Posts Tagged With: barcelona

A running record of cabaret/circus shows 

Posted on November 11, 2017 by Mel

This is the ever-growing list of cabaret and adult circus shows B and I have seen together. What can I say? The man really likes his adult circus! He now claims he can’t go to the normal circus anymore because “it’s just not as good without boobs and stuff”.

Favourite shows so far include Star Wars for the absurdity and the humour, Yummy (which was a drag performance) for the AMAZING crowd atmosphere and the trapeze act at the end of Infamous. That was breathtaking and a must see if you get the chance!

  • Dracula’s cabaret, Melbourne 2014
  • Le Noir, Canberra 2015
  • El Molina, Barcelona 2015
  • Moulin Rouge, Paris 2015
  • The Empire Strips Back, Canberra 2016
  • La Clique (Spiegeltent), Canberra 2016
  • Papillon, Canberra 2016
  • The Kit Kat Club, Sydney 2017
  • Soap, Melbourne 2017
  • Dracula’s cabaret, Melbourne 2017
  • Yummy (Spiegeltent), Melbourne 2017
  • Crazy Horse, Canberra 2017
  • Infamous (Spiegel Big Top), Canberra 2017
  • Let’s Get Practical (MICF), Melbourne 2018
  • Ginger and Tonic (Spiegeltent), Melbourne 2018
  • Blanc de Blanc, Canberra 2018
  • Circus Oz: Neon (Spiegeltent), Melbourne 2019
  • Rouge, Canberra 2019
  • Cirque Stratosphere, Canberra 2019

Pre-show wine at Infamous (the Spiegel Big Top) in Canberra, 2017

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Fun fact: Barcelona tap water 

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Mel

Barcelona tap water is completely safe to drink according to every travel guide and the Spanish water authority – so i have no doubt that’s true.

However if you are someone like me who has a lot of contact sensitivities and allergies….it may not be the best thing for your stomach. Ow. No more tap water for Mel! Just sangria 🙂 

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Day 6: Last day in Barcelona and meeting our intrepid travel group for the Barcelona to Rome Intrepid Adventure (15 days)

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Mel

Despite our best effort, sleeping in was a bust. We were down at breakfast by 8am and then the process to sort out our booking transition was much easier than the trip advisor reviews led us to believe – we handed over the old room cards, settled the room bill and they reissued new ones. No problems! We had to do this because we are now officially on day 1 of our intrepid tour…weeeee. Day 1 is mostly people arriving at the hotel from their home country though so it’s still an exploring day for us.

Little exploring was done though. After breakfast we did some hand washing then…had a siesta. Post-siesta we went back to Les Ramblas for people watching and delicious sangria, cerveza (beer) and pizza. Mmmmm. Plus churros and chocolate sauce. More mmmm. Sine we then had until 7pm until our meet and greet, we siesta-d some more. Basically, it was an extremely lazy day. 

  
We met our very small intrepid group at 7pm. It consists of us, a couple from Canada around our parents age (at a guess) and another young lady from Australia on her first overseas trip. We have a fifth person joining us in a few days as well. Our tour guide is Andrea and he’s from Italy, he seems very well travelled and has been working for intrepid for 3 years. After our brief run through it was back to bed/dinner/exploring for the group before a 10am checkout tomorrow. We took the bed option….a very, very lazy day! 

Steps taken: 6905

Kilometres walked: 4.8km

Tomorrow: As a group, we are off to Ribes de Freser to explore the Nuria Valley

Mel 

P.S. No wifi for the next few days so will upload more posts and what I’m guessing will be some pretty photos once we return to civilisation 🙂 

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Day 5: Touristing around Barcelona and then boobies (not mine…obviously…)

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Mel

Day 5 started very early after the siesta fail and an epic 12 hour sleep. We had finished breakfast by 7:30am and were on our way to be tourists. First stop was the Arc de Triomf where the view was obscured by some car show that was setting up. 
  
Then we walked up to the Parc de la Ciutadella and explored. As it was so early we had to play dodge the homeless person, but we got to see the Cascada monument which was quite impressive…and a giant mammoth. The parks themselves were very pretty as well. 

 

cascada monument with the sun rising slowly behind it

 
 

mel and the mammoth

  

B and the mammoth

 

We then walked through the gothic quarter to check out where Picasso used to live and down to the waterfront where the aquarium is. 

 

gothic quarter

 
 

the aquarium is apprently the largest in europe…but nothing compared to sea world etc. So heads up that you may be disappointed with your 20€ spend

 

After the aquarium it was back up to the gothic quarter to find Euskal Etxe which is a tapas bar where you pay by the toothpick omnomnom. 

  

A short metro trip brought us back to the hotel where I had a rest for awhile as I seem to have hurt my back from walking all the hills yesterday. Yay for arthritis in my spine making itself known at inopportune moments. Grrr. 

After our rest it was off to the cabaret show at El Molino! We were prepared with what we had worked out from the Internet: it was naughty but interesting, it was all spoken in Spanish, they were likely to include us once they realised we didn’t know Spanish and it was in the middle of the party district of L’Eixample. 
We got there early and found dinner in a local restaurant…first time trying paella and it was tasty. The half a litre of cava sangria certainly topped it off haha.
   
 
After dinner at Bar Stage we walked 2 mins up the road to the show. It’s well worth being early as it determines your seat! While lining up for the show we had the brief intro performance (yes, that is ladies dancing under the windmill) and then we were able to go in. Showing our sms ticket which we bought 2 days ago for 50€ (that got us 2 entry tickets + a bottle of cava) was enough to get in where we were targeted straight away as non spanish speaking and sat in the very front row. The show was fabulous and even though the MC spoke in Spanish, she included us. I had a half naked guy on my lap for a kiss and B had a lady in lingerie use him as a seat so we were both happy at the end! The agreed highlight was the aerial performance with silks. That lady was amazing. 

   

El Molino as we left at 8pm

 

Steps today: 24102

Kilometres: 16.9km

Tomorrow: I have no idea, I drank 1/2 a litre of sangria and then shared a bottle of cava (sort of a mix between champagne and passion pop). Sooooo tomorrow is for sleeping as far as I am concerned right now! 

Categories: Europe 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Siesta fail

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Mel

Here is the story of our siesta fail. Sorry Spain.

Yesterday we got home from Montserrat at 4:30pm and promptly decided to nap before heading out to dinner. You can’t eat dinner here until after 8pm as nothing (including room service!) is open anyway.

So after blogging, face booking, jumping on the beds etc it was 5:45pm and the alarm was set for 7:09pm.

Which I decided wasn’t long enough.

So we reset it for 8:09pm with Mel fully intending to nap for no more than half an hour anyway since I’m not a napper.

8:09pm comes around and the alarm goes off and B turns on the light. Nope. I’m not getting up. I’m fast asleep.

8:45pm – are we getting up? Grunts all round.

9:33pm – really we need to get up. It’s dinner time. 

10:45pm – bugger it, bed time. 

We both then slept through to 6am this morning (with a few brief wake ups). No dinner. 

Siesta fail. Pizza for dinner fail. 

At least I proved that I really don’t do naps – I sleep! 

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Day 4: Montserrat 

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Mel

After an early wake up again for both of us (jet lag fail) we were on our way to the local metro station before the sun came up. From there we swapped on to the rural railway line out towards Montserrat. 
Montserrat or “serrated mountain” is a big mountain about an hour out of Barcelona. The area houses a huge monastery, amazing views and the boys choir. We caught the train for an hour and then a cable car halfway up to the monastery. Just amazing views on the way up. 

   
    

 From there, we caught the funicular (small train on a cable system) further up and walked 15 mins to Sant Joan. B walked a bit further up towards Santa Cova but couldn’t go the whole way without some rock climbing gear. Eep.

  
 

Sant Joan

    
   
We then went to the church where we had already beaten the crowds and touched the blessed Black Madonna (photo below courtesy of Google because unlike all the Japanese tourists in front of us I followed the very clear no photo rule!) and joined the throngs of people to hear the boys choir sing.   

The choir is world renowned, they sounded amazing. The crowd was a bit too much for me as we were packed into the church with only two small exits….eeep

 

This was before it got really crowded, by the time we left the crowds were blocking every exit and you could barely squish through

 
So, an early escape was made giving us a clear run at the free lunch included in the all day tot Montserrat ticket. Some more amazing photos and then it was back down in the cable car and back on the train into Barcelona.

  
A day trip well worth the travel effort, even with some motion sickness on the way back. Now at 4:30pm it is siesta time before dinner. Gotta embrace the Spanish lifestyle. Percy and I certainly need a siesta after even more hills today…

Percy needs his daily siesta to keep up! After all, his legs are shorter than ours

Kilometres walked at 4:30pm: 9.6kms

Steps walked at 4:30pm: 13306

Tomorrow: more city exploring and a cabaret show at El Molina in the evening…in Spanish! B picked this as something he wanted to do, I think he is developing a taste for cabaret. I’m sure all the half naked ladies have nothing to do with it 🙂 dancing shoes ahoy!

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Day 3: Exploring Barcelona

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Mel

Well, after waking up at 3am (ahhh my comeuppance for going to bed at 7pm!) and not being able to get back to sleep, I read a book and let B sleep until 8:30am. Our hotel here (Hotel Catalona Sagrida Familia) includes complimentary continental brekkie and it was pretty tasty. Insanely huge selection as well. 

This hotel is the meeting point for our Intrepid Travel part of the trip (15 days Barceolona to Rome) so we are staying here for an extra 4 nights at the start, before commencing the tour. I have to say, it’s a lot nicer than that frigging terrible contiki hotel in London! It’s self rated itself as 4 stars but we reckon it’s more like 3 given limited noise insulation and the fact our double bed is two singles put next to each other. With single bedding on them. Hmmm.

With our little backpacks ready for the day, including all the essentials like the map, raincoat, water bottle and stuffed toy platypus we set off to explore. Our hotel is a 2 min walk from a metro station and we caught that 6 stops to Paral-lel station which is adjacent to Montjuic, a beautiful park/mountain with a castle on top that overlooks the whole city and the Mediterranean Sea. After much aimless wandering up ridiculously steep and long paths we found…the second cable car station! Because we had missed the first and instead walked halfway up the damn mountain. The views were worth it though:

view out to the mediterranean from montjuic

  
    
   
Percy also enjoyed his first ever cable car ride (B says he is looking the wrong way!)

  
A quick train trip one stop over then saw us wandering up Les Ramblas which is the main tourist strip. Lots of street performers, buskers, pickpockets…the usual stuff you expect in a tourist area! Lunch was delicious at Cafe De L’Opera….mmmm tapas with beer and cava sangria, followed by real churros. We then visited the erotic museum which was…uh…not erotic and mostly traumatising haha. 

   
   
Another quick train trip brought us to Basilica de la Sagrada Familia which is 133 years old and is one of Gaudi’s most famous projects, although it is still being built so was not complete in his time. The name basically means “church of the family” or “church of the holy family” but I think it should stand for “bloody great church with ridiculous fruit stacks on top”. Seriously. At the top of the spires on one side there were weird fruit statues. We opted not to go in as it was 20€ each and as B said…a church is a church! Even if it does have fruit statues. 

 

the fruit stacks are on top of the pointy bits to the left of the pic

 
Kilometres walked today: 15.1km

Steps taken: 22106

Tomorrow: Montserrat for a day trip hopefully! Very excited.

Mel 

P.S. These posts will get shorter once we lose wifi, pinky promise. 

Categories: Europe 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Day 1+2: travelling to Barcelona!

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Mel

Ahhh so much airporting in the last two days! Just under 30hrs and 3 flights later we have made it to Barcelona. I got lots of very pretty “airplane window” token photos: 
 

flying into sydney from canberra


 

a very hazy looking shot of Dubai

 

Barcelona! Near the ocean

   

The flights were mostly uneventful except for my feet swelling up like balloons (never happened before) and lots of limping around the plane and the Emirates business lounge in Dubai as a result. On both of the long haul flights we had an empty seat in our row which was great, gave us that little extra bit of space to spread out in. We both managed some sleep on the 14.5hr flight, although I got more than B…mostly due to using travacalm to zombify myself. Drooly Mel is so attractive. Percy also had a great time flying Emirates (Qantas codeshare) for the first time. 

  
We finally landed in Barcelona at 2pm local time (we are now 9 hours behind Canberra and 6 hours behind Perth) and managed to locate our hotel for the next 5 nights without too much drama. Well, aside from getting absolutely and totally drenched in the rain. I left little puddles as I wandered through the lobby…splashy-splashy…

   
With my poor swollen foot (left one has gone down mostly in the above pic but right one still very sore, swollen and puffed up) combined with B’s overwhelming urge to stay in his PJs and watch Spanish TV, we opted for room service and an early night. Well, sort of early as he is now watching Big Bang Theory in Spanish and getting quite engrossed. I’m not at that level of translation ability, I’m more on the Dora level of being able to say “HOLA!!” and smile maniacally while hoping they speak some English. Bad tourist. 

Mel xx

P.S. This hotel has leather pillowcases. It’s freaking me out a little. How are you meant to sleep on a leather (well, I actually assume it’s pleather) pillowcase? 

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2015 Adventures!!

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Mel

Woohoo 2015 adventures ahoy!

So this year I get to have two grand overseas trips. One was planned at the end of last year and is a 4.5 week jaunt through Barcelona, Rome, Naples and Paris in October/November. The second has been a little unexpected (read: last minute) and will hopefully see me adventuring to the USA for 10 days in late June.

So first, let’s talk about Europe. We jet off on October 12th to Barcelona and after a few days lounging in the sun we will join up with our intrepid tour. This will see us traveling for 15 days from Barcelona through a variety of locations across to Rome. After fare-welling our tour and a few extra days in Rome, we will head to Naples which puts us nice and close to both Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. A few nights later it will be up to Paris for 5 nights, including attending the Moulin Rouge to celebrate my 30th birthday! Entering the age of denial in style.

zmsc_2015

Intrepid tours are a company I am not familiar with but B has done a very extended one before and had a lot of positive things to say. Their online reviews are positive and the idea of a small tour appealed to me although I am not sure how I will cope with the reliance on public transport to get from one city to the next, as opposed to say…an air conditioned coach. We have chosen one of the more relaxed tours (no camping etc) although they did have all sorts of trips for all sorts of interests and budgets.

The USA trip is a little more haphazard as it will be planned and booked very last minute. B is likely to be heading away for work over there for a few months so I get to go visit…hooray! The visit has been timed around my work commitments which is why it will be about a month into his work trip rather than closer to the end. At the moment it is actually still not fully confirmed as I can’t book my flights until he has the work go-ahead but it is looking likely. He will be based in the Washington area so there will be lots of exploring of Washington as well as 5 nights in New York! EEEEEE! Do you guys realise what is in Washington? Do you? DO YOU? Let me show you….

Not to mention…NEW YORK!! Very exciting. Probably our last year of travel adventures for a while (although South America and Antarctica/The Arctic are still high on the want list) so time to make the most of it. Did I mention that there will be bears in the US? Baby bears? Baby pandas? Did you see that?

Since Europe is mostly booked and paid for and the USA is still a “wait and see” operation….

The big discussion in our house is around luggage choices at the moment. 

Neither of us are super happy with our suitcases but I am not prepared to fully commit to a backpack and B is not prepared to let me just have a suitcase on the intrepid tour as we are relying on trains to get around a fair bit. Stubborn man. So at the moment we are both spending a lot of time reading and researching. This is my front runner – the 80L Osprey Sojourn convertible wheeled bag although there are a lot of other similar things that cost less (but seem to break easy). He is a mad Osprey lover whereas I am new to their products….so we shall see.

Mel Update: No USA trip ended up happening…but Europe looms! 

Categories: Europe 2015, USA 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

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