Viva Barcelona

The weekend before last, Suze and I went to Barcelona to visit her cousin, Nicky. Since it cost us about the same to fly to Barcelona as it would to take a train to Edinburgh or London, we figured this was a good deal. So, we booked ourselves an EasyJet flight direct from Liverpool to Barcelona and Nicky gave us the details on how to get to her place from the airport. Oddly, it was the first time we'd ever been to the Liverpool airport, but it's pretty easy to take a bus from our place to the airport. Once in Barcelona, we were to take what we like to call "a train disguised as a bus" (or a train-bus) from the airport to Estacion de França. So, Susan asked a helpful airport staff member where to get the train and we wandered around until we found the bus stop. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the bus was free, even though it was a good 30 minute ride to its destination. We got to the station and eventually found Nicky there and she explained that the train line was under repair for so long that people were upset about it, so they made the train free. There's nothing like being in the right place at the right time -- lucky us!

So, we followed Nicky back to her flat after a stop at the nearby grocery for some breakfast food. She lives only a couple minutes walk from the train station and her flat is literally across the street from the Santa Maria del Mar, a gothic church built sometime in the 14th century, I believe. She lives in the heart of El Born, which is apparently a hip tourist attraction -- so we were right in the middle of it all! Her flat is up several floors, with a spiral staircase and a very low ceiling (which poor Susan kept bonking her head on). It's a small 2-bedroom flat with the quintessential tile floor that one would expect to find in a Spanish flat.

After we got ourselves settled in and then we went out for dinner at a place called Origen 99'9%, which is a restaurant that serves traditional Catalan food. There was a waiting list, which we put our names on and then we went to a wine bar for a drink. We went back and were seated and found that the menu is really more like a magazine, with articles, recipes, full color photos, and full descriptions of the food in Catalan, Spanish and English. I went to their website and found that you can read the menu online in PDF format if you like (the bad English translation is quite amusing!). It was quite comprehensive reading! So, we picked out about six dishes and some different glasses of wines to try. The food was very unusual to my palate, quite good but very rich, so not something I'd want to eat on a regular basis because of its richness. We had Cannelloni, stuffed squid, rabbit and sweet potatoes (my favorite, tho it was the first time I'd tried rabbit!), a bean dish, a lamb stew and some courgette (zucchini) dish. After a long and late (it is Spain, after all!) dinner, we headed back to Nicky's flat for the evening.



On Saturday, we decided to go see some Gaudi architecture and I wanted to go to the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral designed by Gaudi, which has been under construction since 1882. It's quite an impressive thing, not least of which is the fact that they've been working on it so long! Nicky advised us to look long and hard at the outside and then decide if we want to pay the money to go inside. Well, the tourist in me won out and we paid the 8 Euros each to go inside. Unfortunately, there was a wedding under way, so most of the cathedral was blocked off and the rest was, well, unfinished. For an extra 2 Euros each we could go on the lift to the top of one of the towers, but the line was super long and we decided it really wasn't worth the extra money. It was quite amazing to see the pillars and ceiling that Gaudi designed to look like trees, with the holes in the ceiling allowing the light to come in just like a canopy of trees would. Beneath the church is a museum, which used to be Gaudi's workshop, where they had some interesting displays and original Gaudi plaster molds of the church facades and the like. That was worth seeing, I think, but soon we got a text from Nicky and we met up with her to go to lunch at a cafe.


Later that day, Nicky took us to Park Guell, which is a park that Gaudi designed near where he lived. The house he lived in is now a museum, which we did not go into, but there was plenty to see in the park! There were all sorts of musicians playing music in different parts of the park -- a very entertaining sort of gypsy brass band in the plaza area, a saxophone player in the cavern-like archways, acoustic guitarists, and jewelry and visual artists selling their wares. The park is quite amazing, with columns built like palm trees, archways shaped like waves, and a two tiered plaza area with lovely tiled benches all around, supported underneath by amazing columns with tiled decorations on the ceiling. That Gaudi guy was quite ingenious and the park obviously continues to inspire local artists.

Saturday night, we went out with Nicky, her friend Ana and her friend who was visiting from Norway. We went to a tapas restaurant and had a lovely assortment of "pinchos", salads, calamari and other stuff. Later we went out to a couple of bars to get our drinks on. At the first bar we had to fend off an older fellow who wanted to befriend us -- luckily, after some rather blatant discouragements, he left us alone. We went to a second bar and had a good time and before I knew it, it was 2:30 AM and we were headed off for one last drink with some of Nicky & Ana's friends at another bar. On our way to the last bar, unfortunately, Ana had her purse snatched and soon we were running and screaming down the narrow tiled streets of Barcelona after the purse snatcher. Nicky pursued him the longest, but was still unable to find him. So, that put a rather dour mood on the evening. I found it a bit ironic that Ana was the only Spanish native in the group and hers was the purse that was taken. So, Nicky called the credit card company and whatnot to cancel Ana's cards and then we went and met up with the others, now at closing time at the last bar and Ana and her friend decided to join the others at an after hours bar, while Nicky, Susan and I decided to call it a night.


After our late night of drinking, we had a slow start to our Sunday. Susan and I decided to go tour the Casa Batllo, another architectural wonder by Gaudi. This one was a private mansion and again displayed Gaudi's incorporation of light, air and designs taken from nature. It was well worth the hefty entrance fee (I think it was 16 Euros each?) and was quite beautiful. Afterwards, we joined Nicky for lunch and then we borrowed her neighbor's bike and utilized one of the ample city-provided bikes (which can be used by residents with a rental card) to ride around the city and along the coast. Still feeling a bit hungover, we spent a quiet evening at Nicky's flat and watched a few episodes of "Bro'Town", a popular cartoon about Islander and Mauri kids in Auckland, NZ (somewhat like the Cosby Kids) that Nicky had on DVD and then we packed and got ready to leave for Liverpool in the morning.

Here are the rest of our photos from the weekend in Barcelona:
http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/Barcelona2007

Photos from the Lake District - Part 2

Now for some "real" photos from the Lake District. From the weekend on which we actually went hiking. The fall leaves were just coming into full color and we even had one sunny day! Saturday was a bit moist and we got quite wet by the end, so mountains and hills were in the clouds, but Sunday was lovely.

Thankfully, we did NOT get locked out of our youth hostel, although we nearly did. On Saturday night, we decided to go to a late movie (we saw "Control" about Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division) in the nearby town and didn't realize there was a CURFEW at which time they LOCKED the doors of the hostel. We pounded and screamed at the door, to no avail. Luckily, I had the Youth Hostel phone number programmed into my cell phone and someone actually answered the phone at around midnight when we called! They contacted the person with the key to let us in (who was just next door, looked half asleep and not very happy, unfortunately). We were quite grateful because it was very wet, cold and windy that night...

Anyway, we had a couple of nice day hikes amongst the Herdwick sheep and saw some fantastic views on Sunday from the hilltops. Here are here are the photos we took of our hikes around the Langdale region.

http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/HikingInLakeDistrict

Southport, Ainsdale & Hilbre Island

A few weeks ago, we took a day-trip to Southport and Ainsdale. We weren't terribly excited by Southport, as it was a place more for family entertainment than beach enjoyment, so we moved on to nearby Ainsdale, which had a nice hiking trail through the sand dunes. The thing that's very characteristic of the beaches here (and also very odd to me) is that they are very long, wide and flat. When the tide is out, the sand just goes on and on and on and there are hardly any waves from the ocean because it's such a flat shelf of beach. Subsequently, there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for kite karting, which is the sport of rolling around in a three-wheeled cart, powered by the wind using a kite. We saw a lot of kite karters on the beach in Ainsdale for some racing event that day.

Taking in the view on Hilbre Island

We also took a day trip to West Kirby, which we heard was quite nice. Luckily, our landlady warned us that we need to be apprised of the tides in West Kirby because the thing to do is to go to Hilbre Island. So, we found out what time we needed to be there and joined the hundreds of people walking across the sand at low tide to check out the views from Hilbre Island on a beautifully sunny day. Turns out that it's a couple mile walk around/over Middle Eye (or middle island) to Hilbre Island. I felt like I was on some pilgrimage across the desert (except it was beach sand, not desert sand). Anyway, it turned out to be well-worth it, as Hilbre Island is quite a charming little island with a few houses and an old abandoned lifeboat station (in use ca. 1840's - 1930's), with views of a distant seal colony and the mouth of the River Dee where it meets the ocean. The only thing that was missing was our packed lunch, which we didn't know in advance to bring. So, we trekked back to West Kirby and found a charming little cafe in which to refuel before we hopped on a train to head back to Liverpool.

Here are some photos I took that weekend: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/SouthportHilbreIsland

Yes, I'm still here!

Yikes, it's been nearly a month since I last posted anything here. Well, I do have a valid excuse -- we've been without internet access at the house for over three weeks and I've spent my precious hours online checking email or doing work, so haven't had time to post anything. Sorry folks.

So, what have the Kiwi and I been up to? Well, I've applied for school in Brisbane and have been accepted to two of the three schools I've applied to. I heard from the one I wanted to go to most within two weeks, which I thought was pretty amazing, considering I'm in the UK, my "permanent" address is in the US and the school is in Australia. I'll be going for a Masters in Information Technology at Central Queensland University. So, I'm pretty psyched about that.

I also started some volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity and have met some interesting folks there. I've especially enjoyed meeting an Iranian refugee woman who volunteers with Habitat. It's been interesting hearing about her experiences and views of the world. Today, I learned that she watched the "Six Million Dollar Man" on TV as a child in Iran. Who knew? I also learned about how they bury people to their shoulders and then stone them to death for converting to Christianity in Iran. So, as you can imagine, she's quite happy to be living in the UK and hopes to get a permanent visa in the next few months. I hope it goes well for her.

Our recent weekend excursions include: going to West Kirby and walking out to Hilbre Island, which was quite lovely. We also went back to the Lake District with Jo to go hiking. In the Lake District, we spent the night at a Youth Hostel in Langdale (which we nearly got locked out of for being out past the curfew which we knew nothing of) and two days of quite nice hikes. We also tried some famous gingerbread in Grasmere, which is somehow a crumbly, somewhat chewy concoction that looks a bit like graham crackers, but is much yummier. Last weekend, we went to visit Susan's relatives in West Mersea, not far from Colchester and then I spent a day in London by myself before returning on a convoluted series of trains (really, the train system here is quite maddening and expensive!) due to my discount ticket.

I'll post some photos a bit later, once I get caught up...

Wales: Betws-y-Coed and Conwy Castle

Last weekend, we ventured off to Wales in search of some castles. We haven't really ventured out to see any of those yet and we had picked up some helpful brochures in Chester (with both English and Welsh translations) about castles in Wales. After reviewing the train routes, I decided that we only would really be able to get to two castles by train: Dolwyddelan and Conwy. After a nearly fruitless search for places to stay, I finally found us a hotel that had space and would allow us to book for only one Saturday night (we're on a budget, here) in Betws-y-Coed. It seemed that Betws-y-Coed is quite the hot-spot for tourists to launch their outdoor excursions, so it seemed like a good place to stay. Upon further searching, I found that there was what seemed to be a popular mountain biking trail in Betws, so I thought that might be a good idea for us as well.

After gathering the somewhat confusing train schedule information, Susan found out that a classmate of hers was planning to take a trip to Wales also. He was planning on leaving at 6:30 AM (ugh), which would get us into town at around 8:30 AM, which seemed much better than getting there closer to noon by train. So, I sucked it up and agreed to wake at that ungodly hour for the free and early transportation (mind you, a one-way train ticket isn't much cheaper than a return ticket).

So, we arrived in Betws and Alex and his friend, Bill, were hungry and we weren't sure what would be open, so we stopped in a lovely, though somewhat pricey cafe' where we could get some coffee/tea/breakfast. Alex and Bill were heading out to the wilderness to train for some foot race that involves reading a map, so they wanted to stop in the local outdoor sports shop to see if they had any maps that would be at the unusual scale they expected during the race (the unusual scale of the map makes things tougher, apparently) so that they could get used to it. While we were in there, Bill said that the book that he had an article in was in the store. Suze and I asked him to show it to us. To our surprise, the book was on the Sahara and Bill's article was about the care and feeding of camels, for desert travel purposes! Not what we expected at all. We glanced over the article and he showed us photos of him (which were indistinguishable because he was wearing a turban, etc.). Anyway, we were amused by the last sentence of his article, which said something like "I hope I never see another camel again."

Soon, Alex and Bill were off on their excursion and Suze and I ventured over to the Visitor's Information office to gather basic info. We found out where the bike hire place was and got the local train and bus schedule. So, we ventured over to the bike hire place and found out that they were all out of bikes. After Susan prodded him a bit, he did give up the information that there was another place that hired bikes. (Funnily enough, there was never a mention of the other place from the Visitor's Centre.) So, we found our way to the other place and they luckily had some bikes available. We dithered a bit, trying to determine whether to attempt to take the bus to Dolwyddelan Castle first or rent the bikes, bring them back and then go to the castle. The guy at the rental shop explained that we'd need at least 2 hours to do the castle, so we decided to go biking first and get a later train to the castle.

So, we changed into some biking clothes and got ready to go. We had a map that we got at the Visitor's Centre and which the guy at the shop had embellished with further information. He gave us some basic guidance on how to get to the trail and we were off.


An hour and a half later, we still hadn't found the trail. The guy at the shop made it sound very nearby and simple to find. What we discovered is that there are a number of forestry roads that were unmarked on the map and we took off on a road that had nothing to do with the map. We rode back and forth cluelessly, then, found our way to a very steep road, where we saw two guys with mountain bikes climbing up. This seemed like a good sign. We climbed and climbed up this steep road that was too steep to actually ride, so we were walking our bikes up the hill (me, more than Susan, of course). Then we came to a farm. We then saw a sign for a road to a landmark that was on the map. About 2 miles later, we found the trail. By this time, we were already winded and exhasted! We encountered a group of guys who seemed to be nearly as exhausted as we were at the trailhead. We then got out the map again to figure out how much of the trail we wanted to do (as there were a number of forestry roads that we could take as a shortcut), as we had already lost two hours in the search for the trail and were only planning to rent the bikes for a half-day). The guys were interested to see the map also.

So, we got on the trail, stopped for lunchtime break near a lake along the trail and got the useless map out frequently to try to make sense of where we were on the trail. The trail wasn't as long as it seemed on the map, but I felt like there was a LOT more uphill climbing than downhill (Susan said it was because it takes longer to climb and only SEEMED that way). Anyway, we saw some lovely scenery and the trail was quite nice, but near the end, I became exhausted and started hyperventilating (I'd forgotten to bring my inhaler with me), so we had to find the nearest path back. As it was, we had already taken the bikes for longer than we had intended.

So, by the time we got back, I was completely exhausted and had no intention of going anywhere but to our hotel room for some R&R. We checked in and found ourselves in a lovely room that had been recently remodeled with a HUGE bathroom. We were especially excited to have a bathtub at our disposal (a luxury we don't have in our current housing situation). Naturally, we took advantage of it and took a nice, long bath to wash off the grime and warm up from the dampness from the drizzly day. Susan inquired about whether we were going to the castle and I decided what I need was some food, hoping that would perk me up a bit. So, we ventured out to pub next door and had ourselves a pint and some good, hearty Welsh dinners. After dinner, we saw the guys that we'd met on the bike trail and they said that they got off the trail soon after we saw them -- obviously, they were worn out from all the hill climbing and now we knew why they were so interested in our map! That night was the World Cup rugby match between England and France, so we took a walk around town and went back to watch some of the game at the pub.

Sunday, we got up and enjoyed our lovely complimentary Welsh breakfast at the hotel. We both had ham and eggs, as well as really good Welsh yoghurt and cereal. We had some more confusion over bus schedules and went back to the Visitor's Centre to find out when we could go to Conwy to see the castle there. Unfortunately, we were told that the bus didn't leave until around 11:30, but we later figured out that there were earlier buses. Oh well. We finally got on the bus and took a ride through some very scenic Welsh countryside to Conwy, where we got to walk on the City Wall and paid our entry fee to scramble around Conwy Castle.


Conwy Castle was built around 1287 and is in impressively good shape. They had rebuilt many of the circular stairs so that tourists can walk all the way to the tops of most of the towers (I can't even imagine being the Queen in all her regalia walking up and down those stairs). The tops of the towers provided impressively good views of the city and surrounding areas. One of the towers was the Chapel Tower, where they held Christian services -- they had actually rebuilt the floors and roof, and on the lowest floor of the tower, they had a museum display about tower chapels used in castles. Most of the towers did not have floors in them anymore. The interesting tidbit about the Prison Tower was that the bottom-most floor was only accessible by a trap-door in the floor, i.e., it was a point of no return. Rather grim, but it was better, in my opinion, than the castle I went to in Ghent where they had a whole display about the torture devices used in medieval castles. There seemed to be no mention of this at Conwy Castle.

We spent a couple hours walking around the castle and then it was time for us to find yet another pub for our late afternoon meal and to catch a train back to Liverpool.

More photos of Betws-y-Coed and Conwy Castle here: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/WalesBetwsYCoedAndConwyCastle

Blackpool and The Lakes District

Blackpool Tower

This past weekend, we went to visit Susan's friend Jo, who lives near Lancaster in a town called Caton. Jo invited two other friends, Sonia and Hilary, to her place for the weekend as well. We went to Blackpool -- it was fun, though quite cheesy. Blackpool is a seaside resort town, somewhat like a gigantic Coney Island, complete with a gazillion streetlights, a huge lookout tower (which looks a bit like a mini Eiffel Tower), various amusement parks, casinos, horse and buggy rides, trolley cars, donkey rides on the beach, wax museum, Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum, etc. etc.

We took the train to Blackpool North, which we later discovered was really on the wrong end of town, because Jo bought us tickets to the amusement park called Pleasure Beach. It was a lovely, warm (for UK), sunny day and it was a rather nice stroll to the park. However, the plan was for us to go to an ice show in the park, so as we strolled along the beachfront promenade (which, unfortunately, was also under reconstruction), we suddenly found ourselves in a rush to get to the park and to the ice show on time!

Jo, Suze, Hilary & Sonia

Amazingly, after much confusion at the park entrance, we managed to get into the show (there wasn't really a cutoff for audience arrival anyway), running past some skaters about to take to the ice backstage and finding some seats. Really, there weren't any bad seats in the house. Although, the costumes for the ice show were a bit hideous and Susan and I were having fun laughing about the paltry budget the costume designer must've had.

Pepsi Max Big One!

After the show, we ventured off into the park to find some expectedly bad fast food and then went off to hit some rides. Jo's friend Hilary, explained to us that Blackpool is "famous" for it's "rock", by which we learned was actually rock candy, not mineral deposits found on the ground. We went to ride the Space Invaders 2 ride (like Space Mountain at Disney World) and while we were in line, Hilary and Jo went off to buy us all some rock. I was even more surprised to find out that the rock candy is really peppermint sticks with an outer coating of colored candy (my definition of "rock candy" is clumps of colored hard candy that looks like rocks). Some of them had "Pleasure Island" emblazoned into the middle of the peppermint stick. It was a nice treat, some of which I saved for an "after dinner mint" (to settle my tummy after my dinner of fish & chips that I ate while walking back to the train station that evening). Later, we enjoyed a couple rollercoasters, especially the Pepsi Max (TM) Big One, which sports a 235 ft. high hill and speeds up to 87 MPH! We rode the Big One at sunset so we had a lovely view of the sunset over the ocean from an extraordinary height! (although, it was a bit frightening, I admit).


Sunday, we went to Jo's family's farm in the village of Witherslack, which is in the Lakes District, for a huge Sunday roast dinner prepared by Jo's mother. The dinner was quintessentially British, complete with plenty of Yorkshire pudding, Brussels sprouts, potatoes and a custard pudding for dessert. Mind you, the word "pudding" is synonymous with "dessert" in England, unless it's Yorkshire pudding, blood pudding or probably a dozen other non-dessert puddings which I'm not yet privy to. A bit confusing to my American sensibilities, although the Kiwi finds it perfectly normal (mind you, her mother IS British).

Grooming Mr. Chips

Before dinner, we met Mr. Chips, Jo's horse and Jo employed me and Susan to help with grooming his mane and tail. After dinner, we took him out for a ride, along with two bikes they had at the farm which were, of course, both too big for my short little legs. Unfortunately, the one with the smaller frame had a rusted seat post that required a wrench to adjust, so I had to ride the bigger one with the adjustable seat. It was a bit excruciating after a huge Sunday roast dinner that Jo's mom cooked for us, since I had to double myself in half over my very full belly to reach the handle bars. Going up hills threatened to prompt a revisit with dinner, but luckily I managed to keep it all under control.

After a short while, Jo, gave up the reins to Susan and then later to me. I was a bit concerned about being able to ride Mr. Chips with my short little legs, and it's true that Jo put the stirrups on the shortest setting and they were just barely short enough.
Thankfully, Mr. Chips was very gracious about his new human riders and he heeded our inexpert commands very nicely. At one point, while Susan was riding, a car had come rather quickly around a blind curve and Mr. Chips stopped and remained quite calm when faced with the vehicle suddenly in his face. Thankfully, horse and car driver were quick to brake and there was no accident!


Soon, it was time to head back to the train station and to make a rather confusing journey back to Liverpool (trains weren't running in parts, so we had to take a bus instead). All in all, it was a good weekend.

More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/BlackpoolLakesDistrict

UK Postal Strike

Well, I did actually get around to buying some post cards and was seriously thinking I might actually write some and even mail them soon. But, then I was listening to the radio (good thing, too!) and heard something about a UK postal strike. So, I went to the BBC website, and sure enough, I heard right. They're on strike and asking the public to hold back on mailing stuff to avoid a "logjam" of mail. Here's the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7027142.stm.

Well, sorry folks, you'll just have to wait a bit longer for those postcards (I know you were just DYING to get one). I hope they get it resolved soon -- these sorts of things can get messy fast!