Euro-Trip 2006

It's the last day of our Euro Trip. I've not updated in a week, so have a lot to tell you. I did type a blog in Paris on Sunday morning, but when I posted it, the whole thing crashed and I lost it. So I typed another one and the same thing happened again. I was not happy. Anyway...

We spent the rest of the day in Madrid lying in a big park in the sun. Thomas was lying directly in the sun for the best part of three hours with no tshirt on. His back got really badly burned and has since blistered quite badly. It's starting to get a lot better now (one week later) but is peeling all over the place. Everywhere you look there are bits of Thomas's back!

So we arrived in Lourdes on Wednesday at 11.30am where we took a taxi from the train station to the Hotel Pavilon Bleu, where we had stayed a few years ago with the youth, in the hope that they would have a room for us for a couple of nights. Luckily, they had two twin rooms available and gave us a good price. First on the agenda in Lourdes was a shower. We'd been out of our hostel in Barcelona since Monday morning, spent Monday at the beach, travelled overnight to Madrid, spent Tuesday lying in the sun, travelled overnight to the south of France and then taken another train from there to Lourdes. We did not smell very nice.
Freshened up and smelling great, we headed to Albert's (the pub) to see if there was anyone around from the diocese. We met up with some of the youth and a few other people and had something to eat there. Afterwards we went down to the domain and the grotto for a walk around in the rain. Typical Lourdes weather, overcast and light rain which lasted for most of our stay! We then went back to Albert's where I discovered I'd left my camera lying on a table. Luckily one of the youth had picked it up and I got it back. I switched it on to find that every single one of my photos from 8 different cities, 3 and a half weeks of backpacking around Europem more than 200 photos had been deleted. I don't know who did it, and I assume it was an accident but I was not happy. Luckiy Thomas has lots of photos from the same places, so when we get home I'll get a copy of his and post them online. Obviously they won't be as good as mine, but don't let that upset you too much. So the rest of our time in Lourdes was spent between Albert's and the domain. Lots of fun with guitars and pianos was had, since we hadn't played any music for a few weeks. I think we're all really glad that we managed to get to Lourdes again. It was good to see so many familiar faces.

Our train for Paris left Lourdes early, very early (8.35am) on Friday morning. It was around 6 hours and we all slept for a lot of the journey. We arrived in Paris in the afternoon and took our best friend, the metro, to our HOTEL. That's right, another HOTEL and not a hotel. The room wasn't up to much to be honest. We had a TV that didn't work plus a private bathroom, but those were the only 'luxuries'. We had two single beds and one double bed which Thomas and Kieran had to share, much to the satisfaction of me and Deeney. We didn't do much on Friday other than spend a bit of time in the room and get food. Saturday was our big sightseeing day. We did most of the touristy stuff: took the metro to the Louvre and spent 2 and a half hours there and still feel like we didn't even see half of it; we then went to Notre Dame Cathedral and had a look around inside of it (didn't see any hunchbacks); took the metro again to the Champs Elysee which we walked right up to get to the Arc d'Triomph and walked from there to the Eiffel Tower. We then looked for somewhere affordable to eat, which is near impossible in Paris on our budget anyway. The best idea seemed to be to head back out to where we were staying where the restaurants were a lot cheaper. Kieran and Thomas weren't that hungry, so Deeney and I went to a pizza place round the corner from the hotel. We stopped in a supermarket on the way back for some beer and wine. The four of us had an exciting Saturday night sitting in the room playing cards before crashing out after a long day.

Sunday was the World Cup final, and we were in Paris, the French capital. During the day we went to the Sacre Cour (I'm not sure if that's how you spell it) where unwillingly spent 5 euros each on bracelets that we did't want. 4 guys came up to us in the street and just started making them round our fingers, offered us the "good price" of 10 Euros, which apparantly is half of what they normally charge. I managed to get the guy down to 5. I tried 2 first, but he was having none of it. From there we went into the centre again to the Champs Elysee where the city was warming up for the world cup. It was mobbed with french people and tourists. People hanging out of their cars waving flags and singing in the streets. The atmosphere was great. Unfortunately, the bar prices in the centre of Paris are as cheap as the food, so we got on the metro again and went out towards Notre Dame where we found a nice restaurant with cheap wine and watched the game from there. Italy undeservedly won on penalties, and Paris was not in the mood to party. So we had another pretty early night.

Monday was our last day in Paris. Kieran and I both wanted to go back to the Eiffel Tower to go to the top of it, since the queues had been too long on Saturday. Thomas and Deeney went to another part of Paris where there apparantly lots of street artists who charge ridiculous amounts of money for paintings. So Kieran and I joined the queue and waited in it for about and hour and a half. We walked up the stairs to the first and second floors, where there is a lift to take you to the top. It was around 3pm by this time and we had to meet the other two underneath the Eiffel Tower (how romantic!) at 3.30pm to head out to the train station for our train to Brussels. The queue for the lift to the top was another 40 minutes to get up, and probably the same to get from the top back down, so we didn't have time to do it which was quite disappointing. Still, the view from half way was still amazing.

The train to Brussels, our last train in Europe, was less than an hour and a half. We arrived yesterday at dinner time and took a tram from the station to our hostel, which is very, very nice and has free internet access (hence the length of this blog). The guy at the reception gave us a few tips about where to eat and drink in the city. After showering and getting ready, we headed to a long street of restaurants and bars for something to eat. There are people outside of every restaurant trying to get you in. We gave in quite early on and paid 18 euros each for three courses and a free beer. The drinks were quite expensive on top of that, so it wasn't really worth the money. Afterwards we paid a brief visit to Brussels' most famous bar, Delerium where they hold the world record for the most types of beer available: more than 2000. This is all very well if you're a beer drinker, but unfortunately Thomas, Kieran and I are not. So Deeney had a bottle of Heineken (yes, I did say more than 2000 to choose from) and we left to go to a blues bar called Bizon where there was a jam session on. Quite a few good musicians were playing guitars, piano, percussion instruments and singing. Deeney ended up going up and sang a couple of songs before we left to go to an Irish pub that we had passed on the way. We were all in the mood to go to a club since it was our last night out in Europe, but Brussels does not like to dance during the week apparantly. So we stayed in the Irish place and came back to the hostel just before 3am.

I'm not sure what we're going to do today since I don't think there's much else to do in Brussels other than eat or drink.

We're flying home tomorrow morning. I can't believe that it's been a full month. Amsterdam seems like a lifetime ago, but I really don't feel as though I've been away for a long time yet. I definitely want to travel more in the near future, although I'm not sure where yet. We've met loads of different people who have done so much travelling and are doing different trips, so I have lots of different ideas for the future. I think we've all gained quite a lot from this trip and learned different things. We've not had any major fall outs apart from some funny arguments over nothing between Thomas and Deeney which they've been able to laugh at and the time I said the Reichstag was on the left and it was actually on the right, I don't think Thomas will ever let me forget that. We've seen so many different places and met so many people that part of us doesn't want to stop, but I think we're all ready to come home and sleep in a comfy bed, take clothes out of a wardrobe and not a bag, eat what we want when we want, drive instead of taking trains and metros and see our friends and families again.

Thanks for reading and leaving all of your comments.

See you soon!

Mark