28 September 2017 - 15 October 2017
We have arrived in Rome! Because we were coming to the end of our allowable time in the Schengan region we were only able to have two days in Rome before we would have to get out of Italy and into a friendlier country. We packed as much sightseeing in as we could but we will definitely have to go back.
First stop was the Colosseum. Mark had initially thought that we had seen plenty of Roman arenas during our trip and so there was no need to go into the Colosseum. Then we walked around the corner and got our first look at it. He said something profound like "wow it's colossal" and we decided that it was completely worth going in for a look.
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We meandered our way through the Roman Forum before stopping off at one of Dad's favourite old Contiki haunts for lunch with Mum and Dad before they flew back to New Zealand. (It was one of the classy day off work places not one of the dodgy "raise my flag" places).
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We then spent the afternoon wandering around Rome, stopping off for ice cream and generally being blown away as around each corner there was yet another 2000 year old Roman building. The Pantheon kept us occupied for most of the afternoon before we made the compulsory stop at the Trevi fountain to throw our coin in, ensuring that we will return one day.
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The next day we headed to Vatican city, where we stood in a massive line to get into St Peter's. The wait was worth it though. The size of the church is immense. We climbed up the interior of the dome and then headed up to the top of the dome for amazing views over all of Rome. We were left with yet another reason to return to Rome, after spending so much time in St Peter's we didn't actually make it to the Sistine Chapel or any of the other Vatican museums. We enjoyed wandering the streets around this area too, where we found many of the stores where priests can purchase ornate robes, and all of the other accoutrements of priesthood.
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Bright and early the next morning we caught the train to head to Nice, France. After very carefully calculating the number of days that we were able to stay in Italy the border guards on the train into France were not even interested in Mark and I. Our beautiful spreadsheet of days in various countries that we were all ready to argue to border guards with was wasted....
Our few days in Nice were a combination of full on relaxation and hard out cramming of sailing theory. When we were planning this trip back in New Zealand sailing around the Mediterranean had been part of the master plan. By this stage of the trip we hadn't actually managed to do any sailing. So we booked a sailing course with a company in the Canary Islands which was scheduled to start a week later.
But before starting the sailing we headed to Barcelona. It was a massive all day bus ride to get there. At least this time the border guards actually looked at our passports when they got onto the bus. The African guy behind us didn't do so well. He just had a piece of paper with a photocopy of a passport. When the border guards were asking him where he was going and he just kept repeating "Spain". He was removed from the bus.
We arrived to Barcelona at about midnight. Almost immediately on starting our walk through the city lanes to our hotel, we were taken away by what a cool city it was. There were so many people wandering around, just having been out with friends or for dinner. There were no drunken idiots - other than tourists once we got a bit more central.
It was interesting to be in Barcelona at this time as the referendum about Catalan's independence from Spain had occurred on 1 October. We arrived on 4 October. There were lots of reporters hanging around Sant Jaume Square eagerly awaiting something exciting to happen. And on 8 October as we were making our way to the airport there was a big pro unity march in the middle of town which we watched for a while and then had to do a bit of a sprint from the metro to the airport bus.
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In between the various rallies we managed to fit in a trip to the Cosmo Caixa Science Museum - which was awesome. There was a whole area which was a giant rainforest, complete with wildlife and sprinklers to create the rain. We also ate. A lot. There was so much delicious food to discover.
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We flew to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands to join the sailing course. The course was for five days and at the end of it, all going well, we would have our "Day Skipper" qualifications. We were learning on a 37 foot yacht, Kerry. Each night we stayed on the yacht at the marina, where we could enjoy the fancy marina facilities with heaps of delicious places to eat at.
The course was pretty challenging for me. There was a whole lot of assumed knowledge that I didn't have, but the instructor was relaxed and we worked our way through it all. It also meant that although there is some basic stuff I don't know I have also been taught more specialised stuff like how to retrieve a man overboard if everything goes pear shaped (FYI - if you're ever on a yacht with me and you go overboard you may be swimming back to shore). I'm not going to be skippering a yacht any time soon but I am now a fairly useful crew member when Mark yells instructions at me next time we are our a yacht together.
From our selection of photos it would seem that Mark spent most of his time taking photos of me - but he did actually learn some stuff too!
From our selection of photos it would seem that Mark spent most of his time taking photos of me - but he did actually learn some stuff too!
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