The last time I was in Barcelona, I had been overawed by the Sagrada Familia bascilica, designed by Antoni Gaudi, and I was looking forward to seeing again, possibly for the last time. While I was here, I was taking the opportunity to see Park Quell, also designed by Gaudi, which I had missed on my previous visit.
I was not disappointed by the Sagrada Familia. It was every bit as stunning as I remembered and I spent hours wandering around inside taking in the beauty of the light and the architecture.
It was just as awe-inspiring the second time around, and I think I’d never get tired of wandering through the columns reaching up to the ceiling like a forest, bathed in the light of the sun pouring through the beautiful colours of the stained glass.
I think I took just as many photos as last time I was here
The fascinating exterior of the building belies the colour and design that meets you within, even in more remote corners
Ever since being introduced to Gaudi’s work, I been enthralled by it. The uniqueness and imagination he showed over 100 years ago astounds me.
Last time, I went to some other Gaudi buildings in Barcelona that show off his brilliance, but didn’t have time to go to the Park Guell. This was a family compound of several houses for which Gaudi was engaged to design and landscape the area. His unique style and flair made this an absolutely intriguing area which is now open to the public.
With everything he did, Gaudi designed down to the last little detail, including the ergonomics of seats, fencing, ceilings and practical items. Nothing was overlooked.
After two full days of Gaudi saturation, I was ready to move on to Portugal so I hopped on a bus to Lisbon.
When I set out, I had no intention of going to Paris but there was a referendum being held in Australia and unless I could get to the Australian Embassy in Paris to lodge a vote, I would be disenfranchised. I take voting very seriously and believe that we can’t complain that things aren’t going the way we’d like if we’re not prepared to vote. Voting is mandatory in Australia, but I would be exempted by being overseas, but even so I felt that I wanted to be involved.
Hence, a train trip from Nice to Paris so I could be there before the close off date.
When I arrived and set up in my Airbnb, my first task was to locate the Embassy and make my way there the following morning.
Priority task completed, I set about exploring and investigating Paris.
Despite all the touristy hype, I found Paris to be very disappointing. Sure, it has the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and other “must see” attractions, but basically I found the city grotty, with nothing to endear it to me.
Under the bridges of Paris is not very romantic in reality
People were queueing to get into this book shop and it’s adjoining coffee shop. I was disgusted with the toilet provided in the coffee shop – it was gross! Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, I didn’t see it till after I’d finished my expensive coffee.
I stayed in what I was led to believe was one of the more desirable arrondissements, just a short walk or metro trip into the city, but as I walked around and through the city, I was struck by how dirty and unkempt the city was. Considering it is listed as the top tourist destination in the world, I expected that the local authorities would have done more to make it cleaner and tidier.
I went to see the Eiffel Tower, but didn’t go inside the fenced off area or go up the Tower, mainly because of the number of tourists, and went past the Louvre on the bus tour around the city, but I looked at the long, long queue to get in and thought, no way. I made sure I saw the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame under reconstruction, just because you do, but none of them could allay my general sense of disappointment with the city.
I’m afraid I don’t make a very good tourist. I prefer to think of myself as a traveller taking in the whole city rather than just tourist spots. Consequently, I spent a lot of time just walking here, there and everywhere.
I should make mention of my Airbnb. It was a small 2 bedroom Parisian apartment on the third floor of the building. The kitchen was barely big enough for 2 people to be in there at the same time, the first bedroom was used exclusively by the owner, and the 2nd bedroom and living area both had a single bed and double bunks in each, so accommodation for 7 people all up. Just one small bathroom and no dining space! The owner had to entertain a dinner guest in the living/bedroom one night, while a guest sat on his bed not knowing which way to look. To say it was close was an understatement. There were no more than 3 people staying while I was there, but with the Olympics in Paris later in the year, it’s going to be a squeeze with that number of people in it.
One more damper on my visit to Paris.
The one touristy thing I did was to go to the catacombs. I’m into all things old, weird and wonderful so it was something I didn’t want to miss. As the cemeteries of Paris became too full, in the late 1700s the bones of the interred were exhumed and stored underground. I can’t imagine how many people are represented by number of bones and skulls that are piled on top of each other. Some estimate about a million or more.
I had arrived in Paris on the Wednesday and came across a notice that one of my favourite bands, Pink Martini, was touring and playing in Paris on the Thursday and Friday nights. They are American and their tours usually take them to Europe, hardly ever to Australia. So, I immediately booked myself for the Friday night and went along to the most amazing concert. Pretty well my only positive experience of Paris.
Having had my fill after about a week, I decided to move on to Toulouse. It’s a much smaller city with far fewer tourists, which was to my liking. I stayed there about a week, taking in the sights, walking by the canal, visiting interesting buildings as well as the Japanese gardens, and generally enjoying the ambiance much more than Paris.
I was planning to go on to Portugal from France, but since I was so close to Barcelona, decided that I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see the Sagrada Familia again. It’s a stunning building that took my breath away when I last visited six years ago, and I just had to see it again. Little did I realise that I’d be coming back to Barcelona after Portugal, but more on that later.
On arrival at Nice airport, I was met by my friend from England who had lived in the area pre-Brexit. With the ensuing immigration changes, she is now only able to do short visits to France, much to her disappointment.
We’d arranged to meet and spend a week in Nice so she’d organised accommodation before I arrived and met me at the airport, making things so much easier for me. I didn’t have to think about a thing beforehand.
It was great to have someone who knew the area and how everything works, to show me around and take me to the best places. We were a little out of the city, but close enough for a short metro ride. Learning how the metros work came in very handy for my later travels in France.
We took a few walks around Nice, including the beachfront, where we had coffee in the beautiful sunshine. But, I have to admit, I was taken aback by the “beach”. I’d always had a mental image of Nice as being long, sandy beaches where the rich and famous spent hours lolling and being seen. Imagine my surprise when I saw that it was another “pebble” beach. Not a grain of sand in sight. I couldn’t stifle a laugh when I first saw it. The Bay of Angels is beautiful and the weather is fantastic, but sitting on towels on large pebbles and saying you’re at the beach is so foreign to me.
One day, my friend took me on a bus ride up into the hills to the village where she used to live, Tourrettes-sur-Loup, a beautiful medieval village where everyone knows everyone. It was great to meet people I’d heard her speak of face to face and share some time with them.
Another day, we caught the train to Monaco, had a walk around, looked at the casino from the outside, and had some lunch in a cute cafe. I looked around the marina and wondered just how much money was tied up in the yachts and boats moored there.
Monaco is very, very small and very hilly so it took a while to walk only a little distance. I decided not to go up the taller hill to the palace. I wasn’t that interested in seeing it, to tell you the truth.
As a surprise, my friend has secured tickets to a lunchtime opera recital, so we went to the Nice Opera House and enjoyed an hour or so of opera arias in an anteroom. That’s my kind of activity, so I was very grateful and enjoyed it immensely.
Being an enthusiast for all things ancient, I was delighted to learn that in the hills around the port of Nice, there is a cave which is thought to have been used as a shelter for paleolithic humans, the Grotte du Lazaret. It is little known and it took a walk around the port to find it, so I was pleased that only 2 other people and myself were there at the time. After a walk through the smallish cave, the back wall becomes lit by a light show tracing the use of the cave through the ages. It was remarkable that it is so little known and has free entry. Well worth a look if you find yourself in Nice.
I also took a bus ride to Eze, a medieval town not far from Nice, again built on a hill, so lots of walking up stairs and narrow, sloping streets. This one is very popular with tourists, and one of its claims to fame is that Walt Disney used to frequently visit. It’s a quaint village, worth having a look at. There is an exotic garden at the top of the hill with views all round, but you have to pay admission, so I gave it a miss.
A walk through the old town, a local favourite of mussels for lunch, lots of coffee of middling standard, sometimes at the beach cafe, and good times with my friend rounded off my visit to Nice before she headed back to the UK and I went on to Paris
It’s time for me to take another extended travel journey, so I’m using a visit to the Scottish Highlands to spend Christmas with my son and his wife as a focal point for the trip.
I had intended to leave home in March or April, but family commitments delayed my departure till the end of September, 2023.
On my previous trip, I’d booked a weekend in Nice but with the upheaval that was Covid, I wasn’t able to take that and put the money I’d paid on hold. When things settled down and we were able to travel again, I transferred the booking to 3 nights in Dubai, so that become my jumping off point.
I’d done stopovers in Dubai before, but I’d never stayed there.
My 3 nights were spent in a rather grand hotel, unlike any of the hostels I usually stay when I’m travelling. On arrival, I was told that I’d been upgraded to a luxury suite on the 36th floor. Hey, I think I can handle this!
Full wall windows overlooking the city, free substantial and delicious breakfasts, and fabulous comfort – I might never stay in a hostel again (haha)
The most obvious thing about Dubai, and the thing that most disappointed me, was the air quality. The view from the windows show just how bad it was during the day, but the night was clearer.
I only had 2 full days in Dubai, so on the first day I went to the Burj Kalifah and then the next day, I took a day trip to Abu Dhabi.
The Burj Kalifah is the world’s tallest building at 160 storeys, and visitors can take the elevator to the 124th and 125th floors, for a cost, of course. The elevator ride is an incredible light show that makes you feel that you’re soaring through space as you ascend. From the 124th floor you have an incredible 360 degree view over the city and beyond.
Funny though, the whole time I was up there I was wondering about the building’s foundations in this sandy desert area and how secure they had to be to support this height and weight. After all, as a kid I learned a song about the dangers of building your house on sand 🙂
The following day was Abu Dhabi with more tall buildings and air pollution, but not as bad as Dubai.
The day trip included a visit to the Presidential Palace and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.
The Presidential Palace was built as a residence for the President, but he declined to live there because it is too grandiose. It has governmental uses now.
I left Dubai the following morning after having had my fill. I was glad I stayed a couple of days, and the luxury wasn’t wasted, but I won’t bother staying there again even though I’m assured that the air quality is much better in the winter months.
I boarded a plane to take me to Nice via Paris for the next stage of my travel journey.
I left Bariloche and took a bus to Buenos Aries, where the temperature was in the high 30s. A bit different to Patagonia.
While I was in Buenos Aries, I met up with 4 women who all belong to a women’s travel group that I’m a member of, and they each showed me a different part of the capital.
One of my favourite areas was La Boca. I was told that it had been a very poor area and that people began painting their houses in really bright colours to make it more pleasant. Over time it has become a real tourist must-see.
Argentina was the home of Eva Peron of Evita fame, wife of the one time dictator. She is either loved or hated by the locals; however, there are statues to her and the family mausoleum, where she is buried, can be visited. Some Argentinians see her as a wonderful person who fought for the poor of the country, while others see her as a colluder with her dictator husband who was responsible for up to 30,000 people who were “disappeared” under his regime.
In fact, in Bariloche the names of people who were disappeared from that town are permanently written on the ground of the square as a remembrance of that terrible time.
Buenos Aries is a large, vibrant city with lots to see including memorials, statues, gardens, churches and fabulous art deco buildings and I was fortunate to be able to see and appreciate what it has to offer.
I did a lot of walking around Buenos Aires despite the heat, but it was really nice to be able to meet up with new friends who were able to take me further afield to places I probably would have missed, and to share a meal or drink with them.
Earlier, I mentioned that the Soccer World Cup was happening while I was in Argentina and by the time I reached Buenos Aries, Argentina had reached the finals. The whole city got behind their country’s team and each time a game was played, everything stopped. Shops closed, cars stopped running and people found the nearest television to be able to watch the game. After the wins, the city went crazy with toots and cheers, just like in El Calafate but amplified.
I had two regrets about leaving Argentina. Firstly, that I had to be home for Christmas so I didn’t have time to go further north (maybe another time), and that I left 3 days before the final World Cup playoff, which Argentina won.
I would have loved to be there in the Plaza de la Republica when several million Argentinians gathered around the obelisk to celebrate their first title win since 1986. The excitement was palpable. Those guys sure get into their soccer!
San Carlos de Bariloche, or Bariloche for short, was my next stay in Argentina.
I travelled between El Calafate and Bariloche by bus, stopping for a couple of hours at El Chalten. This is a popular village with hikers of all levels, including families, who want to explore some of the most magnificent areas of Patagonia. It’s referred to as the hiking capital of Patagonia.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be there long enough for the longer hikes, so I just did the walk to the Chorrillo Del Salto waterfall, a nice easy walk but it was incredibly windy. There is a severe wind channel through the mountains and the wind is very cold, coming off and through the mountains.
After my little walk to the waterfall, it was time to go back to the bus and carry on to Bariloche.
Bariloche is not what you’d expect to find in Argentina. It has many Swiss style buildings, reminders of the Swiss pioneers in the area, and is very popular with skiers. I even saw a St. Bernard ready to rescue anyone stranded in the snow!
I spent a couple of days in Bariloche just enjoying the ambience and one day, stumbled upon a gay rights celebration. There weren’t many people, but lots of enthusiasm!
There are lots of chocolate shops in Bariloche, but I resisted the temptation.
From Ushuaia I took a bus to El Calafate, the next town moving up through Patagonia. As I travelled, I was taken by how much the countryside reminded me of travelling through Australia. The towns are far apart and there are vast areas of open land, just like at home. The difference is that on your left going north are the wonderful and scenic Andes mountains, snow capped and rising to the heavens. A fabulous sight.
El Calafate is a like a small country town, but with all the facilities you would need and very easy to walk around, which I did several times during my couple of days there.
Not having any interest at all in soccer, one of the things I hadn’t thought about was that the Soccer World Cup was being played at that time, and by the time I reached El Calafate, Argentina was making it’s way through the competition to the finals. Every time they had a win, the whole population went crazy. I was walking through the streets when Argentina’s win against Mexico was announced and the town went berserk. Cars were driving up and then down the main street while tooting horns, flags were being waved out of windows, and people were shouting and cheering. And that was only one of the games. I thought to myself, what will it be like if they win? (Wait for the Buenos Aires post)
One of the things I had wanted to do for many years was go to La Linea, to the petrified forest, so I took a day tour in a private car with one other girl from the hostel.
We drove for about an hour before arriving at a private property and driving another 2 or 3 kilometres to a huge depression in the ground. It was like a mini Grand Canyon and looked like a moonscape. But it is full of petrified trees and dinosaur bones. After all this time, it’s sometimes hard to tell which fragments are which, but our guide showed us that if you lick your finger, the dinosaur bone will adhere, but the tree fragment won’t. Good to know – I might need that one day!
We walked for a couple of hours, gradually making our way to the bottom before trekking up the hill to the top again.
This was definitely the highlight of my time in El Calafate.
The other excursion I did from El Calafate was to the Perito Moreno glacier, a huge glacier where it’s possible to get right up close, both from the viewing platforms and a boat trip to the face.
The day was beautiful and clear, perfect for appreciating the grandeur and colour of the ice.
After leaving the ship in Ushuaia, I decided to spend a couple of days there having a look around. After all, you can’t be in the city at the end of the world and not investigate it, can you?
I had an exciting start to my stay in Ushuaia. After getting myself sorted out at the hostel and putting all my gear in the locker, I closed the padlock I was using and then realised that the key was in the locked locker! I went down to reception to ask if they had a bolt cutter, which I found most hostels carry for just these occasions, but they didn’t. So, the young man behind the desk, another girl in the room and I tried for over half an hour to use everything trick imaginable to open the padlock, including looking up YouTube suggestions, but none of them worked. Then I had an idea. I’d walk around to one of the other hostels and ask if they had a bolt cutter.
Off I went and met a lovely man who didn’t speak any English, and I don’t speak Spanish. So, after many hand gestures and facial expressions, he went out and came back with a huge set of bolt cutters. He put them over his shoulder and we walked back to my hostel together. Within 30 seconds, the locker was opened but the padlock would never work again. That didn’t matter because in the locker I also had a combination lock that I’d brought with me. Pity I hadn’t used that in the first place!!
There were 2 young French men in the same dormitory and they invited me to accompany them on a hike to a glacier the following day, so off we went. They were both very experienced at hiking in the Pyrenees and had much longer legs than me, so about 3/4 of the way up the mountain, I felt I was holding them back as they stopped to wait for me to catch up, so I sent them on ahead and didn’t get to the glacier myself. It was a great hike, anyway, and they were such nice young men.
One of the things you can do from Ushuaia is catch the bus to the National Park and then hike/walk to the border with Chile, so I decided I should do that.
I expected some sort of border security, at least a guard box or something, but all that’s there is a partial log and a sign saying not to trespass into Chile. Of course I did, for a photo. But, even if you venture further, there’s really nowhere to go because it’s all bush.
Everyone else who’d been on the boat to Antarctica left to go home from Ushuaia, but I’m glad I stuck around for a couple of days to get a feel for the town.
I found this sitting in my folders waiting to be published. It had ompletely slipped my notice, I’m afraid. This trip was back in February 2021, so completely out of sequence. But, never mind, I’m finally posting it now as it was written at the time.
……..
I’ve become very frustrated with not being able to travel, so I decided to look at Norfolk Island, an external territory of Australia which is administered by New South Wales, my home state. After a few enquiries, I found that even though it’s in the South Pacific, as a resident of NSW there were no covid restrictions preventing me from visiting the island.
The only airline servicing Norfolk is Air New Zealand, so I booked my return tickets for a week on the island, but then, 2 days before I was to fly out, Australia closed the border to Air NZ for 3 days. I spent several hours over the next couple of days trying to find out if my trip would still happen, and eventually I was told that Qantas would take over the flight, so it would still go ahead.
I arrived on the island around midday on the Wednesday and was met by a small fleet of minibuses which transported each traveller to their accommodation free of charge, and I was given a voucher for a free half day tour of the island the following morning.
The weather was not what I was expecting. It was heavily overcast, bordering on rain, and the wind was near cyclonic. I had to buy a cap because my floppy had kept being blown off! The forecast was for that weather to continue till I was due to return home, so I extended my stay for 3 more days so I could experience some sunny weather. After all, you can’t visit a South Pacific island and not see sunshine, can you?
I’m glad I extended because the weather was great after the tail of a cyclone passed and things calmed down again.
Norfolk is a very small island, so it’s easy to see it all in a week, especially if you hire a car to get around, although walkers would have no trouble at all.
It has a mixed history, part of which was as a penal settlement for the worst of the worst convicts in the new Sydney colony. Because these men were seen as irredeemable, the conditions they were subjected to were horrendous, with extreme cruelty inflicted daily by sadistic overseers and guards. It was a place of terror for many men who were sometimes no more than boys.
In fact, it has been documented that men preferred to commit a capital crime and be hanged for it then to continue living in the hellhole that was Norfolk Island. It’s hard to imagine that today because it is such a beautiful place.
A walk through the remains of the settlement and gaol, and the graveyard with it’s very sad headstones, is sobering, to say the least.
But, even with it’s horrible past, it is a beautiful island well worth a visit.
I promised some photos from Antarctica as soon as I was able to download them. It’s taken a while, but here they are. The grey scale photos were, in fact, taken on the same camera phone as all the others. There is such a variance in colours and tones depending on the weather and cloud cover. This range of photos shows the difference between the colours in cloudy and snowing weather and in the bright sunshine we were lucky enough to have one morning.
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