Valencia 32nd America's Cup

We left Barcelona by train and headed to Valencia, with the primary purpose of watching the last few races of the Louis Vuitton Cup which would decide who the challenger for the 32nd America's Cup would be. The Swiss team (Alinghi) are defending. I didn't know much about Valencia before we arrived, but I assumed they grow nice oranges (which they do).

First some images of Valencia itself, which has an interesting mix of both new and old.


Now, the America's Cup. This is a huge event for Valencia to host with and the facilities they provided were excellent.
The Defenders (Swiss Alinghi)
The Challengers (Emirates Team New Zealand)
The prize ... the Americas Cup. Racing starts in early July.
Marco, his father Pietro and best friend Roman had their sailing dreams come true by going for a sail on an ex-Americas Cup racer. At 175 Euro per person, I'm sure it was worth it. I hung around Valencia and investigated the beach and the harbour which were both beautiful. I also got to see the Kiwi's do their victory dance!

I could get very used to Valencia, which was a beautiful place. It was hard to get used to the eating times - lunch at 2:30 and dinner no earlier than 9:30. Here's a picture of all of us after dinner at a "locals only" restaurant in the suburbs (recommended by our taxi driver). Nobody spoke English so we had to rely on Marco and sign language. I was sucessfully able to communicate lamb by saying "baa baa".

Pictures of Barcelona

Hi All

Apologies for the delayed transmission due to a lack of computing power for the last week. Here are some pictures of Barcelona.

One of the beautiful buildings in the Ramblas area, near where we stayed.

The huge statue of Christopher Columbus overlooking the harbour.

The yacht club where we had a fantastic (and huge) lunch.

I just had to show you the beautiful headband that I bought :)

Hi From Barcelona

Hi All

Our hotel happens to have computers available so I'm able to write a little post to the blog. Sadly, can't upload any pictures from here. We arrived in Barcelona mid afternoon yesterday after a slightly prolonged flight from Vienna via Berlin. At last I can now say I've been to Berlin - if only to the (slightly depressing) airport. Our flight was FULL of school graduates heading South for their graduation holiday. Needless to say lots of silly laughter and clapping on landing (??!!).

Barcelona is beautiful, as I'm sure many of you already know. We are staying in a hotel in the Ramblas area, which is right in the heart of the action. We went to a slightly touristy tapas bar for lunch, and had a lovely dinner in a "locals" haunt near the hotel. Also did some very important shoe shopping ... with the prospect for more I suppose in the future.

Today we're off to explore a bit more of the city, including a walk down to the harbour which is less than a kilometre away. At the harbour there is a huge statue of Christopher Columbus and a gondola trip across part of the harbour which we hope to try. We'll also catch the subway into the city centre and investigate purchasing our train tickets to Valencia where we head tomorrow. An update is coming soon(ish).....

Cheers

Marco & Monica

Happy Birthday Marco!

Hi All

In spite of our Hong Kong illness which has plagued us over the last few days, we managed to celebrate Marco's birthday in true Malgarini style - with a bottle of champagne and a HUGE chocolate cake. Marco's mother, Gudrun, makes the best chocolate cake I have ever tasted. Even without the use of my tastebuds (thanks to the flu) it still tasted wonderful. Here are some pictures of Marco blowing out his candles, which were sufficient for the needs of an entire third world household for half a year.











Last night we had dinner at the Donauturm revolving restaurant, which is 170 metres above ground. The food was excellent, with huge portions, but most exciting was the view. Here is a picture of the parents enjoying their meal, and the wonderful view we had during our meal.









Tomorrow we head off to Barcelona for the Spain - Italy - Germany trip. I hope to get the opportunity to update the blog along the way, but if not I'll do a huge information dump when we get back next Saturday.

Cheers to all!

Monica & Marco

What's New In Vienna?

Hi All

Nothing much to report as yet I'm afraid. Both Marco and I have been suffering from the inevitable germs on the plane, also the weather has turned a little shall we say "Melbourne". This morning it was 9 degrees, windy and raining. Hardly happy holiday weather but nice for staying in and catching up on some reading.

It's Marco's 38th birthday tomorrow, so we have some serious cake eating to look forward to. I'll be posting a picture of him filling his mouth with cake (inhaling as Maxime would say!) some time tomorrow.

Bussi to All

Monica & Marco

We Made It!

After approximately 36 hours in airports and airplanes around the world, we arrived in Vienna at 11am local time to a wonderful sunny day, and a balmy 27 degrees. We have met the new Remo, just a baby dog at only 1 year old. Although he means well, when he is running at you with saliva in his “beard” (he’s a giant Schnauzer) and his full 48kg of body weight …. it’s a pretty daunting experience. Marco’s parents house here in Stammersdorf is more beautiful than ever, with the flowers in the garden in full bloom and all the foliage in the fields around looking very “Sound of Music” – which I managed to sing a few bars of while we took the dog for a walk. Look out for pictures of the garden and surrounds in future posts.

You are probably nodding off to sleep right now, thinking you may never bother to check this blog again if Monica doesn’t write something more interesting. So here’s the trip up in a nutshell:

• Arrived at Brisbane airport insanely early for the flight (4 hours) which proved fortuitous as it took over ½ hour in the queue just to check our bags. Let’s not speak of the security line!


• Relatively uneventful flight, with the usual Qantas service aside from the fact that we were in a 20 year old plane that didn’t look big enough for the job. Anyone who knows me will remember how I LOVE flying (tongue firmly in cheek) so the sight of what looked like a 737 waiting for me to board didn’t exactly fill me with joy. It wasn’t just me – the man in the queue in front of me said “are you sure we’re at the right flight, that plane doesn’t look big enough to fly to Hong Kong”. Well it is an 8 hour flight overall.


• Of course we arrived in 1 (crumpled) piece. I’d forgotten what it feels like to stand outside in Hong Kong, humidity combined with a mass of humanity creating a smell unlike any other. It was 33 degrees and about 90% humidity when we arrived. Note the beads of sweat on our foreheads in this picture.


• We spent 6 hours in the airport in Hong Kong which included a funny meal at one of the airport restaurants. The waitresses found Marco very funny (god knows why) and practically applauded him on his chopstick technique. I’ll take the credit for that! We were the only Gweilo’s in site.


• Next leg of the journey 12 hours to London on a Cathay Pacific 747-600. You know the ones, giant double decker planes that I liken to flying elephants. It was a long flight, although the service on Cathay remains excellent, and really does put Qantas and British to shame.


• We arrived in London to a typical morning, heavy fog, 9 degrees on the ground and drizzling. It was certainly a shock after the warmth of Hong Kong and the other 400 travelling bodies on the 747 we’d just left.


• Suffered through the indignity of the virtual strip search in Heathrow to get through the security check in point. Perhaps cosmetics companies should consider creating a line of “no-bomb” makeup that doesn’t require you to walk around with a zip lock back full of your personal toiletries for the whole world to see.


• After sitting in the BA plane on the tarmac for over an hour (apparently Brussels decided there was too much air traffic over Europe and we weren’t going anywhere until someone else landed) we made it!

Now you know as much about our trip as I do. I look forward to something more exciting to tell you after my jetlag has subsided.

Cheers
Monica & Marco

When Are They Leaving?

Hi There

I can hear you all saying "They sent me the link to that blog, they told me they were going .... so where are they?"

Well, we're still in beautiful downtown Brisbane in Australia. Here's some more details about our trip:

26/05 Brisbane – Hong Kong
27/05 Hong Kong – London – Vienna
02/06 Vienna – Barcelona
04/06 Barcelona – Valencia
06/06 Valencia – Pisa
08/06 Pisa – Lubeck (Hamburg)
09/06 Lubeck – Vienna
25/06 Vienna – London - Hong Kong
01/07 Hong Kong – Sydney
02/07 Sydney - Brisbane

Ok, end of blog. Only kidding, we're looking forward to keeping you up to date on what happens at each of these planned (and all the unplanned) destinations on our trip.

Can anyone recommend a good book? It looks like we'll be spending a few days in and out of airports.

Best Wishes To All