Happy New Year everyone! This year has been amazing for both Dee and I. We’ve managed to suspend our jobs (Dee permanently!), got our apartment rented out, possessions all packed and hopped on an airplane to explore the word! We’ve seen and done some pretty frickin awesome things and written about most of it. So here it is, what we think our top 10 things we did this year traveling.

The DVS top 10 of 2009

There was one main attraction that drew us to visit the city of Barcelona. An old friend of ours Dino, told us about this park and how it’s like stepping into a scene from Alice in Wonderland. How every part of the park seems like it’s meant to play with your mind. We told Karen and Steve about this park and they were sold. So they met back up with us after their visit with family friends in Switzerland.

I somehow magically found us a nice apartment to rent for only €100 a night. Located just a few blocks from Las Rambas, the market, and a metro stop. A perfect location and such a blessing for our travels! We were all still feeling pretty ran down after partying for a week solid at Sun & Bass with not much rest afterwards. Having a little place to call our own with a kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and a LIVING ROOM! What a concept! One thing you don’t experience much while backpacking is spending quality time on a couch and we all often mentioned how we missed our couches back home. Almost moreso then our own beds!

After finding out that Karen and Steve would not arrive to Barcelona until late at night we knew what sort of moods they may be in and decided to make their arrival to Barcelona perfect. We gave them our location and directions, went shopping to the market for fresh ingredients and of course some wine, and then cooked all of us some homemade Tacos! Our evening was much like the first evening we met up with each other back in Amsterdam, all of us full of stories, smiles, and excitement.

Then the day finally came, to witness this park and other creations by Gaudi with our own eyes. Karen and Steve started us all of right by waking up, sneaking off to the store, and then making us all breakfast complete with mimosa’s! The plan was to check out as many of Gaudi’s buildings and creations as we could in one day.

The first sight we came across the lampposts that are along Las Rambas. Some of his most earliest commissioned work. Resembling something that looks like it should be in Grandma’s garden as a hanging plant hook, these intricate posts give a busy city street a very organic look. Complete with comfortable curved benches at the base to help you admire his work.

The next two buildings by Gaudi we came across on our route are located on the same street as the lampposts. The first one is the Casa Mila aka known as La Pedrera that is an apartment building. The building does not use any straight lines, thus the exterior of the building is very wavy, with its features bubbling in and out almost like a building one would find on the planet Tatooine (in Star Wars). There is a rooftop area with even more Gaudi goodness to admire that you can pay a fee to view, but it was closed for a private function when we were there.

Just a few block downs from the first building we visited is the Casa Batlló. When you approach the building from the side it looks like peopling are entering through a giant mouth. The rest of the building is a colorful array of mosaic tiles that almost look like flowering vines and each balcony looks like a skull-like masquerade mask. We decided to not pay the fee and explore the inside, as there was a long line and were feeling antsy to get to the park.

This is only half of it… it’s too huge to photograph!

We then took a walk and headed towards the world famous Sagrada Família. A church that was started while Gaudi was still alive but still is not finished. The immense size and crazy amount of intricate work is speculated to take about 200 years to complete, and was started in 1882. The hopeful proposed completion date is set to be for 2026. There are currently 8 spires completed with another 8 even bigger ones to go up. Walking up to this church is a feeling one cannot explain. It’s very dark and gothic looking with, to our opinion, scary looking statue creations in telling the story of Christ on the outside. Not being Christians our self, we wonder how people who follow the religion feel about the look of this church. It’s quite astonishing. One half of the church is built and designed by Gaudi himself, the other half is designed by other architect’s using a similar style but with a more modern approach.

Our last and most looked forward stop on our Gaudi day of sight-seeing was Park Guell, It originally was contracted to be a gated community with the best views of Barcelona. The project flopped and the entire area was turned into one of the most amazing parks in the world. We took the metro from Sagrada Família to the closest stop we could see on the map to the park. This path ended up leading us up a massive hill and towards the back entrance of the park. For anyone planning to go here, we highly suggest to take the same route. A bit of a work out, (however there is some escalators at the steepest parts), you end up at the highest point of the park with a spectacular view of Barcelona below.

You then walk down the winding paths to the main section of the park… however it was a bit hard sometimes to figure out which paths lead up and which ones lead down… almost like walking through an MC Esher painting! We soon found some steps that looked like a easy short cut and heading down on them. Each step was uneven and made you feel drunk as you walked. Looking closely at the steps we were pretty sure this was intended and not just worn over time. Our entire adventure down we felt as if we were being followed by Parakeets. Squak Squak and then we would see a flash of bright green fly by. Are those really here? Are they even native to this area??

Looks like roots!

And then we came to the clearing and saw the majestic pillars supporting a huge platform. Surrounding the platform is a covered pathway with palm trees growing above it, when you look at this from a distance it looks like the supports are actually the roots of the palm trees.

After enjoying the view from the platform we headed down the stairs to check out the majestic pillars. A violinist was playing and the echo inside this area made it sound like it was coming out of surround sound speakers. The entire park is covered in tiny broken pieces of mosaic tile to a precise beauty. We couldn’t help to wonder how long it would take to lay them all down, one by one, and how many times Gaudi’s name was cursed by the men who had to lay them as it must have been such a chore.

Other treasures to find are walkways that give you vertigo and make you feel like your walking sideways all at the same time, stone work that looks like pile of rocks thrown together up close but from a distance actually form into distinct and recognizable designs. Basically, much like our friend Dino described, it’s like walking through a scene in Alice in Wonderland and more!

Looks like a pillar or randomly place rocks….

But from afar said random placed rocks actually begin to form into intricate designs

If you love to spend your free time looking at unique art, enjoying parks, and feeling tripped out, then Park Guell is a must see for you. It’s like being inside an art project designed for entertainment.
Check out the rest of our photos from Barcelona in our flickr album by clicking here.

We separated from our friends Steve and Karen for a few days. They went off to Switzerland to visit a family friend and we stayed one extra night in Rome to do our adventurous Macbook power adaptor shopping, and then figured ourselves the cheapest route to get to Barcelona. Our options were the following:

1. Take an overnight ferry – We pretty much crossed this option off right away… thinking we have Eurail passes that we paid good money for and should use them.
2. Take an overnight train to Zurich and then jump on a train to Barcelona – From our past experiences with overnight trains and paying the extra costs for the private sleeper cabins we decided to avoid this.
3. Take a train to Milan and then catch a connection train to Nice. Stay in Nice overnight and then catch a train the next day to Barcelona. With only having to pay reservation fees this is the route we picked. It sound the easiest for travel and providing a small amount of time in Nice with a good nights rest.

So, the next day we made our reservations, we picked the fastest connection in Milan so we could arrive in Nice with some time to actually explore it a bit. Arriving in Milan, I ask Scott how long do we have till we get on our next train? He tells me we have just under 2 hours. We noticed on the board there was a train leaving in 15 mins to Nice but since our stomachs were growling and we have all learned that hunger overrules all, we decided to get some lunch and hop into an Internet café to reserve a room on HRS.com in Nice. We were taught from my German relatives that this site gives cheaper rates and great specials for hotels then what you would be told by just showing up. To our surprise, they were right and hotels sometimes even proved to be cheaper on HRS.com then booking a hostel room!

We choose a hotel room in Nice that was right across the street from the train station to make things super easy for our early morning train to Barcelona the next day. Paid the deposit fee, grabbed ourselves a McDonald’s ice cream cone in celebration, and headed back slowly to the Milan train station to catch our train, taking pictures of the outside fountain on the way. We were actually quite impressed by the train station… and have heard that is pretty much the only impressive thing to see in Milan.

Licking our cones in satisfaction we look at the board to see what track our train is on, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Not one electronic line of information stated our train number let alone anything saying its destination was Nice. Scott pulls out our reservation ticket to double-check the time and with much swearing advises me he was always looking at the date on the ticket rather then the time!! Our train was actually the one we saw on the board when we first arrived here. Now we just wasted money on our reservation fee and are starting to worry if we can even get to Nice tonight for our hotel reservation with an already paid deposit.

Now our ice cream cones were not as satisfying.. so we pulled ourselves over onto a bench to collect our composure and finish off the cones. What are we going to do? I pulled out our Eurail timetable schedule and we flipped back and forth through the pages frantically. From what we could see there was no more options available to us. I feel like I kept my cool in this whole situation quite well, but Scott was dreading the worse. I think more because he did a mistake of reading the ticket incorrectly and that little mistake lead us to arguing on this little bench and loosing money all at the same time. It was getting quite hard to reason with him to the point we had to just not talk to each other for 5 minutes.

During those 5 minutes I thought to myself while looking at this tiny little schedule book that there is no way it lists ALL the trains in Europe. It must just list the most popular routes and leave the rest out. It would be impossible for something so small to have all the listings for such a VAST train network across 21 countries that accept the Eurail. Once the five minutes past and I could see the vein on Scott’s forehead decreased in size, I explained to him my thoughts and suggest we go stand in the long line and tell the lady we need to get to Nice tonight and see if there is anyway it can be done. Scott doubted the idea but after some more discussion I convinced him to get up and come with me.

Low and behold there was a way to get to Nice. It involved us connecting 3 or 4 times in small town France locations that we can’t even remember and landed us in Nice at 9 pm. Our reservation deposit was not a waste and we were ever so thankful to have a room just across the street from the station. Unfortunately we arrived exhausted and never saw Nice, since our train to Barcelona was at 6 am the next day.

What did we learn in this situation?

• Make sure you are reading your ticket correctly especially if you can’t read the language on it! Maybe even have your travel mate to look at the ticket as well.
• Always double check your train numbers and don’t just rely on checking for the destination on the board.
• The Eurail time schedule you are given does NOT list all the trains.
• Keep your cool if you mess up and miss a train, as there is most likely another option for you.
• Give Scott about 5 minutes if he gets really frustrated and upset before speaking to him with good solution making ideas.