Full Marks Denmark

What a crazy few days it has been!


After a quick stop over in Andorra on our way back to Barcelona to catch a flight to Copenhagen, a long overdue catch up with dear friends began.

It almost didn't actually happen, because as luck would have it, their son became very ill suddenly, and their plans to travel to Copenhagen to meet us were put on hold.  However, they are very determined and as soon as Kuba felt well enough, they changed their flight and arrived shortly after midnight, just in time to pop open the champagne.

It has been six years since we last saw each other in France, so plenty to catch up on.  Luckily, we had 3 nights and 2 full days.  Sleep was scarce, wine was flowing.  From time to time, we ventured out for bike ride around the city, or for a walk.

We took a boat ride through the canals, Aperol Spritz in hand:

We had a laugh:

And a few tears were shed at the airport :(

(no photo of that of course!)

We made plans - Australia 2020.  We will hold you to that A&S.

Besides the fun times with friends, we got to explore the city and really liked it.  It is clean, orderly, and people are so very polite and friendly.  There are wide bike paths everywhere, so riding (without helmets!) is safe and easy.  We have only seen more bikes in one spot - at the Bupa Community Fun Ride.

 Little Mermaid

The city is so flat and buildings only a few stories high.

Views of the city from the tallest spot in Copenhagen (not so tall, views were not all that spectacular)

Our accommodation was 2 shipping containers stacked one on top of the other, which was pretty cool, a little outside of the box (pun intended).  The location a little industrial but it was nice to be staying out of the city centre.

All good things must eventually come to an end.

Signing off now, and look forward to seeing everybody home very soon.  

Two Spanish gems

Very different but equally mesmerising:  San Sebastian and Vilamos.

We had the pleasure to spend two days in San Sebastian.  What our overpriced accommodation didn't deliver, the town certainly made up for.

As we often do in places where food features strongly, we signed up to a walking food tour the night we arrived.  It wasn't the best we've experienced, but we did meet some nice people from Scotland and the UK and tried out a few pintxos bars and learnt the local way of doing things around here.

The food was incredible, and lived up to its' reputation. It goes very well with txakoli which is a lightly sparkling white wine. They pour it from a height to stimulate the bubbles :)

We've learnt that the best way is to try one pintxos and one drink at each bar and spend the night bar hoping.  We tried that out the following night and learnt that to survive this, you must only order small beer (called zurito) so the Aussie pint really has no place in San Sebastian.  It is an expensive social activity, so (unless you are cashed up) I don't know how people do it every week, but hell it was fun.

To raise our appetite, we walked the whole length of the bay (it took close to 2 hours at a slow walking pace) with the final destination the Funicular (little train that takes you to the top Monte Igueldo for some spectacular views).  There is actually an old theme park called the Parque de Atracciones.  It is no longer in use, so it's like it is frozen in time from the 80's.

The second gem we stumbled across on our travel from San Sebastian back towards Barcelona.  We were looking for an overnight stop over at about half way and found cheap accommodation in a town called Vilamos in the heart of the Pyrenees.  It is a small village of 171 people.  

View from the top of a lookout onto Vilamos - we stayed in one of those houses :)

Views of the Pyrenees were breathtaking.  There is a little square overlooking the mountains with park benches -  a perfect spot for some time out and reading books.

The highlight came as the sun set over the village. 

It turns out we were lucky to have travelled here that particular Saturday, because the only restaurant (which opened in 1832!) had a live Cuban band entertaining the locals.  We were the only tourists in town so it's fair to say, we stood out.  Nobody spoke any English either.  We feel that we got a true local experience that night.

As if the day couldn't get better we had a fantastic dinner at the restaurant.  Baked brie, tomato and mozzarella salad, followed by confit duck, with plentiful wine, cake and coffee for just over 50 euros.  We spent more in road tolls than on this dinner!...

This morning, we awoke to this sunrise from our window:

One more adventure ahead before heading home.  See you soon Copenhagen!

En Route to San Sebastian

Returning to Barcelona from Mallorca didn't start off too well.

First, we found a significant scratch on our rental car when we left for the airport at 4:30am.  Someone must have taken the corner a little too sharply and scraped the bumper.  This is easy to do on these narrow streets with less than desirable parking spaces.  We were quite surprised that no more damage was done, to be honest.  We buffed out what we could, and now we wait and hope no-one notices...

Second, as a result of poor signage at the Barcelona Airport, together with almost half of the other passengers from the flight, we got stuck in an airlock trying to get our luggage from the conveyer belt.  Luckily, there were some Spanish speakers amongst us (and no...I am not suggesting it was me :) :) :) ), and we managed to get out and walk around the outside of the terminal to be led in through the back door and into the correct baggage claim area.

Third, we were told by the car rental company that we were not insured to travel anywhere in France, which temporarily put our plans in jeopardy.

Fourth, we got stung 30 euros for road tolls on a small section of road between Barcelona and Zaragoza.  We quickly learnt to take the non-toll routes, and even though they are longer, they were also much prettier.

Fifth, we ended up in a small town called Lleida for a coffee and breakfast stop.  Please, do yourselves a favour and don't go there. The whole town smelled like human faeces, the coffee was ordinary and the croissant inedible.

But, you take the good with the bad.  On the positive note, we got upgraded to a brand new A3 Audi for this leg of our trip, found a much nicer place to eat in Zaragoza, scored awesome accommodation in Pamplona and watched a stage of the famous La Vuelta from the top of a mountain.  So...no real complaints.

This is Zaragoza - 5th largest city in Spain.  Quite pretty, some streets looked a lot like Paris.  It has a very big piazza called Basilica del Pilar.  It is a huge rectangular area and features superb architecture and sculptures.

This is the town on the foothills of the mountain climb of Stage 17 of La Vuelta 2018.  We parked our car in there and walked up about 6km to steak out a spot inside the last 2km of the climb to the finish.

There were signs like these everywhere - a real sign of patriotism from the Basque people.

Here is a taste of the atmosphere we experienced during the race.  Not easy to describe in words.  Rafal Majka was in the leading group and we got the chance to wish him 'Sto Lat' for his birthday that day :)

Though we were not quick enough to snap a shot of Richie Port, we gave him a well deserved cheer on and took this ripper of the great man Peter Sagan.

We quite enjoyed Pamplona, too, although we were only there briefly.  We arrived quite late to check into our hotel (which happened to host some of the rider teams the following day) and were heading out in the morning to catch the race in time.  However, we did manage to venture out into the town and had some fantastic tapas / pintxos.

Following the race, we stayed at a country hotel near Bilbao.  It was more of a big farm house with rooms to rent.  This was the view from our window:

Today, on our way to San Sebastian, we spent a few hours in Bilbao.  We were both very impressed with this town/city of >300,000 people.  It is interesting, stylish and sophisticated.  A superb blend of the old and the new.

We took the obligatory picture in front of the famous Guggenheim museum:

There was something different to look at around every corner:

Even the view over the train lines was nice: