The First trip- final chapter

This leads us to our current position; we are currently travelling on heavily delayed trains through to Brussels (hopefully). Whether we make it to Brussels tonight or not remains to be seen but you will have to read again next time to discover the outcome...

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the final blog of the first/smaller trip of mine and Georges respective gap years. On a side note regular readers may have noticed the last blog was possibly written different (worse?) to the previous, indeed this was not caused by a change in my style, rather I was shattered on the train and George having had too much sugar, was raring to go! Anyway he guest wrote it. Another point is the lack of pictures. This has been the source of several complaints from different people. Basically, its a pain in the arse and we gave up the long arduous process. I am looking into it, and will post a few of the pictures from this trip soon; promise!!

Right so I (George) left you on a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of the last blog. So we missed our last connector of the 4 trains that day due to delays. We were in this tiny town that sat on the border of Belgium and France whose name I cannot remember. The next train to Brussels was in 50 minutes time, it was about -4 Celsius with a strong wind and about 10:30 at night; put it this way, not fun without a waiting room! Anyway looking across the road there was a fairly average looking hotel. Having not booked anything in Brussels, apart from knowing that there was a room there if we needed it for €70 we gandered across the road and found out that is was €69! Result, plus breakfast was thrown in! Happy days...

We then backpacked round Brussels for a few hours, taking in all the sites; well being a place fairly devoid of anything of interest outside Tintin, bureaucrats and beer we had to choose one of the three. The European parliament was apparently miles outside the city, neither of us share a passion/interest/give a damn about comics let alone a comic museum so ermm... Belgium Beer museum!! Upon entering we noticed that most people seemed to be entering the cinema like room. The room had a number of displays of vessels, but the main focus was the TV at the front and people seemed to be taking seats. Anyway the documentary on Belgium Beer came on and dear god, Ive never seen a better example of what us students would call "word count filling". After 20 minutes, about two fifths of the audience had given up and gone. We stuck it out and were the only people left at the end of the 90 minutes, simply because we found it so badly made it was hilarious. Anyway after then trying some of the end product at the end, we made a bee-line for the train station when we suddenly heard, "free wine, boar, cheese." The look of ," sod it the trains come every hour" swept across our faces and we entered into stylish 2 storey exhibition centre packed to the rafters with the finest Italian produce! We noticed that dressed in our travelling gear the exhibitors weren't so convinced that we were as interested in buying their produce as other clientele. We ditched the bags, smartened up and purchased the cheapest bottle of red wine (€5-not so bad) we could find. The resulting love from the exhibitors, seeing two obviously wealthy young men having already purchased goods at another stall was overwhelming. We dined and wined on truffles (and not the chocolate variety!), smoked meats, olive oil and nuts, spewing a well rehearsed b*llsh*t to the exhibitors similar that often spewed by men and women discussing wine lists at restaurants where everyone suddenly seems to become a great connoisseur of wine! Well, it paid off and turned out to be a great free lunch!

Arriving at our hostel we noticed a definitive party atmosphere about the place and instantly made friends with some Americans, Aussies, English, Spanish and other people from loads of places. With them we visited the Rembrandt museum, "I AMSTERDAM" sign (quite cool looking thing) and had a little gander round the notorious red light district...nothing happened...but it was quite cool to see still and it was certainly a lot less seedy than we both thought it would be with the women inside "shop windows" and would knock on the windows to invite you in for their services.

On the last day in Amsterdam we walked to the Van Gogh museum however were told on the way that the queues were out the door and were unlikely to get in before closing. Another day it was to be. Instead we visited the Heineken brewery (now called an experience as the place no longer serves as a brewery. Nevertheless, it was great fun!!! We got to "be the brew" and were placed in a room on roller coaster style seating and we juggled about, sprayed by wate, heated by infra red lights and explained the process of beer brewing (if we hadn't of already learnt that, in detail, at the Belgium beer museum). Plus the tasting sessions were quite good fun as well!

Well then we caught a fairly uneventful ferry that night to hull and were now on a train back to Brum. Home sweet home!!!!

Where shalt thou here from me/george next? George is going to South Africa to visit his aunt and travel round the country, then onto Thailand and then to South America; going from Argentina up towards Ecuador, returning for tennis commitments and other stuff back in the UK in between times. Im going skiing with the family over Christmas in a few days then hopping to travel from January to September starting somewhere, finishing somewhere else. So until I reach that somewhere (most likely in Asia) in January, this is it, the Hblog shall lie dormant, ready to be resumed better that ever (I shall try to sort out the pictures promise).

Mishaps, famous landmarks and Gaudi Galore!

I finished the previous entry by mentioning the beautiful scenery surrounding us on the train towards Barcelona and you'll be pleased to hear that we were able to enjoy these fabulous views not once, not twice but three times! How?! I hear you cry. Well my dear fellows the answer is simple; the inevitable first train disaster of the trip so far occurred and boy was it a pain in the arse. Here we are sitting on what we think is the train to Barcelona, keen to end a miserable 21 hours travel, having changed trains at Port Bou when suddenly we look up and realise that we're back in Narboune and were heading towards Belgium! So we rapidly scampered off the train (so quickly that I managed to leave my Ipod case on the train which was my second loss of possession in quick succession) and checked when the next train to Barcelona was due to leave. Fortunately there was one later that night; however, it was 3 hours later than the original train rounding our travel time up to a big fat 24 hours!

Once we had overcome that minor setback we finally landed in Barcelona at around 20:00. We were keen to make our way to the hostel (kindly booked for us by my parents) which was apparently a short metro ride away so we thought 'screw it' we'll save ourselves a couple of quid and just walk so half an hour later we located the hostel, which was extremely easy to miss but thanks to our beady eyes we found it, and settled down in our room with a kebab and a bottle of wine for an early night and a well deserved one at that!

The next day was what can only be described as a Gaudi overload; and what a guy, he must have designed half of Barcelona on his own! The first stop (after a pretty lengthy lie in) was what, to the best of our memories, was called something like the castle Bastille... George and I had mixed opinions on this piece, George being less than impressed and myself holding it in far higher regard. However, there was no difference in opinion on La Famillia Sagrada (translating as "The holy family") which was truly stunning! We were so impressed that we have vowed to return once it has reached completion in around 2026. After taking a ride up a lift to the top of the cathedral we then undertook an hour long walk, uphill, to Gaudi Parc seeing a park and house within the park which Gaudi also designed. Finally, we were all Gaudied out and opted to return home eating for the first time in the day on the way home; we decided to go for an all you can eat buffet so rather than walking we waddled back to the hostel.

During our meal, a decision was made that, due to our passes running out in a relatively short period of time, we wouldn't make it to Lisbon or Madrid (which was also convenient so we could watch "El Classico" in Barcelona itself) so we stayed another night and therefore headed straight for Paris the next night. This journey was thankfully a little more straightforward than our previous train exploits and we booked a coucher so got a good night's sleep too!

The first thing that struck us when we arrived in Paris at around 8 o'clock the next morning was that the temperature was absolutely freezing so we both layered up before embarking on finding a hotel (once again booked for us by my parents) which was reduced to a very reasonable price! We then hired out bicycles for an hour or two to cycle to the arc de triance and then from there to the Eiffel tower. Disappointingly, due to the inclement weather conditions, we weren't allowed to the very top of the Eiffel tower, but we got pretty high and were still pretty impressed by the view surrounding us. Once again we decided to have a pretty early night, after a nice meal out, with a bottle of wine and watched Villa slump to a 2-1 defeat to bitter rivals Birmingham city- once again George was less than impressed. The next day we took the metro down town to visit Notre Dame, another exquisite cathedral with a rich cultural background and another site certainly worth visiting. We then moved on to louevre musee that is the home of arguably the most famous and valuable painting in the world, the monna lisa. Admittedly, we both couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about, sure it's a decent painting but worth half a billion pounds: I don't think so... Once more we chose to stay in Paris for another night and we decided to check out the nightlife on the main street next to the nearest metro station. The only nightclub we could be bothered to walk to charged 20 Euros per person to get in (well over our budget) and the rest of the street was filled with Moulin rouge-esque strip clubs, lap dancing bars and the like. So we walked home feeling utter disappointment before, completely by chance, stumbling upon a pretty lively bar with free entry and after convincing the bouncer we were over 20 (he clearly was unaware what year we are currently in or just can't count) we enjoyed a little bit of a dance and groove before heading home to catch the ashes!

The following day we visited Sacre Coeur- another cracking cathedral and there was actually a service going on at the point of our arrival so we even enjoyed a wee sing along with the nuns so it was a bit of a double treat! And you can make that a triple treat because the view looking out over the rest of Paris was absolutely stunning. We then made our way over to the muse d'orsay and both were particularly fond of Van Gogh's and Gaucin's paintings before finally deciding enough was enough and it was time to make good headway to the final destination of our trip: Amsterdam via Brussels! Upon initially enquiring how to reach there and what sort of price we would be looking at it became apparent that to reach Brussels would cost around 170 Euros!!! However, where there's a will there's a way so we found a free hot spot, admittedly by chance, and found a regional route to Brussels which would cost us a whopping diddly squat! This leads us to our current position; we are currently travelling on heavily delayed trains through to Brussels (hopefully). Whether we make it to Brussels tonight or not remains to be seen but you will have to read again next time to discover the outcome...