EUROPE!

Long time, no post!!  We are very sorry to our faithful followers; we’ve now been in Europe over two weeks and have been having such a great time with family and friends that we haven’t managed to document it in blog form.  We do apologize and hope to keep more regular updates from here on out!! We are going to try a different format of more pics less typing this time, so hopefully you like it.

England: London-Stapleford-Cambridge-Sedberg; March 30 to April 10

Our European adventure started off in London, where we were welcomed with open arms into Susannah and Patricks flat (Ang’s cousin and boyfriend, for those who don’t know).  It was wonderful to finally be back in a Western location and to be in a home after a lot of months on the road.  Our weekend consisted of an introduction to English cuisine (goggle ‘toad in the hole’, for anyone looking for a great recipe!!), sampling local beers at the pub, strolling around the nice parks of London and an action packed day of rugby union, watching the Harlequins take down Saracens at Wembley stadium in front of a record 83000 person crowd.  Much to our dismay, an iphone update has erased all these pictures, so we only have the memories in our minds rather than picture form—you’ll have to trust us it was an amazing weekend!!

We travelled from London to Cambridge by train to visit Ang’s aunt and uncle, accompanied by Susannah who conveniently was off work for Easter holidays.  We had four days with Maureen and John in Stapleford and our days were jam packed with English experiences.  Drives in the countryside, pub lunches, quaint villages complete with beautiful churches and visits to historic English castles was complemented by the generosity and enthusiasm of Aunt Maureen and Uncle John.  

Nice spring day spent exploring Hedingham Castle, a short drive away from Stapleford.  This is a  castle built in the 12th century and is described as the best kept Norman period castle in England.  We had a nice afternoon in the castle, as well as walking through the blooming trees on the yard surrounding the castle.

Taking part in the castles "tickle trunk'

Lavenham, England; a perfect example of a picturesque English village.  

The Street family treated us to high tea at The Swan in Lavenham.  It is a beautiful old building and we have never had such delicious treats in our life!  "High tea" consists of finger sandwiches (salmon, cucumber, ham), scones with butter, clotted cream and jam (there is no equivalent to clotted cream in Canada, and boy are we missing out!) as well as a selection of fine pastries.  Obviously this is served with your choice of tea, and was a much enjoyed treat by all!  Pinkies up!

On Thursday we loaded into the car, heading off to the North for our first English Easter.  We were travelling up to Sedberg to share the holiday with John’s stepmother, Pat.  Sedberg is a little English town located about five hours drive North of Cambridge, only a few kilometers further and you’ve made it to Scotland!  Along the way we stopped to enjoy more English history and take in the sites.  It was a wonderful weekend and something we won’t soon forget—thanks for everything Aunt Maureen and Uncle John!!

Hardwick Hall, a 16th century prodigy house, a model of the Elizabethan era in Chesterfield, England, which we stopped at on our drive from Stapleford to Sedberg.  This house is significantly different from the previous castle--Hedingham would have been a fortress in battle, whereas this house was more for show.  The house was beautiful and we really enjoyed walking the grounds, especially with the freshly fallen snow!

This is one picture from within Hardwick Hall.  Notice the detailed tapestries hanging on the walls--these were a trend of the time, and some rooms were actually covered completely in tapestry!  Carpet was too beautiful to be on the floor, so you walked on weaved materials and the tapestries hung on the wall. 

The view from our backyard in Sedberg.  Maureen and John treated us to renting out an entire B+B for the weekend.  It was a beautiful home with an even more beautiful view of the hills out our big picture windows! We hiked in the hills which are called moors in England but in this part of the country the moors are referred to as "fells". Yes we are just as confused but enjoyed the hiking just the same. 

This is the Dent town church.  Dent is a little village about 10 minutes drive from Sedberg, and apparently Angela's great-great (maybe one more great???) grandmother was married in this town, before moving to Canada.  We weren't lucky enough to find any graves of our relatives, but did find lots of references to our "Willan" relatives in other places and had a wonderful day exploring this village!

The Saturday of Easter weekend saw us exploring the countryside surrounding Sedberg, first stopping to see  the prehistoric creation of Castlerigg stone cirlces.  No one knows exactly how these stones ended up here, or what the purpose was, but it is quite impressive to see this round arrangement of large boulders, set in a lush green valley. 

After Castlerigg, our exploring took us onwards and upwards.  Well, up to 3000ft, which is nothing compared to Nepal, but quite high in British terms!  Sedberg is in an area known as the "Lake District" and you can see why!  We hiked up this hill and had a panoramic view over two lakes.  If you use your imagination, you can see all the way to Scotland in the top left corner!!

Steve and Ang, on top of the world again!

Easter lunch.  Pictured from left to right are John, his stepmother Pat, Angela and Steve.  If you look carefully, you can see the newest Street-Easter tradition--our Easter tree!!  We had a great day filled with delicious food, good company and a very competitive Easter egg hunt!

On our drive back to Stapleford, we took advantage of the British historical sights and stopped at Middleham Castle.  This impressive village was once lived in by Richard the third and was built in the 11th century.  Although it is in significantly more disrepair than the Hedingham Castle, this was neat because you were able to see the fortified wall and the surrounding buildings, in addition to the castle itself.  This castle would have functioned like a city within the walls, and you were able to appreciate that from our visit.  This pic is from up on the top floor of the Castle, overlooking the town of Middleham where we enjoyed a wonderful pub lunch. 

Maureen and John were kind enough to drop us at a train station so that we could make our way to London, to prepare for the next leg of our European journey.  We thought some of you Harry Potter fans might appreciate seeing the real "Platform 9 and 3/4".  If you can believe it, there was a line-up to get your picture taken at the Kings Cross station in London, so we settled for the second best--Asian tourists doing the Harry Potter run off to Hogwarts!

Barcelona, Spain; April 10 to April 13

Due to perfect timing with this extended Easter Holiday that the House of Lords takes, Susannah was able to accompany us on the first leg of our continental European adventure.  After an early morning flight, we arrived in Barcelona just in time to sample our first paella and sangria.  We had a nice wander around the Barcelona waterfront and enjoyed our first siesta—enjoying life like the Spaniards!!  Did you know that Spain eats the second most seafood in the world??  Well, we learned this fact and put it to the test, with our first night’s dinner in a traditional Spanish fish restaurant, complete with delicious tapas and paella and our second night full of sushi.  We also discovered an amazing Spanish wine; we are happy to boast that we never had a bad bottle of red wine from the Rioja district throughout our time in Spain!!  Not sure if the LCBO stocks any of the Rioja wines, but we would highly recommend trying them if you can get your hands on one!  Our trip was rounded out with some time on the beach, a walking tour of the city, and an afternoon spent enjoying the Sagrada Familia Cathedral.  This city has a ton of life and wonderful atmosphere, a perfect start to our mainland Europe trip.

Barcelona beach, literally a ten minute walk from downtown.

Susannah testing out the Mediterranean--her face tells you just how cold it was!!

Angela and Susannah relaxing at the "tables" at a cafe just off of the Barcelona beach.  We all enjoyed some wonderful Sangria here, and started off our sushi evening.

Sushi!!  And our delicious Rioja region wine is making an appearance too!

Yes, this is looking like the Ang and Susannah party, but we do promise Steve was along for all these adventures too!  Someone had to create the masterpieces from behind the lens. Some cusio-love, sharing our guided tour of the Segrada Familia Cathedral, the Gaudi Cathedral still a work in progress, after over 100 years of work!

This is the back side of the Segrada Familia.  This side is depicting the Passion of Christ.  There are 12 stations carved out over the entire face of the church.  Notice that other than the actual stations themselves, the facade is quite bland to represent the mood of the Passion.

The colours inside of this church due to the stained glass is absolutely stunning.  This picture does not do it justice!

The altar at the church.  Notice the organ, as well as the stained glass surrounding the altar.

This is the back side of the church, depicting the birth of Christ.  We know its difficult to appreciate the details, but the difference between the birth and the Passion of Christ is just remarkable.  Gaudi wanted the birth to be full of happiness and fecundity--and we think he got his point across!

This is a pic trying to give you an idea what the whole church looks like.  It is hard to photograph, being such a monstrous building, but you can see the tall towers surrounding the church.  There will be 18 spires in all, 12 to represent the apostles, four to represent the Evangelists, one for Mary and the tallest to represent Jesus.  It is an overwhelming and remarkable building--we usually don't put up this many pictures of a church, but we actually had a hard time paring down the pictures to post!  The church is expected to be finished maybe in 2020, but possibly more like 2050--we've already planned the reunion Barcelona tour to see it completed, because this was truly a remarkable piece of art.

Andorra; April 13 to April 15

What is Andorra, you may be saying??  Well this tiny micro country (486 sq km—2.5 times smaller than Paris!, population 81000), located in the Pyrennes mountains wedged between Spain and France is a country known for its hiking and skiing.  When we planned our continental Europe time, we had planned on doing some hiking in the Pyrennes, but as luck would have it, we arrived just in time for the final weekend of skiing!!  Before we took to the slopes, we did have a very relaxing day at the caldea spa (see www.caldea.ad for some pics—no cameras taken inside!!), treating ourselves to the VIP wellness area, including Turkish steam bath, Aztec pool and a grapefruit bath!   Saturday was more adventurous, with us taking to the slopes of Granvallaria.  This is a hill like none other we have ever seen.  It’s combined of about five different mountains, with terrain over 250 sq km (remember, the whole country is only 486!!)  You take the gondola from the center of town, and then go up lifts and ski down the other side, over and over until you are to the border of France.  The mountains were beautiful and our weather was wonderful; this is definitely a highlight of our trip.  We had forgotten what it felt like to ski and are really missing our BC winters of the past!  We had our first snowfall of 2012 up on the hill and enjoyed seeing Susannah strut her stuff (a very good skier, if we do say so ourselves!!)  Our weekend was topped off again with delicious food and Rioja wine, including a cheese and chocolate fondue dinner!  Susannah boarded a bus back to Barcelona, as apparently some people have something known as a job that they have to return to, and we took a bus on to France, stopping in Toulouse to board a train to the supposed sunny south of the Cote d’Azur.  We say supposed, because as we purchased our tickets to Nice, the train attendant apologized for how cold the weather has been.  We responded by saying that it is still cold in Canada, so we aren’t too concerned, and he responded that of course it is cold in Canada, but it’s not supposed to be this cold in Nice!!

This is hard to capture, but this is the gondolla we took up from the Encamp base of the Grandvallaria  ski hill.  We are literally in a town (we rented skis not 200m away from where we got onto the Gondola)--no snow, no sign of skiing anywhere other than this Gondola to what appears to be nowhere, yet within about 20 minutes you are transported to ski heaven!

Cousins enjoying our beautiful Andorra ski day.  We were impressed with Sussanah's skiing ability.  The impressive part was  by accident she buckled into a pair of rentals after lunch that she though was her pair, but in fair someone else skis. We had no idea and when we returned our skis, the lady at the store said we had the skis for the other rental store. She was impressed Sussanah was able to ski in the other rental pair all afternoon without adjustments to the bindings. 

Steve finally makes an appearance in the pictures!!  We loved this view, as the peaks of the Pyrennes were so unique and beautiful throughout this entire ski field.  Oh yeah--and we proved you don't need any fancy gear for spring skiing...we are wearing our hiking pants, Steve has his Jays hat on and Ang used socks for mittens!

Just one beautiful shot of our views from atop of Andorra.

Now this is a funny story!  Ang ordered toasted bread with tomato and garlic, in addition to her french onion soup for lunch.  We all thought Ang was ordering the equivalent of bruschetta, but literally she got toast, two tomatoes and two cloves of garlic in a basket!!  We thought for sure someone was taking a piss, but Steve asked the waiter and we learned about a very traditional Catalan dish.  You take your toast, rub it with the garlic (cut the clove but leave it peeled, so you don't get the garlic smell on your hands).  Then you rub the bread with the tomato, and we found it worked best if you squeezed a little of the tomato juice out too.  Then you top it with a little olive oil and salt and VOILA--a delicious Catalan treat!!  We found out at dinner, that this treat is also delicious topped with the famous Iberian ham of Spain and Andorra.  We really did have some delicious meals in our first few days in Europe!

More posts from France and Italy to come, as the adventure continues!!