Somewhere North of Home

Ancona

jessiecresp — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:40:00 GMT

After the longest day spent on train after train after train I reched Ancona.

Hmm Ancona... what to say about a place where noone speaks English and the hostel closes half the day?? haha. It is a fine place to stop over but not coming back!! I have done nothing interesting to report here, just did some washing, and found an internet cafe (hence my sudden flood of blog posts). My high school italian sometimes comes back to me like I somehow knew freddo meant cold when i was doing washing and I can count to twenty which is nice. But apart from that im a big fan of the smile\nod\point combo ive got going on. Today I have to wait for 9 hours at the port for my boat to leave, luckily I found a book shop with English books in it so I should be ok but cant wait to get on the topdeck boat at the other end!!! Suprisingly im still not homesick! And still having a great adventure and great time xxxx

Avignon (Ya'll are magnets)

jessiecresp — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:34:00 GMT

Avignon was a pretty little town!! We caught a train there from Barcelona and stayed 2 nights. Not a lot going on there but nice to relax. We had picnic after picnic and I think any longer there and I would have turned into a baguette. We went on a wine tour of the region above avignon which was tre' cool. We were the only ones under the age of 50 and got told by the American woman in our tour that of course we get let into bars because 'Ya'll are magnets' Which soon became the catch cry of the trip.

Had to leave my magnets in Avignon though!! As they went on to do the rest of France and I went on to spend 13 hours in transit. xxx

Barcelona 2

jessiecresp — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:25:00 GMT

Barcelona could just be the coolest city in the world!! We had such a great time there, and decided we loved it more than fresh sheets AND finding $20 in your jeans pocket. So thats a lot of love right there.
Highlights of Barcleona include...
doing a Spanish cooking class which wasnt really a class but more a watching some spanish man make paella while you drunk as many sangrias as you could then ate as much of his paella as you could. My type of cooking class.

doing a walking tour of Barcelona which was so interesting and came complete with a free beer. I think you may be able to sense the theme for Barcelona. No in all honesty we werent always at the bar, we did a lot of other cool things like eat tapas, visit castles, see sagrada familia, go for a picnic in parc guell, and we rambled along La rambla.

On our last night together we went to this amazing fountain in mondjuic. It was huge and was coloured by a million different ligths and spurted in time to music. It was amazing.

Im so sad to leave barcelona!!!

Barcelona

jessiecresp — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:10:00 GMT

After a hectic week ending in a very fun trip down south I was kinda looking forward to sitting on a plane and doing nothing. And boy did i get to sit on a pane and do nothing. 25 hours of travel later I arrived at Barcelona. Finally my years of watching Dora the Explorer with the kids next door had paid off, I channelled my inner dora grabbed my map and my bacpack only to realise I didnt have Dora's helpful mokey friend boots, nor her grasp on the spanish language. So only using hola and gratsias i somehow managed to find the hostel. Met up with Nikki, Lucy, Eleni and their friend Eagan and spent the arvo catching up.

Today we have been hanging around Barcelona, mainly around the gothic quarter. Since I am hanging out with the 18 year olds i thought i better step up and try read the map. Horrifyingly I seem to have the BEST sense of direction amongst the 5 of us and a common theme of the day (as i feel it will be for the hoiday( was "umm where are we?" No matter, we spent today sightseeing around Barcelona which timed itself very nicely with international free museum day. Had a really nice day and looking forward to tapas dinner, sangria and flamenco tonight!
xxx