Julia's Journical

Antwerp

January 11, 2010 – 11:23 am

One night we were sitting at Beer’s house with Katherine and decided… lets go Belgium tomorrow. We chose Antwerp. Within an hour we had booked trains and accommodation. Early the next morning we were on the train to Belgium. One and a half hours later we were there.

We arrived at the beautiful Antwerp station and walked to our first museum… which was closed. We discovered that museums are closed on Mondays in Antwerp. So we spent the day walking around just looking at things.

It was bitter cold and we are all wearing about 6 layers of jumpers.
with leggings under our pants…. which was good padding for when Katherine ran and jumped on this giant hand.
High Five!

We walked to the harbour and found this old boat shed.

Up the road was the meat market. The brickwork was designed to look like piles of meat.
We tried to get in.
But decided we had better things to do.

Katherine was thrilled to find more hands!

A beautiful old Cathedral as seen from the Grote Markt (big market…. which was market-less)

A beautiful old building…. not sure what species of building though, sorry!

We then went and checked out a park full of graffiti that wiki-travel had recommended.

We walked and found our hotel which was a little self contained apartment with a bed each. It was very comfortable. For dinner we met up with a friend of Lindsay’s Patrick, he took us to a nice place serving traditional food. I had witlof with cheese and bacon. I don’t know what witlof is in english…but it looks like a small skinny cabbage.

The next day we went out to find some museums. The part of town we were staying in the Jewish Orthodox district. So all the men we walked past were dressed like this:

We walked through a park which was full of rabbits! Tame rabbits too!

The first museum we went to the was the Ruben House. It was fantastic! Photos are somewhere…. on one of 3 laptops and 1 hard drive…. but I will find them!

Then Katherine went shopping while Lindsay and I went to the printing museum which was also brilliant. Did I mention that because we were under 26 admission prices to the museums was only 1 Euro each!

I want to live here, I think I will make this room the dining room.

The museum was set up in the old family home and workshop of ones of Antwerp’s first printers.
The first exhibits were hand written books. They were old and huge.

And they were beautifully ornate.

As you walked through the house you got to see how the Printer’s family would have lived and worked. Including their teeny tiny doorways.

Our favourite room was where they kept the type and printing presses. It was fascinating to look at how they developed pages of books.

We walked back through the Christmasy streets of Antwerp, found Katherine at the train station and hopped on a train back to Den Haag.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged Add new tag, antwerp, belgium, ruben house | Comments (0)

Den Haag wit Kat

January 2, 2010 – 6:35 pm

Yikes! I am so behind in my blogging (how unusual, I know).

Anyway… where were we?

While we were still in Den Haag, Beer went to Kenya for a week. Katherine, our friend from high school, who had just moved to London came to visit us for a while. She stayed with us at Beer’s house.

Her first day with us we took her to Heesch to visit my Oma for her birthday. The train trip took 2 hours and we crossed the country! It was a really lovely day.

One day with Katherine we took her to our favourite pancake house in Scheveningen.
It was freezing cold and really windy. Lindsay braved the cold to take some amazing photos while we watched from the safety of the pier.

Sadly most of the photos were lost when Lindsay’s laptop died

Katherine had her first Dutch Pancake.

She really loved it, but was quite sick and pretty much collapsed after eating.

Once Katherine had recovered from her flu we walked with her to Madurodam.

Madurodam is where everything is in miniature

except for the clogs

they have really big clogs!

As you enter the park a man takes your photo and tries to sell it back to you as you leave. So I dared Kat to have her photo taken with the photographer!

This was not Lindsay’s idea.

This photo

is because of this photo

They were both taken on the bridge over the same canal in Amsterdam. Can you work out which is the real canal?

We hung around until the sun went down and everything was prettily lit up

We then walked home to Beer’s house

with Kat…the crazy cat lady.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged denhaag, holland, juliaholmwood, katherine, lindsayholmwood, madurodam, netherlands, scheveningen | Comments (0)

A Year Ago Today…

December 29, 2009 – 7:17 pm

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

December 27, 2009 – 2:53 pm

I interrupt the usual blogging for the traditionally late, Decates family Christmas card.

We all embarked on new adventures this year. Jacob started university in Canberra where he met his lovely girlfriend Geraldine. Julia and her brand new husband Lindsay spent most of the year travelling around Europe. (Read all about their adventures on this blog). Margi and Jeroen celebrated their empty nest by taking trips to Adelaide, Victoria and New Zealand.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Scheveningen *now with added cold!

December 12, 2009 – 7:36 pm

Lindsay and I spent some days at Scheveningen.

We spent a few evenings walking on the beach

It was really cold.

So cold in fact that we found some ice bergs.

We spotted a jelly fish. Thats how cold it was even the jelly fish turned blue.

It was very beautiful despite the cold.

And during the day the sunshine was lovely and warm

especially when we were tucked up cosy and warm at the end of the pier in the pancake restaurant drinking hot chocolates and eating pancakes!

*yes that is a lump of butter.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged beach, cold, foam, holland, horses, jellyfish, ocean, pancakes, pier, sand, scheveningen, walk | Comments (0)

The Beginning of the End.

December 10, 2009 – 4:21 am

While Lindsay was in Ghent, I stayed in Oss with Elke.

My first night back in Holland Oma and Opa took us out to a lovely posh restaurant in Oss.

Again Oma was the only one to behave like a lady.

Opa and Elke ordered Dam Blanche for dessert.

Dame Blanche is vanilla ice cream with whipped cream and hot chocolate sauce on top!

That night Elke and I stayed up very late packing her room into boxes. She was moving the next day into her student room in Nijmegen.

We found a nativity scene missing Jesus - baby Jesus had been sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

I modeled Elke’s many sunglasses for her.

The next day Tom and Michiel, 2 of Elke’s brothers, came to help out.

Building Elke’s new wardrobe was a big job!

After the boys left, Elke and I unpacked everything, I coloured coded her dressed for her. We then walked the 2 minute walk to town for shoarma and ice tea. After unpacking everything we caught the train back to Oss and walked home from the station. As we neared the park a witch rode out of the woods on a bicycle! We were really shocked… before remembering it was Halloween!

Lindsay arrived back in Oss the next day. It was very exciting to see him. A few days later we went with Yvonne to visit Elke in her new room.

Elke’s kitchen:

Couch, TV and sink:

and big green bed:

After a few day in Oss we made our way to Den Haag.

Avi and Beer arrived a day after us from their vacation in Italy and brought with them lots of yummy food.

Lindsay and I joined them for a second breakfast, where we had poppers!

I haven’t had a popper since I was in primary school!

Avi had bought some yummy bread rolls from Germany to share with us.

Lindsay and I spent many days walking around the streets near Beer’s house taking photos of the area. We felt it was about time that we showed everyone the beautiful streets we were walking in everyday.

Tightrope walking statue

The street full of buildings owned by Shell, parallel to the street Beer lives on.

A street full of embassies and a stormy sky.

Me waiting for Lindsay.

Here I am another day walking back from Alber Heijn (the supermarket) after buying eggs and yoghurt! Excitement.

Here is the Irish Embassy

Up next:
Kat arrives and we go to the beach.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged cousin grandparents, denhaag, moving, oss, the hague | Comments (0)

Barcelona to Belgium

December 10, 2009 – 3:45 am

We left Barcelona at the crack of dawn, and arrived in Montpellier (France) after sitting for 5 hours on the train. Hopping off the train we expected to head up to the ticket desk and reserve seats for the next leg of the trip, Montpellier to Paris. In Barcelona the lady at the ticket desk said we would have no problem getting on the train to Paris and had a full hour, more than enough time to reserve our seats.

Walking up to the massive line at the ticket desk our dreams of a quick transfer were shattered. The line was so long, we stood in the line for 50 minutes talking to 2 Australian girls in the queue behind us, all 4 of us still carrying our heavy backpacks. Their train to Zurich came and went. And still we waited. Finally, with 10 minutes to spare before our train was due to leave we were next in line. We showed the lady the train to Paris that we wanted, pointing it out in our Eurail timetable book. She looks at her computer, looks at us and says “non”. So we point to the next time…she says “non”.

Through interpretive dance we manage to get the message across that we need to get to Belgium that night. Lindsay was talking at a conference early the next morning. She types into the computer, then says “allo, non”. Which basically means “computer says no”. Helpful. So we said “English, English?” and she directed us to a colleague who spoke perfect English.

This English speaking ticket woman was lovely, and we explained to her that it was vital for us to get to Belgium that night. So she found a train that was heading to Lille, from there we had 10 minutes to get the train to Brussels and then from Brussels we could get to Ghent, where the conference was being held. It turned out there was a public holiday in France and everyone was on the move. Catching a train to Lille instead of Paris was perfect. In Paris we would have to catch the metro across the city, but in Lille we could just change trains.

We had an hour to wait, so decided to grab some lunch and experience as much of France as one can experience at a train station.

Thanks to Lindsay’s non-paying clients, this is how much of France we got to experience:
A sandwich shop on a busy road next to the station.

(Guess who is officially off our Christmas Card list?)

We got on our train, which as far as trains go was pretty space age. It was like catching a train from the future decorated with an ’80s theme. There was a little dog across from us who fell head over heals in love with Lindsay. The dog tried to get Lindsay’s attention and climb on his lap, only to be pulled back by his owner. The little dog then lay on the ground crying, looking longingly at Lindsay.

We tried to sleep through the 6 hour trip, it was dark outside and looking out the window resulted in your own reflection looking back at you. A young woman opened her hand bag and a cat popped out. My sinuses went omfgzomgwtfzombiesomg. (I am allergic to cats)

Our train pulled up in Lille and we jumped off the train. We had 10 mins to find our next train. We raced up the escalators to look frantically for the departures board. The board said the train we needed was the last one for the night and on the platform we had just come from! So we raced back to the platform and discovered the last 3 carriages of the train we had just been on were continuing on to Brussels.

The train trip to Brussels took another 30 minutes. From there we had to find a train to Ghent. The train to Ghent took another 30 minutes, from Ghent we had to change to another train that took us to the suburb of Ghent our accommodation was in.

In one day we travelled approx. 1400km via public transport! YIKES!

We arrived in Ghent in an Industrial area, by now it was 11pm. To navigate ourselves we were to look for a chimney stack… but it was so misty we couldn’t see any! After phoning the B&B for help we finally arrived. One of the hosts met us and took us onto their boat. Thats right! We stayed in a canal boat! it was huge and luxurious. With a big comfy bed and an ensuite. But sadly a cat…

Lindsay left the next morning for his conference while I hung out with 3 very English kids who were on holidays in Ghent. They were charming and loved photobooth on my laptop.

We then watched Sponge Bob Square pants on YouTube while their parents packed. The parents were so happy to have a moments peace and I was having fun hanging out with their kids so it worked out very well.

I packed my own gear and made my way to the train station. I considered hanging around in Ghent, but the cat at the B&B was really affecting me (I couldn’t breathe) so had to leave.

I caught a train to Antwerp station,

and back over the border into Holland. I was picked up at the station in Oss by Elke.

Up next … lots of thing and the reasons why I have been to busy to blog!

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged antwerp, barcelona, beligum, eurail, france, gent, ghent, montpellier, spain, trains | Comments (0)

Barcelona via Madrid

November 21, 2009 – 12:47 am

While we were in Barcelona, an old classmate of ours emailed, inviting us to visit her in Madrid. So we thought, why not? The chance to see someone from home and speak Australian English at a normal pace, e.g. super fast (we both speak really slow now so that people can understand us).

We caught our train to Madrid with no problems, the train was fast and this time didn’t get lost en route. Lindsay and I made our way to the hostel and hung out a bit before heading out to meet with Sarah.

She found us, and we went on a quick walk. This is my husband, Mr Blurry face, standing in the exact centre of Spain.

We had left the camera at the hostel. So I used my iphone camera. Thus no photos, you are all just going to have to believe me!

It started to rain, and Lindsay, who had started coming down with the cold I’d had the previous week, was getting sicker and sicker. Sarah took us to a restaurant for paella. After eating and chatting we went out to see it was still raining outside. So Sarah invited us back to her apartment.

It was raining even harder as we walked to Sarah’s place from the metro, but it was lovely and warm inside. We met her boyfriend who is really nice. Lindsay starting to look pretty sick. So we had to say goodbye and make our way back to the hostel. Lindsay started complaining of feel really unwell, and really cold. I thought he was suffering from a terrible bout of man-flu. But I decided to check on him just in case, and he had a really high fever! I did what I could which was basically give him some water. Then at 1am a group of Spanish people came into the dorm room, talking and turning all the lights on. I turned the lights off, gave them a dirty look and went to sleep. At 6am they got up to leave again, turning the lights on and talking… again. ARGH!

The next day Lindsay was still sick, but no fever thankfully. I had to get him to the train station so we could get to Barcelona. We made it to Barcelona, back to the hostel with no problems but then had to wait for an hour while a difficult customer was checked in. Lindsay was still really sick, and we had no food, but had to wait. So stressful.

We got our room, a private one this time. Our window opened up onto an internal courtyard/corridor light thingy. All the smells of cigarettes, cooking and bathrooms from 6 floors of apartments came into our room. Yummy. We spent 4 days in the horrible dark smelly room, while we nursed ourselves and each other back to health. Walking into the kitchen one day I was greeted by the prosthetic leg man! He excitedly said “Australia?” I nodded and that concluded our conversation.

After 4 days we were supposed to be heading to Paris. But guess what? I am sure you will never guess …. Lindsay’s clients stopped paying… again. So Paris was cancelled. Paris was too expensive and Barcelona cheap in comparison, so we had to stay in Barcelona.

The hostel we were staying in was an old apartment block, with the dorm rooms in the bedrooms of the apartment. 4 rooms of people share a kitchen, lounge room and bathroom.

We had to change apartments. In our new apartment were some very cool, and English speaking people! We met Aaron, Jessica and Alison all from the US. Oh and the unusual, jet-lagged, Mexican guy. As well as a German couple. We had 2 cards nights, and many a yarn. Once Lindsay had recovered we decided to do some sightseeing.

We walked to Guel Park to see the Gaudi mosaics.

It was pretty spectacular!

And yet rather unusual.

I spy with my little eye Sangrada Familiara

Then we walked up to the highest point in the park, and up this stone platform.
The busker at the base of the platform was terrible.

He didn’t know the words to any of the songs he was playing so he La-ed and hummed and mumbled. He was so bad that he was good.

The view was awesome.

I was still working on my newly developed fear of heights and couldn’t manage a sane photo.

We then walked back down to check out the Lizard.

En route we spotted this on a ceiling:

On our last day we went to an amazing fresh food market. The food was so fresh it was disturbing.

The juices were nice and affordable!

And the same colour as my straw.

Yum!

And then it was time to leave Barcelona for our epic train journey to Belgium.

But that trip was so eventful it deserves its own blog post.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged gaudi, guel, madrid, market, sangrada familiara, sant jordi hostel, train | Comments (0)

Granada

November 20, 2009 – 11:04 pm

Lindsay and I had a private room in Granada which overlooked the tourist district. It was the perfect location!

On our first day we decided to walk around the tourist areas before making our way up to the Gypsy part of town.

There were cats everywhere!

We walked along a creek, we looked up and could see the Alhambra palace.

It was really hot but we kept walking and walked up some very step little side streets.

The view was amazing.

Looking up we could see the old cities walls.

There were even more cats and kittens everywhere.

They were super cute.

Walking around the Gypsy quarter was amazing. Hundreds of tiny white houses around narrow walkways and staircases.

It was all so beautiful, even the doorways!

This house looks cosy.

We got back to our room. From our room we could see a busker outside the town hall. He ran around the crowds of people imitating them, laying down in front of them, declaring his love for them etc. It was hilarious. A group out on a hens night walked by singing and chanting.

One day we we went and spent money buying lovely things for ourselves. Thinking we were towards the end of our trip and Lindsay’s clients had starting paying we could splurge. I got a camel leather handbag, we bought some paper lanterns and Lindsay got a beautiful leather notebook. We had some delicious sweet arabic tea in a beautiful tea shop. That night we went to a Lebanese restaurant across the road, only to be served by the same man who served us at the tea shop! It was very funny, especially when he served us again in the tea shop when we went there for dessert!

The next day was Alhambra day. It was a warm sunny day, with beautiful blue skies. And I was really really sick. I had a heavy cold, was aching and so weak I could barely walk. But to go to the Alhambra you must buy your tickets in advance. So I insisted that we go anyway.

Lindsay took all the photos, while I sat down at every available moment enjoying the place from a seated perspective.

We first went to through the gardens.

I may have been sick, but not too sick to be weird.

No matter where you are in the gardens you can see or hear a fountain.

We then went into the garden palace where Lindsay took this stunning shot.

The rooms inside the garden palace were amazingly decorated.

the ground were river stones arranged in patterns.

In this shot you can see the main part of the Palace on the other ridge.

My favourite part was a staircase with railing full of crystal clear, freezing cold and running water.

We went into a very old bath house.

The were star shaped holes in the ceiling letting in light and air.

After a break we went into the castle.

You could go up inside 3 of the towers to look at the amazing view.

We found a man with the same camera as ours to take our photo.

These were in the centre of the castle, they used to be the offices and workrooms for blacksmiths, swords-smiths, leather workers etc.

I am not too sure what the balls were for

It was really high up! Look dad, look how high I am!

Then I spotted this handsome bloke.

To go into the most beautiful palace you need to book a time when you order your tickets. It is a huge building, and you can make your own way through the palace. We were booked for 6pm. But had to stand in a line until 6.30pm before going inside.

It was stunning!
A ceiling

A floor

A wall

A window where women could watch the men unseen.

A reflection

A wall

A husband

A doorway

A decorated wall

A star shaped roof

A view

A floor

A bath house

A tower

We were seriously impressed!

The Alhambra is the most beautiful building I haver been to!

We spent the last day in Granda drinking tea and willing me to recover. Deciding to travel light we had left a bag in Barcelona. In this bag was all my tissues, vicks and echinacea! Mistake!

Up next, back to Barcelona with a quick stop in Madrid.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Tagged alhambra, arabic, bathhouse, castle, fountain, granada, islamic, mosaics, palace, shopping, sick, spain, tea, water | Comments (0)

Barcelona Week 1.

November 17, 2009 – 3:15 am

Lindsay and I spent 2 weeks in Barcelona. With a trip in-between to Granada. Our first week this is what we got up to:

Sangrada Familiara was only about 4 blocks away from our hostel.

It is rather magnificent! And constantly evolving.

Another day we decided to do a walking tour from our book of walking tours. 10 minutes into the tour we found a nice side street and made up our own tour. It was seriously hot and we enjoyed the cool little streets and looked in the numerous stops.

We wound up in the Gothic quarter. Where we sat briefly to enjoy the music of a busker and the cool shade created by the large church.

I looked up at one stage and saw this creepy thing:

We had a poke around in a church called St Jordi. Instead of having little prayer candles they had electric candle things.

It just looks really weird. To *light* a candle you put a coin into the little money box.

The giant golden thing looked like it had ET faces on it

See them? They are the swirly things going around the sun looking part.

The courtyard of the church was really pretty, there was a fountain with cold drinkable water pouring out of it.

This was my favourite part of the fountain.

The residents of the courtyard were complete gooses.

That night we met one of our room mates. He spoke no English, and we speak no Spanish. But he was urgently trying to communicate something to us. So Lindsay passed him the laptop, open to google translate. And the Spanish man typed in this:
“prótesis de pierna” which in English means, prosthetic leg. He then pretended to scream in fright. We worked out he didn’t want us to wake up in the morning and see a leg lying on the ground.

The next day we went to the train station to book our tickets to Granada. While waiting in the line I spotted some girls who were obviously backpackers having a little bit of a freak out. I saw they had Eurail timetables with them, so I went over to offer some assistance. They were both Canadian and quite distressed. They had planned on catching a train to Milan, but had found out that the trains to Milan went once a week only. So far they had only used one trip on their Eurail pass and were still new to the game. I gave them the suggestion of catching a ferry to Rome, and then from their catching the train to Milan. We gave them directions to the ferry terminal and to Rome once they arrived in Italy. They had some other questions about how the Eurail passes worked and places to stay. They were so thankful that we had helped. I hope they made it to Milan ok.

We booked out tickets in Spanish! We were so proud of ourselves. Lindsay is really good with languages, which is useful. Leaving the station we decided to head in the direction of a hill with a nice building on it. Along the way we spotted this Miro? sculpture.

Turning around from the sculpture we noticed these trees:

Gum trees! I was so excited I was picking up leaves and sniffing them. (home sick much?!)

The pretty building we had come to see was covered with scaffolding and thus not as pretty.

But the view was pretty fantastic.

As was this busker.

Can you spot Sangrada Familiara?

Its such an epic building.

Walking back down through lovely gardens we found some bougainvillea which is fast becoming my favourite flower (vine? plant?).

The next day was Lindsay’s birthday and we were catching the train to Granada in the south of Spain. This was the longest train trip I have ever been on, we had a load of food with us because we had a knew the trip would take 11+ hours. The train zigged-zagged through Spain.
We left the stormy skies in Catalonia.

And passed through the interestingly named coastal town of:

We arrived in Valencia, where the train stopped for ages, then left the station, heading in the opposite direction before stopping again due to an accident on the train tracks ahead.
We passed through another town and or city. Stopped and changed direction (thus the zig zag).

At one station the carriage in front of our carriage and the engine behind our carriage pulled away. Our carriage was left standing next to a train station that looked very abandoned. The carriage was packed with unconcerned Spanish people, obnoxiously loud Americans boasting about their knowledge of the Spanish people, and English couple then Lindsay and I. NB: it was Lindsay’s birthday and by this stage we had been on the train around 9 hours. After freaking out for only about 30mins, an engine arrived, picked up our carriage and off we went. The engine was pulling only one carriage, so we were going pretty fast. The country side around us changed quickly too.

From pine trees:

to hills covered in rows of Olive trees.

To sweeping fields of grain maybe?

And then 12 hours after leaving Barcelona we arrived in Granda. It was a 30 min walk to our hostel/hotel. We found an arabic restaurant and tried to have a celebratory dinner for Lindsay’s birthday.

By Julia Holmwood | Posted in Backpacking | Comments (1)

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