Larna's pics: Italy and Spain

Still in a very chilly Jo'burg. We're starting to put our travel plans together for part 2 of our 'Beeg adventure' set to include Morocco, India, Egypt, Turkey and the USA. A few visas to get and tickets to book before we depart. At this stage, it looks like we'll head off again around the start of September with Casablanca our first destination.

On the subject of travel, Larna took a heap of great photos in Italy and Spain. Here are just a few of my favourites...

Italy - Venice and Verona

Napoli

Pisa

Bologna

Avignon, France

Barcelona, Spain

Madrid

A morning at the Dept. of home affairs

(My feet: three months of wearing sandals over a European summer...)

Greetings from a wintery, but sunny Joburg (yesterday the mercury hit 23 degrees!)

Well I spent this morning at the Department of Home Affairs, Edenvale branch, applying for a new passport. Edenvale is a rather run-down satellite city of Johannesburg about 15 minutes from my folk's house.

Going on past experience, I expected a chaotic morning, but to be honest I was quite impressed.

The initial scene inside did appear rather disorganised with people standing all over the place looking bewildered, but a large bossy, matronly woman went asking people to sit in the chairs provided - "I promise you no one will jump the queue," she barked, before giving a very stern lecture to a few guys in football jerseys who I think are couriers for companies that carry out passport services, warning them about pushing in.

A middle-aged, white-haired "tannie" (Afrikaans for 'auntie') behind the counter checked my application. She reminded me of one of those librarians one used to encounter at the public library - silver hair, thick glasses, an officious manner but quite friendly, if you got on their good side.

I had my right thumb print electronically scanned (I was impressed with the technology), moved to the next counter to pay the application fee, then had fingerprints taken in the old fashioned ink way and then had to queue again for the last step: 'live capture'. This involved having my passport photo digitally taken, signing my name digitally and giving two more digital thumb prints.

The whole process took about an hour and in two weeks time (so I have been told) I will receive an SMS telling me to pick up my new SA passport with 32 empty pages!

On Friday I have an 8am appointment at the US consulate for my B1 tourist visa. Hoping it all goes smoothly. From there we can start applying for our other visas...

Photos: Spanish landscapes

Photos of the incredible Spanish countryside on the train from Barcelona to Madrid:

Wintery smells of Joburg

Our Swiss Air flight touched down at 9am this morning with the thermometer reading a very breezy 6 degrees. It's been 10 years since I last experienced a Joburg winter. Stepping off the plane - we had to take a bus to the terminal - I got that distinctive a 'wood fire smell' of cold winter mornings on the highveld.

The arrivals terminal at Johannesburg International was still decked out in World Cup decorations and posters with signs pointing the way for ticket holders and football delegates. The highway on the way to my parent's house was lined with flags of the competing and now departed nations and a giant South African flag remains cut into the turf alongside the road. A lot of cars (including my dad's Toyota) have South African flags wrapped around their side mirrors like socks.

I weighed myself on the bathroom scale and found unbelievably, that I am about 15 kgs lighter than when we set off from Melbourne four months ago. Saying that, we'll have to get into some kind of exercise regime here, otherwise I'll struggle to keep the weight down. I've already tucked into a packet of biltong and being eyeing out the sweets and snacks in my mother's pantry.

Ah...It feels good to be back.

(I had a glance at the headlines on the Sydney Morning Herald website to see that Tony Abbott's coalition is leading in the polls. Yikes, an Australia ruled by the mad monk scares me!)

Madrid meander

We´re in Madrid for our last couple of days in Europe. It´s stinking hot over here, but whereas Rome seemed to have no shade and was overrun with tourists Madrid has a laid back, spacious, easy feel and there are plenty of lush green parks where you can throw down you backpack and have a nap - as we did yesterday.

Our train journey over here from Barcelona was the best we have been on in Europe, by a country mile. We travelled first class on one of the super fast trains. It topped 300km/hr at its fastest and it was like travelling on business class in an aeroplane with supercomfy seats and stewards and train hostesses serving drinks and a light lunch. Best of all was the scenery. I took heaps of pictures from the train, unfortunately I cannot upload them from this computer, but will do so from Joburg. We passed flat fields and rolling hills of ochre and red brown (very much the colour of the Australian outback) with jagged, quartz-like cliffs in the distance and little towns and stone houses popping up here and there. It almost looked like a Martian landscape at times. In between were enormous fields of sunflowers.

We had a brilliant few days in Barcelona. The city is simply one of the best in Europe. We stayed in a hotel just a few minutes from La Ramblas, the main boulevard. It was in an ¨interesting¨ location - the street outside was literally swarming with street prostitutes of every shape and size.

We visited all the Gaudi buildings. The Sangrada Familia was unfortunately covered in a lot of scaffolding and had almost as many cranes hovering above it as those amazing tapering towers on either end. We spent an afternoon in Parc Guell, the park with the twirling Gaudi houses, mosaic lizards and terrace with on curvy benches. It was packed with tourists but we managed to find some quiet bits further into the park.

So we have two more days in Europe...we´ve been away nearly four months. We´re looking forward to a good break in Joburg trip ¨before setting off on part two of our BEEG adventure -Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and India. Should be able to upload heaps of photos soon....

Exhausted,but loving arty Avignon

We're in Avignon, Provenance, spending our last two nights in France before heading off to Spain for six nights - Madrid and Barcelona.

As you can see by the photo, we are staying in tent city! It is a quite a nice camp site near to the centre of town and has a sort of Woodstock feel with a lot of the people who are performing at the local arts festival staying here. Yesterday there were at least three people juggling and a guy cycled past our tent with all the props from his show on the back of his bike.

The town is very busy with festival goers and people handing out brochures for their shows. It reminds me of the Edinbugh festival, though everything is in French. Despite this hecticness, the town has retained its medieval charm and is one of the most beautiful towns, French or otherwise we have been to. It is entirely surrounded by a castle wall and a winding river with green grassy banks. Because of the festival there are a lot of street performances and yesterday we watched a brilliant brass band and later a Celtic band.

African safari....

We are making a 'slight detour' after Europe. Next week Thursday, we are flying from Madrid to Zurich and then on to Johannesburg for a bit of homecooking and quality time with my folks. We are both exhausted and in need of a break, but we also need to sort out a bunch of visas, mainly due to my South African passport. Attempting to do this in a foreign country has proved fruitless and utterly soul destroying. So we will stay in Joburg as long as it takes to get visas for the US, Morocco, Egypt and India and then head off from there. We are both looking forward to some home cooking, quality family time and finally getting our clothes washed properly!

The last few days in particurlar have been very long and tiring. Tuesday in particurlar was a nightmare. It involved about 9 hours of train rides from Bologna to Lyon. This would have been OK if we had not been dropped off at the Lyon airport at 10pm (instead of the centre of town) and then had to take another bus to the centre of town, followed by a metro journey and then a walk (the rude Italian man at the train station in Bologna never explained any of this to us - a word about Italy vs France at a later date...)

We ended up at our hotel at 11pm. The reception was shut and no one could let us in despite me banging on the door like a loon. Fortunately the locals came out to help (I have never encountered such friendly people as those in Lyon) and I eventually managed to get hold of the owner of the hotel who gave me the access code to get in. Not a great travel day in the annals of the Beeg adventure, but we survived!

Almost four months abroad!

Photos from Napoli

Napoli on a Sunday afternoon
The ruins of Pompeii

The harbourside in Napoli

Larna about to eat one of the famous pizzas at Da Michelle