Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona: city of sun, sea and sangria. Exactly what I needed after my hectic final week in London. The journey to Gatwick was a trial in itself. Decked out in an outfit designed to outsmart stringent suitcase weight limits, I met Kathy, Niki and Edward a mere forty minutes late, barely caught the train, and tried very hard to leave my laptop behind in the overhead baggage area. Revived by one final packet of caramel digestives, we flew into Barcelona without further hassle.

Hot stuff coming through!

Dropping our bags at the apartment, we poked around the neighbourhood looking for food, and eventually found our very first tapas bar. The delicious variety of fried things included calamari, croquettes, empanadas and a potato omelette. And there began my love affair with Spain.

We slept in almost every day: paradise. Rather than leap right into the typical touristy stuff, we started out with a long circuitous stroll around the city. We made our way down Las Ramblas until we found a most incredible (and addictive) fruit market. Here we bumped into Maddie completely at random. Small world.

Las Ramblas led to the marina and the many adorable puppies being walked there. On the way home, we found a cathedral that I very incorrectly proclaimed to be Gaudi’s famous Sagrada Familia. Next stop was paella, of both veggie and seafood varieties, and a fruitless search for churros.

Maddie joined us at the apartment on Tuesday, and the five of us took a day trip to Ocata, a beach half an hour’s train out of the city. The train tracks were set about 100 metres from the water. The whole gorgeous set-up wouldn’t have looked out of place in a James Bond film. Picture blue sky, blue sea, white sand, and bright red screaming sunburn on the fronts of my legs. My thanks to the beauty products outlet from which Kathy and I scooped full handfuls of sample aloe lotion to slather onto my legs in the middle of the street.

Wednesday was for fruit market brunch (mango and coconut smoothies, strawberries, nougat-type stuff and pastries) and Gaudi. Gaudi means touristy stuff. He was a rather extremely famous Spanish architect who was into modern architecture way before his time. We visited the Casa Battló first, a house constructed as a sort of organic seascape. The décor included rising blue tiles, a dragonish roof, ceilings and doorways moulded in the shape of waves, and general seashell décor. You have to see it to believe it.

Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia – a famous church still in the process of construction – was somehow even more astounding.

Niki and I hooked ourselves into audio guides and received a fairly thorough summary of Gaudi’s inspiration and creative process. The outside of the Sagrada Familia has three facades, each featuring a different set of biblical episodes in spectacular style. Though unfinished (and currently covered in cranes), the church sports scores of bell towers and steeples with fruit and flower-based tips. There’s even a scatter of gargoyle-like creatures running down the sides of the outside walls and towers as if to escape the altar.

The church’s inside is a fascinating interpretation of a traditional Catholic cathedral. Leaning, twisting columns sprout branch-columns that finish in a leaf-like canopy on the vaulted roof. Gaudi intended his canopy to enclose and protect the congregation. He deliberately restricted the volume of light that could enter the church through the stained and plain glass windows, believing that too much light could blind worshippers just as well as insufficient light.

The functionality of Gaudi’s design was just as interesting as its aesthetic style. The leaf-canopy plastered to the roof was specifically shaped to enhance the acoustics of the 1000-strong choir intended for the church. 

Long story short, the Sagrada Familia was pretty freaking awesome. I’m definitely coming back in twenty or thirty years when the whole thing is finally completed. 

Maddie left on Thursday and was replaced by Tash, who would be travelling with us for our Greek island tour. Tash popped off to meet a friend, leaving the rest of us to take a walking tour of the Gothic quarter, where we learnt that Catalonia used to be a separate country to Spain. We also stumbled across George Orwell.  

After a restorative churro session, we took the metro up to Park Guell, a park designed by – you guessed it – Gaudi. It was very pretty, brimming with flowers, slanting columns and typically weird/wonderful Gaudi mosaics.

We spent our last day in Spain exploring Barceloneta beach, strolling along palm-lined avenues, visiting the fruit market one last time, and eating churros. Too soon it was time to come home to pack and prepare for our very early flight to Greece.

Note to self: get back to Spain!

London: Last Ten Days

My last ten days in London were insane. I became the queen of Life Tetris, slotting in the Gilbert and Sullivan Society ball, two floor guests, the Jubilee, Melbourne friends, Borough Market x 3, French musicals, baking, many many many goodbyes, and terrifyingly last-minute packing. It was sad, it was stressful, and it was fun.

The ten day countdown started with two grand occasions: the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and much more excitingly, the arrival of Sarah, a friend from Dublin. Sarah did much more than simply sleep on a bathmat on my floor. Sarah ate brownies with me in the captain’s quarters of the Golden Hinde, introduced me to The Avengers, held my hand at the London Dungeons, and even ate cupcakes that I accidentally flavoured with soy sauce. 

Sarah and I made a half-hearted effort to engage in Jubilee festivities. At 3pm on Sunday, we decided to wander down to London Bridge and watch the flotilla, only to be turned away by the police due to full audience capacity. Defeated, and daunted by the dreary weather, we took our takeaway noodles back to my kitchen and spent a good couple of hours mocking the BBC commentary. Did you know that the Queen “famously hates beige”?

We did, however, manage to ‘attend’ the Jubilee Concert the next night. My friend Natalie decided to hold her birthday picnic in Hyde Park overlooking one of the giant screens broadcasting the concert from Buckingham Palace. We were briefly rained on, showered with novelty bubbles, plied with picnic food, danced to Elton John (well, I did) and ultimately froze to death. It was great fun. British people turn out to be rather patriotic, especially the ones sporting bowler hats with little Union Jacks on top. 

My first goodbye arrived on Tuesday morning when Sarah left. This was a highly tragic occasion as we’d been having such hilarious fun together. To cheer myself up, I had Polly and Alice around for dinner, after which we watched 10 Things I Hate About You because Polly hadn’t seen it before, and friends don’t let friends behave in such a way.  

On Wednesday, with five days to go, Niki arrived and took up residence on my floor. It was beyond fantastic to catch up with her, Kathy and Edward, all friends from Melbourne, and future travel buddies in Barcelona and the Greek Islands. I saw these three at increasingly random intervals over the next five days as my schedule became more and more hectic. Somewhere in there, Niki and I managed to pop into the British Museum to check out the pilfered Parthenon stuff in preparation for visiting the actual Acropolis.

And then the painful part of my last ten days began in earnest, and I started the devastating process of saying goodbye to my London friends. I farewelled Tori (and family) at Borough Market, Alice at St Ali’s (a suitably Melbournian café near Old Street station), and Vicky from Iolanthe after watching the purple-panted Aussie version of Pirates of Penzance.

On Friday, the goodbyes continued in a fun but heartbreaking stream. Miki and I finally watched Mozart L’Opéra Rock like we’d planned for months on end, which was absolutely amazing. I then went to dinner with Polly and Kyveli at an Italian restaurant in a rather nice area of Chelsea that I’d never visited before. We attempted to attend a philosophy night at the French Institute before giving up and going for drinks and dancing in a bar on the south bank of the Thames.

Saturday was a particularly crazy day, starting with Josh-and-Muney-baking in the morning. It was almost successful baking, too. My last ten days in London were marked by some sort of cooking curse. I spent a good couple of unexpected hours at a last-minute hairdressing appointment. I then dropped into Borough Market for one final farewell before meeting Fiona at Bea’s of Bloomsbury near St Paul’s. It was an absolutely lovely day. The blue sky was clearly designed as a London farewell just for me.

Cara came over for dinner and watched me take down the first few posters from my wall. Several people warned me not to leave packing until the last minute, so I left it until the last midnight. 

Those final hours before midnight were great. Cara and I met up with Niki and Nabila at The Anchor (near London Bridge) for Crabbies. It was when I got back home that the hellishness kicked in. I packed and dissembled feverishly for three and a half hours until I flopped into bed, then woke at 8am and continued the effort, pausing only for a delicious parting brunch with Polly and Kyveli on Bermondsey Street. And then it was back to the packing, and the panicking, and the general manic stressfulness of it all.

Somehow I was only forty-five minutes late meeting Kathy, Niki and Edward. Somehow we made it to London Bridge station in time. Somehow we caught the right plane to Barcelona. The only positives to leaving packing to the absolute last minute were that I got to spend ten full days hanging out with the best people in London and that I was too crazy stressed to be overly despondent about ending my incredible exchange year.

My love to everyone who made the past ten months so wonderful. Come to Melbourne or else.

Oxford, Oxfordshire RETURNS.

I can be spontaneous. Ask anyone. More specifically, ask Alice, who was my partner in crime on a spur of the moment trip out to Oxford last Friday. She’d never been. I hadn’t been since last September. The urge to rectify this situation proved uncontrollable.

Our day began with an epic train chase through Paddington. We left Alice's house with what seemed like plenty of time to spare, only to arrive at Paddington a mere ten minutes before our train left. Alice made the terrible decision to follow me as I ran towards our platform only to discover that our platform was, in fact, in the complete opposite direction. We pivoted and legged it back towards the train, and somehow made it with a good minute to spare. Who needs the Olympics with this stuff going down?

Once in Oxford, we made our way to Christ Church College, the only college fully equipped with its own paddock. The college was as beautiful as I remembered, all decked out in dreaming spires and ivy and other glorious bits and pieces. Instead of going inside, we strolled along the nearby river and had adventures.

I finally found the Magic Faraway tree.

Alice tested the strength of a ‘Weak Bridge’ and made tourists think she was about to do a Sherlock.

Having made our way back around to Christ Church College, we peeked in at the garden that inspired Alice in Wonderland and then took a wander through the backstreets of Oxford. Admittedly, the wander wasn’t supposed to be quite so directionless, but we did eventually manage to find the Bodleian Library and all the accompanying spires.

We grabbed lunch and headed back to the lush grass just beyond Christ Church for a picnic. One of us eventually checked the time, and we hurried off to the Eagle and the Child – the Inklings’ pub – for a quick pint.

And then we hopped on the train, and we didn’t even have to make a run for it this time. Victory. 

Tintern, Wales

When I procrastinate, I make an effort. In the deepest depths of my exam period, I emerged from my room-cocoon and went on a day trip to Wales with the International Students House Travel Club. 

Having driven through parts of the Cotswolds, our first stop on the way to Wales was Gloucester. Prior to the trip, my impressions of Gloucester were largely shaped by the town’s annual cheese-rolling event, during which participants chase a giant round of cheese down a hill, the winner being the one who ‘catches’ the cheese, the prize being the cheese itself.

All of which slightly departs from the topic at hand. The most exciting thing about Gloucester cathedral is the fact that it played home to the corridor leading to the Gryffindor common room in the Harry Potter movies. Jealous, Mel?

Next up was a lookout somewhere within the Forest of Dean (a forest you might recall from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I swear, every single teensy bit of England was used as a location in those films). The lookout point was great, all sweeping green, white cliffs, and a twisting river.

We knew we’d reached Wales as soon as the road signs stopped making sense. I love the look of the Welsh language, all swirly bits and upside-down-looking letters. I remained happily oblivious to the meaning of the passing road signs until some smart cookie pointed out that the English translations were right beneath the Welsh.

Tintern Abbey was immediately spectacular. The ruins of the cathedral were incredible up close, almost as striking as the ruins of the St Andrews cathedral in Scotland. (St Andrews wins out mostly because of its location on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea.) 

I had icecream for lunch and became very sunburnt by the time we got back onto the bus and headed to a nearby Welsh town, Stockport. Here we posed at the line dividing England from Wales and narrowly avoided being run down by passing cars.

There was also a nice sort of castle with a very nice sort of shade. A few of us lay down on the grassy slope and enjoyed a brief respite from enhanced sunburn.

Afterwards, we drove back to London, which seemed much greyer than normal after all that blinding green. And then I despondently returned to my exam revision, just a little bit redder than when I’d closed my books the night before. 

Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

I spent last Monday in Cambridge with Cara, home to the King’s College that everyone thinks we go to. Which is fine, really, considering that it looks like a lost Hogwarts set, especially when students stride fearlessly across the keep-off-the-grass quadrangle with their black robes billowing behind them.

Trinity College, built in Tudor times, was also impressive to look at. The chapel was littered with monuments to Tennyson, Newton, Wordsworth, Francis Bacon, etc, and had the shiniest floor I have ever seen. There was a maintenance man polishing door hinges while we were there, and I can only assume he pulled out the Pippi Longstocking roller-skate sponges as soon as the coast was clear.

Cambridge is as lovely as everyone says it is. We spent a fair chunk of time wandering through the market, along the river, and being harassed by punters. We couldn’t get into the vast majority of colleges – closed for exams, poor excuse – so we walked around behind the colleges instead. A lot of it looked just like Christchurch (but the Kiwi punters were nicer).

After lunch, we dropped into the Round Church (it was round) and learned many interesting things about Cambridge’s history. Nothing compared to what Oxford taught me about professors who quite literally ate anything, but we did learn that Nazism was caused by Europe’s departure from Christ, so that’s modern history sorted.

We then climbed Great St Mary’s church tower and got a great view into the colleges.

Afterwards, we walked to a park inexplicably called ‘Christ’s Pieces’ and got a bit lost, but we still made it back to the King’s College Chapel in time for Evensong.

Once the service had finished, we walked back along the riverbank and watched some guy play the ukulele from the top of his houseboat. After, we had just enough time to grab dinner at Cambridge’s prime potato-themed café – Tatties – before making our way back to the bus.

Cambridge < Oxford. There, I said it. The river and surrounding area are beautiful, but the architecture is simply not as startling. Still, it was a great day trip out of London and I’m totally coming back for one of these:

Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire

As a special post-exams treat, I caught a train into Great Missenden, the small village where Roald Dahl wrote some of his best stuff, including Matilda and Fantastic Mr Fox. It was a peaceful Tuesday morning, right up until the arrival of a horde of screaming school children. But before the horde, it was nice and quiet on the High Street, which was draped all over in Jubilee decorations.

As it wasn’t yet raining, I took my chances on a walk around town. I made my way past the local school and up a leafy lane just because it looked nice, and wound up at the local church. And then I stumbled upon Roald Dahl’s grave, which was kind of fantastic. There were heaps of really unusual mementos on his grave, including an onion, a tent peg and a 20p coin (someone splashed out). There are normally loads of chocolate bars left there, apparently, but someone must’ve got hungry. 

Can you spot the BFG's footprints?

I headed back into town and located the Roald Dahl Museum, which, of course, had been my primary objective in visiting Great Missenden. Despite being on the smallish side, it was much more satisfying than, say, the Jane Austen Museum in Bath.

The first room was Boy-themed, and contained heaps of anecdotal debris – private letters, Boy extracts scrawled on the walls with Quentin Blake pictures, a video of his sisters dishing the dirt (apparently he used to make one of them hold a cushion and shoot at her with his air rifle to see how deep the bullets penetrated), etc.

The second room was Going Solo-themed, and had lots of interesting information about his years as a pilot. He was so tall that, on his first flight, his head stuck out into the jet stream and he almost suffocated. There was a measure on the wall with character names at appropriate heights. I measure up at Mrs Twit, apparently. Brilliant.

There were also a couple of drawers full of disturbing throwbacks to his adult short stories, such as a collection of severed little fingers. Another drawer contained a shoe full of ice – Roald Dahl’s secret method of stretching too-tight shoes.

And then there was a replica of his writing shed, set up with all his clutter authentically placed. The clutter included photos of his family (normal), a massive ball of chocolate foil that he had amassed over the years (totally normal), one of his hipbones (not normal), and a bottle of his spinal scrapings (eek).

There was a whole room dedicated to his writing process, and his uncomfortable collaborations with just about everyone but Quentin Blake. Roald Dahl wasn’t a fan of the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie; he felt that the Oompa Loompa song missed the whole moral point of his characters.

It was really worth the visit. On my way out, I grabbed a couple of brochures and took off on a bit of a hike through the woods, which were absolutely beautiful. In my opinion, Europe is particularly good for two things: forests and woods.

I found Grandma's bluebells!

I felt just like Beatrix Potter, Perfect Day playing in my head.

So it was with enthusiasm that I plunged into green isolation, spirits barely dampened by on-off rain and knee-deep mud. There were several points where charging through the mud was the best strategy, so I squish-jogged my way along until my feet were squelching too much to care.

I finally returned to civilisation – having only gotten lost once, score – and settled into the Café Twit, mainly to avoid the rain, but also to confront a cup of tea and a slice of blueberry cake.

When the rain took a break, I abandoned the café and hurried off to find Roald Dahl’s old house, where I failed to take photos because his wife still lives there and it felt wrong. And then onto the train, and homeward!

Matilda's library!!