It´s not you it´s me...

So it´s been a while... I´m sorry. It´s not you fault, it´s just I´ve been busy... It´s not you, it´s me. Let me cheer you up with a picture of a Walrus playing an instrument... everyone loves Walruses... More on them later...

IN BRIEF
So I left off in Dubrovnik, when the girls said adios and I was chilling on my own. After another day in D-brik, I travelled to the small island of Korcula... a memorable bus trip which involved meeting Alice, a poor lost Sail Croatia girl who had woken up on the wrong boat, heading in the wrong direction, with no shoes, money, identification or idea what was going on (needless to say this seemed to be a running theme with all the Sail Croatians I met henceforth). Nevertheless, arriving in Korcula I propped myself up in Dragan´s Den and quickly met and befriended some Kiwi, Canadian, English, Irish people. A few days of beach, cliff-jumping (insert photo)

 meeting Australian-Croatians, fold-out couches and devilment (see: breaking into trampolines) it was time to say good bye! Back to Zagreb and onto a plane to fabled France...

Paris

The old Francophile capital, known for bad customer service, fierce protection of the French language and snobbishness in general... Luckily I was staying with a local, Phoebe, who has been on exchange for six months and conveniently has an apartment just off Champs Elysees, which we managed to sardine-style bed down 8 or so people in. Whilst we werent there for long, Phoebe made sure we saw all the sights, including Montmarte, Champs Elysees, the Marais, Villa Savoye, Musee Dórsay, George Pompidou Centre, Sacre Couer, drinking on the Seine etc etc. Cultural highlights included realising that Paris really is the city of love, as everyone makes out, everywhere!  And also that time that I whipped out my old highschool french and managed to tell one of Phoebe´s French friends that I was a dog...hmmm...Low lights included realising that what they don´t tell you about Paris is that it smells like a urinal because there are virtually no public toilets anywhere!
Leaving after a depressingly short amount of time I realised that Paris was a place I would have to come back to again, with more time and more money.

Our next leg of the trip involved a bit of camping. Moss, Condo and I ventured West to Normandy visited Bayeux, saw the infamous tapestry, hired bikes and rode to the see side to see the D-Day beaches and picnic like we´ve never picnicked before.
After this short jaunt, everything got a bit messy, with trains and needing to get places so simply put we managed to end up in the Loire valley in Tours, meeting Grace and Phoebe along the way. We camped in the Loire and discovered the many ways of picnicing in a park and the like... I visited Leonardo Da Vinci´s house and only then realised how much of an absolute genius he was. Condo said goodbye and headed off to follow the tour de France (come on Cadel you champion), and we attempted to go Spain-ward (something which we didn´t realise would be so incredibly difficult, more on that later).

Spain

We unwittingy found ourselves taking a detour through Spain via Bilbao, see the Guggenheim and then end up in Madrid, stay there for less then 24 hours, or long enough to meet an annoying Australian who claimed to have learnt Greek in 5 weeks and also fit in seeing the Prado-hello ´Velazquez´s Las Meninas and the Reine Sofia-Guernica baby. Another night time bus took us to Barcelona, where we allowed ourselves to actually indulge in Spanish lifestyle... something I think suits me quite well. Wake up late, big lunch, siesta, late tapas dinner, drinks and then late to bed. Spot on.

Heading to Barcelona-the cultural capital of Spain- I got stuck into some serious museum going, walked the Mercat de Bocquerie, got lost in the medieval streets and ended up finding myself alongside some Spaniards, rummaging through bins for clothing (some things never change). Highlights woud have to be all the Gaudi architecture (see below), the Joan Miro Foundation, stumbling across the Museum of Textiles and the flea markets! Barcelona feels a lot like Melbourne as there´s tonnes of alleyways, winding streets with street art (see below, Dali work found in the medieval part of Barcelona), cafes work their way into small boutique shops and book shops stock art guides to the city.

Saying goodbye to Barcelona we headed down to Benicassim for a little festival featuring the likes of The Strokes, Brandon Flowers, The Streets, Arcade Fire, Noah and the Whale, Crystal Fighters, Arctic Monkeys and many more... 8 days of camping out in a bur infested dust patch made me realise that we are spoilt at Australian festivals with our healthy dollopings of green grass and camping space. That said, the music didn´t start until around 6pm every night so days were spent chilling out at the beach (not a bad option). Festival finished (yes, I´m rushing over things, but this is supposed to be brief right?) and we headed back to Valencia, the official home of paella, but for us a well needed rest spot.
I didn´t realise before I got there, but Valencia is home to a massive arts and science museum, and all the architecture is in this futuristic style of Santiago Calatrava (current architect for Ground Zero).

And for my birthday I got a ticket to the largest aquarium in Europe! in the Ciudad! I mean they even had a 10 mete deep dolphinarium... ! Crazy stuff.
My birthday came and went and I tried not to think about how much older 22 feels then 21 by appropriately escaping reality and seeing the final Harry Potter film! Amazing!... and we got grande popcorn and everything. Thank you. We also went out for what was possibly the most amazing meal I´ve ever had. I´m talking white truffle lasagne, four cheese gnocci and homemade dips... foodgasm thinking about it.

After Valencia we trained to Granada where I stayed at the best hostel I´ve ever had, Makuteros Hostel where they have their very own bar, chill-out zone hammocks and tree house. Nothing could be more relaxing, and whilst I only booked 1 night, I´ve now been here for  nights.

After leaving Grace, Phoebe, Dan and Grace I had a small bout of food poisoning which embarrassingly left me surpris vomiting in a pot plant, much to the horror of the hostel staff. Despite this have befriended another Australian called Dave and we´re making plans for Morocco! yeah boi!

POINTS OF INTEREST

Getting to Spain via train-or the day that everything screwed up

So. The stuff up. My god, I can´t believe how wrong this went. When we were in Tours, we wanted to get to Barcelona to meet Pip, but found that there was absolutely no trains that we could get on! Eventuly after spending many hours in the train ticket office our helpful customer service officer suggested that we could get to Madrid instead, but would have to take 3 different trains and wait 2 days. Fine.

We came back in two days time to board our trains. It wasn´t until we got on the train that we realised that we´d been sold not only Eurail tickets (tickets we didn´t ask for) but 1st class tickets! Which we didn´t have a Eurail Pass for. So we were ordered off the train in Bordeaux to fix the problem, only to our dismay we realised we were going to have to pay the full price for a return ticket, thus, we sneakily bought whole new ones for an extra 30 Euros.

Then we arrived in Irun to find that the third and final ticket we had purchased for 50 Euros, from Irum to Madrid, was actually for the next day!!! Crap. We weren´t allowed on the train and as we saw it pulling up Grace speedily tried to negotiate in Spanish, but to no avail. Our only option was to disregard our train tickets and take a 30 euro bus to Bilbao, and then to Madrid (quite a scenic detour). Arriving at around 1 am we immediately treated ourselves to awell deserved beer.

So all in all, probably the most stressful 48 hours of our trip thus far.

Gaudi

Park Guell entrance

Battlo House

Sagrada Familia

Absolutely one of my stand-outs for Barcelona was seeing the architecture of the one and only Antonio Gaudi... typical tourist, I was drawn in by the sinous line, absurd sculpture of his Barcelonian Modernisme (see Spanish version of Art Nouveau). Amazing to see his Sagrada Familia (above), probably his most famous work, a MASSIVE church with incredibly intricate design details, which is hoped to be finished by 2026, the 100 year anniversary of Gaudis death-so it´s a bulding a long time in the making. Another great place was Park Guell (google image that), a Dr. Suess-esque park, which was supposed to be a housing development, but failed. Still, lots of fun to walk around all the crazy mosaics.

ART WANK

• George Pompidou Centre-I wish I had had longer in this place. Luckily I looked enough like Phoebe to get in for free. Very stoked to see my first ever Felix Gonzalez-Torres
• Villa Savoye- The Modernist masterpiece of Le Corbusier, was, kind of a bit disappointing. Very few of the original furniture was in the building and the pamphle guide explained little.
• Musee D´´Orsay-I enjoyed this museum immensely, once we finally managed to get in. Huge lines and strikes making it very difficult. I especially loved the Art Nouveau furniture, but felt that the museum didn´t make itself very decipherable for an English speaking audience-typical French.
• Reine Sofia- Obviously Picasso´s Guernicaas a highlight as I don´t think I´ve had an emotional reaction to an artwork in a while. Other highlights were a commissioned Richard Serra and seeing Dali´s The Great Masturbator. On top of that there was a fantastic retospoctive of Yayoi Kusama´s work. Involved in the New York Factory Day´s, it was great to see so many of her works together after having seen individual ones in Moma, Fruitmarket gallery etc.

• The Prado Museum- Like watching slides in my Baroque art class, except that they were the actual paintings. Las Meninas, Goya, Ribera all highlights
• Miro Foundation

Sorry about the length and lack of funny info or interesting things. I think I just had to get this one out... I swear the next one will be better.

Thanks for reading and he your safe and sound.

Amy