EU Holiday

August 20
August 21
August 22
August 23
August 24
August 25
August 26
August 27
August 28
August 29
August 30
August 31
September 1
September 2
September 3
September 4
September 5
September 6
September 7
September 8
September 9
September 10
September 11
September 12
September 13
September 14

Here is the next list. The last few might miss the cut.

• Lisbon & Oporto
• England (soccer)
• Moscow
• Stockholm
  
• Istanbul
• Prague
• Dublin
• Munich
• Reykjavik
  
• Nice & Monaco

EU Holiday, September 14 (Fin)

Last day in Paris and I made sure I didn't get stuck in a major queue to visit the Louvre this time. I read that the majority of visitors try to enter through the glass pyramid outside when there is a perfectly good underground entrance accessible via the train station. So I went that route, bought a ticket at the newsagents on the way, and there was less than fifty people ahead of me in the line for security when I arrived. Once the museum opened it was straight through security, pick up a map and through the entrance to the museum.

I tried to quickly make sense of the map, which is confusing because there is four levels and three different wings, and keep moving to try and beat the queue to the Mona Lisa. I made it there with only a small crowd, checked it out and got some photos and then moved on. Despite all the signs saying no flash photography, people still seemed to either 1) not see it 2) ignore it or 3) get really confused when overhearing that it was not allowed, "what!? no flash photography? what!?". I already knew the painting was going to be small, and it was indeed very small. Not sure what the big deal is.

So that's what the bottom half of a pyramid looks like.

That red spot is either a laser pointer or an idiot with flash turned on.

The next most famous piece I knew of was the Venus de Milo. Everyone must have still been looking for the Mona Lisa because there was only two people there when I found it. Again I'm not really sure why this is so more important than all of the other similar pieces nearby. The map also had a bunch of other "highlights" marked out, so I tried to find most of them as well as checking out whatever I came across along the way. I spent about two hours there all up, but if you were to actually see everything and read all the descriptions, you could easily spend a couple of days.

The gummi Venus de Milo was more impressive.

Now it gets more difficult, The Wedding Feast at Cana.

The Large Sphinx.

Nothing special, it just reminded me of an episode of Lost.

An easier one, Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss.

The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds. 

Had some time to spare so I took a route past the Colonne Vendome (Column Vendome) and Jardin des Plantes (Garden Of Plants). Final adventure for the day was to take a train out to the Roland Garros tennis park. It wasn't very well marked coming out of the station, but I eventually found my way to the entrance. They have the worst priced gift shop I have ever seen, a museum gallery that didn't sound too exciting but I decided I might as well sign up for the daily English tour that was about to start. The tour guide was pretty bad, he'd talk for a bit, give noone a chance to take photos then move on to the next location. So I just went to the front on the group and took photos while he was talking. Got to see some of the interview and media rooms inside the main court, players entrance, change rooms and then walk around the side of the main court. A nice change from all of the soccer stadiums.

Colonne Vendome.

Entrance to the Jardin des Plantes.

The second feature court at Roland Garros.

The interview room.

The main court, that goes unused 50 weeks of the year.

EU Holiday, September 13 (The Queue And The Dead)

I didn't estimate very well how long it would take to walk and catch a train across the river to the Catacombes. So I got there half an hour after it opened to join the back of a major queue. Because only 200 people are allowed down underground at a time, the line barely moves. It ended up taking 45 minutes to get to the front. As I was just starting to go down the spiral staircase to the bottom some woman had already bailed out and was coming back up to quit. I can't believe someone would wait that long for something they must have known they weren't going to like. My ears were again feeling crappy when I reached the bottom of the staircase, so I'd except that excuse perhaps.

As I was making my way down the entrance hall to all the bones, some guy was coming back in the opposite direction which seemed weird at the time. I heard the people behind me giving him a tip he was walking in the wrong direction, but since you follow one path the whole way through I have no idea how he managed to do that. Getting to see all the bones and skulls arranged so neatly was quite interesting. A whole lot more bones than I expected too, although once you seen one hallway of bones it can get a little repetitive.

The entrance hall to the Catacombes.

Pile of skull and bones.

Also on the south side of the river was the Pantheon, Paris edition. It looks kind of the same I suppose, and I'm not sure why they have two of them with the same name in different cities. Before jumping on the train to La Defense I got a better chance to see the Notre Dame Cathedral as well. La Defense is the business district of Paris which is a little bit away from the tourist attractions, to the west side of the city. Seems like a great idea. From underneath the Grande Arche you can see all the way down to the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees which is pretty cool, better than watching trams pass by.

The less frequented French Pantheon.

Notre Dame Cathedral again.

La Defense business district, Arc de Triomphe on the horizon.

The Grande Arche, the practical business version of the Arc de Triomphe.

I stopped off at Galeries La Fayette on the way to Montmartre, only to be tricked again. This was the Paris version of Harrod's! So I didn't bother to hang around and kept on going. Montmartre is where the famous Moulin Rouge is, as well as similar forms of entertainment. Likewise I would assume it's the setting for the film Amelie aka Amelie Of Montmartre. There's actually quite a long main street in the area, and it took a while to track down the Moulin Rouge. After that I had to go up a crazy hill to get to the Sacre Couer Basilica. Supposedly there was a funicular to take you up, but I didn't manage to find it and ended up having to walk up all the steps. The Basilica sadly had the no talking, no photography rules in place when you went inside.

The Moulin Rouge in Montmartre.

Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris.

Right near my hotel in the Bastille district I found out there was not one but three anime stores, one of them was huge and had some pretty cool stuff too. Unfortunately I was out of luggage space and couldn't consider any of the big items. They had some neat slippers, one was Donkey Kong style and another had big One-Up Mushrooms at the end, but they were all in small sizes :(

EU Holiday, September 12 (Bastille Day)

Time to head for Paris to conclude the trip. I knew there was a Madrid Airport bus leaving somewhere down at Plaza de Cibeles because that's where we got dropped off, but we searched around the previous day and couldn't find the stop going in the other direction anywhere. Lucky for me a bus driver who pulled up realised I was in the wrong spot and showed me where to go. I was flying with EasyJet, and if the "Airline" TV program is anything to go by, I was soon going to be angry and shouting "I'm never flying with EasyJet AGAIN!". Actually there wasn't any problem at all. The no assigned seat process was a bit strange, but it just meant you have to holdout as long as you can, until you stand up to join the queue when you think it's gotten long enough.

I had a booking for the Eiffel Tower at 5pm, so I figured I'd spend the 3 hours I had before then and walk the 8km through Paris from where I was staying in Bastille to the east, along the north bank of the Seine and then across it. First thing I passed by was Bastille Square which is just a square with one of those columns in the middle. Continuing along Rue Rivoli I reached the Hotel de Ville, not sure if it's actually a hotel because it looked kind of old and more like a church or something. A slight detour across the river was the Notre Dame Cathedral and then turning back the other way was the Centre Georgres Pompidou which is one of the strangest buildings I've seen, with all kinds of weird pipes and stuff.

The Hotel de Ville.

The front of the Notre Dame Cathedral, pretty ordinary.

Lots of pipes and other weird arrangements, it's the Pompidou Centre.

The other side is different but also weird.

I was running a bit behind schedule, so I kept going and reached the Louvre museum buildings, the Jardin des Tuileries (Garden of Tuileries?) that runs alongside it, and the Plaza de la Concorde. Straight ahead was the start of the Champs Elysees but instead I had to cross the river at this point and head for the Eiffel Tower to make my appointed time. It's pretty cool when you first start to see the Eiffel Tower pop up over the tops of the buildings, and also makes it pretty hard to get lost from that point on.

The glass triangle, with a surprisingly short line.

The Louvre buildings.

The fake Arc de Triomphe, or perhaps the fake Brandenburg Gate.

The Fountain of River Commerce and Navigation, of course!

Some bridge, in front of the Grand Palais des Champs-Elysees.

Les Invalides.

I made it just in time and got the lift up to the middle level. It wasn't too busy there, but after taking photos I realised the lift up to the very top was going to take a long time. Probably had to wait about half an hour to get to the top, so could have been worse. The view from the top was reasonable, but no quite as good as I imagined as there aren't that many landmarks to identify, at least not that I was aware of.

Standing in the Field of Mars, I didn't make that up.

The wait begins.

North of the tower, the Arc de Triomphe and a surprising number of trees.

Some water cannons that went of as I walked past.

Once I got back down, which also took a while, I headed up to the Arc de Triomphe which is definitely the original and best of the arches, and then down the Champs Elysees. There's a whole bunch of shops on the street, including the likes of Luis Vuitton, where people have to line up to enter the store, and Abercrombie & Fitch which had some weird garden entrance way with security guards at the front.

Finally made it to the arch.

Starting the long walk down the Avenue des Cadel-Evans.

EU Holiday, September 11 (Escape From Alcazar)

For my last day in Madrid, I instead went to Segovia, a small old city about an hour from Madrid. I arrived by high speed train to a station which is surrounded by nothing. There's just hills and grass, maybe even a few cows. They have a bus connection with the train to get you in to the actual city though. The first thing you see when you arrive is this big roman aqueduct. It has been surprisingly well preserved, although I still don't really understand how an aqueduct works. At least I can say I've seen an aqueduct...

There is a tourist map which marks all interesting things to see along the city, so I followed one of the routes for that which runs along the inner walls of the fortified city and past most of the landmarks. I passed a few churches and some other stuff, and arrived at the main square which contains a crazy large cathedral. I forgot to find out if it was possible to go inside before moving on. Next was the San Andres Gate (sadly not San Andreas Gate) which is one of the entrances into the city.

Segovia Cathedral.

Towards the back though is the biggest attraction of the city, Alcazar. It is a big stone castle with a bunch of large gray towers, and it looks strangely similar to one of those Disney castles.

Alcazar.

Alcazar front view, the best I could do with all the trees in the way.

The roman aqueduct, in central Spain.

I got back to Madrid in the afternoon to find all of Gran Via was closed down. It looked to me like a bicycle race was coming along soon, although Amir guessed it was a festival - another win to me. It was actually the last day of the Tour de Espana or something, like how the last day of the Tour de France goes down the Champs Elysees. I managed to grab a few photos of the leaders and the peloton as they went by a few times. I had tried to locate a few anime stores but they were all closed in the afternoon for the stupid siesta break and still hadn't opened back up at 5pm.

The peloton on Gran Via.

In the evening we went back to the Irish Pub another time, to watch the opening weekend of NFL games. On the way there it looked we had just missed out on the victory podium celebrations for the bicycle race, which they had set up in the middle of Plaza de Cibeles.

EU Holiday, September 10 (The Walking Debod)

Visited the Temple Of Debod in the morning, which looks like it belongs in Egypt instead of Spain. I think it was moved, or a gift, or something like that. It has a few of those arches outside, and a sort-of reflecting pool, as well as a small building with some Egyptian artifacts. To the other end of the park, which sadly was filled with trash and seems like it must be populated by homeless people, was the Madrid version of the cable car or teleferico. It wasn't opening until something ridiculous like 12pm, but the other station did not seem to be elevated much higher than the starting point, so it didn't seem like it was worth waiting around for.

The Temple Of Debod.

The Temple Of Debod, view partially obstructed.

We walked back through Madrid and down to the Caixa Forum, there was also one of these in Barcelona but this one is much better. It has this strange vertical wall with plants and shrubs growing on it, and the other side is a brown copper, which works well together somehow. The museum inside is free and sponsored by La Caixa, one of the banks in Madrid. They had exhibits on two levels, one was all photographs of old structures around Moscow and other parts of Russia which was quite good, and on the other level was some South American artifacts collection and Haiti earthquake photographs.

The Caixa Forum building and vertical garden wall.

More of the garden wall.

I had to spend the next hour in a queue at the Atocha Renfe train station to buy a ticket to Segovia, the only enjoyable part of that was seeing the large indoor garden they have at the station. In the afternoon we went to an Irish Bar that was showing the Liverpool vs. Stoke game, there was a surprising number of Liverpool fans in Madrid, yet they all had a disappointing day on this occasion.

Atocha Renfe station.

After that it was time for a real game, so we walked up to Bernabeu which was actually quite a long way. All the seats were kind of dirty and didn't look like they get cleaned often, but even worse than that, smoking is allowed in the stadium. Wherever I looked, pretty much everyone around me was smoking, and they would finish one and then move straight on to the next. It wasn't so bad during the game, but each time a goal was scored seemed to be the time when everyone would start up. At half time everyone moves from smoking to unwrapping their foil baguettes, almost everyone had one of these too! The atmosphere from the game and crowd was otherwise pretty good, and it was a close game with Real Madrid 4 Getafe 2 at the end.

Game time at the Bernabeu.

EU Holiday, September 09 (Leaving Las Ventas)

Up to the Santiago Bernabeu today to collect tickets for tomorrows match and to view the stadium on an off day. The route was quite similar to Barcelona and again they have way too many trophies and achievements listed in their museum. Overall I don't think the stadium was quite as good though. Went to nearby El Retiro which is one of the larger parks in Madrid, they have a lake where you can go boating! and a cool Crystal Palace building, but it was closed and there was nothing inside it. I also managed to smash my head walking under this waterfall on the way there, was sore for hours. Had a break in the afternoon to take care of laundry for the last time - according to the internet there is only three laundromats in all of Madrid, and everyone else owns their own washing machine.

The Bernabeu.

The top stand.

Front rows from the other side.

El Retiro Park.

Crystal Palace at El Retiro Park.

Amir was too tired to keep going, so I went off to Las Ventas Bullring to have a look around. It looked in great condition, but they didn't have any tour or access inside that I could see. It did look like they had some kind of event scheduled for the evening, I wasn't really interested in seeing that though. Close by at O'Donnell was this tower marked on my map, so I went to find out what that was, and discovered it was just some crappy radio or tv tower. I also took the train down to Oporto a little bit outside the city, so that I could say I've been to fake Oporto and to find out if there was anything Portugese about the place. It did not look like there was.

Outside Las Ventas.

Las Venturas would have been a better name.