabulary. Our lone full day in Barcelona was spent walking through the streets of the old town before we got all artsy and went and checked out some local architecture. The evening saw us head to Nou Camp to watch Barcelona play Benfica in a Champions League game of soccer - in short the night was a complete dud - it was freezing, Barcelona rested 8 out of their starting players, Lionel Messi played 30 minutes before being stretchered off and it was a nil all draw! But Tom can now tick watching a game of soccer at Nou Camp off of his bucket list and Katherine can say she is the best wife on Earth.
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| Checking out the local architecture - I want what Gaudi was on... |
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| Tom at the soccer... |
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| Katherine at the soccer. |
This next photo needs a small introduction as it is by far the most bizarre tradition for any season any where in the world - here is a link explaining the tradition of
"Uncle Shit" - a quick summary is that in Barcelona, children's presents are delivered by a defecating piece of wood rather than a morbidly obese man that keeps elves in his "toy factory".
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| Uncle Shit |
Now that we had a crew of 4 we hired another car and headed off to Zaragoza, guided by a insanely loud and slightly confused GPS unit, Sonja. We arrived and were quickly out-touristed by Rick & Jo as they headed out to check out the city whilst we decided a nap was a better option. The town itself was surprisingly busy due to the fact that we managed to arrive the day that the town's Christmas festival started, full of screaming children, donkey and camel rides and local food, with so much going on we decided to retreat to the local Irish bar for a quick pint! The rest of our time in Zaragoza was spent exploring Moorish castles (for those of you who watch Seinfeld, Costanza did have it wrong, its not spelled Moops), checking out one of the most impressive Cathedrals we have ever seen, eating Churros, laughing at children attempting to ice skate and sampling the local Irish bars.
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| Out the front of a Moorish castle - "I'm sorry the card says Moops!" |
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| Rick & Tom sampling the local ale... by local I mean Heineken in an Irish bar |
The next stop on our tour through Central Spain was Salamanca, an amazing old city about an hour away from the Portuguese border. We spent the day with our improvised tour guide, Tom with a map he found in a tourist office, and did a brief walking tour of the city. For such a small city it had an absolutely gigantic church and possibly the most visually impressive universities on earth! A fair chunk of the day was spent debating how we were going to get to Porto, Portugal the next day - hitchhiking was mentioned but in the end Rick & Jo kindly offered to drop us just inside the Portuguese border - saving us time, money and the possibility of being sexually harassed by a Spanish truck driver - thanks guys!
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| The Gates family (absent: Ross Gates) at the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca |
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| A group shot at the main Cathedral - those Catholics know how to build a church! |
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| Turns out it's not as warm in Spain as we thought it would be - Rick drawing Tom in the ice of the car |
Well that's it for Spain, once again we have loved this country - the food is out of control and there is a stack to do! Off to Portugal next to see what all the fuss is about!
