Australia Day!

26th of January - AUSTRALIA DAY

Australia day, everybody goes out, barbeque, picnics, beach,concerts,flags flags and more flags. Dad and I went up to the Harbour Bridge to see the boats ferry race on the BAY and took a few pictures. We later headed through the Rocks as a few bands were playing, got some free water and later had a hot dog at Hyde Park. We even saw the Qantas A380 flying around!! My dad got all excited and bought a flag which we walked around with and I was given some small plastic flags and tatoos with the Australian flag that I put on my arms and face :) All this took us almost 6 hours. Exhausted we came home. Later at around 7pm we headed to Darling Harbour to see the night and fireworks show!! Now just have to wait for 26th of January 2012 for the next Australia Day!

STOP!! Kangaroo on the Road!

I had not taken the car in about 5 years.... I decided to drive around 150 Kilometers...and in 7 occasions I had Kangaroos jump infront of the car! Luckily I was alert and on the watch for animals, so I was able to stop on time. My dad taped this as I drove.

You have to be extra carefull around 6-8am and between 6-8pm when the sun rises and the sun sets as kangaroos jump onto the road. During the day they are resting under the trees. We found a lot of dead Kangaroos by the road. Kangaroos dont always follow a straight path, and therefore you are adviced to keep driving straight as most accidents caused by kangaroos crossing the road are car frontal crashes. When you rent a car, some companies do not insure your car if you are driving at dawn in areas in which it is known kangaroos tend to be.

Hurray!! I’m sitting in the airplane direction Adelaide with my dad’s work laptop and typing this! Whenever I get some proper internet connection I will post it.Unlike during some other trips like the Northern Australia in 2009, this time I’m trying to record what goes on. Let’s face it, having a laptop also facilitates the task; pen and paper are becoming at fast pace too old fashion. No way to go back and delete or reededit and the worst, not possible to write what I’m thinking at a proper speed.

We are flying with Jet Star a low cost Australian airline. Jetstar and Virgin Blue are the Australian “vuelings/easyjets”. Im not too happy about being in a plane AGAIN, this is also my dads fifth plane of the week as he has had to fly to Melbourne a couple times this week for work and he isn’t too excited either. My travel sox helped a lot in my Barcelona to Sydney flight, and I arrived with minimal leg pain, but now I just want to arrive to Adelaide!!!

Something that I like to do at airports, whether I’m leaving myself or going to pick someone up is stare at the list of departing flights. Obviously the list changes radically depending on where in the world you are. So these are the flights that were leaving this morning from the domestic terminal of Sydney Airport. Ironically, if you fly domestic you can be taking a flight that is up to 5 hours, this is way longer than a Barcelona-Moscow flight! This obviously implies various time changes. Now flying to Adelaide, a “short flight” of only 1h45 minutes…so in other words as long as my Barcelona-London flight! There is also a zone change of 30 minutes between Adelaide and Sydney.

A rather strange thing in the airport is that we did the check in, went to baggage drop, passed the security check, got on the plane and nobody checked our ids. This has happened to me every time I take a domestic flight in this country. They never check that you are the person whose name is on the boarding ticket, somehow surreal in particular after all the security alarms there have been in the past years.Another thing that I really like to do in a foreign country is go to a local supermarket and stare at their products. I went to one yesterday and took a couple pics of products that I have not seen in Barcelona. I’m able to point out products which I would clearly not find in a local supermarket in Spain, but it’s hard for me to list what there is in Spain that is not here. I suppose Jamon Serrano would be one of the things. Due to the amount of mixed cultures that there is in the city the supermarket had a wide variety of Asian (from Japanese to Pakistani) food . Something which is found in the USA but also hard to find in Spain was Salad Dressings. In Spain and Italy we are way too used to using oil, vinegar salt and pepper for our salads , while here you can find any kind of salad dressing imaginable

Finally in Sydney!

5 pounds went for a set of sushi. Clearly not worth 5 pounds, but the best way to spend exactly those 5 without getting back change. Sat down ate it, ate tons of mandarins and walked around. Sat down again and kept staring at the screen for my gate to be announced. There were 4 different flights to Sydney! Mine via Bangkok, a Qantas one also leaving same time also via Bangkok, one via Singapore and one via Hong Kong. Seriously it is hard for me to understand why so many people would be traveling to Australia. The flight was packed. So think about it 4 747 flying to Australia via south east asia. That is around 400 persons per plane = 1600 persons…and those were only the flights leaving from my terminal, there also Lufthansa, Emirates, and other airlines heading to Australia. Id like to know the story behind all these people moving up and down the globe. . .

The wait in Heathrow became long, and it included a kid spitting on me. At the end, fed up of the child, his dipper smell which was getting mixed with the smell of fried food his dad got and his attempt to spit on me again I stood up and finally the gate was announced, gate 42, the furthest possible gate in the terminal. I remembered it when I saw it, I had been there before. So we got on the plane. Had a girl next to me which was good, she was quite didn’t seem to want to talk too much and wasn’t taking up any of my space. I luckily had an aisle sit so I stood up and down quite a few times. Got offered some chicken with coconout and lime which was delicious and I ate quite a few mandarins. I dosed on and off during the entire flight, which made it go pretty quick. We went through Turkmenistan, Delhi, Varanasi, Myanmar and finally we made it to Bangkok. Spend my time watching a couple few films, start the book and got a bit drunk with some Bacardi coke. I ordered one and they gave me two…so yeah J I saw they had music so I tried to listen to it, but it was mainly crap. I saw they had “sleeping songs for adults and kids” so I put that on and this song started … “twinkle twinkle little star…” I couldn’t believe it! I stopped and moved on…in the search of some proper music. I did not find the entertainment system of BA particularly good, but it kept me bussy for a while. The BA crew gave us the welcome on board by letting us know that they would leave in Bangkok and a new crew would join then, but that crew was not at as good looking as the one flying to Bangkok. Haha.

The airport in Bangkok is very new but its so big that its very exhausting to have to do a stop over there. They made us get off the plane so they could clean it, but what we had to do, as always is walk for about 20 minutes, pass a security check, walk another 20 minutes pass another security check and finally show our passports again and board. Each security check of course with its own queues… just never ending. I saw that at least in this airport you could get free internet. Only 15 minutes and you had to register your passport number and nationality but that was good. Finally was able to connect my laptop to let people know where I was…and then I boarded again… the plane ran and ran and ran through the runway and up we were again. 9 more hours of flight ahead…

The girls sitting next to me got off at Bangkok and this fat, smelly guy sat next to me for this part of the flight I did everything possible not to talk to him. He kept trying to chat and I seriously stopped myself. He was or seemed drunk and kept ordering beers…and his smell.. bleh :S I watched a film and we were still over Indonesia… I read a book and we were still not in Australia… Finally we reached northern Australia…but we still had 4 hours to go to Sydney. It seemed never ending. They gave me chicken again but it wasn’t that great so I finished up all my mandarins and finished the other half of my jamon baguette, which gave another opportunity for the drunk fat guy to talk to me. He was jealous of my sandwich, who wouldn’t have ;-)

I filled in the immigration form…they sprayed the cabin to prevent any pest of entering Australia...

We approached…

Finally the 20 minute to landing announcement

Finally 44 kilometers away from Sydney “ Crew take your sits for landing”

And finally …. Touchdown!

Grabbed my luggage which seemed to never come out, went through quarantine check and took a taxi “home”. I didn’t really know where my parents live since they have changed apartment twice since I last came here.

Finally homeeeeeeeeeeeee, woman in black was home!!!

A bit exhausted…but it was time for a shower and to go for a walk J Australia, its sunny, its warm and it feels great. There is such tranquility. I don’t know the neighborhood around although my parents live very near the center…so we went for a short walk with my mom around the area…ah … I love it!! Sydney seems to me like an American city, but there is this relaxed atmosphere to it. It’s hard to describe it, but I’ll do my best in the coming up posts.

Im taking a plane tomorrow again…. To Adelaide!

How to Survive

Yes! I have tricks to travel with the least pain possible.I can not sit too long in flights, my legs swell a lot.

Tip 1 To cure it I used to walk up and down the aisle. In fact I have just changed my seat to make sure I am sitting in the aisle and do not disturb anyone by standing up every hour. However even walking,drinking liquids after 8 hours im exhausted and in great pain. How then to survive 32 hours? The travel socks are one of my secrets. These socks help in blood circulation and therefore make your legs swell and hurt less. They prevent deep blood thrombosis which is rare but happends when people take long flights.



Tip 2 are natural tranquilizers like Valeriana. I have recently gotten on these ones, but it helps me sleep a bit, be less anxious and specially if the pilot sais it is predicted to fly over a turbulence zone over X country I take one.
Tip 3 learned from Miquel a rhum and coke or two will get you sleeping in no time.
Tip 4 take a night flight to properly sleep.
Tip 5 travel with someone you can lean over, put your legs over them etc. If not, take a pillow with you and hope for the best.

The truth is that if you are not traveling Business or First class, a 32 hour trip can be physically painful. Space between seats are not any bigger than in a normal 1 hour European trip. The only difference, the plane is wider so you have 3 seats, aisle, 4 seats,aisle and 3 seats again.

These are the seats in the new A380 in economy class of Qantas. As you see, this is anything from luxurious. What I feel has made travel more enjoyable and less painful is the entertainment system that planes have adopted in which even in economy you have your own tv with movies,games,shows and news to watch. This to me has been the best change to keep your mind bussy. Also, its hard to believe it, but when I was younger people would smoke on planes! Still sounds surreal to me!

24h for Departure!!

Skype Tijd!Dank je wel!

Whoever saw me this morning walking in Barcelona must have thought I was a total dumbass. My smile couldn't have been bigger as I crossed Rambla Catalunya and strolled down seeing the sun rise while my fingers danced to the rythm of the song that was playing on my phone. The first email I saw this morning at work stated "Gisela, don't bother sending us an email. We know it. YOU ARE GOING ON HOLIDAYS.Bitch". I knew it, last day of work and then 3 weeks of holidays!!!! Its ironic how happy I get now with 3 weeks of holidays when before I used to have never ending 3 months. In 2007 I spend 5 weeks in Australia as part of my around the world trip... and it flew by.These 3 weeks will simply run, but they exist, those 3 month holidays were the good times, something to look back and dream about.

This morning so many people seemed, irritated,tiered,bored and following their routine... but I had something to hope. Australia, Summer,Family. After 9 months its finally time for departure!!! It still sounds surreal to me and I know that I will only trully know Im there when I hear the magic words "ladies and gentlemen welcome to Sydney, were local time is 5 am. Please keep your seatbelt fasten until the plane has come to a complete stop. We thank you for flying British Airways and hope to see you onboard again soon." A sign that I will have survived a 32 hours trip.

I always have to hear the same repetitive speech from people: "you have traveled so much""you have seen the entire world""you cant get nervous". There is so much to see and discover that the words "so much" "the entire" are in my opinion completely out of place. I surely have traveled widely, part due to life circumstances but also and mainly to my interest and eagerness to do so.The magic about each trip is that even if you go to the same destination you were before, despite going to the town next to yours, you get to experience and see things that are completely different from eachother each time. The people you go have a great influence on what you live. Any opportunity to get out of our daily routine is a reason to get me nervous and excited. Today, I recieved an email when I had exactly 24hours until departure " less than a day before you start flying, We are looking forward to welcoming you onboard flight XXXX from Barcelona Terminal 1 on 19 January 2011". I dont like it when airlines remind you of flights, specially when its a return flight. However this mail put a big smile on my face..... and then:

5.00 Out of office message in the Office. Back on the 9th!
7.00 Grandmas Goodbye. Sweet
9.30 Skype ;-). Thanks.
9.50 Check in Online - Seat Selection
10.00 Booking Flights for Morrocco. Happy!
10.15 Gmail Chat. last detail plannings
11.15. Should maybe consider having dinner?
11.30 Tagging luggage
11.50 Hand luggage.
00.00 Should I have dinner?
00.01 Change alarm clock to make sure I dont wake up at 06.30 tommorrow
00.02 Take out work badge, leave it on the table. Not to be touched in weeks!
00.30 Clean the stair case of the house
00.42 Take out dishwasher
00.45 Should I have dinner? No, only some milk and cookies.
01.00 Clean part 1 of Kitchen.
01.15 Now. . . sleep? Dont feel tiered at all.

Strange. Grandma hasnt called today. Must do it myself tommorrow.

7 days to Australia - Queensland Flooded

Anything but excited about the current situation in Queensland, particularly the water raising in Brisbane. Seems like its geting from the outback into the city.

So much for day dreaming about Fraser Island, Noosa and Rainbow beach during my previous trips to Sydney. I now see how the waters are raising and electricity is being shut in the city to avoid electrocutions. So far my flights to Brisbane are booked but I've decided to wait for the bookings of my trip/hostel to Fraser. We will evaluate the situation later in the week and figure out what we do.

This reminds me a bit of the big /disaster that we lived on August 12th 2002 in Prague and eastern Europe when an unprecedented flood wave left parts of the city such as touristy Mala Strana underwater. Not to say waters rose quickly, aftermath was tremendous, borders closed and Prague had to go through a lot of renovation with no metro working for a while etc. However, once the water came down tourism was still functioning, so I think we will be fine. Fingers crossed.

13 days till Departure

Time is here. Holidays Again. After 21 months heading back to Australia. This time the flight is BCN-SYDNEY via London and Bangkok. Ill take this opportunity to visit two places that I have long wanted to see, Kangaroo Island (via Adelaide) and Fraser Island (via Sunshine Coast and Brisbane). Hope to keep you updated through the blog.

Last day in Sydney....Sitting infront of the OperaBar with the views of the Bridge.



So 16 hours left for the plane to take off from Sydney International Departures! Didac and Anna are takig off in 30 minutes from El Prat! So half of the team is on their way! Too excited right now to sleep or do anything like read a book. I just cant wait to get to the hotel in Bangkok and get our tickets to Laos :) Everything has been packed and I have finally restored both my Chinese Copy Ipod and my International Adaptor! Both are working again ueueueu :D

Also, let me introduce you to the Palican that I met in the fish market! Quite huge!! And i had a bag of fish with me.

I was not happy when this beast started to walk towards me! Luckily i got to eat the fish in the evening...
Currently trying to kill time by watching Cricket and I seriously dont understand this game. Games that can take up to 5 days?With lunch breaks?All dressed in white-who wears white to play games? I thought this was reserved for golf players. I should read a bit about the game to actually understand the rules, cuz after 47 minutes of staring at the screen i still dont get it! And now craving for icecream but every shop is closed :S

And check out how nice Sydney is...! This is Balmain in "the middle of the winter"!....Transparent water, shark nets, boats,surfboards,beers and SUN!!

Definately Will Miss it..... The Land Down Under

next time: The Outback

Looking for some warmer weather we are heading up north to the whitsunday islands on a family holiday :)

Ill be back with 1,000 pictures in 7 days :) Until then. . . bye bye!! If im not back in 7 days, then ive been

eaten by a shark while snorkling...Hope to be back though.

Blue Mountains

8am Wake up and look out the window, it seems like a nice day, nobody is awake. Didnt they say we were going to leave at 8.30? Why is no one awake. Too bad, im not gona wake up if everybody is snooring. 9am door opens, shouts starts, movement is frantic. We are leaving we are leaving the day is nice, get up and get ready its lateeee. Tsk!9.30 Voices shout again, "i said hurry up we have to take advantage of the great day"...9.40 Leave the parking lot 9.50 Try to annoy and wake up my brother who is trying to sleep in the car...almost make it but at the end he falls asleep 11.40 Finally arrive to the blue mountains. As they were before they are lovely, quite a few tourists and nice. Take a cable car. Suddenly meet some catalan dude that wants to know where we live etc...short converation and keep walking in the path. 12.20 Take another cable car, make this 50 minute path that tourists seem to avoid. Really nice, it feels like we are in the middle of the jungle. Finally start meeting toursits again. Take the steepest train in the world up back to the parking lot. 3.00 Starving. Look quickly through the souvenier shop and run to the car to find a restaurant. All restaurants look bad. Finally find a nice one. Sit down,order and wait wait wait. 4.30 Take the car. Traffic,Traffic,Traffic. After 1 hour only have done 17km! TSK! Still atleast 2 hours to go...CD has played twice,fed up! Change CD.Still Traffic. Frustration. 7.15 Finally home

Today has been a "dutch" day as i've been biking. For the dutch for some reason it seems that biking cant be associated with pleasure, but I grew up going for "bike rides" as a way to entretain myself......Even though you better be carefull if you are biking in Barcelona as probabilities of dying in an attempt are very high.

Anyways, this morning Miquel and I headed to the Centenial Park in Sydney and rented some bikes and just biked around. What can I say, I really missed my great Fiets from NL. My fiets was so comfy,always waiting for me , just so great getting me from work to home late at night..... and of course coming with me to our great Fiets Expedite to Leiden haha.. oh well!

I wount find a bike like that one again I think :( The centenial park was beautifull, a huge park with lots of green spaces where there were fotie games going on,rugby and cricket games!!! In another area people were riding horses. A small area was reserved for kids to learn how to bike. A large lake full of all kinds of birds...It was nice to bike and later just lay there on the grass pretending it was summer... Unfortunately, the sun decided to hide behind the clouds so I started to freeze and decided to return my bike and head for a bite at "Bite Me". Funny when stated that I was from Barcelona, Spain the reply was "That is not spain its catalunya!" :) A restaurant where I was reminded that aussies are so nice and friendly!!! I have this gut feeling that next year the friendlines of the French will be null....

And now I had to make a call to NL which led me to having to listen to a dutch answering machine for 5 minutes! Bringing the theme of the day "dutchness" back...

And not to lose my dutch and cuz today is a "dutch" day I just turned the radio on in dutch where they are now talking about the "weer" and "verkheer" in the A5 richting bla bla... :) Eindhoven, Groninge,Den Haag ohhhh!!! Well time is going fast and I will soon find myself in one of those traffic jams or in one of the vertragings from the NS :)


It seems that tommorrow there is another trip prepared, but not to Canberra cuz nobody wants to go see the Ugly Capital City... Tsk!

Yes! After a couple days in Sydney I have already made a bunch of friends, let me introduce you to my neighbours and now currently my new friends!!! They are called, The parrots (lots of them,and all very nice, clean,friendly) the Ibis and the ducks. In addittion let me introduce you to their home and the views they have from their home, really tranquil and beautiful (look at above picture). I have to admit that communication with them has been a hard task. I would say that it has been more a one way communication,but maybe its cuz I was unable to understand them when they tried to communicate themselves with me. Im happy I no longer talk to fridges nor toshibas. I missed so much my toshiba pal that i have moved to a new kind of friends. So here they are the parrots, the ibis and the ducks (they asked me not to publish their pic, sorry! --> only part of the conversation i had with them that I could understand). I tried becoming friends with the bats. There are loads of them by the park nex to my house, but they told me they wanted to sleep :(

This picture just DOES not want to rotate itself...so sorry you will have to rotate your head to meet Parrot Jonas!

this is my friend the red beak...

This is parrot xolu eating... (lunch was delicious!)

And parrot ali having some water...also picture wount rotate itself!! :(

Anyways the park is full of parrots,ducks,ibis (picture too blurry, they were running a lot),birds,and seriously BATS! :( freaky ill make sure i close the windows of home ...dont need to find bats at night at home.

arrival in Sydney

Yes! Im in Sydney after a 10 hour flight from Honolulu. As the pilot predicted we just flew over water with no great views of any specially nice place but the Pacific Ocean.Thanks god we didnt have to do any emergency landing I really didnt want to deal with all the sharks in the ocean!! A few times were scary such as " all passengers and crew memebers please sit down and put your belt imediately". I met a girl in my hostel who was also in my flight to Sydney so we hanged around on our way to the airport, in the airport and in the plane. This made the trip a bit shorter. Its funny cuz there is a 20 hour difference between Hawaii and Sydney. As we crossed, the day line i left on the 17th of June at 11am and I arrived in sydney on the 18th at night!! So I lost a day in my life!:(

I clearly asked the girl who checked us in to give us "the most front possible seats with window"...and what do we get "the middle seats in the almost last row". Woho! That is great service!! Anyways, so now im in the middle of Winter, or better beginings of winter. Although it is raining its not as bad as expected it aint that cold at all, didnt have to carry my winter coat around yet :)Today all i did was go to the supermarket and to an asian market to buy some Asian food. All in all to find out my brother wants to move to Japan...random! Cuz i want that too! And i know my dad wouldnt mind either... SOOO random!

Im starting a job in a few days which is good cuz i dont think i can deal with hanging around in the house all time long only editing pictures,taking pictures,reading books,having coffee,listening to the radio and relaxing. Im just not made to relax 100% for 6 weeks i need to be a bit more active... Im looking for anybody that will want to go to Sydneys Fiddler with me...anybody up for a night in a pub???
Cuz its winter its dark by 5pm which isnt that nice. Why did I wait all the past months for summer to arrive to then migrate down under?? :(

Oh and there is an IceBar here too...who is joining?

Lastly, I have uploaded pics in my previous blog entries in case you want to go back and see some pics :)

6 minutes to departure...no time for text or summary of aussieday (great day btw..) lets see if i can post up at least a couple pics of the last hours..



1 minute for departure...

1st time on quantas...see ya back in 24hours.

Real Sharks

...after seeing beaches and beaches sorrounded by nets and people saying there are sharks i started to miss swiming freely in the middle of nowhere in some remote place of the mediterranean.

I sat home and I put on the news Narrow escape in head-first shark attack
By 7News

"The 41-year-old swam into the jaws of the Great White, then poked it in the eye until he was freed""He came up to the surface and he's gone 'help, help, there's a shark"

...swimming in australia, good but think about it twice...

The Shark News

Doncs si, els koalas son MOLT monos...aqui teniu unes fotos mes dels koalas!



Parlant dels animals, avui m ha trucat el meu pare desde Brisbane i m ha informat que al riu tambe a vegades hi pujen els taurons! grrr sembla ser que no em podre banyar amb tranquilitat a en lloc!Al acuari de sydney ahir vaig veure un cranc de tasmania que media mig metre! GRRR! KINA POR! Tambe una tortuga que no guarda el cap dins la closca sino que te al cap a un costat i plega el cap en horitzontal una cosa molt rara.


Avui ha estat un dia de relax i de visitar la ciutat a peu, caminant caminant he recorregut la ciutat i he tornat al hotel al cap de 4 horetes... he trobat una llibreria super gran amb una seccio de lonely planets!!! I me estat mirant per sobre la de cambodia i laos :) :)

I he trobat que per aqui hi ha la primera bar-cafeteria LINDT...tota plena de productes lindt...me comprat un gelat. B O N I S S I M! ! !

Us deixo amb unes fotos de Sydney (que molt be no m han quedat)...la setmana que ve comenca la rutina :(

Hola un altre cop ara son les 6 del mati a bcn i les 4 de la tarda aqui. Mentres vosaltres dormiu jo escric aixo perque al mati ho veieu! whaha...

Ostres doncs ara ha arribat el company de pis que necesita l ordinador aixi que nomes us poso unes fotos de la Fauna Australiana i mes tard escriure un text..ara dirvos que els kangooros son HORROROSOS!!!