Tonight we are staying in Sienna, a historic city in Italy. We're in the city after a nice meal in the centre, well it was a nice meal until we recieved the Cheque. Dad said that the Cheque must be from the 'far canal' if you know what I mean... Anyway here's some pics.
Today we visited Pisa on our way to Sienna where we will be staying tonight. It's here that I ate the biggest calzone in my life! And the Italians called it a medium!!! It was HUGE! Sorry theres no photis of the huge calzones but anyway here's some pics of Pisa.
The Cinque Terre is a region in Italy made up of 5 small waterfront villages and is a world heritage site visited by millions of tourists per year. Here's some pics.
Today we travelled from San Remo to the Cinque Terre Via Portofino. For those of you who don't know of Portofino, it's Italy's most famous fishing village with many international restaurants named after it. There was even a yacht there that was bigger than my house. Here's some pics.
We travelled from France to Italy today via Monaco (If you don't know what Monaco is just think Red Bull Racing & Formula 1). This meant that we had breakfast in France, lunch in Monaco & Dinner in Italy. So it was a pretty busy day. We are staying in a sports lodge in San Remo. Since we're from New Zealand (home of the All Blacks) we've been getting the Royal treatment from AB fans and the people here are just fantastic so far. Here's some pics.
We stayed in Mougin, France (20mins from Cannes) to meet up with Friends Jack & Maria from Australia (although Maria is actually Italian). We walked up to a place called old town on the Top of a small hill to visit the local art markets and galleries. For dinner we went to Cannes to check out the local cuisine (lets just say it got the tick of approval from us). Here's some pics.
So we're back in France again and staying in a place called Montpellier to break up the travel to Italy. This is where dad turned into Clint Eastwood and I turned into Julia Roberts for the duration of lunch. It's such a beautiful place and so relaxed, the people here are amazing. It's such a shame that we're not staying here for more than a night but we will be back, one day... Anyway, here's some pics.
Because we hadn't gotten the cultural fix from Lloret Dr Mar we decided to hit the streets and travel to Barcelona to visit some historic monuments such as the Sangrada Familia Church, the Spanish Arc Du Triomphe and some other Gaudi inspired architecture and monuments etc. I'm also sorry for the owner of this car, the birds here are savage! Here are some photos.
Yes, we are in Spain this time, not Andorra. But there really is no need to know Spanish here because everyone speaks English... even some of the locals don't know Spanish. Damn. Well, maybe that's because we're in the Spanish version of Vegas. But this was not planned. We thought that we were booking an apartment in a small, quiet seaside town. That was until we looked at the comments section. But while it was lacking in culture it did give us an excuse to FINALLY relax and chuck back some Cocktails. And these were no ordinary cocktails. We're talking 3 litre cocktails, cocktails that could take down the mightiest of Irishmen. But don't worry, there was no underage drinking involved, it was Virgin Piña Coladas for us... Here's some pics.
As we crossed the border from France to Andorra we actually thought that we had crossed into Spain because the country of Andorra is so small that 99% of the population will never know it exists. (No that is not a fact but probably true). Anyway, Andorra is a very small skiing/winter sports mountain range country that doesn't meet water. Being that we thought it was Spain, I, knowing some Spanish thought I would try it out on the locals, only to find that I didn't understand them and they didn't understand me... We later found out that we were in fact not in Spain and in a country that spoke Portuguese. Nice one Hanna..... Shows me that I need to do my research on these foreign country's. Sorry that I don't have any photos for you because we just thought it was some pretty mountains in Spain.
A few days ago we went to the Lascaux Mueseum of prehistoric cave art. Although it is impossible to view the original cave due to deterioration we got to see the brand new Mueseum which has an exact replica of the original cave. Artists and sculptors have been working for years to replicate the art exactly and have even included the original engravings which can be better seen with a blue light. The pigments used for the original art were actually made from coloured rock and earth and despite the animals looking very realistic, the prehistoric tribes actually drew imaginary animals that they made up. The original art is said to have taken centuries to complete entirely but the exact amount of time it took is still unknown. At the shop I however bought some pigments to use to create my own art and I'm very exited to try it myself! Here's some pics.
