I have so far been to France and Spain. Today I am also off to Amsterdam. I met up with my friends Alex, Jacques, Annabel and Cynthia under the Eiffel Tower in Paris on the 12th July. We went to the Chateau of Versaille the next day and after waiting a couple of hours in the line we finally made it into the massive palace. It really is so extravagent and exuberant it's unbelievable! We laid about in the gardens outside Marie Antoinette's personal mansion and the choofed off back to Paris. The next day we went to Nice in the south of France and went to the markets there and the little hilltop town of St Paul de Vence which was spectacular. Next we went off to Spain. Arriving in Barcelona and staying there then moving on to Seville and Ronda, another clifftop village that is the home of modern bull fighting. We stayed with Flora, one of the language assistants at Jacques' school and went out for tapas; a divine meal that is made up of many small dishes and is really cheap and yummy. Next we went to Granada and stayed in a nice family hostel with a swimming pool, right next to L'Alhambra, a huge palace builts by the Moers when they came to France from Arabia and Northern Africa. Every wall in the Palace was carved and full of inate sculptures of Sultans and Princes. The gardens in the palace were beautiful and tranquil, full of water fountains, birds, flowers and stone seats. The next day we went to the markets in Granada and spent the day wandering the narrow streets full of small shops. We hopped on an overnight train to Barcelona, we had our first experience of sleepers which gave us a suprisingly good night's rest. In Barcelona the next morning we checked our luggage into some lockers and went sightseeing around the city. We saw the famous Sagrada Fammilia, a modern cathedral that started being built in the 1880's and is still not finished, although it was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War. We also went to a famous sculpture park and attempted to find a labrynth park but it was nowhere to be seen. We walked down the famous street - la rambla and were going to go to Barcelonetta - the waterfront suburb but we ran out of time. We went back to the train station, collected our bags and boarded the overnight train to Tours in northern France, changing at Cerbere on the boarder onto a train with crazy reclinable seats. We arrived in Paris then hoped on the train to tours and arrived in the morning. We went to a chateaux where Leonado Da Vinci sayed in his time in France and where he died. We then checked into our hostel in Tours and had some well needed showers. That night we went to an internet cafè and at midnight cracked open some bottles of champagne to celebrate Cynthia's 18th birthday. The next day we had to make our way to Pontorson to see St. Mont Michel, a monastry that is on an island in the sea. It was built because legend has it that the Archangel Michael appeared on the hill over a thousand years ago. We stayed in a beautiful little hostel that had lovely beds and was very homely. We had breakfast this morning and caught a bus to Rennes where I am now. In an hour or so i am getting on a train to Lille then Brussels then Amsterdam where we are for a few days then it's off to Germany.
Having a wonderful time, and seeing so many things. xoxo Erica
