The Europe Experience

One of the many reason to visit Barcelona is to see the architect work of Gaudi. Unfortunately, many of his legendary buildings were undergoing maintenance work, like the Sandgra Familia.

Gaudi's Legend

Shall let the photos do the talking.

some of his science research findings

museum inside the familia

how gaudi looks like

After like 3 hours plus, we left to visit Park Guell, another Gaudi’s work. But getting there isn’t easy. Because its on top of a hill, plus the weather that day was super super hot and sunny!! Luckily there were escalators for the first half of the climb.

Ice creams save the day!

Awesome view at the park

Think Sentosa tried to imitate Gaudi’s Park Guell style. I think many of us find the design very familiar from Sentosa. It actually originated from here!

on top of the park

We climbed like a thousand of steps to reach the top of the park. But I guess its worth the effort after seeing the view from the top.

exhausted

champions league final!

After visiting the Park, we went to shop at the town while waiting for the champions league final match between ManU & Barcelona. We were really fortunate to to be able to watch in match in Barcelona! We met PK’s spanish friend to watch the match together. Initially we planned to watch the match at the square with big screeen but we were told that that is a place for celebration after the match and there would not be any telecast of the match. Quite puzzling but we have to accept it. We settled down at a nearby pub to watch the match. All the cafe and bars were already packed with fans of all ages and gender with their Barcelona Jerseys and banners and those.

Champions 2009

The fans were cheering their team on, shouting, screaming, singing. You can imagine how crazy they went when Barcelona scores. We dunno the cheers and songs but just joined them and made lots of noise. And luckily Barcelona won. And the city went crazy. Celebrations were everywhere. People see you with a scarf around you will hi5 with you, hug u and even kiss you. Vehicles horn their cars to celebrate, its freaking rowdy and noisy. PK’s friend said that there’ll be riot no matter they win or lose. So its better to be careful on the streets. We joined the celebratation at the square where they gave out the “champions cup” to everyone there, and there were live band there performing. Everyone gathered there to watch Barcelona lift the trophy.

There were fireworks also. The people were getting rowdy, especially some who were drunk. It was quite an experience walking back to the hostel, seeing people climbing the lamp post, doing all sorts of weird things, singing while walking, shouting like there’s no tomorrow.

What a day with Gaudi and the champions league final. Also, its my birthday! One of my most memorable birthday:) Spent in Barcelona.

After having our breakfast (microwaving bread with cheese and ham is super yummy!), we headed to this traveller’s bar for a free city tour. This free tour was organised by the bar. I was pretty impressed with the concept of a bar dedicated to travellers. The tour was a short one, with the guide explaining some of the history during the roman empire and even earlier. Some myths and legends that were pretty interesting like the virgin eating dragon and the devoted christain girl experience. I kind of forgot the names and the details, but such myths and the long history made Barcelona a very special city. Also, we got to see some of Picasso’s frequent hangout places, and his story with his rival/best friend. Also, there is this famous elephant man that will appear in the city naked. We were lucky to be able to catch him after the tour.

free tour

mixed pellas and street art

picasso's biggest artwork

We walked towards the port to book our ferry tickets. It cost about 40euros to take a freaking 22hrs ferry ride to italy.

some buildings near the port

beside the sea

Some of Gaudi's work

more of gaudi's

We ended the day by watching a Flaminco Dance. Actually we are not sure if it’s really the Flaminco, but it does has clapping and stamping, but its more like of tap dancing. It was a really great performance by them.

@ Taranto

The girls decided to spend their last day of Madrid shopping so there were not many photos to show on this day itself.

shopping day

They came back with lots of shopping items from Zara, Pull & Bear and factory outletsss.

Afterwhich, we took the metro back to the train station to catch a train to Barcelona. With all our luggages and shopping bags, 5 of us looked like easy targets for pickpockets. We boarded the metro and 2 guys tried to pickpocket us separately (becos we were standing in 2 seperate groups). But they were really lousy as PK and reg could clearly see their hands SLOWLY moving into their bags. Of course they failed and they started scolding one another in Spanish i suppose before alighting at the next stop. I wonder how they survive if pickpocketing was their fulltime job.

Once again took very super high speed train to Barcelona, took only 2hrs plus to reach. After getting lost while trying to locate our hostel yet again, we were exhausted. The receptionist was super naggy, all we want to do is to go rest on our bed. We couldn’t get the rest we wanted because once we checked in, one of our roommate lost his wallet and was super pissed. He left his wallet on the bed while bathing. 5 of us became the prime suspects. He was cursing and swearing but I understand how he felt. There were 2 american guys already in the room too. So all 8 of us gathered in the room, for him to check our belongings and stuff. Honestly a few of us did saw some money on his bed but none of us saw his wallet. Maybe he misplaced it elsewhere but he claimed that he’s very certain he had his wallet on his bed. Surprisingly he said he trust us more than the 2 american guys, and started searching their lockers and bags. And the only other person to enter the room was the receptionist. Until today, the mystery remains unsolved.

By the time he decided to forget the incident, it was about 8.30pm and we were starving. We decided to go buy KFC some 400metres away from our hostel, with snackbox selling at 1.99euros instead!! 50cents cheaper than in Madrid! The americans told us that the rooftop is a good place to chill so brought our kfc up there. Upon reaching, we realised that the place was pitch black with the 2 american guys eating their sandwiches there. We disturbed their “gay” night and joined them at the table. Regina kept asking one of the guy to sing, and we spend the night enduring regina’s singing on the rooftop.

We wanted to catch the free tour in the morning but upon reaching the meeting point, we were told that the tour was suspended because of some activist condeming such free tours and thus they were unable to carry out the free tour. Its quite sad because I always thought that such tours were really meaningful and useful and i thought that a similar concept could be replicated for cities in South East Asia. Nevertheless, the guide met us at the gathering point and briefly explained some of the history and landmark of the capital of Spain. Can tell that he’s really a very good tour guide, because of his enthuasiasm and humour. We brought us to the zero point marking. Interestingly, madrid has this system, where everything is calculated from this marking point.

Zero Point

The guide drew the suggested route to travel on our maps before bidding goodbye to us. From there on, we started our very own city tour. It wasn’t easy touring Madrid with the girls, because temptations were everywhere, with zaras and mangos “waving” to them at every other street. We arrived at a market and decided to go in and take a look.

The markets in europe are generally a very nice place to visit. Unlike Singapore’s market, its super clean, some fully aircon and the variety in the markets are huge. The raw meat and stuff like pork were nicely displayed behind glasses(like the hams in cold storage style), thus the market isn’t smelly at all. Everything looks super fresh and nice. Its no wonder they also sell Tapas, with people eating at the store. Can u imagine people selling and eating curry puff beside a stall selling fish beside it in Singapore?

market in madrid

market in madrid 2

We continued to visit some of the attractions in the city. But I couldn’t remember any of their names or significance anymore. Anywhere, we don’t have guide book or tour guide so we will just take some photos with any nice looking buildings.

Some of the attractions

more attractions

er...more random stuff

end of our tour

The tour finally ended and we decided to split up after that.

Me Reg and Ys decided to catch bullfighting! Some say you’ve never been to Spain if you didn’t watch bullfighting! And coincidently, its the bullfighting season, thus the shows are on everyday. We arrived at the bullfighting stadium about 2hrs before the time. It was quite an experience trying to buy the tickets. We enquired at the ticketing booth but the leftover tickets cost about 100plus euros. OMG lor. There were many tix booth so we went to each booth to ask. Finally found the cheapest available tickets selling at 30euros each. Its abit too ex still, we just wanted to have a feel of the event, not really into seeing bulls dying. While we were walking around comtemplating whether to get the tickets, some random passer by will sell u tickets. Its the blackmarket! These people came early to buy the tickets and sell them at higher price to loser tourists like us. Some are trying to sell really front row tickets, which we can never afford. Some keep asking us to go to a particular ticket booth (think they have some sort of business relationship). Finally there is this guy, who thrusted 3 tickets to ys and said some spanish words with some weird hand signals and then walk away. We were in shocked. Why did he give us the tickets? For free? While we were loss, he came back and snatched by the tickets and continue to mumble words that we couldn’t understanding before walking away angrily. We saw the ticket price was 4.50euros. Thus we approached him again to ask him how much. Blah blah blah, no one understand each other, we took out 20bucks and he snatched the money from ys and gave her 2 tickets. Ok so it means 10 euros per tickets, so we gave him another 10euros and we were glad even though the guy just earn more than 100% profit from us lar. But at least we get to see the bullfighting at a reasonable rate instead of a wasted trip there.

We took uber alot of photos with the posters and stadium there before heading in. Unfortunately i dun have the photos with me so there wun be any photos and videos of the bullfighting in this entry. The stadium was quite big and grand, and its fully packed. There were a total of 5 shows (as in 5 bulls that they will fight per session) but we left after they killed the 4th bull. Its no fun watching them torture the bulls with blood pouring out their back, struggling, fighting a losing battle. Its all the same routine for each round. People on horses will pierce the back of the bull when the bull charged at the horses, followed by 3 guys pierceing more stuff into the bull’s back before the bull fighter “fight” the bull. By the time the bull had already lost a significant amount of blood and were super tired already. There could only be an outcome, the bull would die, and dragged away by the horses. I wonder why the locals love it so much. The would cheer whenever the bull got stab and fall down or die. Humans are really cruel. Can u imagine a higher race next time had this sort of “human-fighting” event, with the aliens cheering when they torture and kill the humans. Such activities such stop seriously.

We returned to the hostel feeling like we were raped in the mind. It’ll the first and last time we would be watching bullfighting.

After that we decided to go to the pub crawl, to ease the bullfighting memories. BUT the pub crawl sucks. The guide was like shit in his own world. The people that joined were not fun, some are weird. And the girls were super evil to this guy, whom I think he’s nice and did nothing wrong. I dunno why the girls find him weird and started to ostracsize him. The drinks were nice, but not strong enough to get us high. The club was a spanish club, with spanish music and pros dancing spanish dance. But i guess ys and se enjoyed themselves becos they danced with some cute guys. lol. ohhh..i guess i cant upload the photos because they are tooooo…erm…SCANDALOUS! haha..

what a day…

We arrived in the morning at some weird station. Along the way, police boarded the train to check our passport with their guard dogs. Even after we alighted, there were police at the platform to check our passport again. We were quite surprise by the security level in Spain, maybe perhaps of the madrid train bombing some few years back?

Anyway, we had to change train to Madrid and once again we had the scare of our life when the train conductor checked our eurail pass very thorougly, they even use eraser to test the validity of our pass. The train station in Spain works very differently from that of with Germany and France.

For Germany, there were no checks at the platforms or anywhere in the station. So anybody can board the train, and train conductor will check your tickets on the train

For France, there are train conductors at the front of the platform to check the passengers tickets. Thus, there’ll be no checks on the train itself.

For Spain, its alot more tighter. A very similar system like the airport, all the bags are screened and to get to the platform, they must check your passport, tickets and stuff. Anyway, the train in Spain is the most high tech, fastest moving train (up to 300km/h). There are service crew on the train that behave like air stewardess, giving out free earphone, greeting u when u board and alight the train. Pretty impressive.

Anyway, we finally arrived at madrid in the afternoon. Took the metro and finally found our hostel. A very centrally located hostel with free breakfast, wifi and usage of pantry!! woo. we booked a 6bed mixed dorm but there isn’t a 6th person during our stay. We settled down, showered and headed out for dinner! we were very excited to find KFC in madrid with snack box selling at 2.5euros! MACs were more incredible,  1 euros for 4piece nuggets, chicken burger, ice cream and blah blah. Yes, we ended up eating this 2 fast food most of the time in spain. & we decided to catch angels and demon there! cost 7.8euros!

angels & demon

inside the cinema

The movie experience was quite cui compared to Singapore. The seats were small, the sound system wasn’t as good. I guess because watching movie is the only form of entertainment in Singapore, it has to be one of the best experience in the World. haha

The last day in Paris, we treat ourselves to a chinese buffet which cost us 8.5euros each. We were very excited at first, but after a while, the girls realised their appetite became very small and were very full after a short while. So it was rather bo hua to pay 8.5 to eat free flow “cai fan”.

8.5euros cai fan

After that, we visited the famous moulin rouge. We very much wanted to catch one of the show, but it costs about 150euros for a show which also include a meal. Its way beyond our budget. So what we can do is just take photos outside and visit their gift shop.

moulin rouge

Montmartre

Situated at Montmartre, a beautiful part of Paris, we also visited a few other attractions in the area.

After that, we headed back to our hotel and head of the catch an overnight train to Spain. We took a few photos of the beatuiful night view on the riverbank of Paris. A good way to bid goodbye to the romance city.

goodbye paris

The entire day was almost spent in Lourve. The place is so big that you really need the whole day to fully explore everything. More importantly, you need to have at least some interest in the arts and history to appreciate the work displayed in there. If not you’ll get bored within the first 30mins.

Im not a big fan of art, but the place and some of the paintings and artwork are really beautiful. So i think its still worth the trip.

I shall let the photos do the talking.

 Im sorry im too lazy to label the photos. As you can see there are many artifects in the lourve from different ancient civilisation. Most notably ones are the romans, egyptians and naepolean.

It also contained many magnificant giant paintings. Its incredible how the artist managed to complete such a large painting, displaying the emotions of the figures.

Also, the famous Mona Lisa painting is actually inside this museum. I still don’t know why people from all over the world are attracted to the mona lisa smile. Its actually more interesting to see the crowd squeezing in the area trying to take photo with mona lisa than to see the painting itself.

Ended off the visit at the inverted glass pyramid. The designer actually wanted the lourve to be “invisible” so the idea of glass come into place. But apparently the Lourve isn’t any invisible.

By now you should have noticed that the photos are without reg and se. Yes, by the time we finished touring the area, they had already went outside to eat ramen and came back to wait for us. Yes they are those kind that get bored in places like this. My friends are so not arty farty. lol.

After that we went to a shopping mall with all the branded goods. yes its shopping time again. While the girls went to “liao liu” at long champs store, I nua in McDonalds. But before that, they can’t shop in peace because the results are released at 6pm. We gathered at Macs to check our results using ys itouch. The process was slow and torturing. One by one, we all get what we hoped for and everyone graduated happily!! After that they went shopping, perhaps more willing to spend after knowing that we have cleared all their modules. And yes they shopped till the mall closed.

Made our way back to the hotel. Felt super hungry so decided to go to the nearby supermarket to buy some food to cook. Pk and me dunno why almost set the microwave on fire. Smoke were coming out and the fire alarm went off. We were stunned and embarassed when the guy came down. Some customers also came down to take a look. Luckily the hotel guy was super nice, he did not scold us but asked us to continue eating the food. But we can’t use the microwave anymore so its just noodles for the night.

We stayed in a one star hotel in Paris. The room was spacious and clean. More importantly, its centrally located between 2 main train station.

After a good night rest at the hotel, we headed out to properly explore Paris.

road to notre dame

outside notre dame

view from the top

 Afterwhich, ys and reg went to champs elysee while the rest of us went to explore the city.

We walked like almost more than 5km today because we wanted to save money on transport.

We continue walking and seeing other attractions towards the effiel tower.

We went crazy when the tower finally lit up after the sun set. Again, we took a million photos and also some videos.

night view of the tower

with the blinking lights

Its interesting to see the police chasing the people selling sovenirs illegally to the tourist. We had a fun time bargaining with them too.

its been a while since the last entry.

we are all surviving well in europe actually, just that its hard to upload photos to facebook or to blog sometimes.

in case i forget what we did for the past few days, here is a summary of the things that had happened in the past few days.

After Nice, we headed back to Paris. We shopped at champs elysee, visited notre dame, toured the Lourve, saw the night lighting of Eiffel Tower. We also had an exciting checking results session at McDonalds in one of the shopping mall in Paris. We almost burned down the hotel kitchen.

Trained down to Madrid, had some nervous moments with the train conductors. Did some shopping again, went to pub crawl where we met some crazy drunkens and clubbed in some spanish clubs. Watched Ängels & Demons, cant wait to visit the Vatican city. Discovered cheap KFC and McDonald deals, and they become our staple food in Spain. Watched bullfighting which was super cruel. Had to get the tickets through black market outside the stadium. Quite an experience.

Trained down to Barcelona, tried Tapas, watched Flameco dance, watched soccer and shopping. Almost experienced the whole of spanish culture in the past few days. Visited Gaudiś works, which was amazingly cool.

The city went crazy after barcelona won the champions league. Visited Nou Camp, shall dedicate an entry on just that later on.

Actually with this entry, i need not update about each individual days. Shall see if im hardworking enough to properly post the individual day updates later on.

After this, we will be on a 22hrs ferry ride to italy. Finally approaching the last country of our europe trip!

Nice is a really is nice place to stay in. Beautiful, nice weather. Too bad we only had 2 days there.

Took a rocky bus ride to monaco in the morning to visit the casino. It happened to be the Monaco F1 Grand prix 2 days later, so there were alot of f1 posters and gifts around the town.

monaco

Went back to Nice and climbed up to see the beautiful view of Nice the the mediterranean sea.

Nice is nice