The Saunders Wander

Welcome back to the accounts of our wanderings. This time, we travel to Spain, specifically to Barcelona, Madrid, and Segovia. This trip was planned on a bit of a whim, when Lauren sent us notification of a flight sale to Europe via Scott's Cheap Flight Deals. It somehow worked out that we could get tickets to Barcelona leaving on a Friday and returning the following Saturday, right around our first anniversary, for a mere $380 a piece! After some vacation time calculations and realizing we could make it work, it seemed too good a deal to pass up, and I'm sure glad we took advantage of it because Spain was pretty awesome. We departed Raleigh in a bit of a whirlwind this time, not leaving ourselves enough time at the airport with our checked bag. We are so used to having pre-check and no bags to check that we don't need much time, and I've never really seen a long line for bags in Raleigh so when we got to the airport and saw a huge line at Delta we were very worried. ...

Our first full day in Spain fell on our anniversary, and our original plan was to take in an FC Barcelona soccer game at the famous Camp Nou stadium. Unfortunately, Catalonia chose this day to hold a referendum by which the people of the region were to vote on whether they wanted Catalonia to secede from Spain and become an independent country. The central Spanish government of course didn't think that would be a good idea, and decided to name the referendum illegal and send in the national police force to stop people from voting. This caused a significant amount of unrest, and though everything was peaceful by us, even with a voting location around the block from our hotel, there were many incidents across the region of violence by police towards voters. The Las Palmas team that FC Barcelona was supposed to play didn't exactly help things stay non-political. We heard from the Internet that they sewed Spanish flags and the date onto their uniforms for the game, and that the B...

Our original plan for Monday was to check out the Picasso museum in Barcelona, but we hadn't looked closely enough at the Internet to realize that many of the museums are actually closed on Mondays. Instead we went to see Montjuic, which is a hill in Barcelona atop which sits a fort/castle. There are all kinds of other cool sights on the hill as well, as it was the site of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, and also houses an old royal palace that's now an art museum, and a number of gardens. It was really a beautiful day to walk around, and we enjoyed it very much. Luckily, there is a cable car that takes you up the mountain to the castle, which was, in and of itself, a fun experience. Looking back over the city on the way up provided spectacular views. It was easy to see why fortifications were built on this hill to both protect and control the city (depending on which era of history you're examining). The original castle dates back to about 1640, but was rebuilt in ...

Besides the soccer match, the only thing we bought tickets for before actually going to Spain was a tour of the Sagrada Familia church and Gaudi's house museum. So, of course, the day of those tickets the region of Catalan decided to go on strike as a demonstration against the police violence during the referendum. However, we had a great guide book with a walking tour of modernisme (Catalan modernism) architecture outlined, so we got our fill despite the strike. There are so many modernist buildings in Barcelona, each unique and interesting. The most famous architect of course is Anton Gaudi, who designed many buildings as well as the Sagrada Familia church. He lived at the Sagrada Familia building site for 14 years, but never saw his work finished. In fact, they are still finishing the church according to his original designs. Along the route the Sagrada Familia were a bunch of neat houses, designed by a variety of architects, some of which are pictured below. ...

On Wednesday we woke up early to catch the 8am high speed train to Madrid. The train took about three hours, and though I slept most of the way I think Charlie would agree it was quite comfortable. We got a nice breakfast in the station in Barcelona before heading out, and once in Madrid it was a short two-stop subway ride to get to our hotel. I really wish high speed rail travel was an option in the US, as rail always seems much more pleasant than air travel. We were actually able to check into our hotel a bit early, and even got an upgraded room, which was awesome because it had a king size bed and a little couch where we could relax without feeling like we were in bed all the time. It didn't have much by way of windows, since it was on the top floor and was almost attic-like with a sloped ceiling, but there was one window high up with a motorized blackout screen that was amazingly effective at blocking out light. Once we dropped off our things in the hotel, we headed out to ...

On Thursday we took a day trip from Madrid to the nearby town of Segovia, which was one of the things I was looking forward to the most for our trip. We had been made aware of Segovia from one of those "25 places to visit before you die" click-baitey articles, specifically because of the Alcazar castle there. Don't get me wrong, the castle is really cool, but I think the Roman aqueduct completely stole the show in Segovia. Getting to Segovia consisted of taking a commuter train to a regular train to a bus, which dropped us off right in the square with the aqueduct. It was an amazing sight to behold - built in the 1st century (you know, like year... 98 or so) and used until the mid 1800s! The aqueduct towers over the main square, was originally built without mortar, and is just over 93 feet at its tallest point. It is a truly stunning piece of architecture and history, and I am so glad I got to see it with my own eyes. The old city of Segovia is built on a plateau ...

On our last day in Spain, we went to the Prado museum, and boy am I glad we budgeted most of a day there. The Prado is enormous! We got in line for tickets right when it opened around 10am, and were inside around 10:30. I kid you not, we spent over 6 hours in this museum. We got the audioguide and hit it hard. At the start we did the audioguide wherever we could find it, but we soon realized there was no way we could do that and make it out alive, so we focused on the lengthy list of masterpieces in the pamphlet (50+?) and made it our goal to see all of them. In hindsight this was a really ambitious goal, but it was worth it. I can't believe neither of us got bored in that time, as I never thought I'd spend that much time in an art museum, but each room (and there are over 100 rooms in this museum) held such stunning works that we couldn't give in. We did stop for lunch in the museum cafe, and somehow made it to every room in the permanent collection. Perhaps it's...

Welcome to our newly minted travel blog! Our first stop is of course New Zealand, from which we arrived home a few weeks ago. While New Zealand is a pain in the butt to get to, it was certainly worth it, and made for a phenomenal honeymoon. We began our trip around 6:30 Friday night, with a nice sunset out the window of the plane at RDU. We had ahead of us a 6 hour flight to Los Angeles, and from there another 13 hour flight to Auckland, NZ. Though 13 hours is a long time to spend in any plane, we were fortunate at least to get to spend it in one of Boeing's newest planes, the 787 Dreamliner. We noticed almost immediately how much quieter the Dreamliner is, which apparently is due to a number of things including the plane being made out of composite rather than metal, and the shape of the engines, which allows for a quieter plane overall. Another interesting feature that we didn't notice right away (to our credit it was 2AM Raleigh time when we boarded the flight) were...

Almost without fail, the first thing anyone asked us when we said we were going on our honeymoon to New Zealand was "Ooh are you going to visit Hobbiton?!?" or some other LOTR themed question. I must confess, that was literally the first thing we booked aside from the flight. I couldn't go all the way across the globe to Middle Earth and NOT go see Hobbiton if I had the chance. This was the only LOTR themed activity we did, and trust me, there are many available. Hobbiton is a bit like Disneyworld in a way. There is an attention to detail there like I have seen in almost no other place. Interestingly, it has actually been built twice. It was originally built in a temporary form for the filming of the LOTR movies, at the end of which it was burnt down for the scene in Galadriel's mirror (this includes the Green Dragon Inn, which is where your tour ends with a beer/hard cider/ginger beer). Then, a few years later, Hobbiton and the Green Dragon Inn were re-built to t...