Portugal - Porto

It very common to see the exterior of churches and other buildings tiled in Portugal

We got a cheap flight over to Porto (cheaper than catching the bus! Bless Ryan Air). Porto is the biggest northern city. Porto takes its name from the local drink, you guessed it, port. The grapes are grown up river and then the raw wine is ferried down and aged in the large number of of port lodges here.

Porto is set on the steep banks and hills of the river. All the roads are made of little (uneven) pavestones. Lots of buildings are tiled on the outside, particularly churches. Its a beautiful town and we had a good time walking around the little streets. It is amazing how many variations of pretty winding stone streets you can find in Europe.

Our hostel is cool in every sense of the word. Common room is downright freezing, but very funky, kind of like a warehouse apartment. Kitchen good too. We are in an 8 bed dorm room and all the linen is clean (!) and the beds comfortable (!!).

Today we went across the river to a port lodge. There we had free tastings, a tour around the cellars and didn´t buy anything! Ah ha! We felt slightly out of our league alongside the well dressed tourists and 60 year old port. The biggest barrel held 100,000 litres. Very big barrel
We quite liked the port, and look forward to drinking more. Probably the supermarket purchased variety...

Off to Lisbon tomorrow. No accomodation as yet, as its New Year and very full.

Spain - Madrid

We arrived in Madrid in the afternoon. From the bus we caught the underground to our hostel and got our first taste of the fantastic buskers in Madrid. These 3 guys jumped on the train and started playing flute, banjo and guitar and beautiful singing of a flamenco style song.

Once at our hostel we went down the road to the supermarket to try and get some christmas food. The supermarket sucked except for cheap wine, so we thought we would go somewhere else. Back at the hostel the reception guy told us nothing else would be open (and the first one was just closing as we left...) so for a moment there we thought we would only be drinking on xmas. Thanks to Lonely Planet we did find another supermarket! so we got lots of goodies.

Christmas was cool. We slept in till about 10.30 then had a picnic of croissants with cheese, and sparkling wine and orange juice in our room. We then picked at dried figs (NZD$7 per kilo), and apricots with goats cheese, quince paste, and chocolate truffles.

Then went out for a nice walk in a huge local park. It was such a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and the sun was really warm. There were hundreds of people out, and buskers, and stuff to see. We bought a cd of a woman playing spanish guitar and singing. She was really good, and we thought it was a good momento.

We then came back and made our late lunch. We had pork loin stuffed with sundried tomatoes, peppers, and olives, and wrapped in cured spanish ham. As vege we had roast zuchinnis, and cherry tomatoes. However, just as we were about to turn the oven on to cook this we were told that the oven did not work. So we were forced to cook it in a makeshift oven by putting tin foil over the top of a pan, and kind of steaming the whole thing. But it worked really well.We spent the afternoon eating all this food, plus olives, cheese, and a few bottles of wine. We played cards with an Aussie couple, which was fun, and then went out for an evening walk around town. There was a choir singing carols in spanish which was quite cool, and we watched them till we got cold.

Everything was open boxing day. We planned to go to museuems but the lines in the morning were huge. So we went to the Palacio Real (the royal palace from the 1800´s, now just used for official stuff and tourism). We didn´t go in but had a look from the outside and then walked around the royal gardens.

Later we made it to the best of Madrids galleries, the Museo de Prado. It was a pretty cool building and paintings - artists like Goya, Rubens, Raphael, El Greco and Bosch.

We thought we were in a dorm but ended up getting our own twin bunks. The hostel wasn´t great apart from that though. The kitchen was always really messy with the crap of the people who worked there and the rooms were not all that clean either.

Madrid is a really pretty city. There are so many lovely old buildings, it has a really regal feel about it, what you imagine a capital city should be.

The christmas lights were really good too. We saw lots of other good buskers. The streets were absolutley packed for the post christmas sales. The weather was fantastic the whole time we were there. Like a NZ autumn, crisp with clear skys and lots of sun.

Spain - Bilbao

Now we are in Bilbao. Another Basque city about an hour and a half from San Sebastian. We are staying in a not so great hostel. Its 2km out of the city so we take a train in (it was the only available one at a reasonable price). No english is spoken and there is no kitchen so we have been living on bread, cheese and salami.

The main drawcard of Bilbao is the Guggenheim Museum. We went there today and thought it was really good. The architecture is amazing and worth seeing on its own. There was a fantastic exhibition of contempory African art.

Other than the museum, we are just filling a day before we go to Madrid tomorrow for Christmas. We are staying in a dorm, there is a kitchen so hopefully we will make some nice food (we are really hoping that the supermarkets will still be open when we arrive, christmas eve and all....). Its about 8 hours or so by bus from here.

Spain - San Sebastien

After 4 nights in Barcelona we took an 8 hour bus to the Basque country and the lovely town of San Sebastien. It is a beach restort town on a big scale. There are 4 beautiful yellow sand beaches with calm, clear, turquoise water. It was a bit colder here than Barcelona but to our surprise we saw at least one person each day braving the cold for a dip.

We stayed in the best hostel. Not only was it cheap, but super clean, friendly, small, great kitchen and bathrooms and the best people. We had a really really good 4 nights there. We drank a lot of wine with everyone and cooked some nice meals. It was really good to have a friendly atmosphere and not feel the need to be out and about all the time, and so easy as everyone there were english speakers (australians, canadians and americans).

Sarah and Dave, an Australian couple we hung out with

We did however venture out of our backpackers. There was a beautiful wooded hill with a castle ruins and many walking paths.

The old city was again a lot of fun to explore with its narrow streets, stone buildings, and a couple of really nice churches.

On our last day there was a local fiesta. This involved the drinking of massive amounts of local cider, and the eating of chorizo like sausages. There were so many people there, many in traditional dress and dancing to traditional music. We had a fantastic sausage wrapped in a hand made corn bread tortilla (mmmmm).

Making of the bread

We tried the cider, but its an aquired taste and more expensive than the NZ $2 wine we had been drinking (it is so amazing the selection of wine for that price!). We went out again to see the end of the fiesta (11am-about 10pm) and there was so much broken glass all over the city.

We were sad to leave San Sebastien as it was so comfortable and homey. We got our own room for 3 of the 4 nights which was nice too. If we came back to Spain we would definatley visit again, especially if it was summer. Our hostel was only a minutes walk from the beach.

Spain - Barcelona

Our cheap flight took us to Girona airport - 1.5 hrs from Barcelona. So we got a bus in and checked into our backpackers, an 8 bed dorm. It was in a pretty good part of town, close to all the main tourist attractions, shops, markets and restaurants.

Barcelona is a really easy to walk around and we have done a lot of wandering. There is a rabbit warren of tiny little cobbled streets in the old town that are a lot of fun to walk around, especially at this time of year as there are loads of little market stalls selling natievety figures, gifts, jewellery and that sort of thing.

It is so much warmer here than in the UK. Most days have been about 15 degrees and it only rained once for a morning.To add to a more tropical feel was the bright green parrots who flew around alongside the pigeons.

We spent a morning at the Picasso museum. There was a lot of his work there, mainly from his early period and later periods. It was all housed in a beautiful old building and a morning well spent. It has been amazing to go to these european galleries and see many famous paintings that would never be shown in nz.

All the big houses are situated around sqares, or plazas.

One of the main sights of Barcelona is Gaudi´s Sargada Familia Cathedral. It was not completed at his death but work has since continued. He was a devout catholic, his architectual style however is very different to traditional religious architecture. When we went a lot of the towers were under scaffold in construction but it was still great to see. As we are tight arses we didn´t pay to go in but had a good walk around the outside.

The beaches in Barcelona beautiful. They´re close to the city and we spent two afternoons wandering around the port and the beaches (there is about 5). Lots of people were surfing or hanging out at the cafes. It would be amazing in summer. The whole area was done up when Barcelona hosted the Olympics, we walked a bit around the Olympic village area too.

The first couple of days we had some nice meals out at restaurants. Even though they were the cheapest we could find we soon realised that our money was not going to go far if we continued to eat out (the cheapest is about $20 NZ each for a meal). We then discovered the joys of self catering. Its fun to go to the supermarkets as they have different stuff, and cheese and olives (and wine!) are at the cheaper end of the scale. The only down side is that not all hostels have kitchens so we have started to get sick of cold bread and cheese. Other culinary delights included local produce markets with fine cuts of meats, whole jamon hams, cheeses, fruits, etc. And we also sampled the local gelato. It was delicious. And for the first time pretty much since we left NZ we have been having good coffee. It is very popular and good here, English coffee sucks!

England - London

We didnt have long in London this visit, but we managed to pack quite a bit in.

We arrived in the center of London packs on back. We´d planned to leave our bags in storage, and pick them up again on our way out to the airport. The only problem (which we founf after checking our bags in) was that the storage opened at the same time as our bus departed for the airport. This was no big deal (but annoying) it just meant that we had to pick up our pack the night before.

We then went and baught tickets for The Lion King stage show. Judi had very kindly sent me (Tim) some theatre vouchers, and we got pretty good seats for a daytime show the next day.
This done we headed out to Wembly where a friend of Elle´s had organised a cheap night at a hotel for us. It was cool to stay in a room all of our own. Its one of the things that you quickly start to miss when your living in dorm rooms.
Breakfast was included in the hotel, and we ate a ton to keep us going for the day.

To fill in the time between check out and the show we went to Camden market. It wasnt as busy as it is in the weekend and alot of stuff was closed, but it was cool to see, all the trendy clothes, and stuff they have for sale. It goes to show that if you had the money you could spend a fortune. We then jumped back on the tube (the tube rocks) and shot over to the theatre.

The Lion King was amazing. Though the acting was the weakest part it really didnt matter. The music, stage and costumes were fantastic. The opening scene (same as in the movie) was the best and really set the mood of the show. Most of the dialouge followed the movie word for word, which felt strange at times but worked. I dont really know how to describe it better, and we dont have any pictures to put on so you´ll have to use your imagination.

We then went over to Kara´s place. She kindly offered to put us up for the night. We went out for a very good pizza meal, and then Rita and I went into town to get ur packs and look at the pretty christmas lights. We have to say the lights werent stand out. Maybe we were in the wrong place, but the ones in Spain have been better.

The next morning we got up very early, and caught the tube to the bus that took us out to the airport. Then caught our cheap cheap flight to Spain.

England - Newent

We spent another 5 fantastic days in Newent after Wales. By the time we got there we were really hanging out for it. I cant say that we did a huge amount whilst there. Again we spent a lot of time eating, drinking, talking, and this time playing poker.
There was also quite a bit of work (carpet removing, and replacing) going on so we had a chance to pay our way in labour, which felt good.
One day Teressa (mother Bliss), Rita and I took a friends son to see father christmas at some caves in the near by Forest of Dean. It was really cool. It was Keegan´s (the small boy) 5th birthday, and he had a great time. The caves are quite big and long, and they were decorated in a christmas theme with lots of pine trees, presents and lights. Keegan got to talk to santa, and was given a present. We had a hot drink at a small cafe down in the caves.
The day that we caught the bus to London was my (Tim) birthday. So we had a very nice meal the night before. Steve cooked steak, and Rita and I bought a selection of cheeses and desert wine. We also had cake, and some choclates that Chloe and Elle gave me for my birthday.
It was really fun, and thank you to everyone.
The next morning we got up, packed, and then caught the bus from Gloucester to London.

Wales - Fishguard

Fishguard is on the north side of Pembrokeshire and another pretty town, but not right next to the beach this time. We stayed in a really cool backpackers, we had our own room which was so cosy. It felt like staying in a flat, there was a cosy lounge, dining room and big messy kitchen. It was quite full as there was a group of Welsh people from up north who were putting on a theatre production in Fishguard. We did a couple of walks on the coast path, just a little one on the first day as it was a bit late and the weather was dodgy, but then went out for half the day on our second day. We went to Dinas head, a walk around a headland. It was really rugged, pretty and windy. We ate welsh cakes (very tasty) and walked around for a few hours.

It was great at the backpackers to be able to cook our own meals. Welsh is spoken throughout Wales, on all the signs and everyone seems to speak it, even if they speak English as their main language. Apparently in Northern Wales it is spoken more than Southern.

Then after two nights in Fishguard we had a horrible journey back to Newent involving 5 buses, 1 train, cold, grumps and frustration. Left at 10am and got here near 7, a trip that by car would take about 3.5 hrs.

Wales - Tenby

Tenby is a beach town in Pembrokeshire. It has a population of only 5,000 but this increases to 40,000 in summer. We could see why, it is such a pretty town with two beaches and lots of restaurants and B&B's. It took us ages to find a room though as most were closed with the low season and the other were all out of our price range. But we finally found one where we managed to get a really good discount on a great room as the woman had been so quiet recently.

Unfortunately it rained quite a bit while we were in Tenby, but we still had some nice walks on the beach and around the town (most of which is surrounded by an ancient stone wall) and took time to relax and read in our room.

We went to a local pub for a sunday roast which was yummy. Tenby is so nice, it would be great to come back in summer if possible someday.

Wales - Swansea

Swansea is a really pretty city right by the sea. There are no hostels there so we had to go to a B&B which actually ended up cheaper than the hostel in Cardiff and we had our own room. Our B&B was right across the road from a really long flat beach which we went for a really long walk on the first day.

The next day we took the bus out to different walks along the coast path. We walked along the cliffs, beach, sand dunes and farmland. We spent most of the day doing that and we were so lucky with the weather - it was sunny all day and not too cold. The landscape is really beautiful around the area.

We stayed one more night in the B&B, the day we planned to leave was Sunday, which happened to be the day when public transport is practically non-existent. We found a train though to Pembrokeshire, our next stop.