I celebrated my birthday in Valencia

26 years old! I finally had a sunny hot summer day to celebrate my birthday. We enjoyed our day with a nice relaxing morning on the Beach followed by a traditional Valencian dish of rabbit and chicken paella for lunch yum yum. After siesta Leah went to do some shopping for a picnic at night. We had the pleasure of prawns and snacks in the Turia river over looking the Fira Juliol a carnival / fair. After dinner, Leah surprised me with a 'birthday cake' made up of two heart biscuits, custard, smarties and chocolate brownies. Perfect day.

Birthday Paella

Birthday night

Leah put this together with love and lots of custard.

The beaches were very similar in Valencia to Barcelona just less touristy and lots more space for activities. There were several bring-your-own-net courts for anyone and play volleyball or 'foot volleyball', where you can't use your hands, awesome to watch. Along the board walk you could see massive sand castles that people would build for tips. Several were in the building stages and a lot of hard work goes into it.

Just a little sandcastle on the beach of Valencia. 

Valencia is a beautiful charming city considering its the 3rd biggest in Spain behind Madrid and Barcelona. We walked around the city for several hours stopping to look at the Towers of Serranos, El Miquelete, Mercado central and Graffiti lanes, as well as all the cool things we found in random streets when we got lost. We even saw the Estonian Embassy.

Tiles everywhere.

marble flooring and fountains everywhere

During our mandatory run around 11:30pm in the evening, it was a bit more bearable being only a sticky 27 degrees not 37 like during the day. We ran down and through the Turia Park, which is an 11km dried/filled river bed with all sorts of cool stuff going on in there. There is a massive fibreglass playground of Gulliver from Gulliver's travels, football, rugby and tennis courts, parks, walking and running tracks and at the end, The City of Arts and Sciences. That night in the park there was a beauty/ 'little Miss Valencia' type pageant. A couple of hundred people were watching and cheering on the girls in their traditional Spanish dresses decorated with glitter.

Miss Valencia

Fira Juliol in the Turia Park 

We've really been enjoying the beaches and knew that we had to get a good fix of them before our next two stops that are inland. So we caught a bus a little south of town and soaked in the rays and chilled out in the shallow waters of the Mediterranean sea.

day on the beach.

Barcelona

Hello sun.

Hello beach.

Hello hot weather.

Hello Barcelona and Spain!

Barcelona Beach

I think that I’ve found another ‘wish list’ place to live.
After a little panic at the airport in London thinking that we were going to have to pay an extra 80+ Euros because our bags were over weight, we whittled them down from 18.3 and 17.6 to 15.1 and 15.3 respectively. Pretty good even though our carry on was now heavier. We were very excited to be back in Europe on the euro and in some consistently good weather.

 

Barcelona was our first stop in Spain and like all other cities in Europe the public transport was awesome so we found our accommodation for the next 6 nights easily. We really enjoyed our crisp Estrella beer that night. Our apartment was great. Easy location for travel in and out of the city, a nice little balcony where we ate our meals  but my favorite relax spot during our many siestas was the Hammock that you could hook up in the lounge room. I fell asleep there a couple of times a few with a book and a beer. 

Me Relaxing on the Hammock (yes with a can of Estrella)

We started our first day by walking around the busy La Rambla. We were greeted with annoying guys trying to sell you a whistling thing hidden in their mouth, lots of souvenirs stores with ‘I heart Barcelona’ t-shirts, sunburnt English tourists and some very impressive human statues with huge golden wings or silver robes. At almost every store they sell Barcelona Football Club Jerseys. Home colours, away colours and alternate colours with Messi #10 or Neymar Jr printed on the back. The amount of people wearing the Barcelona jersey was crazy, maybe 1 in 20 people! I even saw a Grandma in a wheelchair with the home jersey on.

Onto the Barceloneta beach, where 1000's of beach goers filled the sand with tanned bodies, red bodies, colourful umbrellas and an assortment of towels. We found out that the sand is actually imported from Egypt once a year and has been since the preparations for the 1992 Olympics.

Barceloneta Beach

We saw all the cool sites like the Barcelona port, the ins and outs of the Gothic quarter, Cathedrals, arty stuff , statues, memorials, markets, the Arc de Triomf and heard heaps of history that went in one ear and out the other on our walking tour. The most breath taking was the Sagrada Familia an ever-changing church that is never finished. We also went to check out the 1992 Olympic and sporting area where we found this cool rock climbing tunnel where people were just ‘hanging’ around.

The port.

Sagrada Familiar

Rock climbing tunnel

It was also cool to learn about the Catalan culture, which is very different to that of Southern Spain. They have their own language, flag, customs and are still having referendums for independence, even though Spain would never allow it. We also learnt that Catalans are obsessed with bowel movements, with a  doll called a caganer, depicting different famous people 'pooing', being a popular tourist souvenir.

Night life was really fun. One night we caught up with Carlie, an Australian who we worked with in Tallinn. A night out with Carlie is never a quiet one and we tasted Barcelona’s nightlife with a couple of bars and a shot bar with over 500 shots. Some of my favourites were campfire and Bob Marely. On another night Leah had researched some hidden bars for us to try. We started off at a 1 euro tapas bar and ended up drinking with a Columbia and a Peruvian. Very random night and very hung over the next day. 

RSA? Nar. The Campfire shot where you have to toast a marshmallow in the flame before taking your shot

On our beach day we caught a train about 30 minutes north of Barcelona to a beach called Ocata. Beautiful calm blue waters, hot sand, topless sun bathers, families, friends playing games, people reading books and guys walking through selling cold drinks and sunglasses. The whole all day we didn't hear a word of English and it was a nice feeling being away from the hustle of tourists and relaxing somewhere where the locals hang out.

Octava Beach

We caught the sunrise our last morning during our compulsory “run in every city”. A nice early start so the weather wasn’t too hot to run in got us down to the beach perfect timing for the sun to rise. 

Sunrise

Next on our travels is Valencia.

- Arvi

London bridge is NOT falling down!

Well, after an easy 4 hour bus ride from Manchester we were in the big smoke.

Trafalgar square

With so much to see, and about a week to do it all, we didn’t really know where to start! So we decided to kick off our time in London with yet another free walking tour, around Royal London. We saw sights like the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace (no, sadly we didn’t see queeny ), Trafalgar square, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.

Me in Green Park (called green park because there is no flower beds )

Arvi next to one one the queens massive guards 

Big Ben

On a rainy, wet day (normal weather for London) we headed to Camden market and got ourselves lost in the hundreds of stalls selling everything from punk leather outfits and piercings to furniture. The amount of food stalls was amazing too, with every cuisine you could think of!

Camden markets

even the shop fronts were all funky

With London being the home of Arvi’s favourite football team, Chelsea, or course we had to fit in a visit to check out the grounds… And their official football store! We also tried to fit in all the other sights of London like the street art in Brick lane, the river Thames, London bridge and London tower bridge.

CHELSEA!!

around brick lane 

Street art, Brick Lane

We even fitted in a little date night to see Wicked the musical after a yummy dinner in China town. Even from row W we really enjoyed the show and the atmosphere.

nose bleed section at Wicked

We broke up our stay in London by heading to Brighton for the weekend, a 2 hour bus ride south. When we arrived at our cute (and cheap!) BnB in Peacehaven, we were greeted with actual summer weather for a change and spent the afternoon sunbaking on the beach and reading books we bought for 50 p at a second hand store that afternoon.  We also sampled the buzzing Brighton nightlife, which is a favourite among English stag and hen parties, who travel to Brighton to get messy, very messy.

Brighton beach (not much sand)

 The next day was much colder and we spent it visiting the famous Brighton Pier and exploring town. Before heading back to London, we went for a morning run along the beautiful coast at Peacehaven, which featured the Bastian stairs or, as our BnB host called them, ‘The bastard stairs’. The 187 step, steep staircase leading up the cliff from the water certainly gave us a workout!

Tea time in Brighton

Fish and chips with mushy peas next to the peer (yes, I am  choking on a chip but it was the best photo)

Board walk in Peacehaven 

Beautiful weather the first day

Overcast weather the next

Some fountain in Brighton

Lots and Lots of stairs

When we arrived back in London we decided it was time we caught up with some of our many friends who are in London. I caught up with my friend from uni Emily, while Arvi caught up with his old school friend Liesel.  Then we met for a drink with our friend Katie, who has been living in London for years. We were also joined by Tiina, who was on a holiday in London. It was good to see some friendly faces.

Arvi, Leah Katie and Tiina

The next day we decided we needed some culturing so we visited the Museum of Natural History. It was a huge museum in a beautiful building with lots of interesting exhibits but lets be honest, we were only really there to see their awesome dinosaur exhibit! 

Arvi with his closely related Ancestor, the sloth

T-rex

Museum of national history

My amazing impersonation of  a puffer fish

We topped off our stay in London with an amazing night seeing one of our favourite Australian artists, Flume, with Karla and Holly. It was so cool to see him play over the other side of the world but we felt like we were back home with lots of Aussies in the crowd. 

FLUME!

always classy! on our way home from Flume

- Leah

Manchester

On our way up to Manchester with Holly and Karla, we stopped of at a pretty little town called Burton-on-the-water for some lunch. The town has a lovely little waterway running through the middle, with pretty little bridges connecting the 2 sides of the town. We ended up having some very English tea and scones as well because it was very cold and started to rain a little. Karla thoroughly enjoyed spotting dogs and wanting to take them with us.

little bridges over the water

beautiful town

In Manchester, we stayed in Disbury with a nice young Airbnb couple from Australia who had both moved to Manchester to play classical music and study. The apartment was awesome, located in a trendy little village only a 20 mins bus ride out of town.

That night ,we met up with Karla and Holly for a night out in gay district. For some reason we all thought it would be a great idea. All I can say is that Arvi was very popular that night. I think being the only guy out with 3 girls confused all the boys…

just anther church

Manchester graffiti 

During our stay we saw some sights of Manchester such as the John Rylands library, located in a beautiful old building and filled with really old books, some the size of  young child!

Leah and Karla studying in the library 

Arvi was very excited to be in a town with such a big football culture so naturally we went to visit the Manchester United home ground at Old Trafford, where apparently ‘Many football gods have graced the field’ Arvi (2009).

Arvi outside Old Trafford Stadium

Giving Sir Alex a hug

He was even more excited when he found out there was a entire museum dedicated to football and ended up spending about 3 hours exploring whilst I tried to go shopping with a very limited budget, not so fun in the UK.

Brighton and Hove Jersey

History of World cup balls 

Old School English Keeper jersey

The Premier League Trophy oh so shinny 

We also checked out the Museum Of Science and Industry, where we saw exhibits about the history of Manchester’s textile industry and a pretty impressive collection of old aircrafts.

old aircrafts 

textile museum

Next were off to the big smoke, London. 
- Leah