The Cathedral and the Castle

As if we haven’t had enough of cathedrals and churches after Italy, we headed to Toledo for the Catedral de Toledo. Toledo was a rather small town, something like San Gimigano which we stayed at in Tuscany. It was a rather nice town to walk but since we stayed at a hotel slightly out of the city centre, we had a fair bit of a hike up a small hill to enter the city, good workout after the morning breakfast :p

From Wikipedia, ‘Toledo is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its extensive cultural and monumental heritage as one of the former capitals of the Spanish Empire and place of coexistence of Christian, Jewish and Muslim cultures, as well as the place where harsh religious persecutions where held against the Jews. Many famous people and artists were born or lived in Toledo, including Al-Zarqali, Garcilaso de la Vega, Eleanor of Toledo, Alfonso X and El Greco.’

View from the medieval city

Other than the above, Toledo is also famous for sword making and there were quite a few souvenir shops which sold full sized and miniature swords like Excalibur etc, kitschy but cute. They didn’t have any of the swords used in Lord of the Rings though, lolz…

Toledo was quite an easy town to walk around in. One of the highlights was of course the Catedral, which was rather unassuming from the exterior, in fact it looked kind of small and ordinary, however when you enter, it’s a whole different story. It was quite large and rather grand. The cathedral used to be quite poorly lit so a sculptor cut a hole in the ceiling to let more light in, lol... It’s rather well done though so if you don’t know you would have thought that it was how they had planned the cathedral to be like. With the sunlight, this is what you get to see clearly now

Inside the Cathedral

The other highlight was Iglesia de Santo Tome, which is a chapel with El Greco’s masterpiece ‘The Burial of the Count of Orgaz”. It was a bit of ‘The Last Supper” moment cos you have to queue to see the painting and just like “The Last Supper” there is another painting opposite it which no one bothers with. There is no time limit though but I think you can’t take pictures. We have never heard of El Greco before this but his paintings are quite recognizable, his faces are usually elongated and the people usually look quite tortured :p

View from the medieval city

After Toledo, we headed to Granada where I was very hyped up over Alhambra and Generalife from (a) reading Frommers which advised reserving tickets in advance and (b) pictures on the internet which looked so grand, but next time I’ll know better. We booked a tour of Alhambra from the official site as I thought it would be good to have a guide who can talk us through rather than just listening to the audioguide. Our guide was knowledgeable but her thoughts were a bit scattered, so we will get dribs drabs of information which was not pieced together nicely. We did learn that potatoes, corn and chocolate were not originally from Europe, but Americas (“New World”) instead, who knew! I mean I knew chocolate was from America but potatoes?

Inside the Nazareth Palace Granada

Cherry Blossoms in Granada

Anyway back to the tour, it included access to certain restricted areas so we had a guard following us around as he was needed unlock restricted areas included in our tour, it was almost like he was our bodyguard, lol… The tickets sold had a time restriction of either morning or afternoon and if you try entering certain sites after the time stated on your ticket, you weren’t allowed in. Alhambra and Generalife is actually open to the public, but if you want to visit certain sites within them, you have to show your ticket, so if you want to maximize your ticket, you have to plan your route carefully. The Palace of the Nasrids can only be entered at the specific time stated on the ticket so that also requires a bit of planning. They also had some restoration works going on so we couldn’t see the Court of Lions. While it is undeniably quite an interesting piece of architecture, it didn’t exactly lived up to my expectations.

The Roman Forum in Alhambra

View from Alhambra

On the whole, Toledo was much more enjoyable than Granada though I think the food in Granada was just a little bit better. And now, to Valencia to burn, baby burn!

Gaudi, Gaudi, Gaudi

After a night on the overnight ferry, we arrived at Barcelona! It was quite weird getting out of the ferry terminal, you literally just drive out from the ship and there were no customs at all. I know they are all part of the EU and they have eliminated border checks but it was still weird.

So, Barcelona, city of Gaudi and Picasso! After the Venice pick pocketing incident, we were actually a bit wary of Barcelona since the pickpockets there are supposed to be rather good. We actually spent quite a bit of time reading up on the various types of pickpocket scams and various other scams that happens in Spain. It was quite interesting to read but you also end up a little paranoid.

Anyhoo, we signed up for 2 walking tours in Barcelona, one of which was ok and one of which was really quite good. Both the tours can be signed up at the tourist office and they were relatively cheap, but of course cheap prices meant large groups, no more one-to-one with the tour guide. Our first tour was the Gothic tour which takes us through a walk in the Gothic Quarter, ‘Barcelona’s historical and political centre’. The group was really huge and I think our tour guide tried her best but she was somehow not very engaging. In addition, there was some kind of demonstration going on so I think we missed out on some areas. There were some rather nice sights though such as the Cathedral and some other which I forgot the names.

We had good meals in Barcelona and of course, being in Spain meant drinking Sangria!

Monk Fish with peppers

Pork Steak with Peppers

Fries+Pork Chunks+Chorizo+Egg = "Broken Eggs"

Super dish!

Spanish pork chops

The second tour we did was the Picasso tour and our guide was fabulous. While the group was just as huge, he was quite engaging and shared quite a few tidbits with us. It was rather interesting to visit the various places that influenced Picasso as a youth, his only public piece of art and of course the museum where you can see all his works before he started on his own unique style. As a person, he was quite horrible I think (all the wives, lovers and mistresses) but his talent is quite undeniable. Though we are not really that into art, the tour was quite interesting.

And of course what is Barcelona without Gaudi. The city had 3 of his works, Sagrada Familia (which you need to queue to go in), Casa Batllo and Casa Mila. There is also a Park Guell, which we didn’t visit due to lack of time. Apparently all his works are considered UNESCO World Heritage Sites. His works are really quite interesting and we both enjoyed them very much.

Sagrada Familia

Inside the Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia is really quite interesting, you can read all about it here. It was quite refreshing to see something different from all the churches we have visited in Italy and while it is still far from complete, I think the end product will be quite a sight to behold. There is a lift which goes up to the towers of the church and which you have to pay more for and which there is a designated time to go up. The view from the top was quite amazing and you get a pretty good view of Barcelona as most of the buildings are not very high. It was quite confusing though cos I thought we can walk across the towers but I think due to the construction going on, they sealed off the walkway. We were literally walking around in circles for a while and it was scary to look down from that height.

As for Casa Batllo and Casa Mila, Casa Batllo was quite an interesting house but I thought it wasn’t very well maintained. There were parts of the roof that had mosaic tiles falling off and some of the paintings on the wall were also chipped. It was amazing how much thought Gaudi put into each and every aspect of the building, from the doorknobs to the windows etc. Casa Mila was much better maintained and though we could only visit the roof and some parts of the terrace, more care seemed to have been taken in maintaining the building as a whole. Casa Batllo was also quite expensive to go into compared to the other two, but at the end of the day, it was still worth it.

Casa Batllo -

Gaudi's fascination with nature and its form shown here

Casa Mila / La Pedrera

Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo both required some queueing to enter but it wasn’t excessive. Summer time may be a little more crazy though and it doesn’t seem that they restrict the number of visitors at any one time so morning may be a better time to go. There are other Gaudi buildings around Spain but I think Barcelona has the most, so all in all definitely a city to visit.

Other than all the Gaudi buildings, we also visited ‘the largest market in Europe’ La Boqueria. It’s like our wet markets in Singapore but not as wet or smelly and with nicer displays of vegetables, meat and fruit. We concluded it looked nicer cos they bother arranging the produce rather than leaving them in the cardboard boxes like how we do it in Singapore. The fruit juices there on display all looked quite yummy and it was interesting how their fruit juices were always something combined with coconut, like raspberry+coconut, strawberry+coconut etc, weird combinations but it actually turned out to be quite tasty.

Arranged with love...

Endless rows of juice combinations

Chocolates,

Chilies,

Spices and Nuts.

We also did some window shopping. I had expected Mango and Zara shops to be everywhere but I think there were slightly more Zara than Mango shops around. Prices do seem to be a little cheaper than Singapore but then again, I only buy Mango during sale and nope, I didn’t buy anything.

One thing we did end up doing in Barcelona was eating quite a fair bit of fast food. We hardly saw McDonalds or any other fast food in Italy but everywhere you go in Barcelona, there seems to be a fast food outlet. It also doesn’t help that they have lunch so late (2pm is the fashionable time to eat lunch, we have seen people strolling in at 4pm to eat lunch!) so sometimes we get so hungry the only option seems to be fast food. Tapas weren’t exactly cheap either (around 3 or 4 euros per dish and we order around 4 or 5 dishes in order to have a proper dinner) and we only had it one night at a place that had 2 baby cockroaches crawling nearby so not the most pleasant experience. We also tried the paella but its quite huge and the first time we ate it, we struggled to finish it. We ate it once in Barcelona and then decided to only eat it in Valencia since that is apparently where they have the best paella in Spain. Food portions in Spain are quite big though by our standards and we usually struggle to finish our food. Meals were also quite ‘meaty’ which was a change from Italy where it was more balanced.

Paella!

All in all though, Barcelona was quite enjoyable, not withstanding all the warnings about pickpockets. And of course since we were fresh off the Venice experience, we were on super high alert.

10 things we learnt in Italy (in no particular order)

After spending 3 weeks in Italy, here are the Top 10 things we learnt about Italy

1. Bread is not served with olive oil in Italy. Olive oil is meant for dressing salads, not for drowning bread.

2. Italian food is not all about pasta, it's usually just a first course.

In fact, they start with a pasta, followed by a meat or seafood dish and then dessert.

3. Pizza is a main course and Italians can eat a whole 12" pizza individually, regardless of age and gender. We witnessed a young kid almost finishing one big pizza herself.

4. Spaghetti Bolognese isnt't from Bologna and not really from Italy. Spaghetti pasta isn't from this region of Italy and the sauce in Bologna is actually "Al Ragu", which is a similar meat sauce but not a rich tomato sauce.

5. Pasta is only eaten with a fork, no twirling on a spoon.

6. Aglio olio is never cooked with bacon. (The waiters all give a funny look when we requested it, lol)

7. There are dogs everywhere in Italy, and we mean everywhere. In restaurants, shops, hotels, trains, everywhere!

8. Ducati started out with something totally non-automobile related, typewriters and cameras.

They made motorized bicycles after World War II and it then evolved into motorcycles.

9. Marco Polo didn't bring back spaghetti (concept of noodles) from China, though he did bring back a Mongolian wife. Apparently spaghetti was already present in Italy BEFORE he went to China.

10. Nutella is from Italy! And I always thought it was some Asian brand, oops...

CS and W went up the hill...

to eat a pot of pasta!!!

Well, actually we climbed up a mountain and not a hill, specifically Mount Vesuvius, the one famous for burying Pompeii.

We had extended our Rome trip by one more day as I had spent one day being sick, so on our second last day of Rome, we decided to do a day trip to Pompeii. While driving there, we decided to visit Mount Vesuvius since it was along the way. It proved to be the right decision cos Pompeii was quite the disappointment, but more on that later.

Some facts about Mount Vesuvius first

- Vesuvius is the only active volcano in mainland Europe

- It last erupted in 1944 but still poses a threat to the cities around it

- It is still considered an active volcano

- Mount Vesuvius is 4300 feet or 1310m above sea level.

- To give you an idea of how explosive it was; when Mount Vesuvius blew its top in 79AD the height of the mountain was halved and the nearby coastline extended about four hundred metres further out!

We drove almost to the top and climbing up the last bit of Mount Vesuvius was very very tiring to say the least. Though it was still winter, there were quite a few people climbing up the mountain. We met a French father with his 2 boys, one of them looked like he was only 3 or 4!!! And of course, there were the Italians with their dogs right up in the mountains, lol...

The barren treacherous moon-like terrain we had to climb up

Actually there was a path and the view was not so barren

It's free to climb up the mountain, you only have to pay if you climbed right to the summit. The view up there was pretty amazing. The mountain had quite a few souvenir shops and there was one right at the summit! Imagine making their way up 1310m up to work everyday, faints...

We decided to take a break at the summit to eat our lunch of spaghetti bolognese which CS had cooked. Our thermal pot has proven to be quite the good investment, hehe... And yes, that's how CS and W ended up at the mountain, eating a pot of pasta.

Trusty thermal pot looking over the edge of the volcanic crater

After the fortifying lunch, we headed to Pompeii. Maybe it was because we had lovely Brian as our guide for 2 days or maybe Pompeii was just really quite poorly maintained but we totally didn't enjoy Pompeii at all. The site was not well organized for tourists to visit. Visiting with a tour guide would be recommended. The audio guide not arranged properly according to the map given and it was old and falling apart. There were 2 separate numbers on many of the sites so it wasn't clear which one we had to enter into the audio guide and there was a severe shortage of signage. Sad to say, it just felt like a big mess. I'm sure the site itself is probably quite impressive but as we and the other tourists there spent half the time figuring out where to go, it kind of just killed any interest. I think the exhibition we attended in the National Musesum in Singapore was way better and gave me a better idea of what life was like. All in all, quite disappointing.

Pompeii

The next day was slightly better, we headed to the catacombs just outside of Rome city before taking a ferry to Barcelona. There were guided tours and we had a funny Filipino man as our guide. I must say it was quite well organized, there were tours in English, Korean, Italian and some other languages. It was a shame that they removed all the bones as tourists kept taking them as souvenirs, no photographs were allowed too, so no bones and no photos. It was seriously quite interesting though and the guide really made our tour quite interesting. He had pop quizzes for us and if you failed you get a lifetime stay in the catacombs.....

We then drove off to Livorno to catch a ferry to Barcelona. The ferry terminal was seriously ulu (in the middle of nowhere) and we ended up eating instant pasta at a little bar for dinner. As we had a lot of time before the ferry set sailed, we ended up watching "The men who stare at goats" in the car, our own version of a drive in movie, lol... Movie was damn funny, go watch it.

The ferry itself was quite nice, we booked a cabin to ourselves and the beds were rather comfortable. Having said that though, we are definitely not cruise people, one night is fine, but anything longer than that will drive me mad.

And now, Spain!! Actually we are now in Germany, heading to Switzerland, we just have a huge backlog of entries to do, whoops...