The final chapter.....

This is it, the final blog.  Tomorrow Lew and I get on the first of many planes to take us back to New Zealand.  Since we got back from Portugal we've been staying with mum and dad, and taking a few days to visit friends and generally say goodbye to everyone.

The only "event" to report on was the Glastonbury Carnival that we went to with friends last Saturday night.  This is quite an impressive spectacle which happens every year in several towns in Somerset.  For those of you in New Zealand, its like a Santa Parade on steroids: long haul truck trailers converted into floats with hundreds of light bulbs (powered by 2 huge generators towed on a second trailer), moving parts, dancers, loud music and a real party atmosphere.  People line the streets for hours beforehand to get the best views and there are plenty of stalls selling candy floss, pies and chips - just what you need on a cold November night.  Although there's actually quite a bit of heat coming off the floats from all the lights!

There are different themes each year, and judges running alongside throughout the whole procession.  All highly competitive, and incredibly creative.  The heads on these buffalo swung side to side and up and down in time with the music!

The whole thing takes two hours to get through town, so the dancers have to keep going for all that time.

The hours and money that go into a float must be phenomenal.  This Charlie and the Chocolate Factory float had spinning parts going in three different directions.

So how do we feel at the end of our year off?
Happy to be going home?  At this stage - yes.  We've spent the last 6 weeks living out of our suitcases, and with a year's worth of stuff scattered around the place, it can be hard to find exactly what you're looking for!  While we were living in our house in Provence, we were very happy and settled, but now we're looking forward to getting back to our own home and surroundings.

So what will we miss?
In no particular order........

The wine of course!
Whether you're buying from a fancy vineyard...

Or the local cooperative...bring your own container and fill your boots!  Let's hope its not just coloured dish water pumped out from the winemaker's kitchen sink!

 Having sampled a fair few wonderful wines during the year, for no more than 3 or 4 euros, it will be hard going back to New Zealand prices.  But you still can't beat a good Kiwi sauvignon blanc!

The friends we made.
We never expected to make such strong friendships in a short period of time, and to be able to sit at a table chatting with French friends, in French, was certainly a huge achievement for me!  And luckily for both Lew and I, the French always speak more English than they like to admit!

We will really miss our friends from Le Thoronet and Lorgues, and all the social events we were invited to.  They certainly know how to party!

The shopping.
We're not talking clothes and jewellery here, these are the real French shops, where grandpa is out the back making the bread, and grandma is selling it to you....which they've done for the last 70 odd years.

And while we're at the boulangerie, of course we'll miss the croissants and pain au raisin.  The rest of the world needs to admit that they just can't make croissants like the French, and leave it to them.

The knockers!

New Zealand could definitely do with more knobs and knockers, along with my personal favourites the Net Curtains!!

The food.  Say no more.  Maybe part of our enjoyment was having more time to shop for ingredients, research recipes, and try different dishes.  Let's hope this continues when we get home.

The opportunity for travelling easily to different countries and cultures, all relatively cheaply and quickly.  We have so many great memories of Corsica, Portugal, England and Italy. 

Not forgetting the many, many....many medieval hilltop villages we visited!

The cheese.

I don't think the word "cholesterol" translates into French.... and if it did, I don't think they'd care.

The cafés.  There's nothing like sitting in the sun, winter or summer, watching the world go by.  The French have made it an art form.

And finally, family.  One of the main reasons for taking a year off and coming to Europe was to be a bit closer to the family over an extended period of time, which has been wonderful.

So, to all of you who have logged in to find out what we're up to, we hope this has satisfied your curiosity, and thank you all for at least pretending to be so interested in following our progress.  We promise not to talk about this for the whole of 2014.....tell us to shut up if we do!

24 hours in Seville

During our week in Portugal we decided we were so close to the Spanish border, we should have a quick trip to Seville, for one final fix of European big city culture.
We'd used the trains successfully to get to Faro and Tavira, so surely the train would be the way to go to Seville?  Not so.  It seems Portugal and Spain don't cooperate much when it comes to border crossings, so there are only three places in the entire country where the train lines actually continue from one country into the other.  So it was the bus.  However, that wasn't quite so straightforward either....we easily bought the return ticket in Olhao and our seats were booked for the trip to Seville, but we were then told that we had to book the return seats once we arrived in Seville.  Different country, you see.  Impossible to do that from Portugal.  But what happens if we get to Seville and then find out there are no seats left on the bus back to Olhao the next day?  Shoulder shrugs all round.  Oh well, going with the flow, we got to Seville, enjoying the coach trip past the orange orchards, strawberry fields and more tiled houses.  According to our bus driver, with his limited English, he said we didn't need to book the return seats at all.  Being slightly doubtful, and wanting to ensure we got on the bus the next day, we then spent some time in Seville bus station "communicating" our situation with the non-English speaking non-cheerful non-helpful ticket lady, who eventually took our return tickets off us completely and swapped them for a one way ticket back to Olhao.  Sorted.  The only problem being that these new tickets showed they had cost zero euros, as we had already paid in Portugal, so the bus driver didn't like that at all, indicating that it had confused the whole system and why did we give the ticket lady our return tickets at all?!?  Well, why don't you improve your international relations and stop confusing the tourists?!?  He let us on the bus.  Just.

Travel issues aside, the intervening 24 hours were great.  Like so many European cities, Seville is vibrant, beautiful, friendly, and in November the weather was still sunny and warm, with not too many tourists around.  The usual maze of tiny streets, interesting buildings, stunning doors opening onto lovely inner courtyards

Complete with medieval doorbell....!

We stayed in an excellent hostel, bang in the centre about 100m from the cathedral.  50 euros a night for a big double room with bathroom, and breakfast - certainly the best bargain we've found all year.

The cathedral certainly dominates the centre, and is really impressive from the outside, with lots of turrets, buttresses and twiddly bits, we spent quite a while just sitting in the square looking up at it from various angles.

Inside wasn't quite so impressive, but we enjoyed climbing up the bell tower: instead of the usual countless steps, the ascent was a very graded slope going up 34 levels.  It was bizarre how easy it was to gain height, and noticeable how many overweight/old/unfit people were making it to the top, who never would have managed it had it been steps.  You can just make out the bullring in this photo from the top - Seville is one of the most important bullfighting cities in Spain, and shows no sign of joining some other cities like Barcelona where they have given in to public pressure and banned it.

Lew and I don't often go into museums, castles and houses when we're visiting cities and towns, preferring instead to walk around getting lost in the streets, just looking at the architecture and watching the people.  However, Lew overheard a conversation in the tourist office which resulted in us getting into the Alcazar Palace for free, which we couldn't really ignore!  This is a collection of buildings which house the Spanish monarchy when they are visiting Seville, and has been added to and "re-decorated" over hundreds of years depending on the current monarchy's interior design tastes!

Inside and out, the decoration and plasterwork was amazing, and once again, our camera doesn't do it justice. (I can feel a duty-free purchase coming on during our homeward trip.....!)

Food and drink always takes high priority for us when we're travelling, so we try and do a bit of research beforehand, and ask the locals where they eat.  According to the hostel owner, there was only one place to go for tapas, and we needed to get there early as it is so popular.  So we set off with the map in search.  Took us a while to find it, so it was after 7.30 when we arrived.  No-one there at all, all looked decidedly unpromising.  We went for a wander around the block and came back at 7.45 - two tables outside had people looking at the menu, so we decided to give it a go. Managed to get a couple of glasses of wine from the sole person behind the bar, who told us the kitchen didn't open until 8.15.  At 8.00 three other staff suddenly appeared and launched into a frenzy of preparing cutlery, glasses, bread baskets....things were looking much more promising.  People began appearing from the darkness and by 8.15, every table inside and out was full, and everyone was poised with menus at the ready, waiting to order!  The waiter in charge of the outside tables where we were sitting set off around the tables, taking multiple orders, serving drinks, and writing names on a blackboard hung up outside - eventually we realised that was the waiting list for a table.  The pavements were soon full of people hanging around, glass in hand, waiting to pounce on a table when their name came up!

But what about the food?  Predictably, Lew and I over-ordered in a big way, but it all sounded so good.  Salamenjo - a type of gazpacho soup; Iberian black pork; cheese and asparagus fritters with red pepper sauce; fried courgettes; papas bravas - potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce; chicken and bacon rissole in almond sauce; spinach croquettes; aubergine cooked in honey.......

Four glasses of wine, enough food to feed us and probably the table next door too - 27 euros.  Amazing value and really good food.  Next time we'll order a couple of dishes to start with, instead of everything at once!

The place we really wanted to see in Seville was the Plaza de Espana.  In 1929 Seville hosted the Iberico-American Expo, and spent 19 years preparing the city and constructing the exhibition buildings.  The purpose was to showcase Spain and improved international relations with the attending countries.  All the buildings were designed to be used as embassies, offices, museums and consulates once the Expo finished.

The tiles and ceramics decorating the bridges were beautiful

Around the periphery of the semi-circle were alcove seats, each representing a city in Spain, in alphabetical order.

The tiles depicted something about the history of the city

This was another place where we just sat and admired the buildings for some time, and watched the people coming and going from the offices, jogging through the surrounding park, or painting in the gardens.

And the final photo?  Not sure who he was, as the statue was in the middle of a very busy roundabout, but he had obviously been given a make-over for the coming winter, and was sporting a very fetching lycra number to keep him and his transport warm....

Bring on the fish.....we're in Portugal!

Four days of November in England and we'd had enough of the cold and rain, so it was onto the plane for southern Portugal, flying into Faro on the Algarve.  Lew's friends Melissa and Mike had kindly let us use their house in Olhao (pronounced olly-ow!), a small town, which is the biggest fishing port in Portugal.  The house is tiny, literally one room stacked three stories high with a roof terrace, and all the houses are packed in tightly like the local sardines, which means you get to know the neighbours very quickly!
The view from the roof terrace...

 The streets are a maze of tiny passages, many of them too small for cars, so it took us the full week to get the route to the bakery sorted without getting lost and having to backtrack.

We loved it, walking everywhere, as nothing is too far away, watching the locals going about their daily routines, the kids playing in the streets late into the night, the men sitting and watching the world go by their doorstep...Portugal is certainly a place to kick back and relax, no-one is going anywhere in a hurry.  They love to talk, and spend ages chatting on street corners....

Or attending important meetings....

But more about the houses......in particular the tiles.  Portugese houses are clad with an incredible array of colourful tiles.  Even the poorest looking houses can have a beautiful selection covering the walls, which makes it difficult to put the camera down sometimes.

There are those who like to maintain the appearance of their houses...

And those who obviously spend their euros elsewhere!

The houses on the mainland are usually two-three storeys high

But the houses out on Culatra, a village built on a sandspit just off the coast, are all single storey and very geometric and colourful...

Whilst Olhao is on the southern coast of Portugal, there is no actual beach, as there are huge tidal sandy banks a kilometre or so off-shore, with Culatra being one of the "islands" visible from the shore.  We took a boat trip out there and had lunch on the beach, then walked around the village.  No point in having a vehicle here, just the odd tractor, as there are no roads, its all sand.

 The population depends on the fishing, and its obviously still made up of lots of one-man operations, no Mr Talley or Sealord here.  This is from Culatra looking back to Olhao.

Have I mentioned the fish?  A large amount of the fish caught locally is sold locally, at the big fish market on the waterfront every morning.  It was just as a fish market should be, loud, crowded and full of the biggest selection of fresh fish, most of it still wriggling, and much of it unrecognisable to us.

I ate fish every day, from grilled sardines to whole sea bass, from fresh tuna, to cataplana - the local fish stew cooked in a copper dish with a domed lid

One thing even I didn't try was bacalau, or salt cod, which was everywhere - it has the appearance and texture of thick cardboard, due to the amount of salt used to preserve it, and just didn't look that appetising - this man picked up several pieces and gave them a good bang before walking away!

We also came across the lesser-spotted coat-hanger fish down at the port....no idea what they do with this.....most of the flesh seems to have gone....

Opposite the fish market is the fruit and veg market, which also runs every day, and spills out onto the waterfront on a Saturday, when gran and grandpa come down from the hills to sell their 12 oranges and 5 courgettes that they've grown that week.  This lady even had the old fashioned weighing scales for precision accuracy.

We used buses and trains to get around to the nearby towns of Faro and Tavira.  Faro seemed to be heavily populated by storks, who make their nests in the most exposed high up points they can find, which are usually church towers!

Tavira is a beautiful town with a river running through the centre, and an definite air of prosperity about it, with some beautiful buildings and churches.

Tavira also had the most refreshing example of good old fashioned self-responsibility being alive and well in Portugal: everyone is encouraged to walk up onto the castle walls, which were a good 15-20 metres high, no hand-rails, no barriers, not even a warning sign to be careful not to wobble off the edge....fantastic!  Take the children and your grandmother up there to enjoy the view!

We loved Portugal for so many reasons - the buildings, the people, the weather, the food.  The one down side?....Portugese sewage systems are so bad they can't even deal with TOILET PAPER down the toilet!!  You have no idea how hard it is to break the habit of a lifetime and not hurl the paper southwards every time.  It takes full concentration and you can't take your mind off the task for one moment, otherwise its out with the barbecue tongs...!!!

We also took a quick trip to Seville while we were down that end of the world, but that deserves a blog of its own, so I'll finish with one more tile photo....