HOLIDAY ON ICE
The diversity of my activities here in Toulouse never stops to amaze me, this life is so much fun - always new stuff to do!
Thursday afternoon I joined Tom to go with AS Golf (The golf group at INSA) to shoot some balls on the driving range. We have both played golf actively for several years, but several years ago. We noticed this on the arbitrary direction each ball took. I don't have any pictures from the driving range, but we had lots of fun!
Yesterday was BOOM night, something that is normally pretty fun. Instead of the normal preparty in the "Trou" I joined Juha, Annika and Cate to the ice skating show "Holiday on Ice - Energia".
Backflip on ice skates!
A ticket costs at least 80€, a price way out of our price range - so how could we go anyway? Well, luckily Juha know one of the performers and got four freebie tickets!
I got really positively surprised by the quality of the show. It got better and better with more and more energy! We had a great time, followed by a short followup-preparty at Juha's before we left for the BOOM!
A great show - "Energia" by Holiday on Ice
A DAY WITHOUT COURSES
It is kind of weird, I haven't had a single course today. I follow the complete fourth year here at INSA, something that means my time table is full every day. Except today. I got a bit shocked when I yesterday (I live one day at the time) found out that I didn't have any courses today. WEE!
How many hours did I study the day I had no courses?
None this time. I figured I would take the day off from school in general and simply enjoy the fantastic weather!
I woke up around 11 (we had a fun St. Patrick's party yesterday - it got pretty late!).
At 14h I met with Juha, Tom and some of the Americans to go shopping at Carrefour. I bought Coca Cola in authentic bottles (!) and lots of ice cream (of course some stuff I actually needed as well).
When I got home I saw an episode of House (while eating ice cream). Then I went out in the sun and slept for an hour :D
Tonight it's time for volley practice (love it!) before there is a barbecue in the "Trou" (love that too).
I've finally put in a little Twitter Widget to the blog. I was supposed to put it in when I added the Flickr widget, but it didn't work with iPublish of that time. Now it's in place and I like how it looks. What do you think?
Another thing as well, support Amnisty Internationals campaign for Freedom of speech on the internet! (Look under the Flickr Widget)
INTERNATIONAL BLOG?
I use Google Analytics to crunch the numbers when it comes to statistics for my blog. I checked in today and I must say I'm impressed of how "international" my blog is. I have visitors from four out of five continents!
France and Norway are not surprisingly on the top of the list, but people from 34 different countries have visited my blog the past month. Top 15 shown above. Pretty cool in my opinion!
Now some normal blogging stuff:
I bought a cool "fisheye" build-on lens for my camera. Ebay is great, now I'm just hoping it will arrive before we leave for the Alps.
I had an exam in Finance 1 today. I don't think it went very well, unfortunately - time will show so I'll take the downer if it comes.
It's St. Patrick's day today! Hooraay. We're going to celebrate, hopefully in an Irish pub! (And I have nothing for school tomorrow. It's the first time this semester I have absolutely NO classes!)
I'm ending this post with a picture I took last week from my apartment window. Awesome sunset!
Lots of CO2 in and around Toulouse it seems. Beautiful.
WEEKEND TRIP: BARCELONA
Sagrada Famillia and I
Travelers: Cate, Susana, Synnøve, Geir, Kristian, Juha, Kristofer and me.
Travel budget: 101€ for transport and housing (incl. breakfast)
Time in Barcelona: 44 hours
Weather in Barcelona: 20 degrees centigrade and blue skies(!)
When we planned this trip we had trouble finding transportation back and forth to Barcelona. Luckily, Juha knew about a convenient way to get from Toulouse to Barcelona: Mike.
Who is Mike?
Mike is a English/Spanish guy who owns a minibus. We payed him 65€ each to bring us to and from Barcelona. Driving with Mike is the ONLY way to get to Barcelona - and have time to see the city in one weekend (when you don't have a car of course).
Bus Mike, Cate and Synnøve
We got to the hostel around 23h Friday night, paid 36€ each and got out on La Rambla, the big tourist street in Barcelona. Since I was still on antibiotics, I had a good orange juice in one of the outdoor cafés.
We were back home around 00h30, we were all pretty exhausted.
Saturday:
Saturday we ate crackers and jam for "breakfast" - could have been better.
Hostel breakfast: Synnøve, Kristian, Juha, Kristofer, Susana, Geir and Cate
We left the hostel around 9h and strolled along La Rambla towards Casa Milà. Casa Milà, also known as La Pedrera is a building drawn by Antonio Gaudi (Catalonia's big architect). We visited the museum and learned a lot about the architect Gaudi.
Casa Milà (aka. La Pedrera)
The roof of La Pedrera
We then walked to Sagrada Familla, Gaudi's church project (he wanted to build the biggest church in Europe). The building started at the end of the 19th century and is still ongoing (some voices whisper 2015).
We hadn't had enough of Gaudi, so we visited Parc Güell, a Gaudi designed park, where we ate great home made sandwhiches. We had walked quite a few kilometers already, so we had a long siesta on the park lawn.
No walking on the gras, so we sat down.
We finally figured out that the Metro was a good idea and went to the beach where Juha, Susana, Cate and I tried the water. Freezing!
Trying to get out of the water: Juha, Cate and Susana
In the evening, we found the only restaurant in the Barcelona with fresh tapas. If not the case, the tapas was really good! We then went on our own little pub crawl. 6 good pubs in total, good fun!
Sunday:
Sunday we got up late, around 11 and were out of the hostel by noon. We tried to find Starbucks, didn't and got so hungry that we ended up eating MacDonald's take-away in a park. We then went to the Olympic stadium, a spectacular set of buildings. On the way we accidentally passed the Catalonian National museum, an incredible building (and an incredible view of the city)!
Everyone in ONE photo!
We found Starbucks and had a well deserved break there before we saw Casa Battlo (Gaudi again), got our luggage from the hostel and were picked up by Mike.
We were back home in Toulouse at 23 o'clock. A great weekend was over!
SOON OUT OF ISOLATION
Well, I'm still ill - though I'm hoping today will be my last day in my room. The past days I've been sleeping a whole lot, eating, watching some series and slept more.
I've missed out one a few things, for example the Champagne party in the trou on Monday and the strike on Wednesday. The strike was an advantage for me, I had mandatory class, but since all the buildings were blocked by the strikers the class was cancelled. Lucky.
Tomorrow I HAVE to be well, because the we're going with Mike the bus driver to Barcelona! Monday I have an English test, Tuesday I have Finance, but I haven't been well enough to study for the Finance bit. I'll work on it today.
PS. Thanks to MoleSon2 for the photo