The Matadors in Seville

When you think of the culture of Spain, one might imagine passion, royalty, and excitement.  Seville embodies these traits perfectly, and its passionate heat was felt throughout my time there; it was hot enough to wear t-shirts during the day whereas in Barcelona it was already cold.

Seville

Seville is notable for its bullfighting events and its flamenco dancing.  I was unable to witness either of them, although I did watch some flamenco dancing that was on the streets.

In a way, Seville reminded me of Nice (you can read my blog about Cote d’Azur here), where everything was spacious, a tram ran through the city center, it was the whole vibe and atmosphere that was very similar… I guess both cities being part of the Southern part of their respective countries lends itself to create such an atmosphere.

Continue reading The Matadors in Seville

A Small Town Called Girona

We have had more than enough time to cover all the major tourist spots in Barcelona, so we decided why not visit some of the nearby towns in Barcelona to get a sense of a different experience?

The first and most obvious choice was Valencia, but not only have I already been there, we only had one day and we had to be back in Barcelona by the evening, so it was too far for a one day trip.  There’s of course Figueres, where it is most famous for having Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museum designed by Dalí himself, but we wanted to visit a town rather than just a museum; we’ve seen way too many museums by this time (even though I personally really like Dalí a lot).  There was also Sitges, famous for its seafront promenade, but again I have already been there and there wasn’t much to do anyway besides enjoying the bright happy promenade.

So, we settled on Girona.  It was a small town located a little more than 30 minutes of train ride from Barcelona Sants, plus it’s most notable for being one of the filming locations for the hit TV show Game Of Thrones, where they filmed Braavos, Oldtown, and King’s Landing for Season 6 (source: barcelonayellow.com) Continue reading A Small Town Called Girona

Mount Kilimanjaro and Tanzania Safari

Kilimanjaro just happened to be the place where, for the first time, I felt as if I was brought out of the bubble I was living in and realised just how different and large the world was.

Just before we delve deeper into this blog post, I must warn you that a majority of this post will be mainly a photo blog post just because… this trip was taken more than 12 years ago!  We’re talking about a time when smartphones didn’t exist, and I was using my digital camera to take the pictures below, printed these photos from long time ago, and then I had to scan them to my computer one by one just for this post.  That said, there are aspects of the trip, the emotions I carried with me, that linger within me that I will do my best to express them in this blog.

Mount Kilimanjaro is famous for being the tallest mountain on the African continent and the highest free-standing mountain in the world.  You would think that such a description was the reason why it allured me to sign up to partake in this school trip, but rather, it was my own naiveness and my own bubble that I was living in that really made me participate.

You see, I had just switched schools and I guess was consuming too much information at once at the new location.  When a trip to Kilimanjaro was announced, I imagined in my mind to be a Cross Country race instead in Hong Kong, which having been participating in Cross Country school teams, I was like, “Yeah, sure, I could do this.”  They even mandated that there would be two extra-curricular sessions per week a month before setting off to raise our fitness levels. Continue reading Mount Kilimanjaro and Tanzania Safari