Barcelona!

We just spent another weekend away, this time exploring Barcelona and getting the final bit of sunshine out of the year.

What a fantastic city. From the moment we arrived we wanted to live there - the weather, the food, the Spanishness - but I guess being on holiday always puts a place in the best light and real life's a bit different.

Barcelona's a really small city, so very easy to get around and see plenty, but even so we will have to go back to fit in everything we want to do there.

We stayed at a really cheap hostel, Hostal Neutral, right in the centre of town. The place was really basic, but perfect for two nights, and cheap to boot. We arrived late on Friday night and took a midnight wander down Las Ramblas, stopping for a beer en route. We enjoyed this introduction to the city, one of all night partying and entertainment. As it was October there weren't too many tourists which made wandering along much easier.

Saturday was meant to start with a bike tour of the city, but as we'd both been really busy the week before the trip we'd forgotten to note down details of where the tour began. So instead we explored Mercat de la Boqueria, enjoying some delicious fresh juice (mmm strawberry and coconut), some seafood treats and some pastries and fruit. From there we took the metro (very simple and cheap) to Sagrada Familia, stood in the queue and paid 12 euros to get in (boy inflation goes up quickly in Spain, our guide book from 2007 had the price at 8 euros so that's a 50% increase in just three years). Gaudi's masterpiece has been in construction mode for more than 100 years and still has a long way to go. The exterior's amazing, and we both enjoyed most the more modern side of the building, designed by Josep Maria Subirachs. There's an excellent museum under the church itself and it was well worth a visit.

We finally figured out the starting point for our cycling tour and joined it at 4pm. What a brilliant way to see a city! Our tour was with Fat Tyre Bike Tours. In about 4 hours we saw various Piaza, Arc de Triomf, Palau de la Musica Catalana, Parc de la Ciutadella, Barcelona Cathedral, the outside of Sagrada Familia, and finally a drink on the beach. We will definitely look for bike tours in future, and highly recommend Fat Tyre Tours.

The following day we kicked off with an excellent breakfast sitting at the bar of Ciudad Condal and wished we'd found it for dinner the night before. After that we visited the Cathedral, took in some Catalan dancing outside, and braved the crowds to queue for Museu Picasso (the first Sunday of each month is free so it was a bigger queue than normal we expect). Well worth waiting as the museum has hundreds of pieces from Picasso's early life.

Our weekend ended with a reminder of why we'd love to live in Spain, the most fantastic tapas meal at Lonja de Tapas, just down from the museum.

Cracking time in Cracow

We spent the final weekend in September visiting Crakow with Dean's sister Sarah and our friend Kate. What a great city for a change of scene.

Our accommodation, the Da Vinci Apartment, part of Globtroter hostel's offering in the Old Quarter, was beautiful, all romantic high ceilings and huge windows (and all for £25 per person, per night).

While in Krakow we visited Wawel Hill, home to Cracow Cathedral and the Royal Castle, enjoyed wandering around the market square in the Old Quarter, and had a brilliant (and slightly vodka-laden) night in the Jewish Quarter.

Dean testing the walls at the salt mine. Salty.

We also spent a day on a tour visiting Auchwitz and the Salt Mines, both of which were well worth visiting. Auchwitz (as expected) was a pretty harrowing experience, and the Salt Mines were really interesting, with miners having carved an incredible church out of the salt.

We highly recommend a visit to Poland - oh and the food was amazing (mmm pork hock, beef stew, gypsy-style pancakes, delicious dumplings, cherry vodka...).

2010 Summer in London

Summer? We had the coldest August in 17 years. Despite that though, we had a pretty good few months, with lots of family visiting and our third season of the Proms.

Here are some highlights:

Proms in the Park with friends

Last year we went to the official Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and this year we did the outdoor version with friends. It was a fantastic night, lots of food and singing along. Dame Kiri was a bit disappointing, forgetting the words to 'Tonight' from West Side Story, but the rest was a blast. Here we are enjoying a singalong at the end of the night.

Visit from the Yarralls

Dean's folks popped over from NZ for a few weeks in July/Aug, and we enjoyed a few outings with them, including a fashion-inspired high tea at the Berkley.

Lou's birthday

Lou turned the big 30 in August and we celebrated with an incredible dinner at Le Pont De La Tour on the Thames. It was a beautiful night and was strange eating a birthday dinner outside, since Lou's birthday is usually in the middle of winter back in NZ. We enjoyed a bottle of Hawke's Bay red and a lovely evening in the shadow of Tower Bridge.

von Dadelszens migrate

All five of the von D kids now live in Europe, with John arriving for London in July, and Ange moving to Milan in September. We've had both come to stay with us and it's been great having more whanau around. Here are John, Vonce and Hannah with Lou.

Sunshine in Spain

We just got back from a totally rejuvenating mini-break in Tenerife in the Canary Islands (best known for loutish English people who want to party and eat English food and avoid anything Spanish) and it was brilliant. We stayed in an area away from the louts, the Golf Del Sur. Our hotel, the Vincci, was a 4 star place right on the waterfront, with everything we wanted for a lazy long weekend (a comfy bed, sunloungers, and great breakfasts). During our two, 38 degree days on the island, we explored the really touristy areas of Los Americas and Los Christianos, drove north to Puerto de la Cruz to check out the other side of the island, and had plenty of time lounging pool side. We ate at Tapas and Opera in Golf Del Sur, and found a fantastic fish place called Tambo’s right on the rocks at Puerto Santa Cruz, and fell in love with Canarian style potatoes. We even enjoyed the touristy cocktails with sparklers, and the karaoke-style entertainment all the restaurants have (Lou had flashbacks to the dance floor of the Happy Tav in Havelock North when one singer pulled out Kenny Rogers great “Coward of the County”). All in all a brilliant weekend and we returned sunned and relaxed – and we highly recommend Tenerife for a long weekend.

Football World Cup South Africa

Attending a football world cup was a once in a lifetime experience for us, especially as the 2010 cup was the second time NZ had ever got into a world cup. We secured tickets in December 2009 and started planning our trip. Unfortunately plenty of South Africans saw it as an opportunity to make a buck, and we received some totally outlandish quotes for accommodation, but some far more reasonable as well thankfully. In total we spent 16 nights there, staying mostly in B&Bs and driving ourselves between games.

We split this blog post into overall impressions, games, tourism, and Kruger park.

Overall impressions

Well the football was amazing, we were the proudest kiwis. The party we had that night after the first game we will never forget – it was like we had won the world cup, not drawn our first game. One of the highlights was catching up with so many footie friends; many of whom we knew were going, and many of whom we bumped into along the way.
Organisation ranged from super efficiency (we could have been in Germany the way Pretoria organised the park and ride) to almost a riot with people fighting to get on buses at Rustenburg stadium to get back to the park and ride. Similarly, some areas were prepared and able to cash in on the party, and others weren’t (like the bar in Nelspruit which fit about 1000 people and had two people working on the bar. Seriously, two).
We mostly stayed at B&Bs and generally they were pretty good, especially Elonda in Pretoria – the owners are like our South African grandparents they took such great care of us.
We ate some brilliant meals along the way, including impala, ostrich and hartesbeast. Dean was particularly fond of his various types of biltong.

All up, we drove around 4000kms in 16 days, which meant a couple of 7hr drives. The toll roads were excellent, but the secondary roads were often pretty dreadful. Some amazing drives - through the Kruger was our top drive, the two hour drive to the first game in Rustenburg was hard to beat for the anticipation, and the drive out of the Kruger down to Polokwane was incredible for the different view of life away from the big cities.

South Africa, as most people acknowledge, still has a long way to go in addressing the issues from apartheid, but everyone that we met and talked to was really positive about the potential that South Africa holds.

Games

We went to all three New Zealand games and we also had tickets that followed the winner of NZ's group (if NZ didn't make it out) through to the semi final. We thought we should at least watch one knockout game, so we stuck around for the R16 game in Pretoria and offloaded the other tickets for a fair face value price.

The first game was NZ v Slovakia and the atmosphere was incredible - lots of loud, excited kiwis and a great spirit of all having travelled such a long distance to support our heroes. NZ went 1-0 down pretty early in the second half and our spirits dampened a little - a strange feeling as we went there not expecting anything but of course hoping for something. Then along came little-known Winston Reid who scored in injury time at the end of the game, earning NZ its first ever world cup points. We were totally ecstatic of course, and the party that night felt like we'd won the competition, a night we'll never forget.

The second game was a few days later v Italy at Nelspruit. The stadium there was built especially for the competition, with the pillars holding it up designed to look like giraffes, and the all the seats striped like zebras.

This game had drawn a lot of attention as of course Italy were the reigning champs and everyone expected them to walk all over New Zealand. But we sure showed them a thing or two, with Shane Smeltz popping one in pretty early into the game. That silenced the Italian fans and got us on our feet for the rest of the game. Unfortunately for NZ though, we were up against a world-class team at pulling dirty tricks, and an undeserved penalty was awarded to Italy, with them drawing 1-1. Still a pretty fantastic showing from NZ, drawing even with a team like Italy. We were quite chuffed at that, especially as our accommodation was hosting the Italian team and Italian supporters for lunch and had quite rudely kicked us out of breakfast early that day to give them time to prepare. Ha, we showed them.

The third game was in a fairly dismal little town called Polokwane (our accommodation was dreadful, there was nothing to do in the town, staff at the stadium charging an arm and a leg for average food and drink were begging for tips - just a bit of an embarrassment to be hosting world cup games), against Paraguay. Ending with a nil-all draw was a bit of a downer, as was the heavy handed actions of riot police who forced us all to leave straight after the game. The party that night though was another fantastic one as we knew we wouldn't see our kiwi friends again for some time. The DJ got hold of someone's ipod with about 4 kiwi songs on it (Slice of Heaven, I see Red and a couple of others), so they were played on repeat throughout the night, along with the official world cup song by Shakira that we didn't grow sick of (not even being sarcastic, we're still fans and can do the dance on demand). We were of course sad that was the end of the cup for the All Whites, but we were so proud of how well they'd done.

The R16 Pretoria game was held at Loftus Versfeld, and was Paraguay against Japan. Neither team were particularly ambitious in normal time, the game ending at 0-0 after 90 minutes. Unfortunately, not much changed in extra-time and the game fizzled out into penalties. Luckily the penalties came inbuilt with drama. Sitting next to Reece, a kiwi we met at our B&B, as the Japanese 4th penalty taker stepped up, he said never trust a left footer - and the poor guy went and missed, giving Paraguay the advantage which they took and on they went to the Quarter Finals.

Loftus Versfeld is an old rugby stadium, and it really showed that you need different things for different sports, and that stadiums have come a long way in terms of facilities and spectator comfort. Being a Tuesday afternoon, and two unattractive teams, Pretoria didn't really get behind the game, so it was another partially full stadium.

The games were great, but it was always disappointing to see lots of empty seats at the live games. This was probably down to a combination of the long way to come for the overseas fans, and overpriced tickets for the locals - a real shame.

Tourism
We learnt a lot about South Africa on this trip, not just what we were taught in high school history. Highlights include a visit to the Voortrekker monument, the Apartheid museum (which was excellent, and had one of the best guides to get the most out of your visit) and the Battle of Blood river monument (about 40km drive down an poorly maintained dirt track, and there in the middle of nowhere, at the site of the battle, is a full sized laager (circle) of replica wagons, amazing).

Another highlight was a visit to the Cullinan diamond mine. We did the full tour which meant getting kitted out in full safety gear (took Dean back to his NZ Rio Tinto days and Lou was quite fond of her helmet) and travelled 763m below ground inside the working mine. There we walked the passageways and saw kimberlite (the rock diamonds are found in) being scraped out of the earth and carted up to ground level. Amazing to learn that for every 100 tonnes of rock, they find about 2 carats of diamonds - it made us appreciate the price we paid for a small keepsake in the gift shop as we left (rude not to support the local economy and all that).

We shouldn’t have bothered with an official tour to Soweto, which all the guide books said must be done on an organised tour. We could easily have driven there ourselves and visited the couple of museums we did on the tour, saved ourselves a lot of money and been perfectly safe. A shame really, because it was an interesting place to visit, and we’re glad we did, as our expectations were quite different to what we saw (we imagined mile upon mile of shanty towns – this is not the case, it’s actually quite a nice, safe area with some excellent museums, and our (white, female) tour driver told us she’d be quite happy in Soweto at night, and the only way you’d see her in the middle of Johannesburg would be dead).

Kruger park
On such a tight schedule we only had two nights to spend in Kruger park – a national park the size of Israel. We stayed in bungalow/huts in the Shingwedzi and Mopani camp sites which were excellent – fully equipped, we could have stayed for a week. In just two days we were really lucky to spot four of the big five (elephants, rhino, lions, hippo – no cheetahs/leopards), especially as our camp sites were in the north of the park where there are more trees and game is harder to spot. We also saw crocs, lots of giraffes and zebra, wildebeest, warthog, buffalo, monkeys, some beautiful birds and thousands of impala and the like. One of our souvenirs is the skin of one, which happily lives alongside our NZ lambskin on the floor of our lounge.

We were incredibly lucky to spot lions in particular, we only had a sedan, but a couple of 4 wheel drives had spotted a lion and lioness in the bushes, so we pulled up alongside. Then we saw the same lions on a night drive that evening and watched them for ages, plus spotted another lion (who had likely been playing wingman and lost out, according to our driver).

And finally, a video to sum up the party spirit of the kiwi fans.

The hills are alive with the von Yarralls in Salzburg

Lou’s Mum came for her regular galavant around Europe in March, so we all piled off to Salzburg for a weekend together (with Lou’s brother and his wife, and Lou’s sister). Salzburg was a sweet, small city, easy to walk around and with plenty to do. We were really lucky with two sunny days and made the most of them.

On Friday afternoon we went on the Sound of Music Bus tour (highly recommended) which of course was right up the von Dadelszen family’s alley. Plenty of singing along and re-enacting scenes in the movie, captured on film here.


Vonce, Helen, Eileen and Lou, skipping down the avenue where Maria sang "I have confidence"

We also visited the fortress on top of the hill overlooking Salzburg, went to Mozart’s birthplace which is now a museum full of history about his family – paintings, letters (interesting), locks of hair (a wee bit spooky) and a really odd room with everything upside down and weird headless models positioned half outside the doors. No explanation and it was a bit beyond us.


Helen, Eileen and Lou overlooking the city

Other than that, we ate and drank plenty, just enjoying a weekend together. We enjoyed some delicious Austrian food at Wilder Mann and Stern Braeu – both fairly cheap and cheerful Austrian restaurants; beer at the Augustiner brewery which was founded by monks in 1621; and lots of coffee/pastry/strudel breaks in between. Our accommodation, Pension Elisabeth, was also really well priced, comfy and in a good location.

Dean and the von Ds at the beer hall

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen from the von Yarralls for now.

The Bees #2

Stop number 8 on the tour of London's league football grounds saw Dean and his friend Zac trip out to Brentford in West London. Having earlier this season seen Brentford away to Leyton Orient, Zac proclaimed them his favourite London team.


The visitors were Gillingham. Being based nearby in Kent meant they filled a large part of their stand, and contributed to a pretty exciting atmosphere even though the crowd was only just over 6,000. The crowd was close to the pitch which was great at half time with the crowd chanting "getting sacked in the morning" at the Gillingham manager due to the 3-0 scoreline, and throwing bottles etc! One crazy fan was even waving his shoe at the opposition fans.


Wajciech Szczesny, the Brentford goalkeeper, is currently on loan from Arsenal and was in particularly good form. Given the current poor form of Alminia and Fabianski at Arsenal, he could be featuring there in the next couple of years - he will need to beef up a little bit though - he's as skinny as I was!

Livening up the game, we put some ££s on - including picking some scores, with 3-0 being the last option live at halftime. Not a great way to spend the second half - wishing for no goals. Luckily there was only one chance, and unlcukily it went in off the back of the Gillingham goalies bonce. Arrgh the 13-1 pick of 3-0 down the drain.

Stadium was pretty average - no allocated seats, and pretty tight leg room wise, in fact impossible to sit normally, lucky really it wasn't at fullcapacity, and the stand had a number of poles obsurcing the view. Food seemed to be a standard range, but the ground only had a minimal number of programme sellers. To be fair, Brentford were promoted last season, and have plans for a new stadium so there is some lee-way there.

Not a bad day out, not too cold for the middle of winter.

So that is stop 8 down. The remaining grounds are Tottenham, West Ham, QPR, Watford, Crystal Palace and Dagenham and Redbridge.