London & Spain - 28 June to 12 July

LONDON - we made it into London on the 27 June, after we had a 3 and a half hour delay due to engine problems and having to switch planes at Changhi Airport. Michelle (Dee´s sister) greeted us at Heathrow to show us the way to her home town Tooting Bec. Due to our late arrival we needed to get of the tube and on to the night bus. This meant we got of at Piccadily Circus and right into the nightlife of London... you know you have made it to London once you walk onto the Piccadily streets. Neon signs, people everywhere and the smell of London, ahhh our home for 6 months. This was also quite an adventure with 40 something kilos worth of luggage and Michelle being so excited to show us the sights as we navigated our way to the bus. We made it onto the bus safely and michelle insisted we sit on the top floor of the double decker. This was great until James smacked a not to happy passenger with his pack not once but twice!

During our next four days, we did the touristy stuff like visit Greenwich Park (where the GMT line is), Westminister, cruise down the Thames, Big Ben and The London Eye passby´s and the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Piccadily Circus. James reunited with the Melbourne crew and the rest of the night was history.. good times!

On Monday we made it to Wimbledon, and when we say made it, it was just like that. Trains, buses and queues. They make you line up in the park for 2 hours and then you walk through the Wimbledon Royal Golf Course. 3 hours later we were in. Strawberries and cream, PIMS and tennis on the hill. It was a great day for some aussie action: Hewitt, Dalacquoa, Pratt, Stosur... oh and Woodbridge just standing in the outer courts waiting for people to greet him [its in the past Woody, move on]. Saw some great tennis and some English sunshine, we have sock marks to prove it... well Dee a "flip flop" mark!

NICE - We left to officially start our 2 months of travel around Europe on the 1st July. A fast train to Luton airport, and easyjet flight and 4 hours later we were in Nice. Not a bad city (I guess people are right when they compare it to the Gold Coast), minus the pebble beach. Had some Italian (I know not French food) for dinner and a few drinks at a bar in the main square that night. One night only in Nice and we were off to Barcelona the next day.

BARCELONA - Our 12 bed dorm was awaiting us the day we arrived. It is a bit of fun sharing with others as you get to meet heaps of people, however one toilet & shower per dorm can get a little painful (especially for those people that blow dry there hair most mornings...), the city is amazing though. That night we experienced our first tapas bar and sangria (legitmate as it had heaps of fruit in it and plenty of red wine).

On our second day we did what was called a fat bike tour. For 20 euro you go on a very casual bike ride around Barcelona (it´s a flat town) and the guide points out all the sites and talks about them. This helped us for the next few days to decide what we wanted to do. A bit of department store shopping for Dee that day also. That night we went to the Magic Fountain. The fountain by night is a mega light show with some of the corniest music you can imagine, but it was worth the 5 euro bottle of white wine we took down there for consumption. We left at midnight and James was positive he was heading in the right direction back to the hostel, however we managed to walk further north instead of south. This lead us to end up in the ghetto part of town next to the local jail. A bit of orienteering advise from a local and we were soon back on track to the hostel after our 90minute walk which had originally took half an hour on the way there...

During the next few days we ate more baguettes, more tapas and drank more sangria (James more beer then sangria, still not a huge fan of red wine).

MADRID - This would have to possibly be our biggest eye opener city on arrival... two words, Gay Pride! We arrived right in the middle of the march!! Our bus was unable to access the hostel as the streets were closed off so the bus load of us jumped on the packed underground train to our hostel. We were sprayed with something.... as we walked up the stairs onto the street to people partying everywhere. Madrid is a vey busy and perhaps more dangerous city in comparison to barcelona. You couldn´t walk further than 20 metres without seeing police. I think this was particularly true around our hostel as we were in the heart of the city. A few prostitues also liked to hang about our street too!

Over our three nights in Madrid we did the touristy thing and visited Real Madrid´s home stadium, several museums and Retiro Park (second bigest park in europe). The stadium was huge with a capacity crowd of 80,000 seats and are classified the most successful ´football´team of the 20th century according to FIFA. It was pretty interesting however we managed to get told of twice by the security guards, once because James jumped the barrier... and a second time for sitting on the seats, tough security! We also had trouble with our backpacks again with Deanne managing to knock an entire bowl of coco pops onto the floor meant for all the hostel backpackers when rushing past the breakfast table....very embarrasing the spanish lady at the hostel wasn´t very impressed but strongly declined assitance with the clean up!

SAN SEBASTIAN - 5 nights in total was spent here our longest stretch in one place yet. Three nights of which was spent on a busabout tour for the running of the bulls festival. The festival is located in Pamplona which is about an hours bus ride from San Sebastian. The bus also departed at 4am which meant a 3.15am start to the day, ouch! You have to arrive early as the bulls run at 8am. The festival is amazing, the spanish people go absolutely crazy and party non stop for 9 days, day and night the street rubbish also reflects this! We all dressed in our whites which is essential to be part of the spirit of it all. James and Matty defied all warnings not to run but made it safely to the arena, thank god!! James´comments: The biggest adrenaline rush of my life, the frantic run around dead mans corner, up the hill where you wait for the bulls to pass you and then another frantic run into the arena so that they don´t lock you out.. for the record matty beat me in with a time of 2:31 and me 2:45... not really they don´t time it, but from start to finish it´s 800 metres. They can now tick this off their´life to do list´. Each morning they release 6 bulls each weighing in at around 600kgs in a stretch of road that takes only 3 minutes from start to finish for the bulls to run! Once in the arena the bulls run straight through to the others side and so you think all is safe until they then close all doors and release another 5 bulls, one at a time into the arena. However to some relief they are smaller however never the less much more fiesty!

San Sebastian prooved to provide us with our best and worst weather yet! Its an amazing place and perhaps a favourite so far. We spent 3 days relaxing on the beach working on our tans, hit the pubs and made a mistake in drinking cheap and nasty vodka ($AUD6 bottle) can´t even remember what it was called and nor do we want to. Our last 2 days were mucher cooler and brought some rain however we still braved the elements and visited the lookouts. Not the best for photo taking though!

So finally we are off to Paris tomorrow for some Tour de France action hopefully.

This is adious from Spain...