A Week of Travel
After a month, we left Florence on Monday. We were back to traveling like the first 2 weeks of our trip. Those weeks were tiring, but fun because of how much we were able to see. This time we only have 1 week of travel before we get to Valencia where we will stay for a month. We went to Turin (Italy), Lyon (France), Montpellier (France), and Barcelona (Spain).
We got to Turin around 3 on Monday. We were meeting my dad’s cousin at the train station. He picked us up and took us to our B&B. We didn’t do much on the first day, but we did get to meet his family. We got takeout from a local pizza place and ate it at their house. The next day we actually went into the center of Turin.
It turns out that they were having a chocolate festival in the main piazza. There were so many different tents that had all different kinds of chocolate. My sister and I got cioccolatte calda, which is a better version of hot chocolate. It’s pretty much drinking straight melted chocolate. We walked by a lot of tents which all had good looking chocolate. We got some made of Ecuadorian cacao beans and some made from Indonesian beans. We still haven’t tried them yet, but they look pretty good.
After walking through the festival we wandered around the center for a few hours. We had tickets to go to the Museo Egizio, the second biggest Egyptian Museum in the world, at 2. I thought the whole museum was really cool, but my sister didn’t. She hated all the skeletons and mummies, and freaked out multiple times. I thought it was cool because of all the artifacts. There were so many of them. I also thought the mummies were pretty cool.
We were in the museum for about 2 hours, and then we went back to my dad’s cousin’s house. My sister played with his kids until around 9, even though they had school the next day. We had pasta and watched some Champion’s League soccer, and went back to our B&B.
The next day we had a train at 4:30 so we just wandered around the city some more. We saw Mole Antonelliana, which is a tall spire made out of bricks. We also had some really good pizza, for our last meal in Italy. At 5 we had to catch our train. We were heading to Lyon, France. It was the first time we left Italy in more than a month. We got on the train and took a 3 hour ride. When we got to Lyon it was almost 8, so we were all tired and ready to go to bed.
The next day we had a train to Montpellier at noon, so we didn’t get to see much of Lyon. We got some pastries for breakfast, and my sister and I had this really good chocolate banana tart. On our way back to check out of our hotel, we stopped at a McDonalds to get macarons. There aren’t macarons at McDonalds in the US, so we had to get some. They weren’t that bad, they just didn’t have much flavor. The vanilla one was my favorite, so if you ever go to a French McDonalds, I recommend that one.
We got to Montpellier around 3, so we were actually able to explore a little bit. We walked to the Arc de Triomphe. I thought it looked pretty cool, especially with the park behind it. We went to that park, where there’s a big statue of Louis XIV. There’s an aqueduct at the end of the park, so we went and looked at it. There’s an aqueduct that comes out of the back, but it was blocked off so we couldn’t go on it. We wandered around the center for a while, and we just ate a bunch of snacks instead of dinner.
The next morning we wandered around for a long time. Our train to Barcelona wasn’t until 2, so we had to find lunch before we left. My parents got sandwiches and I got some meat pastries at one place, and they were pretty good. My sister didn’t want to eat anything they had there because she’s picky. We found a Mexican restaurant, so she got a burrito. That was our last meal in France until December.
When we got to Barcelona we took the subway to our apartment. Our apartment had a balcony with a view of La Sagrada Familia. La Sagrada Familia is the big church in Barcelona. They’ve been building it since 1882, and they still haven’t finished. There’s also a shared roof terrace in our building, which has an even better view. We sat up there for a while until we met our friend for dinner. I got quesadillas and everyone else got some tapas. Tapas are a bunch of different little dishes that are made to be shared with lots of people.
We had our first big breakfast in a while the next morning. I got pancakes with yogurt and fruit, and my sister got pancakes with Nutella and bananas. I also got an apple, pear, and orange juice, while my sister got a strawberry and banana smoothie. My mom got french toast, and my dad got yogurt. My sister had been begging for a real breakfast for a while, and I think this satisfied all of us.
There were some buildings by Antoni Gaudi, an architect from Barcelona, so we decided that would be the first thing we do. I thought that the Casa Milà looked pretty cool. It didn’t look like any of the other buildings I had seen in Barcelona. It was super curvy and it had really cool balcony railings.
We walked towards the harbor next. We walked through La Rambla which was very crowded. When we got to the water the crowds thinned out. By the time we got to the water it was almost 2, so we were all hungry. We found a place by the water and got more tapas. They were really good. I really liked the chicken wings and fries.
After lunch we walked through Parc de la Ciutadella. There were lots of people in the park. There was also a huge fountain that looked pretty cool. There were dragons who were spitting water out, but they were covered in moss. The moss blocked some of the dragon's mouths, so the water didn’t come out like it was supposed to.
After the park, we walked to the Arc de Triomf. I didn’t know there were so many Arches of Triumph before this trip. This one is made out of brick so it’s red. Under the arc there was a guy playing the drums on buckets. It actually sounded really good for buckets. We didn’t do much for the rest of the day after the arc.
The next day was Sunday so my dad was going to see if he could get into the Sagrada Familia for free by going to a mass. The mass was at 9, but when he got there at 8:20 the security guard told him it was already full, so we didn’t ever get to see the inside. Our family friend brought pastries for breakfast, and we ate those on our roof terrace. We had heard that there was going to be a people stacking event not that far away from us at noon, so we decided that we would have to go. These events are called castells.
When we got there we saw one of the teams marching in. None of us knew what to expect, so we were surprised when we saw each team make towers 4 people tall, and walk around. After each team did that they tried to build as high as they could standing still. There were 3 teams that all went twice, but we didn’t stay for the last one, so we got to see 5 human towers. It was really entertaining to watch, and I would recommend going if you ever had the chance.
After the event we wandered around Barcelona for a while. We eventually went back to our apartment for the last time. On Monday we’re going to Valencia for a month, and I’m excited. It looks like there are so many things to do there. I just hope that they speak at least a little English, because our Spanish is not good enough to do everything.
