The Land of the team which beat my Arsenal!

Alrighty readers... Let me tell you something about Barcelona. It is the best city i have been to! We stayed at Khar Hau's place which is very near the bus station so getting there was no hassle for us. Usually, we had to take the shuttle bus from the airport, then take the underground metro, take some long train or the bus to finally get to the hostel but for Khar Hau's place, all it took was a bus ride from the Girona airport to the main bus station. So we arrived in the morning and we started our little Barca tour. By the way... the day we arrived was the day Barcelona was playing Arsenal for the Champions League Final. Man... thinking about it breaks my heart... but anyway, we asked Khar Hau to tell us where to go and we started our day with a nice walk to the city, the famous Las Ramblas.

Sights of the Sagrada Familia

Cowan looks like the chinese guy in the Matrix... shades all

View from the top...

Spiral view

A little history on the Sagrada Familia... The Sagrada Familia is probably Barcelona’s most famous and most controversial work of Gaudi. Gaudi started building the church when he was only 31, during the last years of his life he even slept in the crypt. In his vision the Sagrada Familia should become a memorial of remorse for modern materialism in Barcelona: 18 majestic towers shall be crowned by another one in the centre with a total height of 170 metres. If ever concluded, this would be the highest building in Barcelona. Unfortunately Gaudi died before he could finish building the Sagrada Familia... well he expected it anyway cause there is no way he could build this whole building in one lifetime! This building is massive! So several architects and sculptors have contributed to the fulfilment of Gaudi’s vision. Unfortunately, how fast the church can be completed depended on how much financial support it received and so... all the money the tourists pay to enter the Sagrada Familia actually plays a part in it's construction! At least i know my 5 euros is being put into good use. :)

So we walked around the Las Ramblas after checking Gaudi's main monument. We got kinda hungry and so we searched for a nice place to have some Paella. Unfortunately, we were so hungry that we went into the first Paella shop we saw... and it was ran by Indians. Well... Spanish food is great.. WHEN cooked by Spanish people, not by Indians. We asked the counter guy how much one Paella costs and he said 10 Euros. So we went in.. ordered.. waited a million years for it.. and worst of all.. it wasn't very good at all. So when we finished, we asked for the bill and a different waiter gave us a bill for 38 euros... meaning 19 euros for each paella. So we cleared up the so called... "misunderstanding" and in the end.. they showed us the menu and our paella actually costs 16 euros each. Haha... try harder if you really wanna cheat us idiots!

After a long day of sight seeing, we decided that it was time for some harmless shopping. We went to Zara boutique along Las Ramblas and ladies and gents.. it is true... Zara is truly cheaper in Spain! One pair of jeans costs only 36 Euros while everywhere else in Europe sold it for 49.90 Euros. Unfortunately since i spent too much on shopping already... i had to stop myself from buying anymore jeans. Oh well... Gotta know when to stop and now is definitely the time. :) We went back to Hau's place to cook up some dinner and of course... to watch the greatest game of the year so far! At first, Cowan and I wanted to watch it in a pub or a bar to soak up the Barca atmosphere. However, within 3 minutes into the first half, i decided to stay in Hau's place to watch the game because i couldn't contain my real emotions. I cheered whenever Arsenal had chances and jeered when Barca as attacking. Sooo... I would be putting Hau and Cowan's lives in danger if i do watch the game outside. So Arsenal scored first... looked like they were going to win.. and then suddenly Barcelona scored 2 goals to win the god damn game! I wanted to cry.. i swear.. but after much persuasion... we went down to the city to celebrate Barca's win. I didn't regret it because it was the best celebration i have seen in my life! Fireworks thrown on the streets, people climbing trees and street lamps, people peeing all over the place... people hugging us just cause we looked like we were singing along to Barca cheers... Great atmosphere i tell you... check out these pics!

I had to freaking pretend i was cheering for Barcelona... damn it!

Hau joined in the climbing!

Even the dogs celebrated...

So that was the end of the first night. Great sights, great atmosphere, great people.. only thing lacking was the great food!

The next day we woke up and took a nice long walk to the beach. We haven't seen a proper beach since we arrived in Europe so we were really happy to finally hit a proper one.

Sand... something my feet haven't felt in a looooong time.

Oh before i forget.. let me introduce this cat to all of you.. I sleep on the couch when i am at Khar Hau's and this adorable cat likes to join me on the couch at night... I miss having pets around me man. K Moving on...

Nice brother brother shot.

Today all the museums were free. At first we thought it was because Barcelona won the Champions League Finals but noooo... it was international Museum day and so entry to all museums . Loooove it!

Nice atmosphere for chilling... Soothing music with beautiful sights.

So we went to the Chocolate Museum in hope to get free chocolate since it was internatioanl Museum day. Did we get any? Nope! We did see some pretty interesting sights thought. The museum had a section where we could see through the glass how the "chefs" were making the chocolate and designing them into objects like this.

The white King Kong!

Damn Barca player.

Although we didn't get free chocolate... we had a 1 Euro cup of hot chocolate.. Literally hot chocolate ladies and gents.. it's like eating chocolate from the chocolate fondue... mmmmm

And this is me gleefully enjoying the warm chocolate. :)

K if you are wondering what the hell i am doing... i am actually fixing up Khar Hau's bathroom cause i broke the bath tub sheets. I won't say how cause it's too embarassing but i broke it and in the midst of fixing it up.. we decided to take so funny pictures. :)

The beginning of goood foooood. This is Churros with hot chocolate. You are supposed to dip the fritters into the hot chocolate... Niceeeee... the fritters taste something like Yew Char Kway in Singapore. I think something like this could do well in Singapore.

As you can see, i love Churros!

So Cowan and I walked to the most beautiful park i had ever seen in my life... Park Güell. Check this out... it looks like a scene from one of those fairy tale movies. Absolutely amazing!

We climbed to the top to find the Barca police taking a break off their jobs. Well, it does look like they are maintaining law and order but no ladies and gents, they were soaking in sun while admiring the pretty female tourists. :)

An aerial view from the top of Park Güell

Street buskers everywhere in the Las Ramblas... It adds a lot of flavour in the already existing culture-ful Barcelona and of course, it makes chilling along the streets much more enjoyable!

As usual Barcelona was done a while ago so i'll just post more interesting pictures!

Having fun amidst the pain of pressing the metal piece against the ceiling...

Ah Hau brought us to a restaurant near his place and this is when we finaly had REAL Paella... and it was soooooooooooooooooooooo goooooood!

This cat can sleep anywhere!

Alrighty then... that's pretty much Barcelona. I really wish i could write more but as i near the last 2 days of my Eurotrip... my laziness grows exponentially and thus, i think now is a good time to stop for this beautiful City!

London.. the land of the Gunners!

And soooooooooo....

I am all alone in this god damn village and i have totally nothing to do. Guess it's time i updated my blog. I realized that my blog entries have been rather short on words recently. I will try... TRY to write more from now. Anyway i only have a few more updates before the Eurotrip ends so i will do my best to make my entries interesting!

London. You know: fish, chips, cup 'o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins... LONDON! Haha.. i took this line off the movie Snatch. So anyway, I arrived in London in the evening and met cowan to go to Gwen's place. Thankfully Cowan could find me accomodation in London and thus, I saved on a lot of money. So what did i do with the saved money? I went ahead and splurged it on Fish and Chips for our very first dinner! We met Roy and Jo who were also in London after thier short stint in Germany for the BSM course. Roy brought us to this restaurant called "Harry Ramsden's" where they served the best Fish and Chips. So in the menu there was this dish called "The Challenge" because it was supposed to be so huge that most people can't finish it. They would even reward the people who finished it with a certificate. Well to me, it was BULLSHIT! I finished it without a sweat and the worst thing was that they told me they ran out of certificates. Well of course they ran out of certificates! Anyone who ordered that dish could finish it! So anyway we had Fish n Chips, beer and a nice toffee cake and the whole meal totalled up to 15 Pounds. Well, only consolation was that the fish was pretty good and I haven't had good fish in ages.

Us outside the restaurant.

So after dinner we took a long walk back to Gwen's place and saw many nice sights along the way. Here is the London Eye at night!

This is non other than Big Ben :)

Oh yes, before i arrived in London, Cowan got us tickets for the Phantom of the Opera musical. It cost us 35 Pounds each and it was held in Her Majesty's theatre where the musical first started showing in. So i thought i would do a little impersonation... not bad considering that i haven't played the part of the Phantom since my college days. My close friends would understand this... :)

The next day, Cowan and I made our way to the Buckingham Palace to watch the change parade for the guards. Coincidentally we met Roy and Jo as we walking there and of course.. as Asians we had to take photos, photos and more photos. The change parade is unlike the change parade in our army. It is very grand and there are many components to it. Damn they even have a military band which played songs from the Beatles! Unfortunately we didn't see the Queen but it was good anyway. So we were playing a fool and took some funny shots right outside the gates of the Buckingham Palace.

This is the normal picture...

And this is the abnormal one! Check out this pic la.. Cowan is trying to be Buzz Light Year i think.

We look like sailors!

The British guard in close up...

The guards marching along the streets.

Ahhhh the sights of summer... beautiful blooming flowers

Broadway is dark tonight A little bit weaker than you used to be ...

Ahhh yes... SMU.. we are different.. Remember this pose from our poster boy? :)

The friendly guide who did an incredible job in explaining the history of the tower without failing to add drops of humour! These guides actually stay in the towers with their families and they are carefully selected from a group of men who have served as a British guard for at least 30 years. They must have excellent track records before they can even be considered for the Tower guide selection.

The London Bridge (it's just a normal bridge!)

This was the theatre where we watched the Phantom.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the play but we tried anyway!

The famous Harrods of England.

I had to take this pic man... man do i miss mahjong!

We went to the Portobello market the next day and trust me... it was amongst the best markets we have been to. Leon, you will love this place man. The market had a large variety of antiques items, second hand clothes, t-shirts, telescopes, food, shoes, hats, etc. A great place to spend the lazy Sunday afternoon!

I can't remember what this lady was doing but if i am not wrong, she was asking for little donations for her to take care of these stray dogs or something...

Don't laugh when i say this... but after going to the market, we spent the whole afternoon watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. in Gwen's apartment. It was raining badly and so we couldn't go ahead with our sight-seeing plans. I think we watched at least 8 or 9 episodes in that afternoon itself. Hahah.. what a way to spend the afternoon in London yea? After that, we headed to Marks and Spencer to buy ourselves some cookies and snacks for our little roadtrip to Stonehenge. Gwen lent Cowan her car and so we planned to go for a long drive up to Stonehenge to see the famously mysterious stones. We bought 10 pounds worth of M & S cookies and we had NO trouble finishing them at all. M & S cookies are truly... the shit.

Cowan looking cool in the Beemer

This bakery, called Sally Lunns' is supposed to be a very famous bakery. Before we left for our road trip, Gwen told us that we MUST try the bread here. So we went to the little museum store did exactly what we thought Gwen told us to do. We bought a bun from the shop and unfortunately, it was just a plain bun which we could have easily found in a bakery shop in Singapore. So when we got back, we asked Gwen what the Bun fuss was all about. What Gwen actually meant was that we had to go to the pastry store and order something from the store itself. Haha.. so we stupidly spent 2 pounds on a piece of bread cause of our stupidy!

I was doing this because the sign said "No Alcohol". :)

This guy was making chocolate fudge. As he was doing it, he was explaining to everyone in the queue what he was doing in detail and how every step would affect the taste of the fudge. The fudge was expensive but they allowed free sampling so me and Cowan took a little piece. It was... DAMN GOOD!

A variety of flavors to choose from...

Stonehenge from afar

SMU jumping shots... getting a bit to cliche i think...

Why were these stones placed this way? The audio guide gave us many versions of the little myths that were created to explain how such massive stones could be laid down in such perfection especially when they were laid down so many years ago where men could only use primitive methods to lift the stones...

Cowan looks gay in this picture. The car is pretty apt for the picture too!

I look like i am gonna break into this M3. What to do... can't afford it for now so i have to steal it!

This is interesting... Anti-Climb paint. This house had it written outside the wall so that burgulars would know better than to try to climb the walls of this house... Didn't stop me though...

Welcome to my humble shop where i provide the best cookies in London! Haha.. we found this cookie store as we were heading to the London Stansted airport and man, those cookies were incredibly good. I had the Peanut butter cookie and the peanut butter was still hot as i took my first bite into the delicious cookie! Mmmmm

So that's basically it for London. We had a great time here and though everything was freaking expensive, we managed to get ourselves great buys! You will never guess it but we bought Loreal Remix Hair Stlying gel for only 2 pounds each. That's 6 SG dollars! It costs 12 Sg back at home so i bought 2 to stock up. We also tried good Chinese food which was ridiculously expensive as compared to Singapore prices. Cowan and I paid 5 pounds each for Char Siew with Roast Duck noodles. With that money we can order 5 plates in Singapore but the consolation was that.. it was very very good char siew!

So i would say... go to London! but forget about converting pounds to SG dollars because it will just dampen the travelling spirits. Next entry... SPAIN!