I can't remember when the last time I blogged was, but I think it was a while ago. Since then I have started my own mini series of video blogs on Youtube, they're all on language based topics and you can find my channel here.
This weekend I went to Cordoba for a few days with Jack and Erin. Wouldn't usually mention the bus journey but I'm going to because we got a free bottle of water, packet of peanuts and a pastry as well as extra comfy chairs and a film to watch! Once we actually arrived in Cordoba however we met Erin off of her train and got a taxi to the hostel on the basis that we didn't really know where we were going. The hostel was very nice and just what we needed for the weekend. We spent Friday afternoon eating, wandering round and then eating some more! On Saturday we went to the Mezquita, the "must-see" attraction in Cordoba, it's a lovely building and well worth your money to take a look round if you're there. From there we headed to the Alcazar which has some lovely gardens as well as a tower you can climb to see out over the city. It was a really hot day so we took this opportunity to sit in the gardens for a bit to catch the sun. We came across a cheap Chinese for lunch which was really nice, and good for the price too. We also came across a market stall that sold loads of flags, we got some for LULangS, Jack got a Venezuelan flag just for the sheer hell of it and Erin got a Catalan flag, partly because she'd been looking for one for ages and partly because she found it really funny that she could buy one in Andalucia! After this we weren't really sure what to do with ourselves so we went and sat on the terrace at the hostel for a bit and chilled in the sun once again. In the evening we did a lot more wandering and then gave up on being good and cultural and had kebab for dinner... Our bus wasn't until 2 on Sunday but as we had our bags with us we didn't really want to do too much. We ended up walking towards the bus station and stopping every 5 minutes for a 30 minute break, I'm not even exaggerating! That wasted away the morning quite well and before we knew it we were on the bus and Granada bound, leaving Erin soaking up the sun whilst she did some work as her train wasn't until a lot later. I'm in the process of loading my million photos up onto Flickr so if you feel like taking a look they'll be there for you in a bit.
This week I have 4 days of classes (although if I overheard a conversation correctly it may even be 3...) before I go to Seville with Erin on Friday until Sunday. Monday and Tuesday are fiesta here so there are no classes, meaning just 2 days of classes for me next week and then my parents and my Nana arrive on Sunday for the week! I'll be back with an update for you after Seville, I doubt anything interesting will happen before then.
Showing posts with label Photos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photos. Show all posts
Monday, 23 April 2012
Sunday, 8 April 2012
An accidental holiday in Magaluf.
This was the week that we had been looking forward to for a long time. Booked at the end of last year we decided to spend our holiday in Mallorca, it was somewhere we could all get to from 3 different airports, it was a good price and it is a nice place. We booked a hotel called TRH Palmanova (remember this, it is going to be important...), booked our flights, and all we had to do was wait, so wait we did. A quick read up on the internet suggested that the hotel wasn't quite in Palmanova like the name would suggest, and on a steep hill, neither of which really caused us a problem. Easter week rolls around and off we go! Charlotte and Vicki arrived first having flown together from Manchester, and get told we've been moved hotels as there had been over booking with ours, not a problem, it's just even further up the hill! Now I'll take you back to our location, we were basically on the end of the strip in Magaluf! Not quite what we'd intended, but oh well! Palmanova itself, when we actually did go there for a wander, is a lot bigger than we had realised and we'd certainly go and stay there again. The only problem with the location we ended up in was that there was a Spanish festival of some sort on for a few days and there was a huge group of people staying in our hotel, and they weren't the quiet type! But when this is the view from your balcony, you really can't complain:
The very first time we took a walk down to the beach we realised that we would have to find another route, it is impossible to walk down the main strip without getting stopped at least every 5 or 6 steps (and I'm not even exaggerating) by some promoter or other trying to get you to stop in their bar for a drink. It doesn't matter how clear you make it to some of them that you're not interested, they'll engage you in conversation, physically block the way, try and split up the group and even try pulling you in by your hair! It's a bit of a laugh but certainly gets tiresome after a while. We instead tended to go to places along the beach front or walk over to Palmanova where there are still plenty of lively bars but without the hassle. We did cave into them once or twice though, the first time was at 4 in the afternoon when we bought beer and sangria and got given free shots of Sambuca, only in Magaluf...
Because we're so cool and so mature we bought a bucket, spade, rake and some little animal shapes, oh and a sive! We spent quite a while on 2 different days making these creations:
And on a sand related note, the girls buried me in the sand and sculpted me into a mermaid. I didn't get the best photo of that though!
In general we spent our week wandering, eating, drinking and laying in the sun, so I'm not going to give you a diary entry style blog of what we did for fear of boring you all so much that you never come back! However, we did go to Palma for the day which was nice, other than paying €4.50 for a Fanta! We had intended to see one of the Easter parades for Semana Santa but by the time we'd spent the day there we were getting tired and ready to leave so we didn't get to see it. I just see that as an excuse for me to get back out to Spain another Easter and see it all though!
We also did one of those holiday essentials and played mini golf which was a lot of fun. Especially with holes like this one where the water gets in the way some what:
I didn't do very well, lets just say that I lost by a long long way and leave it at that shall we? Whilst we were there Katy and I had our photo taken with a snake, it was pretty scary and we weren't really expecting it to happen, but we had to buy it just to prove we've done it! Apologies for the quality, it really needs to be scanned in at some point.
That is about it really! I came back this morning fairly early, I've unpacked, done 2 loads of washing, uploaded my photos, done my photo of the day project and now I've even written this! Will be an early night for me tonight though, and hoping for my first totally uninterrupted nights sleep in a week! Got a day tomorrow to catch up and maybe do some work before classes start again on Tuesday which feels really odd. I'm glad though, because I'd quite like the next few weeks to pass, it's been hard knowing so many Erasmus students that have been home and seen their families this week and I haven't. Oh well, one blank weekend, then Cordoba, then Seville and then my parents are here with my Nana for a whole week which even includes my 21st! Can't wait!
The very first time we took a walk down to the beach we realised that we would have to find another route, it is impossible to walk down the main strip without getting stopped at least every 5 or 6 steps (and I'm not even exaggerating) by some promoter or other trying to get you to stop in their bar for a drink. It doesn't matter how clear you make it to some of them that you're not interested, they'll engage you in conversation, physically block the way, try and split up the group and even try pulling you in by your hair! It's a bit of a laugh but certainly gets tiresome after a while. We instead tended to go to places along the beach front or walk over to Palmanova where there are still plenty of lively bars but without the hassle. We did cave into them once or twice though, the first time was at 4 in the afternoon when we bought beer and sangria and got given free shots of Sambuca, only in Magaluf...
Because we're so cool and so mature we bought a bucket, spade, rake and some little animal shapes, oh and a sive! We spent quite a while on 2 different days making these creations:And on a sand related note, the girls buried me in the sand and sculpted me into a mermaid. I didn't get the best photo of that though!
In general we spent our week wandering, eating, drinking and laying in the sun, so I'm not going to give you a diary entry style blog of what we did for fear of boring you all so much that you never come back! However, we did go to Palma for the day which was nice, other than paying €4.50 for a Fanta! We had intended to see one of the Easter parades for Semana Santa but by the time we'd spent the day there we were getting tired and ready to leave so we didn't get to see it. I just see that as an excuse for me to get back out to Spain another Easter and see it all though!
We also did one of those holiday essentials and played mini golf which was a lot of fun. Especially with holes like this one where the water gets in the way some what:
I didn't do very well, lets just say that I lost by a long long way and leave it at that shall we? Whilst we were there Katy and I had our photo taken with a snake, it was pretty scary and we weren't really expecting it to happen, but we had to buy it just to prove we've done it! Apologies for the quality, it really needs to be scanned in at some point.
That is about it really! I came back this morning fairly early, I've unpacked, done 2 loads of washing, uploaded my photos, done my photo of the day project and now I've even written this! Will be an early night for me tonight though, and hoping for my first totally uninterrupted nights sleep in a week! Got a day tomorrow to catch up and maybe do some work before classes start again on Tuesday which feels really odd. I'm glad though, because I'd quite like the next few weeks to pass, it's been hard knowing so many Erasmus students that have been home and seen their families this week and I haven't. Oh well, one blank weekend, then Cordoba, then Seville and then my parents are here with my Nana for a whole week which even includes my 21st! Can't wait!
Sunday, 25 March 2012
A tiring touristy weekend.
This weekend has been a touristy one as Erin came to visit Granada for a few days. On Thursday I just had one class to go to before going to meet Erin from the bus, I rather unenthusiastically dragged myself up the hill and into the classroom just for the teacher to turn up and tell us that there would be no class. As you can imagine I was not impressed, not just because I'd got myself up there but also because next week we are missing a class because of a strike and I could really do with the lesson time for Latin if I am going to stand half a chance in the exam. Still, there is nothing I can do about it, ♫ Que sera sera ♫ and all that, so off I went back down the hill to the flat. When Erin arrived things were not quite as straight forward as they could've been, the internet says that the bus stop is at Triunfo Gardens so logically that is where I was waiting when I received a text from Erin telling me she had just got off of the bus, yet she was no where to be seen. Some confusion and rough directions later and we found each other after the bus had quite helpfully dropped her off down the road, not even in sight of the gardens! With the initial confusion over we spent the afternoon having a wander round the city, and even went inside the cathedral which I'd still not done. We ate in a really nice restaurant where the food was really moorish (Sorry, I think I have spent too much time around Jack and his terrible puns, I won't do it again...), I had a lovely cous cous dish with vegetables and we also had some arabic tea afterwards too.
Friday brought with it a trip up into the Sierra Nevada. I didn't really know what to expect but knew that I should make the most of my chance to go up into the snowy mountains and enjoy the views before it all melted away. The bus ride is only 45 minutes and cost us less than 10 euros for the return which was really reasonable. The views on the bus journey are amazing and every time you think that you couldn't possibly be driving any higher you turn another corner and up you climb a bit more. We were prepared for the cold with hats, scarves, gloves, hoodies and gillets but it wasn't as cold up there as we'd been expecting. In fact we sat outside a bar drinking cold drinks and watching the ice melt before our eyes. Being so warm and sunny yet surrounded by snow was more than a little surreal I must say! Whilst we were there we took the cable car up higher, we think it was around 8200ft, to really make the most of it. It was quite expensive at 16.50 each but worth it to appreciate the views up there, we'd been walking round the bottom of the resort which was absolutely dead, we soon discovered it was because they were all at the next stage up, there were loads of people! After another sit down with a drink in the sun we headed back down to have some lunch before getting on the bus again. In the evening we met up with the others to go out for tapas, we tried the Chinese tapas to start off with which was a strange concept but the food was good and that was all that mattered! The last place we went to had a huge range of tapas to chose from and we had some really good fajitas, will certainly be going there again.
On Saturday we woke up to the rather disappointing sight of clouds and everything looking generally grey but this actually turned out to our advantage because although it rained a little it made our day a lot easier. We walked (or more accurately climbed) up to the Alhambra where we queued, in order to queue, in order to just queue again! You'd think we were in England, we like queuing there, it's our national sport, but the Spanish don't generally like to partake in such an activity! Despite all the queuing we had a really good time, but we did an awful lot of walking and consequently by the end of the evening after we'd been out my feet were in no fit state to walk home and we ended up getting a taxi- stupid blisters! We'd not eaten anything for lunch before we went into the Alhambra and so were rather hungry when we eventually caved in to the temptation of buying a packet of gullible tourist priced biscuits from a stall, half a packet is a nutritious lunch right?! We did eventually eat again when we got back into town and went for tapas, including another visit to the Chinese tapas place. In the evening we went to Paddys with the others for a few drinks, finally arriving back at the flat in time to change the clocks and see an hour of our sleep for the night go flying out of the window...
Today I've not done much, in fact I don't really think I've done anything. I walked to the bus stop (that this time actually was at Truinfo Gardens) to say goodbye to Erin and then headed back to the flat where I have successfully done one load of washing, written this blog and put my photos on facebook. For those of you that want to see my photos from the weekend I've put them all (or at least am in the process of...)on flickr as opposed to Facebook where I have only uploaded half.
This week is going to be a short one as the Spanish are going on general strike on Thursday so I won't have my classes. I do have an exam on Wednesday though which I have no clue about the content so that should be rather interesting. Oh well! Just 3 days of classes to get through before a few days off and then off on holiday for a week! I can't wait now, it should be really good. As well as looking forward to seeing my friends (obviously) I'm really looking forward to getting to see a Spanish Easter parade on Maundey Thursday. At the end of this week I'll be half way through my classes out here in Granada and a third of the way through my time in Spain. 6 weeks down and 12 to go!
Friday brought with it a trip up into the Sierra Nevada. I didn't really know what to expect but knew that I should make the most of my chance to go up into the snowy mountains and enjoy the views before it all melted away. The bus ride is only 45 minutes and cost us less than 10 euros for the return which was really reasonable. The views on the bus journey are amazing and every time you think that you couldn't possibly be driving any higher you turn another corner and up you climb a bit more. We were prepared for the cold with hats, scarves, gloves, hoodies and gillets but it wasn't as cold up there as we'd been expecting. In fact we sat outside a bar drinking cold drinks and watching the ice melt before our eyes. Being so warm and sunny yet surrounded by snow was more than a little surreal I must say! Whilst we were there we took the cable car up higher, we think it was around 8200ft, to really make the most of it. It was quite expensive at 16.50 each but worth it to appreciate the views up there, we'd been walking round the bottom of the resort which was absolutely dead, we soon discovered it was because they were all at the next stage up, there were loads of people! After another sit down with a drink in the sun we headed back down to have some lunch before getting on the bus again. In the evening we met up with the others to go out for tapas, we tried the Chinese tapas to start off with which was a strange concept but the food was good and that was all that mattered! The last place we went to had a huge range of tapas to chose from and we had some really good fajitas, will certainly be going there again.
On Saturday we woke up to the rather disappointing sight of clouds and everything looking generally grey but this actually turned out to our advantage because although it rained a little it made our day a lot easier. We walked (or more accurately climbed) up to the Alhambra where we queued, in order to queue, in order to just queue again! You'd think we were in England, we like queuing there, it's our national sport, but the Spanish don't generally like to partake in such an activity! Despite all the queuing we had a really good time, but we did an awful lot of walking and consequently by the end of the evening after we'd been out my feet were in no fit state to walk home and we ended up getting a taxi- stupid blisters! We'd not eaten anything for lunch before we went into the Alhambra and so were rather hungry when we eventually caved in to the temptation of buying a packet of gullible tourist priced biscuits from a stall, half a packet is a nutritious lunch right?! We did eventually eat again when we got back into town and went for tapas, including another visit to the Chinese tapas place. In the evening we went to Paddys with the others for a few drinks, finally arriving back at the flat in time to change the clocks and see an hour of our sleep for the night go flying out of the window...
Today I've not done much, in fact I don't really think I've done anything. I walked to the bus stop (that this time actually was at Truinfo Gardens) to say goodbye to Erin and then headed back to the flat where I have successfully done one load of washing, written this blog and put my photos on facebook. For those of you that want to see my photos from the weekend I've put them all (or at least am in the process of...)on flickr as opposed to Facebook where I have only uploaded half.
This week is going to be a short one as the Spanish are going on general strike on Thursday so I won't have my classes. I do have an exam on Wednesday though which I have no clue about the content so that should be rather interesting. Oh well! Just 3 days of classes to get through before a few days off and then off on holiday for a week! I can't wait now, it should be really good. As well as looking forward to seeing my friends (obviously) I'm really looking forward to getting to see a Spanish Easter parade on Maundey Thursday. At the end of this week I'll be half way through my classes out here in Granada and a third of the way through my time in Spain. 6 weeks down and 12 to go!
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Ah, got to love a good puente.
Last week finished off without to much excitement really, I've now settled on History of Women, Spanish Dialectology, Linguistics of Teaching Foreign Languages and Introduction to Latin, so long as I can register for them all this week then that's me set for the year. I'm finding them all interesting and actually enjoying what I am learning which is more than I can say for the courses I did in Brussels. That's the advantage of being here, I've got so much choice!
This week I have also written an article for Third Year Abroad about Granada which is intended to help people that want to come here next year, I did one about Brussels too and they can be found here.
For those of you that don't know what a puente is it's basically an excuse for the Spanish to take another day off of work/class etc! Puente literally means bridge, and that is because if a holiday falls on a Tuesday they generally choose to take Monday off too. Today is Andalucia day, not that you'd know it, in a very un-Spanish style nothing has actually happened to mark the day other than everything being closed.
What have I done with this lovely 5 day weekend then? I have to be honest and tell you I've not actually done all that much! On Friday after having spent the morning inside I went for a wander with Jack, we didn't go anywhere in particular but we did stop for a drink and end up with one of the stranger tapas dishes I've had, literally a fish. I have no objections to fish at all, in fact I really like sea food so the fact that my food was looking at me didn't really bother me, I just can't help but think it was a bit of a strange tapas dish though!
On Saturday I went out with Aimee, Michael and Jack for another walk, this time up into the hills of the Albyzin where Aimee lives to appreciate the great views as well as while away a couple of hours at a bar where we once again were provided with whole fish for tapas, maybe it's not as unusual as I'd thought it was.
Sunday was a nothing day, I went through my notes from all my classes this week to try and get some sort of understanding of what I had supposedly learnt! I think it helped... I hope it did because one of my classes is split into 4 parts which means I actually have a test next week that counts towards my end result for that course, bit scary this early on!
Monday was, to be honest, a fail of epic proportions... we had decided to make the most of the weekend and do something worthwhile and thought we should head up into the Sierra Nevada to appreciate the views. This would've been a great idea, if we had booked our bus tickets. Unfortunately we turned up at 9.30am just to find there was only one seat left on the bus, and for 6 of us that wasn't going to work. We decided to make the most of actually being up and getting there by having a coffee in the bus station cafe, how exciting are we?! After going back to the flat and realising nothing productive was going to get done I went to the shop to stock up on food etc and then went out for a wander again. We went up to the monastry near the uni as well as up a hill that seemed to head to no where (it didn't, we just turned around and went back down) and then a lap around part of the city. Tapas called yet again, but this time it was bread and meat followed by fried squid.
Which leaves me with today, and if I'm honest I'm not really sure what on earth I have spent my day doing! I've read through my French essay for Lancaster and marked on the corrections I want to make but that can't have taken me all this time surely?!
Well, it's a hard life for an Erasmus student so tomorrow I have to head back to classes again, but don't feel too sorry for me now will you, I may have 6 straight hours of classes tomorrow from 8.30am but I only have 1 class on Thursday and then I'm done for the weekend again! Maybe next weekend I'll actually get some of my dissertation done like I'd intended to do today...?
This week I have also written an article for Third Year Abroad about Granada which is intended to help people that want to come here next year, I did one about Brussels too and they can be found here.
For those of you that don't know what a puente is it's basically an excuse for the Spanish to take another day off of work/class etc! Puente literally means bridge, and that is because if a holiday falls on a Tuesday they generally choose to take Monday off too. Today is Andalucia day, not that you'd know it, in a very un-Spanish style nothing has actually happened to mark the day other than everything being closed.
What have I done with this lovely 5 day weekend then? I have to be honest and tell you I've not actually done all that much! On Friday after having spent the morning inside I went for a wander with Jack, we didn't go anywhere in particular but we did stop for a drink and end up with one of the stranger tapas dishes I've had, literally a fish. I have no objections to fish at all, in fact I really like sea food so the fact that my food was looking at me didn't really bother me, I just can't help but think it was a bit of a strange tapas dish though!
On Saturday I went out with Aimee, Michael and Jack for another walk, this time up into the hills of the Albyzin where Aimee lives to appreciate the great views as well as while away a couple of hours at a bar where we once again were provided with whole fish for tapas, maybe it's not as unusual as I'd thought it was.
Sunday was a nothing day, I went through my notes from all my classes this week to try and get some sort of understanding of what I had supposedly learnt! I think it helped... I hope it did because one of my classes is split into 4 parts which means I actually have a test next week that counts towards my end result for that course, bit scary this early on!
Monday was, to be honest, a fail of epic proportions... we had decided to make the most of the weekend and do something worthwhile and thought we should head up into the Sierra Nevada to appreciate the views. This would've been a great idea, if we had booked our bus tickets. Unfortunately we turned up at 9.30am just to find there was only one seat left on the bus, and for 6 of us that wasn't going to work. We decided to make the most of actually being up and getting there by having a coffee in the bus station cafe, how exciting are we?! After going back to the flat and realising nothing productive was going to get done I went to the shop to stock up on food etc and then went out for a wander again. We went up to the monastry near the uni as well as up a hill that seemed to head to no where (it didn't, we just turned around and went back down) and then a lap around part of the city. Tapas called yet again, but this time it was bread and meat followed by fried squid.
Which leaves me with today, and if I'm honest I'm not really sure what on earth I have spent my day doing! I've read through my French essay for Lancaster and marked on the corrections I want to make but that can't have taken me all this time surely?!
Well, it's a hard life for an Erasmus student so tomorrow I have to head back to classes again, but don't feel too sorry for me now will you, I may have 6 straight hours of classes tomorrow from 8.30am but I only have 1 class on Thursday and then I'm done for the weekend again! Maybe next weekend I'll actually get some of my dissertation done like I'd intended to do today...?
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Now I remember why I prefer Spanish...
Reason number 1- (Yes I know this isn't normal but I'm using it all the same) Walking round on the last weekend of November and not even needing sleeves.
Reason 2- Tapas and Sangria, how much more stereotypical can I make this? I'm sorry...
Reason 3- The language, it just comes to me sooo much easier than French does.
Reason 4- It's just better and I don't need to justify that.
The next day didn't get off to a great start as we didn't set any form of alarm and managed to lose our morning to sleep! We soon got up and out and about and seeing all the sites of Madrid, or at least about half of them before we headed to meet Dan for a drink. But that came later, first we had a very important appointment to keep with a Mr Noel Gallagher? Don't know if you've heard of him, used to be in that band Oasis (Or to the Spanish Oh-wa-siis). We just happened to pass the hotel he was staying at, asked the people there what they were waiting for and decided to hang around and see for ourselves.
In the evening we decided to go to the Ice Bar, now I've been to one of these before somewhere else in Spain but all I remember from that is that none of us were dressed appropriately but that it didn't really matter because they gave us a fair bit of free drink... (The lack of memory and level of drink are not linked before someone suggests it!) This one was better than the one I'd been in before that you got a proper coat instead of the furry poncho thing I had before, but it was still just as empty. We stuck it out for an hour though and amused ourselves so all in all it was still good fun! After this we decided just to head back to Ellies flat and we made our own churros, some were more successful than others lets just leave it at that! But the peanut buttercups we'd made earlier, despite looking awful, tasted really good!
Today was my last morning in Madrid so we got up at a decent time and headed off to see the rest of the city, got lots of photos which I'll put on Flickr as and when I remember.
The journey back to Brussels was uneventful and I'm now sitting in my room listening to cheesy music before I go to bed because when I wake up the reality of the washing, food shopping and work I have to do is going to hit me....
Monday, 14 November 2011
"Video" 2 October-November
Apologies all, this is not really a video, it was quickly put together on Movie Maker with photos and music and is seriously lacking in captions etc. I don't have time to do as much as I did before and there is no video because me coughing and sniffing isn't something that YouTube needs to see! I hope you enjoy it all the same :)
Thanks to LUGleeC for being used as the backing music.
Sunday, 13 November 2011
A weekend in Luxembourg- we did a lot of walking!
Walking. This seems to have been the theme of our weekend, and don't get me wrong, I enjoy wandering round and discovering places but I have a limit, and I think my legs have found it this weekend as they are no longer functioning at full capacity I must say....
The journey to Luxembourg city from here isn't too bad, just over 3 hours on the train. It all went swimmingly, until the little screen on the train started saying "Terminus Arlon" (a town in Belgium...) and we started worrying just a little! Luckily it must have meant that Arlon was the last stop in Belgium as the train soon continued onto Luxembourg. Phew! We arrived in a rather cold Luxembourg in the early afternoon and headed off to the hotel to dump our bags. After filling in a form that seemed to want to know everything but my inside leg measurement we got into our room. We decided that the best thing for us to do first would be to go to the tourist information centre to get ourselves a map (as you will later learn it obviously wasn't good enough...). Seeing as it was still mid-afternoon we wanted to wander over to the European area and see everything over there and it made sense to get it over and done with first as it was on the other side of the city. So off we went, in the direction that according to our map and the signposts would lead us to the area with all the EU institutions in it. After a while we were faced with a long path, leading uphill, through the trees. For some reason this didn't strike us as odd, I just remarked that they must send the tourists the scenic route as presumably all the people that work in the EU institutions don't walk this way! So up we went...it didn't take too much longer for us to realise that we clearly weren't going to get there that night. The problem was this being abound 4.30-5pm in November it was starting to get dark and we were on a rough path, through the woods and round an old fort, with no lights. Brilliant. The choice being either to turn back where we'd come- hardly a short distance, or continue we decided to march onwards. Eventually we ended up at what you could loosely term as civilization. I hesitate in calling it this as there seemed to be no people, shops or anything of the sort. By now it was too late to be heading for the EU stuff and about time to be searching for food. Problem. Luxembourg is basically on 2 levels, the high town and the low town. They aren't very well linked-other than by a great many stairs and you'll have a job locating them. So this is how we spent a large part of our first evening in Luxembourg, trying to "escape" the Ville Basse and get back where human life could be found. We managed this - via an epic flight of stairs and a series of rather steep hills. Nice relaxing welcome to Luxembourg.... Food was soon located, and you know you're in a posh expensive restaurant when they take your coats and give you some pea-mousse thing whilst you look at the menu. It was a fish restaurant and all the food looked (and tasted) very nice. We did feel a bit like (bad pun coming....) fish out of water though as we were most certainly the youngest people in there.
Saturday-
On Saturday we had to head to the European area, after all the mess of the night before we had worked out where we'd gone wrong and how we'd ended up underneath the bridge we'd actually wanted to be crossing. As it turns out it is probably for the best that we'd not made it there the previous night as there was a lot to see, it took us a good hour or so to walk round and wouldn't have been so good in the dark. The geek in me wants to go and see the rest of it in Strasbourg now seeing as I've seen the European Commission and all the other bits here and now (here comes the list...) the European Investment Bank, European Court of Justice, European Court of Auditors and the European Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg. I'm pretty sure we also saw where the main translation centre is too. I've been looking into all the types of translation jobs they need in the EU, I'd love to translate for the Court of Justice but that would involve some form of Legal qualification which I don't have, well I can dream can't I?
After this we did a hell of a lot more walking! I've put some photos on Facebook but for those of you not on there I'm about to stick them on Flickr too so I'll give you the link, just give me a chance to get them up there.
2 observations about transport in Luxembourg- there are loads and loads of Audis, especially in the European area where at least I'd say 1 in 3 cars were Audis. Also Luxembourg, despite being tiny seems to be the European Capital of busses or something, there were hundreds of them, often with the very useful destination on the front of "Luxembourg".
After exhausting all the views and monuments of the city, writing postcards and drinking expensive (but very nice) coffee we went to the restaurant next to the one we'd been to the night before. Whilst we were looking at the menu outside the waiter from the other restaurant came past and said hi, 2 young female students were probably a rare occurrence for that place, must've been easily recognisable or something! When we were inside we were offered the English menu and caused some confusion when we asked for the French, and one of the waiters clearly wasn't sure as he insisted on speaking to us in English each time, although the others did at least stick to the French. When we ordered the waiter asked me if I was sure that was what I wanted, did I know what it was? I thought I did having read the English version of the menu outside but evidentially it was a different thing entirely. What I was ordering, the internet now tells me, was part of a pigs large intestine.... yuuummmmm :S I'm glad I didn't go for that in the end then... As the exciting, party-animal, Erasmus students we are, we then returned to the hotel, got into our PJs and watched Danse avec les Stars.....
Sunday- To round off our trip we headed to the Museum of the History of Luxembourg City, presuming that the museum would be some what relative to the size of the city itself, it was surprisingly big though but a nice way to spend our last morning before heading back to the station and returning to Brussels.
I know I've already told you how much we walked, but seriously, my legs really really ache now. I've had my exercise for the week. Maybe I don't need to climb the stairs every day?!
My Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bexnobes/
The journey to Luxembourg city from here isn't too bad, just over 3 hours on the train. It all went swimmingly, until the little screen on the train started saying "Terminus Arlon" (a town in Belgium...) and we started worrying just a little! Luckily it must have meant that Arlon was the last stop in Belgium as the train soon continued onto Luxembourg. Phew! We arrived in a rather cold Luxembourg in the early afternoon and headed off to the hotel to dump our bags. After filling in a form that seemed to want to know everything but my inside leg measurement we got into our room. We decided that the best thing for us to do first would be to go to the tourist information centre to get ourselves a map (as you will later learn it obviously wasn't good enough...). Seeing as it was still mid-afternoon we wanted to wander over to the European area and see everything over there and it made sense to get it over and done with first as it was on the other side of the city. So off we went, in the direction that according to our map and the signposts would lead us to the area with all the EU institutions in it. After a while we were faced with a long path, leading uphill, through the trees. For some reason this didn't strike us as odd, I just remarked that they must send the tourists the scenic route as presumably all the people that work in the EU institutions don't walk this way! So up we went...it didn't take too much longer for us to realise that we clearly weren't going to get there that night. The problem was this being abound 4.30-5pm in November it was starting to get dark and we were on a rough path, through the woods and round an old fort, with no lights. Brilliant. The choice being either to turn back where we'd come- hardly a short distance, or continue we decided to march onwards. Eventually we ended up at what you could loosely term as civilization. I hesitate in calling it this as there seemed to be no people, shops or anything of the sort. By now it was too late to be heading for the EU stuff and about time to be searching for food. Problem. Luxembourg is basically on 2 levels, the high town and the low town. They aren't very well linked-other than by a great many stairs and you'll have a job locating them. So this is how we spent a large part of our first evening in Luxembourg, trying to "escape" the Ville Basse and get back where human life could be found. We managed this - via an epic flight of stairs and a series of rather steep hills. Nice relaxing welcome to Luxembourg.... Food was soon located, and you know you're in a posh expensive restaurant when they take your coats and give you some pea-mousse thing whilst you look at the menu. It was a fish restaurant and all the food looked (and tasted) very nice. We did feel a bit like (bad pun coming....) fish out of water though as we were most certainly the youngest people in there.
Saturday-
On Saturday we had to head to the European area, after all the mess of the night before we had worked out where we'd gone wrong and how we'd ended up underneath the bridge we'd actually wanted to be crossing. As it turns out it is probably for the best that we'd not made it there the previous night as there was a lot to see, it took us a good hour or so to walk round and wouldn't have been so good in the dark. The geek in me wants to go and see the rest of it in Strasbourg now seeing as I've seen the European Commission and all the other bits here and now (here comes the list...) the European Investment Bank, European Court of Justice, European Court of Auditors and the European Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg. I'm pretty sure we also saw where the main translation centre is too. I've been looking into all the types of translation jobs they need in the EU, I'd love to translate for the Court of Justice but that would involve some form of Legal qualification which I don't have, well I can dream can't I?
After this we did a hell of a lot more walking! I've put some photos on Facebook but for those of you not on there I'm about to stick them on Flickr too so I'll give you the link, just give me a chance to get them up there.
2 observations about transport in Luxembourg- there are loads and loads of Audis, especially in the European area where at least I'd say 1 in 3 cars were Audis. Also Luxembourg, despite being tiny seems to be the European Capital of busses or something, there were hundreds of them, often with the very useful destination on the front of "Luxembourg".
After exhausting all the views and monuments of the city, writing postcards and drinking expensive (but very nice) coffee we went to the restaurant next to the one we'd been to the night before. Whilst we were looking at the menu outside the waiter from the other restaurant came past and said hi, 2 young female students were probably a rare occurrence for that place, must've been easily recognisable or something! When we were inside we were offered the English menu and caused some confusion when we asked for the French, and one of the waiters clearly wasn't sure as he insisted on speaking to us in English each time, although the others did at least stick to the French. When we ordered the waiter asked me if I was sure that was what I wanted, did I know what it was? I thought I did having read the English version of the menu outside but evidentially it was a different thing entirely. What I was ordering, the internet now tells me, was part of a pigs large intestine.... yuuummmmm :S I'm glad I didn't go for that in the end then... As the exciting, party-animal, Erasmus students we are, we then returned to the hotel, got into our PJs and watched Danse avec les Stars.....
Sunday- To round off our trip we headed to the Museum of the History of Luxembourg City, presuming that the museum would be some what relative to the size of the city itself, it was surprisingly big though but a nice way to spend our last morning before heading back to the station and returning to Brussels.
I know I've already told you how much we walked, but seriously, my legs really really ache now. I've had my exercise for the week. Maybe I don't need to climb the stairs every day?!
My Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bexnobes/
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