Day 279 - 30 Mar '24 - Zürich to Montpellier. During our travels, Pokémon Go has been an enjoyable (and at times, annoying) app to have on our phones. It has given the kids something to be entertained by, when admiring old buildings gets boring. It has also been used as a carrot-on-a-stick.
This weekend there was a special event, where a rare and powerful Pokémon could be caught in a 'raid' at 'gyms'. Because our trains were all changed yesterday, we had time in the morning to go to some of the 'gyms'.
"Please can we go to the gym, mummy?" Alex implored. "Please? It's just across the road!"
"Please mummy?" Abi joined in.
"Fine. But there's no point in doing the raid if there's only the two of you. If nobody else joins, then we're coming back here."
"YES! Okay! Great!"
Down the stairs we went, then outside to the pavement. We tried twice to do the raid, but it was just the two of us, and we needed at least eight to be able to win.
"I'm not waiting any longer," I finally said. "We've been here five minutes, and I've got plans."
Even though we didn't have to leave until 11am, we now had time to go to the shops I wanted to, before our train left at midday.
At the train station, Alex and Abi were thrilled to see the Lindt Easter stand still up, so they joined the queue again to get more eggs. I took this time to go to the Victorinox flagship store.
Just inside the entrance, there was a large sphere made up of 15.825 small pocket knives! I wanted to buy the kids a Swiss Army Knife, because here, in Switzerland, I could pick different colours, and get them engraved!
Unfortunately, the colours I really wanted (orange and turquoise) were on the smallest knives, but I still managed to get Alex a see-through blue one, and Abi a white one.
I made it back to the station with 25 minutes to go, which was plenty of time for me to ask the Lindt lady for some chocolates (she gave me a double handful plus two mini bunnies for the kids). Dan then swapped me the guarding of the bags, and went to buy some lunch.
"Can we see if there's a raid happening here?" Alex asked.
"Yes, okay."
There was, right beside us. And once we joined, nine other people joined - excellent!
I'm pleased to report that we were successful in winning the raid, and in catching the famed Shadow Mewtwo. (This will, of course, only be of relevance to those who know Pokémon).
Abi, however, was gutted - Dan was away with his phone, and so she missed out. She sat down on the ground next to the bags, and sulked.
Dan made it back with 15 minutes to go, and wouldn't you know it, another raid popped up, which Abi joined, won, and was successful in catching Mewtwo as well.
"Fantastic! We need to go. Now."
Our first train was a short trip to Basel, then another one to Mulhouse. We then got on our third train to Nîmes Pont-du-Gard, which was almost five hours long.
As we got closer to the station, the delay of the journey got longer and longer. By the time we were an hour away, the delay was up to 25 minutes. Our final changeover was just 27 minutes.
"We're not going to make it," I said to Dan. "There's no way we can run through a station in two minutes, especially since we don't know where to go!"
"Hmm..."
I had a quick look online to see what our options were.
"Okay. We arrive at platform A and have to go to platform C. We can try to catch it, but if we don't make it, there's another train 45 minutes later, and we'd get to our destination at 8:30pm. Or, we stay on this one to the end, then get the tram to our destination and get there at 7:50pm."
"It would be a bus, then a tram," Dan amended. "I'd seen that option too, but we'd have to buy the tickets, and I didn't want to spend any more money."
"So...what do you want to do?"
"What do YOU want to do?"
"I reckon we try to make it. The worst is we have to wait at the station."
Dan asked a passing conductor if he thought we'd make it, and he seemed to think we'd have four minutes to changeover, not the two the screens had been telling us for the last hour.
The train pulled up to the station, and we weren't the only ones in a rush - everyone that got off was running through the station! We all ran down the escalator, through the station building, and out to the relevant platform...which was empty.
"Seems the conductor was right! Four minutes after all!" Dan said, as we watched our train arrive.
"Still, it made me feel better that we weren't the only ones running for it!" I answered with a smile.
Our final train to Montpellier was less than an hour, and it was only a five minute walk to our hotel room. We dropped our bags off and went to a convenience store to get some fruit for breakfast; no fridge in our room meant we couldn't store milk for cereal.
The public plaza we came across looked really pretty at night, and Dan and I were looking forward to seeing it in the daylight, when we explored Montpellier tomorrow.
"Is the Easter bunny going to come tomorrow?" asked Abi.
"Can we do more raids tomorrow?" asked Alex.
The priorities of children...!
Day 280 - 31 May '24 - Montpellier to Narbonne. Dan and I had a seriously crap sleep. The mattress had no support and was like sleeping on a marshmallow. No matter which position we lay in, we would end up sore after a while. Even lying on my stomach, my back and neck would hurt being bent in unnatural angles.
Needless to say, when we got out of bed around 8:30am, we didn't feel very refreshed. This put us in an excellent position to deal with two excited children who discovered the Easter bunny had visited after all!
After our simple breakfast, we dropped our bags off at reception and went for a wander through Montpellier. The Place de la Comédie, which we had found last night, was much busier this morning, with lots of people out getting brunch at the many restaurants.
We walked along the streets and alleys, where we found a number of bicycles stuck in walls, and a water feature that was a moss-covered boulder that slowly dropped water.
We ended up at the Place Royale du Peyrou, a rather large promenade area. It started at their Arc de Triomphe, turned into a long two-storeyed promenade lined with trees, then finished at a water castle, which was in turn connected to an aqueduct.
For a small town we had no knowledge of, or any intention of visiting, we were pleasantly surprised with what we discovered on our walk.
We bought some sandwiches and rice salads for our lunch, then ate them while sat on the steps of a building in the Comédie plaza. This also gave us time to battle in more Pokémon Go raids for Mewtwo!
The wind had picked up and we were all starting to get a bit cold, so we walked back to the hotel to get our bags, then went to the train station. Dan tried to get our tickets to Spain sorted, but we once again hit beaurocratic walls.
"We can't book the Eurail tickets online to go to Spain," Dan said when he came back, "and the lady behind the counter didn't speak very much English. She couldn't book them for us because we can't book a Spanish train in France."
"So we need to be IN Spain to book the train TO Spain?!"
"Yep."
"But that's ridiculous! And impossible!"
"Yep. We could book a train if we were in Germany."
"But Germany doesn't even border Spain!!"
"Nope. We could book a French train to get to Barcelona, then book a Spanish train to Valencia while in the Barcelona station, but I didn't have enough time to do that now."
Our train to Narbonne was due to arrive, so he made the right call. The benefit of the Eurail pass was supposed to make things easier, but it has instead thrown up a lot of logistical nightmares.
The train to Narbonne was half full when we boarded, so for the first half hour, only Abi and I sat near each other, and eventually Dan and Alex managed to sit together.
On the journey, we were amazed to see a flock of flamingoes feeding in a marshland!
"No need to see them in Tanzania, now!" I joked to Dan.
We arrived in Narbonne at 4pm, checked into our accommodation, went to the supermarket beneath us (which was miraculously open) then spent the rest of the afternoon inside, doing things like washing clothes, trying to book train tickets, and arguing with our little shits.
You know, the usual.
We're so tired...
Day 281 - 1 Apr '24 - Narbonne. Another crap sleep. This mattress was not only soft, but narrow and short. Lying on my tummy, my feet were off the end and my head was against the headboard. Also, for some strange reason, so many houses we'd stayed in had duvets that only just reached the edge of the mattress. That meant that when you lay on the bed under the duvet, it no longer was big enough to cover you properly!
First job of the morning, I called the Spanish rail network to try and book tickets. I was told quite clearly that I could not book a train on the Spanish rail network while in France, and could only book them in Spain. Bloody ridiculous.
It was a beautiful morning, and dressed once again in shorts (I'd gone back to trousers because of the rain), we hopped on the train to Carcassonne. This medieval city was split into two parts - the new town area, and the central citadel, which was where we were headed.
We bought some lunch from a supermarket and sat in the public plaza to eat it. Dan and Alex had pizza slices, a quiche, and a sandwich, and Abi and I had two different salads. Mine was sweetcorn with cucumber and tomato, and Abi's was rice with avocado, sweetcorn, and kidney beans.
"I don't like my salad," said Abi. "It's too spicy."
"Would you like to taste mine?" I asked her.
"Yes please."
"Do you like it?" after she'd had a couple of mouthfuls.
"Yes."
"Would you like to swap?"
"Yes, yours is much nicer. Mine's too spicy."
This trade lasted all of another few mouthfuls.
"Why aren't you eating your lunch?"
"I don't like it."
"Why not?"
"It's too spicy."
"It's NOT spicy!"
"Maybe for YOUR tastebuds! But it's too spicy for me!"
"IT'S NOT SPICY! It's sweetcorn, cucumber, and tomato! Your own salad wasn't even spicy. This one definitely isn't!"
"It's got wasabi in it."
"It DOESN'T have wasabi in it! I wouldn't have bought it if it had wasabi in it. Just eat it."
"I don't like it."
"Well, you're not getting anything else!"
She did this yesterday too. I gave her the choice of two salads, she chose A so I picked B. She tried A, decided she didn't like it, so swapped B with me. Ate some of it, wanted A back again, said she didn't like it, and wanted B back for a second time. I ended up eating both A and B.
After a painfully long and argumentative lunch, we carried on walking through the town until we got to the citadel. Seeing it standing on the top of a hill, with pointed towers and walls surrounding it, and a cobblestone arch bridge over a river in the foreground, was like something out of a fairy tale!
We slowly climbed the hill towards one of the main gates into the inner city, and made our way to the castle on the opposite side. I'd bought tickets to get inside and walk the ramparts, which was something we'd missed out on at Dubrovnik.
There was an incredible view from one of towers, where we could see over the old town all the way to the snow-capped Pyrénées in the distance.
Once we'd finished visiting the castle, we got to walk the ramparts to the gate we entered at, then walked around more of the city between its two defensive walls.
We went through another gate back into the citadel, where we saw the cathedral there. It had some beautiful stained glass windows, that wrapped around the entire front end.
We then left the citadel and headed back to the train station, and arrived back in Narbonne shortly before 5pm.
It had been a lovely relaxing day out, but unfortunately our evening (well, Dan's evening) was not as enjoyable.
The travel situation for tomorrow was a joke. The high speed train could not be booked using our Eurail ticket, as we were in France and wanting to travel on the Spanish network. Our options were: 1) leave at 8am on a French train to Barcelona, then book a Spanish train to Valencia while at the station, with four train changes in total, 2) leave at 2:30pm on a Spanish train and arrive in Valencia at 9pm, still having to book the Valencia train while in Barcelona, 3) pay €360 to buy a ticket on the Spanish high speed train that left at 10:30am and arrived directly in Valencia at 5pm, 4) get a bus to Barcelona, then the subway to the train station, to get another train to Valencia.
On top of that, he also applied for our Tanzania visas. Our three-month first class Eurail ticket has saved us a LOT of money for the amount of travelling we've done, but it's been a massive pain in Dan's arse navigating the various 'not applicable' countries' websites.
Not long til we're out of Europe, with less than two weeks to go!
Day 282 - 2 Apr '24 - Narbonne to Valencia. Given that we were still asleep at 7:30am, we clearly didn’t go for the 8am train option! Frustratingly, our host didn’t respond to our request to stay later in the apartment, so at 11am we relocated to a park bench.
The train station didn’t have any luggage storage, and none of us felt like walking around with our rucksacks for three hours, so a park bench was it.
It could have been worse. It could have been raining!
Alex and Abi amused themselves by climbing trees, running around the grassy areas, and having stick fights. Dan tried to find train tickets. I researched accommodation in Istanbul.
At lunchtime, Dan and the kids went on a food run while I guarded our bags. Both Dan and I were pessimistic about Abi finding something to eat. I didn’t want to go as I’d had enough of her dramas.
Sure enough, when they returned with some toasted sandwiches for us and some coleslaw and crisps for Abi, she once again complained.
“The coleslaw’s spicy.”
Sweet mother of god…
“Let me guess, it’s got wasabi in it,” Dan laughed.
“Yes!”
“It doesn’t have wasabi in it!” I said with exasperation. “There’s nothing spicy in it! IT’S COLESLAW!!!”
(God knows how she's going to cope in India).
Somehow, we managed to keep ourselves entertained long for three hours, then it was time to go to the train station.
“Do you reckon that guy was a drug dealer?” Dan asked me as we left.
“Who? The one who kept coming and going on his scooter, and that random people would sit down next to, then leave again?”
“Yep.”
“Oh yeah - fully!”
We didn’t have to wait too long at the station for our train to arrive; onboard, the luggage compartments were chock full of suitcases, and we were sitting in two different areas but still in the same carriage.
When we arrived at Barcelona, Dan queued up to book our tickets to Valencia. When he rejoined us, he’d also booked our tickets from Valencia to Seville.
“They’re not all together though,” he said.
“That’s okay, so long as we’re two and two.”
“Nope. We’re two, one further back, and one in a different carriage.”
“What?! Well, I guess we put the kids together, one of us by ourself, and one in the other carriage. Actually, I’m going to get them changed.”
I rejoined the queue and when I spoke to the person behind the counter, was told they were unable to change them here, but when we board the train, the conductor would be able to change them.
We’ll see…
We had to pass through security gates and an X-ray machine to get to our platform, much to the horror of both kids, who wanted some McDonald’s for dinner, which was back on the other side of gates.
“I’ve told you, we can’t go back through the gates!” I said, for the fourth time, after escorting Abi to the barrier so she could see with her own eyes.
“What are we going to have for dinner then?”
“I don’t know, whatever we can find.”
“But we haven’t had any lunch either!”
“Yes you did, you had coleslaw, remember?”
“But it was yucky!”
We got on the train at 6:15pm, and in our bag of food I found enough nibbly things for us all to munch. I had dried soy beans, Alex had a banana, Dan had a muesli bar, and Abi had crackers. Not a big meal, by any standard.
We arrived in Valencia shortly at almost 9:30pm. All the food shops were closed, so not only could we not buy dinner, but we couldn’t get anything for breakfast either.
But we could finally have something to drink!
Day 283 - 3 Apr '24 - Valencia. Nobody wanted to get out of bed this morning. The clocks had changed yesterday in France, so we were already an hour short; add that to a long day of travelling with no food, and it was hard work getting started.
Grumpy children, grumpy hungry children, grumpy hungry tired children - YAY!
Our morning was spent in my least favourite acitivity: clothes shopping. We needed quite a few items. Dan needed a shirt, possibly a tie, and some shoes. Alex needed trousers and a shirt, possibly some shoes. Abi needed a dress, trousers, and a shirt. I needed trousers, a shirt, a black v-neck camisole, and a new bra.
We needed smart clothes for my cousin’s wedding, and also long-sleeved shirts and trousers for Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, and Tanzania. And once again, they needed to be lightweight!
After visiting seven shops, and spending almost three hours looking, Dan had a shirt, I have trousers, a camisole, and a bra, Abi had a dress, and Alex had two pairs of trousers and a shirt. So, pretty successful really!
We walked back to the apartment to drop our shopping off, and to eat some lunch we bought at the supermarket.
After lunch, we went back out to do some sightseeing. The first place we saw was the Plaza de Toros de Valencia, the bullfighting ring of Valencia. Unfortunately, in 2016, the Spanish government overturned any bans on bullfighting that existed across the country. It is very much still a popular ‘sport’ here.
We stumbled across an amazing playground on our walk. It was Gulliver, lying prone on the ground, tied down and swarming with Liliputians! So awesome!! (I found an aerial photo online, which really shows the scale).
Both Alex and Abi had loads of fun clambering all over him, and sliding down the many slides. It was such a fantastic playground, because really, kids love climbing and sliding more than any playground equipment.
Our main destination was the City of Arts and Sciences. This was a huge complex close to the playground, and was a marvel of architectural design.
It was full of curves and straight lines, coloured in whites and blues, and very futuristic wherever you looked. We passed the opera house, a museum, and a theatre, and we hadn’t even seen it all!
It was hot under the sun, although there was some debate as to the temperature. Our phones were staying it was 26°C, but we walked past a sign that said 31°C! Whatever it was, we were all feeling it, so went to a nearby shop to buy some drinks.
I looked into going to a tapas bar, but it was then 5pm and everywhere was closed until 7pm. We still have one more night in Spain when we go to Seville tomorrow, so maybe that can be tomorrow’s dinner. We went back to the supermarket to get some food, then that evening watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
Day 284 - 4 Apr '24 - Valencia to Seville. When our alarm went off at 7am, I was rather less than enthused about getting up - it was even still dark!
When we got to the train station, I asked at the ticket office if we could change our seats to be together. I was again told it wasn’t possible, and to ask the ticket desk once we’d gone through security.
They sure do take things seriously in Spain! We had to go through an X-ray machine like we did in Barcelona; I’m not sure if I should feel safer or more concerned they feel the need to X-ray everyone and their belongings.
The ticket man said it wasn’t possible to change our seats, but asked the supervisor, who came over and also said we couldn’t change them as the train was full.
So, Dan sat in carriage two, and the kids and I were in carriage one, with Alex sitting in a single seat, four rows in front of Abi and I.
Four hours later, we arrived in Seville, and made our way to our apartment for the night. We were allowed to check in two hours early, which was fantastic; we dropped our bags off and went for an afternoon of sightseeing in Seville (after changing into shorts).
The first place we went to was an incredible futuristic mushroom-like construction, the Metropol Parasol, the largest wooden structure in the world.
We then walked down a long narrow alleyway, filled with shops selling tourist things like flowers for your hair, or multicoloured fans, or flamenco dresses! Abi had earned some money from the tooth fairy last night, so she spent it on some marshmallows at one of the many convenience stores also on the street.
We came to the Seville cathedral, which had fabulous doors on each side of the square it occupied. One of the doors was the ‘door of forgiveness’, and another one looked like it had recently been cleaned, as it was a totally different colour to the building surrounding it.
The cathedral was once a mosque, which explained the separate bell tower in a totally different style.
My number one reason for picking Seville as a destination, was the Reál Alcazar, the royal palace. It had been used as a set in Game of Thrones, and had beautiful tiles and gardens.
Unfortunately, the tickets were all sold out when we got there, so we made our way to the next place on our list, the Plaza de América, which was one of many areas in a massive public garden.
“Now you get to see the gardens for free, Nic!” Dan tried to console me.
“Yeah, I guess so. And these are very pretty.”
Plaza de América was known for the buildings either side (two different museums) and white pigeons! Not doves, but white pigeons. In fact, most of the ‘dove release’ businesses are white pigeons, not doves, as doves have no homing ability and would all fly away!
We then carried on to the Plaza de Espagna. It was built for the 1929 Ibero-American World Expo, and started construction in 1912.
It occupies approximately 50,000m2, has canals running through it, and the 48 arches represent the 48 different areas of Spain, with each arch also having a tiled coat-of-arms of the region it represented.
As we made our way across the plaza to the building, we were lucky to see a couple of street performers dancing Flamenco, to much applause. No, they didn’t have the elaborate costumes, and they weren’t the best dancers I’ve ever seen, but they were still enjoyable to watch.
It was then 5:30pm, which meant we had missed our opportunity for tapas again. Everywhere seemed to stop serving food around 4:30pm, and wouldn’t start again until 8pm.
“We’ll just go to the supermarket and get something light,” I said.
“But you wanted tapas!” Dan answered.
“Yes, well, never mind. Maybe we’ll get some in Portugal.”
We did get some Spanish food for dinner, in the form of microwaveable tortillas! Plus a little dip back into Italy with some microwaveable pizza!!
After dinner, Alex and Abi went outside into the courtyard by our apartment, and spent an hour or so playing football with some local kids and their families. They came back in at 9pm, hot and sweaty, with big smiles. For the first time since January, they’d had other children to play with, language barriers be damned.
Day 285 - 5 Apr '24 - Seville to Faro. At 9:15am I woke Dan up.
“What time is it?” he mumbled.
“Quarter past nine. I’ve let you sleep as long as possible, but it’s time to get up.”
That made me sound very caring, like I’d already been up for ages, but I’d only just woken up 15 minutes earlier. I tell you what, shutters on windows are the best invention in the world!
The kids were still fast asleep as well. We’d had a few late nights and a couple of time changes, so it had caught up on us a bit.
We checked out of our apartment at 11am and got a taxi to the bus station, and waited there until 12:30pm for our bus to depart. Abi said she was hungry, but I told her we could wait until we were on the bus for us to eat our lunch.
“Prohibido comer y beber” means eating and drinking is prohibited. Even if you couldn’t work out what ‘prohibido’ meant, the big pictographs of a knife and fork and a glass, with a big red line through it, were pretty easy to understand.
The American girls behind us didn’t seem as smart as us, or the older American couple in front. It didn’t help that our tummies were rumbling either, as we watched those four much their way through some delicious looking and smelling sandwiches.
Alex and I were in the middle of the bus, and Abi and Dan were seated towards the back - that was not intentional. Dan had reserved us four seats together, 10A-D. When we’d boarded, the seats on one side of the bus skipped 9-11, and also 13-14! There were quite a few people standing in the aisle with their tickets in their hands and confused looks on their faces.
We arrived in Faro at 2:30pm, having gained an hour when we crossed into Portugal. Country 31! We were allowed to check in early, which was great, and after finally eating our lunch, we went exploring Faro.
We first went to the Capela dos Ossos across the road from us. It was housed at the Igreja do Carmo, which had some incredibly ornate gold shrines inside it. The main one at the end of the church was easily twice the size of the ones along the sides, and had loads of heads of babies? Cherubs? Angels? We couldn’t get close enough to work it out.
Out the back and round the corner was the Bone Chapel. It had the bones of over 1250 skeletons of Carmelite monks, which had been exhumed in 1816 from overcrowded cemeteries.
It was very symmetrical in its design, and rather macabre. The skulls, of various sizes, were placed at regular intervals to create the patterns, and the rounded ‘rocks’ were the ends of various leg and arm bones. Some of the skulls had been damaged, and outside, in a similar shrine, all the bones and skulls had been picked away out of the cement.
We next walked to the marina, where Alex and Abi took their socks and shoes off to play at the water’s edge, which they said was still quite cool.
After sitting down on a bench for a while, watching them play, we went round the other side of the marina to go to a sunset bar.
“Good one Nic,” said Dan, as we reached the end of the road.
“Yeah, good one mummy,” repeated the kids.
The path across the water turned out to be a railway track. No pedestrian access. Bugger. We then walked all the way back around the marina to where we started, and took the short route to the sunset bar.
“It’s only 5pm,” I said, “and the sun doesn’t set until 8pm.”
“I don’t want to sit here for three hours waiting for the sunset,” said Dan.
“No, not when there’s no food to eat. Come on, let’s go.”
“Yay! McDonald’s milkshake!” squealed Alex and Abi.
“Who said anything about a McDonald’s milkshake?” I asked.
“Daddy did. He said if we didn’t stay at the bar, we could get a milkshake from McDonald’s!”
When we discovered they didn’t have any milkshakes, they somehow turned into sundaes.
“Nobody’s going to want any dinner now!” I protested.
“I’m not hungry,” said Alex.
“Neither am I,” agreed Abi.
“Are you having a sundae?” Dan asked me.
“No thanks, I’m thirsty, I don’t want an icecream, I’m not hungry.”
It was round about then that my mood started to go downhill. We hadn’t had a drink in the bar, I was thirsty but the minimarkets we’d found only sold alcohol and snacks, and nobody wanted any dinner (apart from Dan) so there was no point in going out. Plus, we were all a bit tired and hot, and should probably have an earlier night
We went back to the apartment and I lay on the bed sulking.
“Can I have an apple?” Abi asked.
“No, you said you weren’t hungry.”
“Can I have a packet of gummy bears?” Alex asked.
“No, you said you weren’t hungry.”
At 6:30pm, Dan and Alex went to a nearby barber for a haircut. Abi and I listened to the church bells chime every quarter hour, and at 7pm there was a long, melodic peal.
The boys came back an hour after they’d left, minus most of their hair, and plus some milk and yoghurts for breakfast, as well as a microwaveable pizza for Dan’s dinner.
By the time Alex and Abigail went to bed, it was 8:30pm. Dan got up fairly quickly afterwards to tell them off for talking, then again to stand them up in the corners of the room, then again to get Abi to stand in a different spot altogether. Once Alex had been allowed back to bed, and then fallen asleep, Abi was told to once again go to sleep. She seems to be the main instigator at the moment...not that her brother is entirely blame free!
The church bells kept ringing until 10pm, and then thankfully stopped. Fingers crossed they don’t start up too early!
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