Archive for the ‘Our Trips’ Category
April 2010, Barcelona, Spain
April 7th, 2010 by Leo
We just come back from Barcelona last night. Again we had great fun! Although getting up at 4am to catch the train to the airport was simply a pain.
As usual we visited a few tourist attractions. If you are an art-lover, I highly recommend you to visit the Picasso museum, La Sagrada Família and the Gaudi Park. I am honestly not too excited about the works of Picasso as I think my artistic sense is not really up to that level, but I do like some of his works and bought a few postcards.
The La Sagrada Família is a church designed by Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) and is still under construction. It is truly an amazing design – blending nature, modern art, cryptic and biblical stories into the church building. A picture is worth a thousand words – which I will post later.
The Gaudi Park features more of Gaudi’s works. Magnificient is the only word that can describe them.
We also ate a lot, well, as usual. There are 3 things I must try: Sangria, paella and the suckling hog. I only knew there are other variations of paella when I arrived. Apart from the traditional paella, we tried the paella cooked in squid ink and the paella in noodle instead of rice, named Fideua. The paella in squid ink is our favourite. I had Sangria with my meals every single day, and Doris was complaining that I talked too much when I drink. Oops that sounds like my dad.
We had big problem finding restaurants serving the suckling hog. Finally we found it in a traditional restaurant. It was lucky we went early as there was a long queue when we left! They also serve very well prepared fish and I must say all the food that they serve are truly stunning. Although it was the most expensive meal we had for the whole trip, it well worths it.
We also tried a lot of tapas in the tapas bars and cafes. Not all of them are nice, I must say, but generally they are tasty and make a good snack between meals. Spanish usually have dinner after 9pm. Spanish hams are also very famous and we had that for breakfast (!!) on the first day.
Our next ‘big’ trip is going to be Lisbon. Before that, I seriously need some rest…
March 2010, Amsterdam & Leiden, The Netherlands
March 25th, 2010 by Leo
Doris’ youngest sister, Katherine, is going to stay in Europe for a few months. Therefore we have planned a few trips with her until May. Our first stop is Holland.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
We happened to be visiting Holland on the coldest weekend of Europe. It was very windy. However it has such a nice scenary! I especially like the houses along the canals.
There are a lot of bicycles in Amsterdam as it is well planned for cyclists. This is a ‘bike park’ near the train station:
Bike park
As you can see it is full of bicycles. If it was not that windy, we would have hired some bicycles and travel around.
We have also visited Willeke’s place in Leiden. Thank you for the lovely dinner! And we also had a very nice chat.
Kat stayed in Leiden for 2 weeks as she was working in Willeke’s lab to gain some experience. And hence we had a tour at the lab and the hospital (which was attached to the lab) and I have seen a lot of things which I have no idea about!
The trip was great fun and relaxing.
Back from Nice
September 23rd, 2009 by Leo
We spent the last long weekend in Nice, Monte-Carlo and Cannes.
This time we travelled with Faith & Christy. Surely, we had a very enjoyable and fun time!
Nice scenary, nice food, nice chats.
Amongst the 3 cities, I like Cannes the most. It has the best scenary and very enjoyable walk-path by the beach. Living in Switzerland, different from in NZ, causing us not having a chance to see the sea for a very long time! And for the last 3 days, we have been walking along the beaches, smelling the smell of the ocean, feeling the breeze, walking on the sand…
Not to be missed are the nice seafood, wine, steak, cocktail, ice-cream…
We spent the last 1/2 hour in a beach-side restaurant drinking nice cocktail. It was a pity that we had to rush to the airport. It would be so great if we could sit there for only another 1/2 hour…
Back from London
August 31st, 2009 by Leo
It is always great to meet up with friends. Last weekend Doris & I visited London again to meet Mary, Tang & Jin Tau. Mary is leaving London in a few weeks’ time, and hence we thought we should visit her before she goes.
Unlike most of our trips, we didn’t bother to visit the tourist attractions. We just have a relaxing weekend, walk around, lots of chats, eat eat eat, and I did some reading as well.
We visited a big toy store – 7 levels full of toys! We bought 2 new Lego sets, which are basically board games built by Lego. The set that I really wanted was out of stock 
And by reading the catalogue, I found that there is another set that I want ….
We watched the “Dirty Dancing” musical and it was surprisingly good. Love the dancing and the stage design – superb. I give 8 out of 10.
We stayed at Mary’s place this time (thanks Mary) and as usual, we are being taken care of very well.
(Photos to be uploaded)
Our First Paris Trip – Day 2
March 31st, 2009 by Leo
We got up early in the morning and started our day with buffet breakfast provided by Best Western. After breakfast, we visited the Notre Dame Cathedral – another famous cathedral in Europe. After the visit, we still had some time before meeting Elaine, hence we went back to Musee de Louvre to take more pictures.
We met up with Elaine and had a big lunch. The cafe that we went to was very crowded, and the food there wasn’t too special, hence we didn’t take much photos. We had a nice cup of coffee / Chocolat Viennoise though.
We spent our afternoon visiting Victor Hugo’s apartment – which is now used as a small museum displaying things related to Victor Hugo. Many people know about Victor Hugo because of Les Miserable. In fact there were old posters of Les Miserable displayed, hence we took a few photos of them.
It was Elaine’s idea to visit the graveyard of Frederick Chopin and Edith Piaf (a very famous French singer). It was a pity that we didn’t manage to reach Edith Piaf’s grave early enough, as it was a big slope to climb, and the graveyard was closing.
After the ‘mountain climbing’ we decided to head to the train station and have a quick dinner. Well, it was quick but still not too quick. We just didn’t have enough time for dessert before our train departs.
We decided to take train home instead of plane as we live very close to the train station, and the few hours that we spent on the train was a good sharing time.
It was a bit rush, but we had great fun in Paris with Elaine. We hope we would visit Paris again very soon! There are still heaps of places we did not manage to visit. Anyway, our next trip is – Vienna!