Realizing how big is Canada.

After Keji we went, the three of us, in a more calm down trip to the North of Nova Scotia: Cape Breton. What seemed to be a short trip took us 7 hours driving!!! Cape Breton is land of mosses but unluckily we only have seen their silhouette in the yellow signals, anyway the weather was great and after all this driving we could spend the whole day in an isolated beach. (the picture links to the photo album)

After Cape Breton I was in my own. I thought to go to Quebec, the closest big city, but it takes 20 hours by bus, 24 by train or red numbers in my bank account. So what to do? Rick offered me his bike and I went for a bike trip following the Trans Canada Trail. (the picture links to the photo album)

Some sectors follow old rail tracks and other secondary roads. The 3 days trip let my feel again how big is Canada, 360 km to cover only a small portion of the country and the more incredible thing; even the trail was really well maintained in three days I have not seen anybody following it. Well, not humans, but I have seen one porcupine and four bears!!!

Kejimkujik

From Iceland another small jump and you arrive to Nova Scotia. Two years later I’m in Halifax again to visit my cousins. This time no English course; just having a good time together, some tours on the back country and of course some surf in icy water.

The last three days we have done a kayak trip around the Kejimkujik national park. An amazing place where you are only allowed to camp in a few spots; so when you are in your camping place there is no body else in 1km around you!!!

Rick reserved one of the nicest spots of the park, one small cozy island fully prepared for camping. From our campsite we had explored the park, a big forest full of lakes. The hardest part is going from one lake to another, suddenly in place of paddling over your kayak you are walking under it. Luckily we had really good food to recover of our daily exercise.

You will see in the pictures that we have used a quite strange stand up paddle board too. Rick is working in an article about this kind of boards. In a lake it offers you a different point of view as it seems that you are walking over the water.

Landmannalaugar - Þórmörk

After all the adventure activities we needed one day of relax, so we did what usual tourist in Iceland do: we went to visit Geysir and Gullfoss. Geysir was not that special but Gullfoss, the water fall with more water of Europe, that was spectacular. What continuous surprising us is the small amount of people you can find here even in the most well known touristic places.

One day of usual tourist was enough so the last five days we have spend them in a hiking trip from Landmannalaugar to Þórmörk. This is the most well know hiking trail in Iceland and it is incredible. Every single day of the hike the landscape change, the colors are different and you don´t know what to expect next. Hot springs everywhere, lava fields, glaciers, black sand, rivers, canyons and even a forest.

Added to the amazing landscape we had nice conversations with people from all nationalities who were following the same path and with who we shared the evenings in the huts. Even I met a friend from my former mountain club in Catalonia, Dani who was there the same days as us.

I have selected them but there are tons of pictures in the gallery.

Reykjavíck

Iceland, in the middle of the Atlantic, where the European and American tectonic plates crash. Land of volcanoes, earth quakes and as the names says; it is pretty cold up here. Anyway my first two impressions arriving to this island were: there are no forests and there is no dark (at least in summer time).

We have spend the first four days in Reykjavíck and the surroundings practicing what Santi calls active tourism. So: snorkeling in the icy waters of Pingvellir (2ºC), visiting caves created by the lava rivers, kayaking in the Hvalfjördur fiord, swimming in the outdoor hot swimming pools of Reikjavíck, mountain biking around the hot springs of Hveragerdi, riding horses and even rafting in Hvítá river.

It looks like a tight schedule, but I assure you we have been never in a hurry, we took our time in every activity and even enjoyed Reykjavíck night live. But of course the never ending day has helped us a lot.

A selection of pictures, from everything except the water activities.

30 R. – 30 T.B

Next Friday I will turn 30, so this year we decided with my friend Ramon to organize a big party together at my grandfather place. The party took place this Saturday and today, Tuesday, I still not able to work.

It was more that one day party, the people coming from far away (Netherlands and Sevilla) arrived on Friday and helped us (us means Ramon, my parents, my sister, Eloy and me), so before to start the house was already in the perfect atmosphere.

The party started at 5, people were asked to play a game where they needed to find someone in the party, once founded they were going to the photo point where all kind of clothes, wigs and hats could be used to take funny pictures of themselves. (Clicking the picture the full album)

After that we had a fabulous dinner cooked by my parents, pork meat cooked by 7 hours with my grandmother recipe, it was delicious; and this for the 70 people, amazing.

After that we had some performances, ended with a video of our 30 years of life produced by my sister and Eloy with pictures and videos collected by our families and friends, as you can imagine this was a tear-jerker video.

And finally we had party with two DJ’s until the sun was there to tell us: go to sleep. It was not just amazing it was really nice. Thanks a lot to everybody who was there and specially to my parents to make it possible.

(Right now I only have pictures from the photo set, I hope to collect the others soon)

Koninginnedag

Queen's day is the biggest party day in the Netherlands. It is the day of free market, when you can sell all your old items and the day for all kind of street music performances. The best thing to do is to walk around and enjoy the atmosphere. This was already my second year but it continues suprising me.

Unfortunately this year Queen's day had a a tragic success too. There is crazy people everywhere in the world even in the usually calm Netherlands. But live doesn't stop; at the same time that a guy lost his mind trying to attack the Queen and killed 8 people in the city of Amsterdam thousands of people where enjoying the festivity.

So I let you a short video and a large album of my walking tour around Amsterdam.

The winter is gone

Long time without updates in the blog. It is not that I had a monotone life in this period, well maybe more quite than usual, it was more that I was not in the mood. Maybe this second winter in the Netherlands has had a bigger effect on me than the first one. Anyway the spring is here, and even if in the Netherlands still quite cold, you can fill it in the air.

So as a short summary of the last three months:

I did two short trips to France. One to Grenoble to visit my sister on her Erasmus destination and another to Normandy with some friends to celebrate a birthday. The Normandy trip was just a weekend, fun but to short. The Grenoble one was great, it was really nice to see what my sister is doing this Erasmus year and moreover we went for sky two days, perfect mix.

And I moved to a new place. Now I'm leaving in Den Haag, the political capital of The Netherlands, is a smaller city than Rotterdam but nicer and close to the coast. I'm now at the same distance of my job ,12km, but closer to Amsterdam. Even more the house that I share with Bea is big enough to handle all kind of visits, from one to many of you. So what are you doing? book a flight and come to visit me.

This was in short my highlights of the last months. I hope to be more regular updating the blog now that I'm in the mood and the agenda is full of exciting things to come.

I let you with a few pictures of Grenoble and Normandy. Clicking to them you can see the full album.

Frozen Netherlands

Several days with maximum temperatures of -4ºC makes everybody angry at exception of Dutch people. These last two weeks has been like a collective madness in the small and flat country because all the canals, ponds, lakes and any other water surface has been transformed in skating surfaces. Ice skating is the national sport in the Netherlands, but it has not been possible to do outdoor ice skating for around 10 years.

So during these weeks people was finishing early in the offices to profit of it and the whole weekend all big and small water surfaces where covered for families enjoying sunny and cold days. It has been amazing, Netherlands in his best form, everybody was irradiating happiness.

I let you with a big pile of pictures. First Rotterdam on Wednesday afternoon, Friday night at Leiden, more Rotterdam on Saturday morning and Delft on Saturday afternoon. But everywhere the same image.

*Clicking the image the full album.

A Christmas story

One week before to go to Barcelona for Christmas I met some musicians in the Rotown, a bar that is like my second house in Rotterdam. They were planning to go to Barcelona to expend their Christmas holidays playing in the streets and bars. So trying to show our supposed warm nature I told them "Barcelona?, oh yes I know the city".

In consequence after ten minutes talking in the bar and two crossed emails they ended sleeping in my former flat in Barcelona and even offering a really nice concert for our friends. Clot flat starts to be famous for the several services they offer. If you never need a good party, or good lodgment, or just want to have a nice breakfast with natural orange juice don't forget to stop there. Thanks a lot guys.

They are called the Balcony Players. Clicking a few more.

The rest of my Christmas was: family, good food, friends, good food, snowshoe excursion, good food, snow boarding, good food, gifts and good food. In short two more kilos and a big smile to go back to the Netherlands.

Three months update

It has been a long time since the last post. At the start it was because after such a good summer I didn’t want to write about every day matters. Later on I was quite busy trying to produce something for my job.

In the last three months I’ve been quite stable. Only one weekend in Barcelona for a wedding and a weekend in London to interview some people because of my job, the rest of the time I’ve been in the Netherlands, where I’m slowly being more adapted. Anyway I continue fighting with the Dutch language without to much success, it seems that it will take long, but I’m sure one day I will be able to communicate with it.

So now I’m finishing some articles, crossing my fingers to get an approval on them and waiting to go two weeks home for Christmas. Meanwhile I continue cycling under the rain.

Cliking the picture you can see several more from this autumn