Scooter tour: Spain and France

Scooter tour!

Typed after too many Belgium beers: I am pleased to announce that Thomas Hoffmann and Susanna Hoffmann were reunited in Barcelona after almost 2 years apart. Not to let our time go to waste, we quickly set about exploring the city. Barcelona is so different to South America- everyone speaks a different language, it’s clean and very chilled. You still have to put toilet paper in baskets though and you can’t drink the water: some things about Hispanic countries never change. Our adventures started in a burger bar, the best burger bar ever, recommended by our constantly high but friendly hostel owner in our empty hostel

Introducing TOM

Ummm...is this a beach?

Awesome reunion burgers

Beautiful Barcelona

Bumping into old friends in the street

Sunsets

Pepe enjoying a Spanish breakfast

Ahh Guadi

By nights we wandered the old city and drank Sangria and wine in bars. A friend recommended the website ‘el tenedor’ to make reservations in high end restaurants and get half price dinner. We used this for my birthday and Tom took me out for the most amazing meal of tapas(duck spring rolls and cheese), duck with vegetables and the best keylime pie I’ve ever had!! Amazing. By day we wandered the streets and parks admiring Gaudi architecture(quite possibly the wackiest and most awesome architect ever), eating tapas and generally enjoying being alive.

Pepe sampling Sangria

Church

Gaudi park

Gaudi park

Gaudi park

Gaudi architecture

Tom enjoying the view

Awesome church we found while exploring scooter style

Pepe like it too

A bit bigger than I thought

Heaps of tourists make it up here

Birthday wine

The best duck in the world

Tom's a world class photographer of truffles

After two days, we packed up and loaded Bella the scooter with my epic backpack and crawled at 60km /hr to Girona. Girona is a small city near costa brava, a beautiful coast line with cliffs and forests. The city itself has a river running through the middle with amazing bridges and colourful houses. It has awesome tapas and open-air bars. Costa Brava has an array of perfect beaches and we spent our time swimming in the crystal clear, icy water of the nude beach(every beach here is nude) and drinking cocktails overlooking the sunset. Perfect! The landscape here is absolutely fantastic with winding roads, beautiful old forest and colourful houses. There is a national park near by and I dragged Tom to climb an amazing volcano(Tom complaining all the way). It was here we had the most perfect Tapas yet. For 3  euro each we got a beer(San Miguel- the best), octopus and stuffed mushrooms- delicious!

Girona

Lovers brisge

Dragging Tom up a Volcano

A bit lost

Worth it

Reward Spanish Ham and wine bought by Tom

We loved Girona but we had stayed there too long. The trip back to Montpelier, France was 9 hours  in the rain but luckily we made a few stops:

Stop 1: the museum of Salvador Dali

Dali's museum

Like a castle made out of candy, the building itself is as much a surrealist artwork as his actual art. There isn’t much of his famous stuff but you can see how his style developed from realism to surrealism with a bit of cubism mixed in. It was amazing and I didn’t even mind the 10 million people.

Dali's living room

Dali's feature wall

Dali's piano

Stop 2: Narbonne, France!! One of Tom’s favourite towns and for good reason; awesome winding streets, cute French houses and decent hot chocolate.

Finally after a long and wet journey we got home to Montpellier. Montpellier is the most amazing city. It is an old, beautiful labyrinth of winding, narrow streets and staircases which think they are streets. It has amazing French patisseries, fun bars, is full of students and has a fantastic vibe. Tom lives with 2 French girls who sort of speak English(I’ve had to pick up the basics of French quickly), in a little apartment with a view of trees and churches-beautiful! Everynight someone cooks something French and I learn a little bit more about how to be cultured(luckily they’re very patient with me). For example- never cut camembert in slices, always eat the cheese between dinner and desert and never cut a baguette with a knife! Every night is a different and cheap party, my favourite being a street festival where, for 5 euro, you get 3 decent glasses of wine and you get to keep the glass. There was also an array of any kind of food and with Tom’s new housemate Vannessa’s help we assemble a  delicious feast.

Festival!

Pepe finds his first beach

Breadstick salad

Birthday cake

Old, winding streets of montpellier

The French lining up to buy lunchtime baguettes

There are so many sporting facilities here and it’s possible to run or ride or climb every day. There is a beach close by and a million gorgeous little shops in the streets to visit. The sun is always shining and everyone seems to love life. I may be looking at MP through rose coloured glasses but Tom definitely picked an awesome city to set up in.

Pepe getting into Belgium beer

After one too many, Pepe needed to be penned up- he started speaking in fluent French

Tired after our epic tour

Revisiting the homeland(or half of it)

Chile: the land of my ancestors, the place mum was born, full of history and memories and long lost relatives. I couldn’t go through the Americas without making a stopover, no matter how brief, with the relatives. While I was nervous to visit family I hadn’t seen in 6 years- when I arrived I found only warmth, hospitality and kindness. One thing about South American families, they really make you feel like you belong.

Drinking a Mote and enjoying the view of SANTIAGO!!

After a spontaneous flight over to Chile(the pass for the bus had snowed over) my aunt Vicky picked me up with a big smile and warm hug. It was good to be around family again. She dropped me off at my uncle Anthony’s house where I would be staying for the week and I was greeted by Mata, a maid who is practically part of the family, who showed me the luxury room I would be staying in (bigger than the BA apartment with a bathroom and a bed that heated itself up) and asked about my parents. No one else was home but I was keen to catch up on sleep after the crazy month in BA.

The best room ever with the best bed ever!!

The week unfolded with me spending most of my spare time with my two cousins Katty and Vally and my travel friend Jose who I met in Bolivia. Katty is the most chilled out person, a world traveller and lovely. Valey is gorgeous, engaged, building a house and fond of Champaign. We explored bars, went out to lunches and ate the best sushi in the world(Chile’s sushi owns Australia’s, sorry but they wrap it in avocado and salmon and have tempura flavoured sushi!) Meanwhile, Jose took me to interesting seafood restaurants(with themed rooms like ships and submarines), controversial socialist bars and to climb up a hill for the best view of Santiago. He also taught me how to cook delicious Chilean so easy even I can’t ruin them!

My beautiful cousins

The best sushi ever

My awesome guide Jose, showing me around

Seafood pie

Sea themed seafood

During the day Motty, my aunt, would drop me off in Santiago- an absolutely gorgeous city with beautiful art galleries(free), amazing parks, bohemian areas with good coffee and streets jam-packed with independent designers. Unfortunately my bag weighed a tonne or else I would have bought everything. The city is so clean, the food so good and while you don’t feel exactly safe(I was told under no circumstances speak English in the street or I would get attacked), it is so chilled compared to BA. I loved it.

Park

Bohemian

Beautiful art

Every park has a pair of pololos 

Beautiful art

Beautiful architecture

It was also a place for reunions. I had high tea with all my great aunts to discuss family, gossip and love-lives. One night my uncle threw a huge cocktail party with all the cousins, aunts and uncles. It was amazing to see so much family in one room and hear about so much history. The food was unbelievable too with mini-empanadas, so much cheese, chocolate cake and delicious jugs of pisco sours.

Visiting Tia Ruth

Family gathering

Another beautiful cousin: definite similarities with this one

Moty, Anthony and a pair of cousins

After such an epic week it was with a heavy heart that I left the Americas. In the end I conclude that there is so much history and so many connections in Chile that it was a travesty to only spend 6 days there. I could have spent 3 weeks there and not visited all the people and places that needed visiting. I think I will just have to return and soon!! Next stop: Europe!

Chile and Australia: rally not so far away