Barcelona, the city that Gaudí built

Ok I'm so getting back on the time line of our holiday, from Brighton we went to the Music festival and then back to my home town for a few days: This is always a pleasure but I'll talk about Basingstoke some other time. From Basingstoke we went to beautiful Barcelona. Another magnificent city I had always wanted to spend time in. I was there over night in 2009 on my way to Bennicasim music festival but sadly didn't actually get to see anything of the city. Like most of this holiday it was a relitevely small stop in Barcelona for just a couple of days but we were lucky enough to still experience a lot of this great city.

Now some of you maybe asking who Gaudí is and others of you may ask why I am giving him sole credit for Barcelona, well let me explain. Whenever I go to a new place, yes I may see and experience many different things but I will always take away one or two very specific things as my main memories . For example the first time in Norway it was Trolls. Well in Barcelona the main thing without doubt was Sagrada Familia, the massive cathedral that has been being built in Barcelona for well over a century. The reason this stands out so much is by no means a surprise when you see the view from our hotel bedroom window and the roof terrace.

Our bedroom window at night when we first arrived

In the morning

From the Roof Terrace

It was quite amazing and more than just a little bit imposing I can tell you. It is an incredible building with strange but marvellous details all around. For those who have not put two and two together yet, it was a Mr Antoni Gaudí who designed this masterpiece but he also did many other things including Park Güell, which we spent a large proportion of a day looking around and I strongly recommend. Its not exactly off the track and is completely packed with tourists but there are nice walks around the area that are less crowded and it really is a lovely place. These two things along with several other buildings in Barcelona stand out a mile as architectural wonders and they were all designed by this one man. Just a short walk from Park Güell we came across a 4D cinema all about Antoni Gaudí and his creations. It was a shortish show but lots of fun, not to mention a great way of getting out of the scorching sun for a little bit so thats another thing I really recommend. Ok with all the pictures this post is getting on the long side so I think I will talk about the food and stuff in Spain in my next post.

Park Guell

A view from Park Guell

Bonny Brighton

So despite what the order of these posts suggest, Brighton was the first stop in our recent holiday extravaganza. I talked about the Music festival first as it was the catalyst to the rest and therefore seemed to deserve first dibs in my opinion. Brighton is a city I've heard so much about over the years and always wanted to spend time in. Its most famous tag these days is as "The Gay capital of England", now from our experience I certainly wouldn't disagree with this but there is so so much more to Brighton than its gay friendly reputation. Brighton is a large metropolitan city of culture full of awesome bars, restaurants, quirky shops and really all those cool things you look fir in a modern cultural city. Despite having wanted to visit for so long the trip there was in many ways a fortunate accident. The music festival started on the Friday and Marianne's Birthday was the Thursday, we didn't want to travel on her birthday so thought we should fly a couple of days earlier and have a little birthday romantic trip. As we were flying into London and the festival was in a neighbouring town to Brighton it was just the oblivious choice and I'm so glad we did it. The only shame was we couldn't be there longer as just a couple days really didn't do it full justice. We stayed at a nice quirky independent hotel (which was good but not great enough to bother plugging) just a couple of minutes walk from Brighton pier. The first night we arrived quite late and searched for somewhere to eat. I was a little disappointed at first when getting turned away from several places who had already closed their kitchens as I had been told Brighton was a real lively never sleeps type city. It was only a Thursday though so we pushed on and eventually came across a little French place up a side road called "La Maison Du Van"(the house of wine, and yes this place was well worth a plug). We had a cracking meal and bottle of wine and called it a fairly early night as we wanted to make the most of the following day. After a nice English Breakfast at the hotel we spent the whole next day walking around Brighton, it was impossible to fit it all in but we had been told about many of the best streets to see cool shops and stuff and did our best to get around those. I recall particularly well a huge shop/market full of so many interesting items that one could spend a day in there and hardly scratch the surface. There were several other unique places and just generally the city was packed full of character and beautiful architecture. The pier too while full of arcades and over priced ice creams' is a traditional must and well worth a wonder around. We had a fantastic day exploring and occasionally dipping into the most interesting looking pubs for a refuel. The city was full of all different nationalities and types of people of all race and creed and yer, of course there were many gay people too. I'm a big supporter of gay rights and its a shame that gay people don't always feel comfortable being open about there lifestyle all over the world. If any gays are reading this and feeling repressed, get yourselves down to Brighton. That goes for the rest of you to actually, its a fascinating city!

The Norwegian wing of you plane overlooking the beautiful English countryside

Welcome to Brighton

Brighton Pier

Random I know, but there were lots of differnt things like this and they were all great

Mural by a pub if I remember correctly

Gentlemen of the Road

Ok so I am recently back from my summer holiday, an immense three weeks where I got up to all sorts of fun and just generally loved life. This whole holiday all began with a music festival called "Gentlemen of the Road" in a beautiful English country town near Brighton called Lewes. Now I this was a very small festival of around 50,000 people attending and only around half of those actually camping. To provide some perspective I believe Reading and Leeds festivals around around double this and Glastonbury is about three times the size with about 150,000 people camping.

This festival first caught my eye a little before tickets were announced as I heard it was being put together and headlined by Mumford and sons, one of my favourite, if not my favourite band at the moment. I first saw them in 2009 at another small country festival in Kent where they completely stole the show for me with there stage presence, passion and of course immense music, I've been a big fan ever since. After first hearing about it I proceeded to forget all about it until the morning tickets were going on sale. I got to work at 8am and then saw something about it online and decided on the spot that I MUST go. I had 4 hours before tickets went on sale and I instantly started calling a load of friends in England to get involved. All being the legends they are everyone instantly jumped on board and somehow found the money right then and there. In what turned out to be a great bit of luck through miss communication we ended up with almost twice as many tickets as we needed and this allowed more friends later to jump on board and we ended up with party of 11 to hit this festival. Part of this party was my Mum and her Husband Dave, now some may say that they would never take a parent to a festival but I stand by the fact it was an awesome idea. Like most festivals this one was full of people from 15 to 60 and as far as I could tell they had a fantastic time. Sure they didn't take part in the drinking games and didn't scramble to the front for the music, but music festivals are about more than that and I was really glad they came.

Now I would call myself a relatively experienced music festival goer having been to 5 previously and this one is undoubtedly as good as any other. The relatively small attendance and the setting of this idyllic old English town made for a fantastic atmosphere with everyone pretty chilled but having a fantastic time. I could write a whole post on the town of Lewes, only 15 minutes from Brighton this oldy worldy town is a little gem with views of rolling green hills in every direction and the high street full of cosy independent stores and pubs. I could definitely retire to a town like this. Each morning feeling very hot, tired and a little hungover we would slowly wonder into town for a bite to eat and from what I heard the locals seemed to love the atmosphere the festival had brought to the town, a lovely change from the usual destruction you see of some towns during festivals and the scorn shown by the locals.

To the main order of the day though, the music. The headline acts were Vampire Weekend and Mumford and sons with other acts including Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Witt, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic zeroes and many others (although not all with names so long). Apart from Johnny Flynn (who I am a huge fan of but gave a very short set neglecting many of his classics for fairly unexciting new material) everyone was fantastic. Mumford were as always, out of this world unsurprisingly and anyone who as ever enjoyed a single song of theirs I urge to go experience them live. Their passion and skill on stage is almost unparallelled by the many acts I've seen and there talent is matched only by there humbleness. The wild card of the weekend for me was Edward Sharpe, an act I had heard a little before the festival but I wasn't very knowledgeable of bu for me easily take second place for the weekend giving an awesome lively and engaging set full of fun and energy.

All in all it was a fantastic experienced made even more special by all the friends I was able to experience it with. Not only that, the organisation of this festival little weekend laid the foundations for what became our three week vacation . . . . .

Meet our party. My brother had the idea of the whole group wearing bandannas and sunglasses which turned out to be a great plan as it was the perfect situation. Originally each person was to chose a colour and wear a matching set however after the creator of the idea (my brother) forgot his own bandanna and making that impossible, we all decided to mix it up, which in the end I think was much better anyway.

A snippet from the local paper, a photographer wondered around the campsite for ages taking pictures and looked like he hit the jackpot when he found our very cool group.

A rig in the arena area, this was towards the end of the festival, don't believe that sky, for most of the weekend the weather was crazy hot!

The Stage