Molly!

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Paris, Venice and Slovenia

PARIS

From Madrid we flew to Paris and spent three days exploring the city. On the first day, Col directed us on a grand walking tour of many of the sights such as the Grande Ville Hotel, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Pantheon, the Latin Quarter, Luxemborge Park (where it was challenging to dodge the pigeon poo from the trees above!), St Sulpice, the Louvre, the Champse Elysee, and the Arche de Triumphe.

On the second day we took a long walk along the Seine and then visited the top of the Eiffel Tower to enjoy the amazing view over Paris. After coming down from the Eiffel we sat in a lovely little park beneath the tower and had a romantic dinner of a tin of lentils messily combined with a tin of spinach! Oh well, we thought it was close enough to strawberries and champagne! As we walked across the bridge away from the tower and looked back at it, we were pleasantly surprised to see the tower all lit up with twinking lights. It was really magical.

Overall Paris was a really beautiful city with amazing historical monuments and sights and we enjoyed our time there although we found it to be very expensive, even after living in London!

VENICE

We arrived late at night in Venice, Italy, and headed for our accommodation which was a cabin in a camping villiage, a short boat ride away from Venice itself. In the morning we took the ferry to town and began exploring the city. What can we say? It was so so so beautiful!! Narrow, winding, cobbled streets lined with small shops mostly selling handmade Venetian Glass or masks weaved their way over canal bridges and through the city. The Saint Marco Basilica is a prominent feature in the main square and is just gorgeous with its stunning architecture and ornate decoration.

We made sure to fit in a yummy pizza and wine meal and sampled some magnificent gelati! Verdict: Highly recommended, very beautiful and romantic, even moreso than Paris.

SLOVENIA

We caught a train from Venice to Ljubljana, arriving in the evening. We found our accommodation then set out searching for some dinner and stumbled upon one of the most beautiful cities we had ever seen, where things were actually affordable and people were very friendly. The city lies beneath a towering hill with a medieval castle on it and is centred around a flowing green river which is crossed by several cobbled stone bridges. We were very pleasantly surprised to find a great pub where we could have dinner and drinks for barely over 5 euro or 9 dollars AU. The next day was a public holiday so everything was closed and we just mosied around town and walked up to the castle as well as planned our travel for the next few days.

Bright and early the next morning we hopped on a bus to lake Bled in the Julian Alps. The mountains surrounding the lake are all snowcapped, there is a fairytale castle perched high on a cliff overlooking the lake, and an island in the middle of the lake with an old church on it. We spent the first day walking around the lake and also doing some really nice bushy walks up some of the surrounding hills overlooking the lake.

The next day we took a bus to Lake Bohinj which was as if not more beautiful and far less touristy. We did a 16km walk to a lovely waterfall along a gorge with turquoise rockpools. The setting was unbeatable.

In all we really really loved Slovenia and would highly recommend it as a great travel destination. It is so small its really quick and easy to get around and had good links for getting to Croatia which is where we headed next.

Will continue with our Croatia trip soon....

Col and Ang, xo.

Croatia so far

Slovenia

Venice

Paris

Pics: Morocco, Madrid and Gredos mountains

Pics: Farewell to London friends and start of Morocco

Morocco and Spain!

Hi everyone!

We´re having a ball so far on our travels! Since leaving London on 4th April we headed for Morocco and spent 8 glorious days in the vibrant, bustling, and somewhat chaotic city of Marrakesh and also the charming fishing town on the coast Essouira. Being the seasoned travellers that we now are we had fully prepped ourselves for not getting led astray or ripped off. We did well for about 15 minutes. After having only spent about 30 minutes in Marrakesh we had been seduced into a cup of mint tea in an old man´s shop and had been dressed up as ´Mohammed´and ´Fatima´ in traditional attire and had been attacked and swindled by snake charmers who put cobras all over Col. Oh yes, such wise and seasoned travellers we are! Oh well, we have some quite amusing pics to show for it.

After settling into our ´riad´(family-owned hotel usually built around a central tiled courtyard and with a roof-top terrace) we ventured out to the central market square and the ´souks´(small alley-ways full of stalls selling everything from leather goods to silver, fabric and spices. As in Thailand it was difficult to just look or simply ask the price of something without being pressured into making a purchase. We got some good bargains but on the whole we found that things were not as cheap as we had heard or expected. After a hard day of fighting off snakes and touts we headed to a restaurant for our first taste of real moroccan food. The typical dishes include tagines of many descriptions, cous cous, and pastillas. All the food we tried was gorgeous!

After the third day of being in Marrakesh we felt as though we needed a break from the chaos and decided to head for the seaside town of Essouira. We tried to get tickets for the bus company recommended in all the travel guides but were only able to get tickets for the local (and very dodgy) bus service. For starters we wer coerced into paying an additional fee for our luggage not only once but twice! (And they even attempted a third). The bus looked and sounded like it would probably explode, and well... we had a tyre blow-out on the way. ´Conveniently´it happened outside a carpet warehouse in the middle of the desert! On the bus we met a young mother travelling with her two gorgeous little girls, one 5 and one 8. We fell in love with the girls and got on really well with their mum so we met up on a few occasions once we arrived in Essouira.

Essouira was lovely. It had a really long and nice beach (ok, not quite queensland standard but close!) and a quaint town within ancient city walls with narrow winding paved streets. It was a lot more relaxed than Marrakesh and was a great spot to relax. After spending a few days there we headed back to Marrakesh to get our flight to Madrid. Although we had an amazing time in Morocco we must admit we did breathe a sigh of relief when the plane took off.

We arrived in Madrid late at night and headed straight to our backpackers hostel which was quite centrally located. The next morning we headed to the Reina Sofia gallery which was amazing. We focused on the permanent collection which features Salvadore Dali and Picasso (including his most famous work, ´Guernica´). In the afternoon we met up with our good friend Nats (Natalie) who was able to come and visit us for the weekend from London. We had a great couple of days with Nats, enjoying tapas and drinks, several historical sights, and especially the amazing music and nightlife of Madrid.

On Sunday we embarked on the trip out to the Gredos mountains to take part in the program where we helped Spaniards to improve their conversational English. In exchange for our time we received our accomodation and food in an absolutely beautiful hotel in a picturesque part of the countryside. A typical day involved about 6 one to one sessions with different Spaniards as well as group activities and entertainment (provided by group members). It was a really great way to learn a little about Spanish culture and also to meet heaps of people from many different backgrounds. The week flew by and we feel very positive about the experience!

Now we are back in Madrid and will be flying to Paris tomorrow evening! We hope that you are all going well back at home and are keen to hear from you!

Lots and lots of love,
Ang and Col, xoxox.

PS - We will post some pictures soon when we get the time.