Lovely London

And Bath, Oxford, and Brighton too, I suppose. 

From Barcelona, I flew into London to meet up with Shannon and Matt, who were staying with their friends Rob and Alison. I hadn't planned to meet them in England, but I wasn't really ready to head out on my own yet, and I felt it would be silly to miss the chance to see my friends again. Plus, Barcelona was stressful, as mentioned, and I thought that England would be a brief respite from some of the most difficult parts of travelling. I was right. 

Just under two weeks in England let me relax a little and regain my confidence. It was definitely the break I needed; staying in the same place, establishing habits of a sort, and not constantly worrying about my stuff being stolen was immensely helpful for me. Plus, returning to a place I had already visited (again - Paris was good for that too!) makes for a different kind of tourism; there's less pressure to see and do it all. And staying in an apartment was great - we cooked, could use the Internet consistently, and even got to watch Netflix! It was a really good decision, and I'm glad I went. Many thanks to Shannon and Matt for letting me join them, and even more to Rob and Alison for letting me stay with them!

Now, the downfall of visiting a place I've already been is that I didn't take terribly many photos. There no Eiffel Tower in London after all. Regardless, my first night I went for a walk around town and snapped a couple of shots from one of the many bridges on the Thames. 

The moon and Antarc - wait, no, that's Big Ben. 

And the London Eye. It's supposedly vastly overpriced but I do like the sight of it, all lit up for the night. 

The next day, I met Matt, Shannon and Alison at the Borough market, which is a collection of food stalls and vendors near London Bridge. We ate delicious sandwiches and olives, and then bought some treats from a macaron shop for later in the day. We tried to tour the Cathedral, but were instead monopolized by a very enthusiastic volunteer with some unusual thoughts on, well, really a lot of things. He would go on for a bit against the monarchy, then remember himself and talk briefly about the cathedral before going off on another tangent. It was an interesting conversation, or monologue, and when we finally managed to extricate ourselves from it we popped down to the Globe briefly before hopping on the Tube to go to the Natural History museum. That was followed by Harrod's -
where I could have easily spent far more time and money - and then dinner at a Jamie Oliver restaurant. Afterwards, we headed home for a quiet evening in. 

The evening had to be quiet as we were up very early the next morning to catch a train to Bath. We spent a lovely day in the city, hitting all the tourist spots and taking a delicious tea in the afternoon. 

The sacred spring!

The main pool. 

Sleepy duck! 

Quaint canals and parks - basically exactly how I think of England. 

We also stayed late for a comedy walk around the city - no history, just jokes. It was a lot of fun, and if you're in town you should check it out!

Bath was just a day trip, so we headed home that night, then repacked and went to Oxford the next day. Oxford was quite nice; I've noticed that I have a fondness for college towns, and that's basically what it is, albeit a very, very old one. 

 The Radcliffe camera! Taken from a weird angle to hopefully hide most of the scaffolding erected around it...

Christchurch gardens. 

The interior courtyard. 

The dining hall! Possibly familiar to some of you from the Harry Potter movies...

The main courtyard, with the view mostly ruined by a lorry. Dammit. 

I think these are parts of the actual residences at Christchurch? To be honest though, I can't really remember. 

Huuuuuge lily pads at the Botanic Gardens!

Garden Gate. 

We also spent a decent amount of time at the Eagle and Child, a pub in town where Tolkien and Lewis would often write... It's not as touristy as you might expect, and was pretty cool!

The day after we left Oxford, Shannon had to fly home, so we breakfasted with her and then sort of lazed about for the day. We only left the apartment to get groceries, and we spent the day hanging out, playing video games and watching Netflix. It was awesome, and I'm very glad we did it!

The next few days all blur together a little, and unfortunately I barely took any photos, but we went into London every day and did the normal tourist things: the Tower of London, British Museum, the zoo, eating Indian food, and generally sort of bumming around. We also went to a comedy show, and got free tickets to a circus-type act that was pretty cool. 

Sunday, we went to Brighton, a little seaside town about an hour from London. It was quite nice, and the weather was great!

Look! You can almost see the whole building! (The pier actually goes on for a while, and there are even roller coasters at the end... Which we were completely surprised by.)

I hope they remembered sunscreen!

For Anita: this carnival game-thing was filled with haribo prizes. I have no idea how it worked though. 

The palace! It was designed to look Indian, and the inside is incredible. 

I assume this is the old pier?

The next day was Canada day, so we headed to the party at Trafalgar Square, which unfortunately did not have any poutine at all. We hung out there for a bit, then went for a walk through Hyde Park. 

The Canada gate! Fitting, given the date. 

It's a crossing button like seven feet off the ground so horse riders can use it!

The detail on this might not be great, but there are two things you should try to see here: the statue marked "Physical Energy Statue" - huh? And the "senior playground" in the bottom middle. What's a senior playground?

We walked back to Trafalgar Square to watch some of the musical acts perform, including the Tragically Hip, but there was something wrong with the audio set-up and we left halfway through the set because they sounded so bad. It was still a fun day, and it was neat celebrating Canada Day in London! 

The next day was my last in England, so we headed to an exhibit at the British Library, which has all kinds of literary treasures, from Shakespeare's first folio and the Magna Carta to the napkin the first draft of the Beatles' "Yesterday" was scrawled on. There was some neat stuff! After the Library, we walked to Camden, which has tonnes of little shops and stalls all over the place. There was some pretty cool stuff, and so many food vendors that looked delicious that both of us were disappointed we weren't hungry. We wandered around for a couple of hours, then headed home and cooked a pasta dinner. 

The next morning, I caught a flight to Vienna, and it was goodbye to England for the time being. I had a great time there, and I'm very glad I went! Now it's back to touring Europe, which is much harder, but I guess I shouldn't complain about my long trip overseas, eh?

Smitten

A shot list of things I love about England:

- the candy. 

- free museums - usually good enough to be worth a few quid anyway!

- bathrooms with fans in them. 

- the candy. 

- Netflix. Sweet, sweet Netflix. 

- being approached by random people to receive free tickets to a show worth £40. 

- the candy. 

- tea. And scones. And sandwiches. But mostly tea. 

- crisps in flavours I would never have imagined but which are delicious nonetheless. (Smoked paprika, I'm looking at you.)

- the candy. 

WTF Barcelona?

I've been looking forward to this post for a while... Barcelona had some spectacular WTF moments. 

- the Barcelona metro's sound for "arriving at a station" sounds a lot like some of the notes in "Leaving Earth" from the Mass Effect 3 soundtrack. I was near tears often on the Barcelona metro. 

- in Spain, when you are waiting for service at a train station, there appears to be a law stating that for every two people in line, there must be at least one staff member standing about gossiping. If there are 20 or more people waiting, it's time for the siesta and all of the staff will leave. They will eventually come back. Sometimes the next day.  You will wait a long, long time for service at the train station in Spain. 

- that said, in spite of being very slow, and not speaking any English (while my Spanish is limited to about 20 words, four of which have to do with eating and two of which are about wine), once you do eventually get to the window, people will try very, very hard to help you, spending a long time on your claim and generally bending over backwards to be of assistance. So while we waited forever, eventually someone would help us and be incredibly good to us, not to mention tolerant of said broken Spanish when they did so. 

- on our last day, wandering around a park on our way to the museum of modern art, a buff gentleman asked us the time. Jesse told him, he thanked us, then whistled to a man across the street. Then he crouched down, and hid behind some bushes. He whistled to his partner again, moved forward a few feet, crouched down once more. This went on for a good minute, and I still have no idea what he was doing. 

Barcelona: the Quick Version

I'm like a week behind on posts now, so I realized I should probably just give a quick oversight of Barcelona, and maybe return to write a longer post about it later if I get the chance. Barcelona was wonderful, but thanks to a series of issues (like problems with the train, as mentioned, getting sick, and absolutely hating the first hostel we stayed in) I was just not in the right headspace to have a good time there. I liked it more and more as time went by, helped massively by changing hostels to one of the best places I've ever stayed, but I think my experience in the first couple of days has skewed my perspective badly, and I might not be able to look back fondly just yet. Still, we had a nice time and there were a lot of cool things to see, do, and most importantly, eat. 

We were kind of bad tourists in Barcelona; between my bad mood and sickness, Jesse's sickness just before he left, and making two extra trips to the train station, there was a lot we didn't get to see or do there. What we did get out to was great though!

Also it was gross out. Windy and warm and painfully humid. It really makes the views of the city grey and bleak. 

Glimpses of Gaudian architecture in the park. 

La Sagrada Familia, which is unbelievably gorgeous and awesome. Not in the overused, "cool" sense, but in the sense that it literally inspired awe. 

I'd have to say its the most beautiful church I've ever been in. 

Massive, and still under construction. 

View from the top.  

Also fruit on top of the spires. 

A spiral staircase that just went on forever... Long enough to give both of us vertigo and terrify me at least a little. 

On a brighter day, the city is much prettier. 

And fountains abound!

The modern art museum and gorgeous fountain leading up to it... So many people around though!

So Barcelona was pretty, but exhausting... It's nice to be in London, where I can relax a little and hopefully avoid any additional serious travel miscommunications!

Paris, je t'aime

I do. I really, really do. Paris has long been one of my favourite places, and revisiting it for a few days didn't do anything to diminish my love for the city. It might also have had something to do with mostly being left alone by locals, being able to fully speak the language, and never needing to pay someone for toilet paper, too. Getting to and from Paris was a complete nightmare, but I have chosen to interpret that as being indicative of the fact that I should probably never leave Paris again. 

After an extremely long day of airports, we got in to Paris at dinner time and set off right away for Montmartre. Dinner was spectacular (at least in part due to the fact that I hadn't really eaten anything in three days, but still), and Montmartre is as beautiful as I remember. 

€15, for a huge, delicious plate of food!

Sacred Heart, surrounded by dudes with blankets covered with counterfeit merchandise. 

The view from Sacre Coeur. 

That was about all we could manage for that night - we'd been up since 3.30! - so it was back to the hotel for us. In the morning, we got up at a semi-normal time (aka not 3.30) and headed out for the day. We stopped by a bakery a block from the hotel to gather delicious sandwiches, then took the metro to the Musee d'Orsay. Which was totally interesting and cool and not boring or weird and kind of freaky at all. Totally. 

Okay, one part - a temporary Goya exhibition called l'ange du bizarre - was a little weird and creepy. The rest of it was interesting though, and there were a lot of beautiful paintings I was not allowed to photograph and that have all run together in my mind. I did especially like a few of the Renoirs, though, and there were a lot of sculptures I found quite nice. Also, the whole museum is housed in an old train station, and I loved the way they had converted it, with huge clocks in several places and enormous iron girders everywhere. It was a cool place to visit. 

After exhausting the Musee, we wandered off to find a snack (om nom nom macarons) and then head to the Eiffel Tower. Not surprisingly, it's not exactly hard to spot. 

Look, there it is! 

It's trying to hide, but I found it! 

Along the way, we encountered a sporting goods store too good to pass up:

How big was the fish, Jesse?

Soon, though, we were at the tower, and waiting in line to go up. The views from the top are really spectacular, even when it's overcast. 

I love that one incongruous skyscraper at the back. Just chilling. 

Solo Skyscraper: Hey guys! Wanna hang out?

Downtown Skyscrapers: Seriously, Pierre, what are you doing all the way over there?

After we headed down from the Tower, I kept looking back at it over my shoulder. Here is where I should warn you: I'm kind of obsessed with the Eiffel Tower. It is one of my favourite things in the world, and seeing it makes my whole day. It represents travel and the world and awe to me, and I adore it. All of this goes to say: I took a lot of photos of the Eiffel Tower. Like, of the approximately 100 photos I took in Paris, at least 70 have the Tower in them. Apologies in advance for spamming you with them. 

How can you not love it though?

Okay, okay. I'll leave off for now. After the Tower, we had some delicious Vietnamese food for dinner and called it a night. The next day, we headed to the Catacombs, decided the line was too long, and went to Notre Dame instead. It is exactly as I remembered, although there was a mass going on while we were inside so that was cool. 

It's big!

Rose window!

The main entrance. 

Right on the Seine, too. 

Also, there's a statue of Charlemagne out front, and can I just say that Charlemagne and his bros had pretty awesome moustaches? Seriously. 

After the Notre Dame, and a walking tour of the area that was quite interesting, we had lunch at a gorgeous little cafe before heading to the Pompidou. 

French onion soup! Referred to only as onion soup here. Also it looks kind of greasy in this but was totally not, it was amazing. 

This is a painting at the Pompidou. It is a glorious colour, though as far as art goes I'm not sure I get it... I'm not sure I got a lot of what was happening at the Pompidou though. There was a lot of stuff that confused and/or upset me. But there was a room filled with felt that was so delightfully quiet that I wanted to live there forever. 

I found the Eiffel Tower again! Also a million cranes. 

The next morning, we took another stab at the Catacombs, this time successfully. They were very cool, if quite dark, somewhat creepy, and exceedingly drippy. 

Narrow, short passageways in the whole place. 

The well used to mix concrete. It's a natural spring, and is evidently quite warm. It's called the foot bath because the water starts very suddenly, and in low light conditions the apprentices would often accidentally walk right into it when they went for water. 

One of the passages out. 

The ossuary. You're not allowed to use flash here, so not many of my photos turned out, but it was very interesting. The disinterred bones of millions of Parisians have been moved here from deconsecrated cemeteries. The audio guide kept going on about the many romantic flourishes the architects had put into it though... I guess I also don't get romance. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around, shopping on the Champs d'Elysee, hanging out at the Arc de Triomphe, and eventually making our way back to the foot of the Eiffel Tower to watch the sun set and the lights come on. It made for a superb end to a great trip to one of my all-time favourite places. 

Egyptian Obelisk!

The Arc de Triomphe is really, really big. 

Like, really big. 

Look, here it is again!

Now is where the Tower spam really starts, consider yourself warned!

As you can see, we stayed in the same place for some time, and I took this series of shots... I love the way they look next to each other!

This one also has the moon!

Last one... Goodbye Eiffel Tower! I love you! 

That wrapped up Paris quite nicely, and the next morning we left for Barcelona... Which is a whole other post unto itself!

WTF Morocco

 A lot of the weirdest things in Morocco were actually things I noticed about myself while there. Not that there weren't some interesting cultural differences too!

- It took me about twenty minutes to acclimatize to Morocco's crazy, no-holds-barred traffic system. The first time I crossed a street, it took eons to find a "safe" opportunity, and I usually had to wait for a local to cross first so I'd know I could go. The second time, I was worried I was going to starve to death, stuck in the middle of the road forever with no feasible way of ever crossing. By the third time, I walked into traffic like any native, throwing up a hand and giving a clear "I'm walking here!" scowl to anyone who dared face off with me. I'm not sure how more people aren't hit by cars there. 

- If you're ever late for a plane in Marrakech, and you hear them announcing "last call" for your flight, don't worry! They'll call last call at least eleven more times in the next twenty minutes. Eventually, they'll start announcing it nearly continuously, such that the PA won't even turn off between announcements. The words will run together smoothly, and soon it will be the soundtrack for your rapid descent into madness. This works doubly well if you are waiting for a delayed plane at 5.45 in the morning!

- I guess I like olives now. I had some with our first meal in Morocco, and they were alright. Then later, I had more, and they were pretty okay. Still later, I got annoyed when they weren't served for free as part of a meal. Eventually, I started ordering and paying for olive plates entirely of my own volition. No one is as surprised as I. 

- Everything ever has a rooftop terrace in Morocco. This is wonderful and should be adopted in every place ever. Even Vancouver, where it is clearly very feasible on account of the weather. Especially Vancouver.