More adventures around France

Well back in Amsterdam now after an epic 13hr drive yesterday from Vieuxx Boucau, a beach near Hossegor on the Atlanic coast of France.

Had a fantastic time Exploring the area around Narbonne and Carcasonne with Nana and Viv . Josh and Rebecca arrived last Tuesday to Sainte Valiere for Nanas birthday on Wednesday then we drove up to the Atlantic coast on Friday.

Two and a bit months has gone quickly but also at times been slow which was good too.  Back to NZ and the real world of work again on Thursday.

Out and About with Nana & Viv

Sainte Valiere (wee Village near Narbonne)

Im now in St Valiere with Nana and Viv staying at Estival , a homestay type place with a couple of cottages owned by an english couple. We all met up at Carcasonne airport on Wednesday , I got the train down from Toulouse and Viv flew in from London, its quite funny to be with little Nana and Viv wondering around the villiage.  The villiage is surrounded by vineyards and  its about a 10- 15min drive to Narbonne where all the shops are , we go in with the couple who own Estival. Will try to post photos soon .

weekend day walk

This is a wee mishen we did on Saturday to Dourgne,a little village East of Toulouse.

Day walk in the Pyrenees

Toulouse – Well so far Toulouse has been lovely , very old beautiful city. Im staying  with my friend Marion who I worked with last year at Kathmandu back in NZ.

Yesterday we did a mishen to the Pyrenees, the mountain range between Spain and France, we drove for about 1.5 hrs from Toulouse to a track which pretty much zig zaged straight up for 2hrs too a mountain lake. Fantastic scenery and views with snow too! pretty crazy because the weather was so hot. We had lunch for a while by the lake then made our way back down the track which only took about an hour. Today I checked out the Natural history museum and gardens around the corner from Marion’s.  Will be here till Wed 27th then down to see Nana in Narbonne.

Barcelona

Hi from Toulouse

Well I feels like i have packed in sooo much in the last 2 weeks. Tarifa, Barcelona and just arrived in Toulouse yesterday.

The rest of my stay in Tarifa was very chilled out, mostly spent my time at the beach and then going to Chilli Mosa for dinner. Graeme also took me to the place where he worked and stayed when he first came too Tarifa about 6 months ago, its morrocon style accomidation but free to stay if you do work on the property, run by English hippy characters .

My mishen to Barcelona was a long one , bus at 8.30 to Malaga for 2hrs then waited at the airport a few hrs for my flight to Barcelona. I got the train into Barcelona and then a metro to my hostel but got absoloutely soaked trying to find the hostel  in absolute pouring rain, eventualy found it with the help of friendly locals .

I met a Hungarian girl at the Hostel, which was very nice,  pretty much straight away and went out to dinner with her and some freinds right in central Barcelona the night I arrived so when we finnaly got back to the hostel after travelling all day sleep was very good. I’l post more about Barcelona in a day or so.

Au revoir for now

Barcelona part two – I basically had 2 . 5 days to check out barcelona but I mananged to pack in quite a bit , would like to go back there some day for sure. My first day i just check out La Rumbla the main st in the city centre which is where I found the food market . Day 2 was the Gaudi stuff, the gaudi park and sagrada famillia also a few other buildings.

Day 3 was a quite a bit of walking , very hot too. I check out some gardens , the olypic stadium and the beach with far too many packed onto it so i didnt stay there for long. The Hostel experience was heaps of fun, I met a couple of girls from Wellington and some Australians.  I also left the reception staff ,who play music in the comuninal areas, a few albums of  NZ music which they were stoked about. On Monday morning I got the bus to Toulouse, about 6-7 hrs but very nice country side, vinyards in all directions.

Tarifa (the bottom of Spain)

Hi Everyone

Well made i’ve made it to the southern most point of Europe !

Tarifa is a lovely town a bit smaller than kerikeri. Its great to get away from the big cities for a week and chill out at the beach. Graeme and his girlfiend Maria from the Chech Rebupublic live in town and close to the beach, we’ve been having fantastic vegetarian food since i’ve been here at Chilli Mosa, a vegetarian resturant that Mariea works at. . There’s always  a wind here which can sometimes be very strong but its not cold.  It’s not quite summer  yet but it sure feels like it to me in the  middle of summer it can get up to 37-40 degrees !  around June/July.

Morocco is much closer than I thought, about half the distance between the north and south Is in NZ.  On a very clear day you can see the houses on the hills of Africa ,very cool. Yesterday we drove for about 15mins down the coast to another beach, Punta Paloma. It felt very similar to the beaches in Northland, walking through pine forest tracks out to the Atalantic ocean , sooo blue.

Im here for another few days so il be making the most of the beach before heading to Barcelona.  I have some pics to post but left my cable back at the house, will post them tommrow or the next day.

Hasta Luego.  love to all

Sacha

Queens day and Kayaking

Queens Day 30th May : The Dutch Queens birthday, basically an excuse for a  big party throughout Amsterdam. Heaps of  free music everywhere, lots of markets secound hand stuff etc on the streets and an insane amount of people. We didnt go into the centre but you can hardly walk because of the crowds apparently. We spent a few hours on the canals in the morning before they got too busy then hung out in the westerpark for the afternoon. Later on we went to Parideso, really amazing club in a church  to see a few djs till the wee hours.

kayaking on Saturday: Josh, Rebecca,  Josh’s friends and I did a wee Kayaking / canoeing trip around a wetland nature reserve in the north of Amsterdam on Saturday afternoon . Stopped by a little wine place along the way beside the water too, very nice day.

This will be the last post for a wee while, off to Tarifa (Spain) on thursday to stay with cousin Grahame.

Tot ziens

Paris in a week

Hey, just got back to Amsterdam from Paris this afternoon. Beautiful city but very big and whole lota people. Will post more details tommrow .

So I stayed with Geoff Cant ( Lucy’s brother) which was super easy to find in Montmartre, only one metro line from the train station where I got in  and a 5 min walk. I was very lucky to have some one to stay with as i imagine the hostel prices would have been pretty expensy. My first day I checked out the pompido centre, a very cool mondern building that has several galleries of modern art picasso mondrian and an amazing kadinsky exhibition (one of the tutors at the original bauhaus.)I used the metro to get around it seemed to only take about 5-10 mins to go anywhere and only 1.60 euro , although some of the stations where I had to conect to another line were crazy busy with so many metro lines.

Thursday i checked out Montmartre, the sacre cour bassilica on the hill behind Geoffs and the surrounding area, again  loads of tourists. Friday i was a very sucessful tourist and did the arc de triumph , eiffel tower, hotel invaldies and part of the louve Museum.  The arc was pretty nuts because it is a giant roundabout with about 8 or 9 roads coming off it! the drivers in paris are crazy too , people on the roundabout have to give way to the people coming onto it so , it looked like quite a mess.  The Eiffel tower was very cool, i took the stairs ques were much quicker than the lifts. Spectacular views in all directions and super sunny day.

Texel Island with Rebecca’s family for the weekend.

Have more to post later , off to Paris now.