Muddling in Milano

After an exciting adventure in Barcelona, I can safely say that I am unlikely to forget my time in one of Spain’s most beautiful cities. Never before have I seen such a wonder as La Placa De Le Seu – although I think perhaps the Nou Camp may come a close second.

Attending a football game was a new experience for me – and one which I feel I may repeat.

An elated evening with the fans of FC Barcelona left me hungering for more adventure – so I’m off to Milan.

 Travelling the 12KM back to Barcelona airport via local bus, it took just 25 minutes and a 5 Euro fare before I stepped through the doors of the departure lounge.

A marvel, really, when you consider that I would have spent all that time and more, several hundred years ago simply preparing my ship to leave port.

After being hustled through a large metal machine which I’m told is part of the security process, I am asked to open my bag for a quick search.

This is certainly new. Aboard my ship, security was as simple as looking a man up and down. If he looked respectable, he joined the crew. If not, he was swiftly removed. However, I’m told times are different now, so I comply without question.

After a quick chat with the staff – who speak a fascinating and new localised branch of Spanish – I climb on board a shiny big airplane to experience my second journey in the sky.  I’m still stuck by the lack of space and the thought that I’m travelling in what is essentially, a tin can in the air. 

However, I am also impressed by the amount of people they have managed to fit into this craft – which is likely around the same size as the bow of my ship. And in the corner of my eye, I see a man and woman dressed smartly, and preparing a trolley. I have a feeling that we may be fed and watered on this short voyage. Excellent news.

My ticket details that this flight takes just over an hour, and I’m travelling for a good price as I booked my flights via Toowist. There were multiple options available, and I found I was spoiled for choice!

Hence I now have a rather larger budget than previously anticipated for my accommodation once I reach my destination…so I can choose a hotel rather near one of the many attractions I’ve been advised by Toowist to visit.

Touching down at Milan Malpensa, I’m graced with a multitude of options for reaching the city. I can travel via express bus straight to the financial capital of the north, or I can catch local transport to nearby Gallarate and jump aboard a forwarding train.

I decide to queue amongst a range of other travellers for the express bus, which drops me at the front of Milan’s stunning train station. The Stazione di Milano Centrale seems the perfect location for exploring this beautiful city.

 

Toowist has a vast section on Duomo – one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world. Dazzling in the morning sunlight, I join a group of tourists for a closer look at the building – which is not unlike some of the greatest treasures I laid my eyes upon as an intrepid explorer.

 

After surveying the sights and sounds of Milan from a great height, I return to solid ground to further my exploration of the city.

After consulting my Toowist guide once more, I pay a visit to Museo del Duomo to learn a little more about the history of the building.

The museum displays the 700-year-old history of the construction of the cathedral in a variety of ways, and I take great pleasure in viewing the impressive walk in wooden models, and façade designs from several centuries ago.

There are also a variety of sculptures – I’m fairly certain I’ve met a few of these great gentlemen on my previous travels.

After a day of exploring Milan, I head off to find a bed for the night – for tomorrow I shall be visiting the Sforzesco Castle.

 

Oh, the life of a traveller…

Reign in Spain

It is official: I have rediscovered my love for Spain. Vibrant and peaceful, beautiful and rugged, this stunning country has everything to offer both the seasoned (like myself) or rookie traveller.

After spending a wonderful few days in the picturesque city of Bilbao my adventurer’s feet were itching to move on to my next location. Recommendations from fellow travellers on Toowist and various other social networking sites (what a way to communicate – immediate interactions, gone are the days of messages in bottles and carrier pigeons) pointed me in one direction.

I was Barcelona-bound.

Not content with just getting travel advice from Toowist, I discovered I was even able to book my onward travel through the site – incredible! I was told the quickest way to travel to Barcelona – even faster than the train – is to fly. Fly! Can you imagine my reaction? For years I heard stories of people, who attempted to grow, make or craft wings from wood, wax and metal – and now it is a reality.

These sensational inventions are called airplanes and I was beside myself with excitement when I realised I could travel from Bilbao to Barcelona on one.

The journey in the airplane was incredible – I just couldn’t fathom how it worked. I was told by a very helpful young man, who called himself a ‘flight attendant’, that the plane was flown by a pilot who sat right up at the very front in the nose of the aircraft. Sadly I wasn’t allowed to go up there to see the mechanisms for myself but he assured me it was very impressive indeed.

After what seemed like no time at all I was back on terra firma – this time in the beautiful land of Barcelona, Catalonia

I passed through this breath-taking city just once on my previous travels but I was too busy swashbuckling my way past pirates and artful dodgers to really drink it all in. Now I was determined to take my time to explore this vast metropolitan that has become so popular with modern-day adventurers.

Another train journey (I really am becoming quite the dab-hand at this train travelling thing) later and I found myself in the centre of Barcelona. I stepped out of the Barcelona Sants railway station into a buzzing hub of activity.

With my Barcelona guide, courtesy of Toowist, open on my newly purchased iPad (really this modern technology thing is a marvel!) I set about making my way to my first destination – the Sagrada Familia, a church designed by a famous Catalan architect by the name of Antoni Gaudi. I’ve been told it is really something to behold – never completed despite the project starting way back in 1882 and it is now a registered World Heritage Site.

I was transfixed by the gothic beauty of the church. Its countless spires seemed to rise endlessly into the sky and it was hard to see all the way to the top. I had to fight through hundreds of tourists, all greedily snapping photographs from every angle, to make my way inside the church. It was spectacular and like nothing I have ever seen in all my years of travelling. I stood rooted to the spot marvelling at the incredible detail on the ceiling for what seemed like hours before finally moving on.

Inspired by Gaudi, I decided to make my way to Park Güell – the park designed entirely by the man himself. I am told it was inspired by the English Garden City Movement in the early 1900s and that Gaudi actually lived in one of the houses built on the site – but he was not the one who designed it – and it is now known as the Gaudi House Museum. Unfortunately for me it wasn’t open the day I visited the park, however if his works inside the house are anywhere near as impressive as his works outside, I can only imagine how breathtaking they would be.

And if I thought Barcelona was electrifying during the day, I have no words to describe the city at night. It just came alive, with music on every corner, dancers in the city square, people crowding into bars along every street and stalls galore selling everything under the sun (or moon as it was).

My time in Barcelona was certainly an experience – I’ve discovered a love for architecture and am finding myself being more drawn into the history of cities and countries than ever before. When I first started out on my travels I wasn’t so interested in the history of the places I came across – if they had a history I wanted nothing to do with them as I wanted to create history, not fall into someone else’s.

This time however, things are different – there is so much out there for me to learn and discover and I can’t wait for my next adventure.

The Spanish Inquisition

After buckling my swash in Adventureland thanks to some excellent Toowist travel tips, I headed back to the great Parisian mecca to continue on my travels.

Met with the smell of coffee – an illustrious drink which I tried just days ago, but now cannot imagine life without – my senses came alive as I turned toward the great plasma screen in the sky which read ‘Departures’.

Somewhat different from navigating with a map and compass, I struggled to read between the lines of orange text flashing in the distance, but finally managed to establish that in order to reach my next destination I had to find ‘Platform 4’. Or ‘Quatre’ as they say in this beautiful city.

One of the finest things about exploring this new world via untried and tested transport is that everything seems to move much more quickly – meaning that I get to try out most of the recommendations I’m given for things to do and see, as well as learn some words of a new language.

Clutching my European phrase book and jumping aboard a train – I’m finally getting to grips with this new-fangled contraption – I nestle in amongst my fellow travellers for a trip set to take almost 12 hours, but which will land me in one of my oldest haunts – a Spanish port close to that of Valladolid - the very place I hung up my original travelling hat in 1506.

When sailing on the high seas time is of the essence, and it took just weeks to travel from one land of opportunity to the next.

However, after boarding what is known as the SNFC (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français), I came to the realisation that journeys have become abnormally fast in this modern Europe, and that less people seem to suffer from the sickness.

This can only be a good thing – I lost many a good crew member to scurvy, and even more to the broken promises of chests of treasure at our destination.

There was no such problem as I pulled into the city of Irun after spending the night sleeping on this automatic invention.

However, beautiful as it was, this fair city was not my final destination for the day.

No, I was heading for the city of Bilbao. Capital of Vizcaya, in the Basque country of Spain, the city has become vast and very ornamental in my years away.

Housing many large buildings I’m told are called museums, I spent the next few days ‘Guggenheiming’ –an exciting way to use a few hours – and exploring the rich green hills of the surrounding countryside which were less plentiful many hundreds of years ago.

Thankfully I had access to Toowist – an accurate guide as to what was available to see and do. Goodness me, if this had been around in 1490, I would have wasted less time at sea, and spent more time on land!

And now that I’m in Spain, I need suggestions of where to hot foot it to.

It’s a large country you know…