Hi
Today I finished a week in Majorca with Siegfried and 4 of his friends. The entire week was spent in this order: Party all night, sleep all morning, beach what's left of the day. Fantastic. We did have one day where we hired a car and toured the island and another where we headed in Palma de Mallorca for some shopping and tourist activities but otherwise, party, sleep beach x 7 days.
My holiday travels now take me into Austria for a bit of hiking around the Alps, then it's off to Berlin for a couple of days, Hamburg for a couple of days then finally Stuttgart for a couple of days before heading home to arrive August 10th.
This therefore will be my last entry probably and so ends my adventures. Maybe i'll do one final instalment once i'm home but we'll see.
Until then!
Auf Wiedersehen
Dave
G'day
Well, I've now officially rolled off the project and have just spent the last 4 days with Mum. We left Stuttgart early Saturday morning and flew to Barcelona. There we got onto one of those hop on, hop off tourist buses and headed around Barca. Our first stop was Park Guell where we looked out over Barca. We then headed out in the direction of the site of the 1992 Olympic Games on Mont Juic.
We next took the funicular down to Las Ramblas and walked around there and through the Gothic Quarter back to our hotel for a regroup and to check in seeing as we were too early to check in earlier. After, we took the underground out to the Church of the Sacred Family. By this time it was getting late so we headed out for dinner.
The next morning we hired a Renault Meagane(despite asking for a VW Golf) and headed towards the Pyrenees and southern France. Our destination for today would be Toulouse. The drive through the Pyrenees was long and windy and slow in sections but the views were excellent. Somehow, we found the city centre in Toulouse, almost by accident and after smashing the car into the hotel car park wall, parked for the night and set out to look around Toulouse and get some dinner.
We got up the next day for a bit more looking around Toulouse before getting in the car and heading out in the general direction of Nimes. Along the way we stopped at a few smaller French villages along the canal regions including Castelnaudary and Carcassonne(which had a big walled city which we explored. More car troubles were to come when we got rear ended when I stopped at a red light. Thank god for plastic bumpers, you couldn't even tell we'd been hit. This time, I did manage to park the car at the hotel without more damage tho.
The next morning, we got up and looked around Nimes a little including a tour of the amphitheatre, which is a Colosseum type structure which was really good. We headed off next in the direction of Avignon but first stopped at an Aquifer just outside of Nimes. We passed through Avignon and headed for Marsailles. Let me give you the big hint, Marsailles is a hole, don't go there. We didn't even stop.
We then headed for Sete, a little seaside town just south of Montpellier. This was our destination for the night and dinner was had down by the canal that runs through the centre of town. Seafood of course.
Our final day, we drove back to Barca but only after we drove through another city, Bezier, which I was unable to navigate out of. After driving around for about 15 circles and 65 days, we finally found the way out of Bezier and headed to Barca. Our final car problem occurred on the way when a warning light on the dash came on and being a Spanish hire car, was in Spanish. I pulled over and called a colleague who spoke Spanish and informed me that it meant "Change Oil Quickly". A few more calls were made to Spanish 'help' lines, and dad and in the end, we went to the nearest Europecar who topped up the oil despite it not really needing it and drove on regardless.
We returned the car, got the guy to sign off saying there was no new damage and then casually walked away until we were out of eyesight then ran off thanking god we didn't have to pay extra for all our 'incidents'. That night we flew to Frankfurt but only for a base to fly from the next day.
Overnight at an airport hotel and then I flew off to Vienna to continue my holidays and Mum flew home to finish hers. We said our goodbyes and parted company.
I will endeavour to update this after Majorca but we'll see how we go.
Til then.
Stay safe, sorry about the epic post.
Dave
Hi
Apologies for the late entry. This weekend just been was officially my last weekend of travel for Project Rainbow as I'm finishing up work here on the 14th of July for good. Anyway, before I get sentimental I better tell you about it. Mum and I left Friday night for Lisbon, Portugal which was somewhat of a novelty given the Portugal team were coming to Stuttgart to battle it out in the World Cup for 3rd/4th place against Germany.
Our flight was quite long as we had to transit in Frankurt but we still got there and checked into the Meridien. Not much was done that night as we were tired and it was late so we crashed ready for an early start Saturday. Saturday morning we quickly realised that our hotel wasn't exactly central to the action but it wasn't that far either so we just strolled down the main road in the general direction of the centre of the "old town".
We found some Elevador de Santa Justa which took people sorta up one of the hills to the side of old town which also doubles as a good lookout. I think it was built in like 1901 or something but to be perfectly honest, I can't really remember. Anyway, after that, we headed down to the water where we caught a tram up the hill on the other side of old town to where the Castelo de Sao Jorge is. We wandered around there and took in the great views and general castle structure but there were really no rooms or anything as such to speak of to go in and look at.
We then headed back down the hill to catch another tram out toward the Monastery. We grabbed lunch here then wandered to the Monument to Discoveries and again, climbed that to grab the view down the water front and back over to the Monastery. We decided not to go to the Monestary today and headed back to the hotel for some research about where to go when I finally finish. We headed out again for dinner where we went to a restaurant part owned by actor John Malkovich, Bico do Sapato. We had a really good meal and some nice champagne.
Sunday we slept in a little after drinking too much Champagne the night before before heading to the Monastery for a look around. We were a little disappointed we couldn't explore more with the public area essentially restricted to a courtyard. There were several exhibitions though that we looked around. Given our flight was at four, we didn't actually have much time for too much else so we headed back and wandered back up the main pedestrian street again taking in some last minute shopping.
Flights home were uneventful and so ends the last of my work travels. I will update once more before I leave Stuttgart as i'm not taking my laptop on the next leg of my travels.
Hope all is well, see you soon enough!
Dave
Hi
Well, firstly, mum arrived in Germany on tuesday night as she decided to join me in my travels so i'm now travelling with her on weekends. Her choice for this weekend was to visit Edinburgh in Scotland so off we went on Friday evening.
We arrived uneventfully after a flight via Amsterdam and found the Sheraton where we were staying after a bus ride to the airport. Friday night we just stayed in to conserve engergy for tomorrow. Saturday we got up, hired a car, a pug 206 and headed for St Andrews. About 60 odd miles of motorway and we arrived. The weather was kind to us and we walked around and saw all the sights, grabbed lunch and also visited the famous "old course".
After taking in what St Andrews had to offer, we headed off to Perth, Scotland of course, the "other Perth". We also stopped by a castle somewhere I can't recall off the top of my head for the moment but they wanted 10 quid to go in (like $25) and i've seen heaps of castles in my last 5 months so we kept going.
We drove back to Edinburgh and returned the car in time to watch the end of the England world cup game. Sorry chaps, your time has come. Also for Brazil which is a surprise, loosing to the French. Anyway, we ordered a bottle of wine in the room and started on that before heading out to dinner at Est Est Est which was very nice. We returned to the room a little under the weather to retire for the night.
Sunday was a little gloomer than saturday with some scattered showers but muggy. We headed straight for the royal mile and started at the Edinburgh castle end. We spent most of the morning touring around that looking at all the prison cells, the museums and general castle grounds. We then headed down the royal mile in the direction of Holyrood Caslte which is at the other end. Unfortunately, the queen was due to visit the next day so the castle was closed to the public and we couldn't go in.
We then decided we were running out of time and headed back via the Grssmarkets to the hotel after quickly grabbing a bit to eat for lunch. We then headed back to the airport for our flight back to Stuttgart which was typically uneventful.
Portugal next weekend so stay tuned.
Cheers!
Dave
