I've not talked about places I've been visiting and I though it might be good to do so (or remove the Trip part of my blog name).
So, this past year I've travelled quite a lot. To summarise, I've been to Granada, Berlin, Andorra, Montreal, Tolouse and Edinburgh. To some of these I went with my partner, and others I went with my son too. So I think I'll talk about these trips just a bit each, since most of them were short trips 2-4 days long, apart from the Canada one.
First, Granada. It's my second time there, but the first time with my son. We didn't plan it like that but we went during Easter, so we managed to be there during processions. We ended up not seeing any because the risk of rain cancelled all the ones we were close to, but still we could experience the atmosphere a bit.
Granada is very beautiful, not too big but with lots of amazing corners, like the small neighbourhood with views to Alhambra or the old centre, or the Alhambra itself of course. We just walked around but we did visit the Science Museum, and have to say it's a very good museum, really worth going there. The food was amazing although way too much, in plenty of places we just ordered drinks and got enough food with tapas that we were full when the main dish arrived. It was curious to live the party atmosphere related to the processions, even if we didn't see any, and honestly it reminded me so much of Blasphemous and how its iconography is all based on living in Andalucia and made me realise how gore is the Catholic church in general.
Then, in May, my partner and I went to Berlin. It was our first time there, and it's a place I've been curious about for a long time now. The experience was quite good, we had amazing sunny days for Berlin, and we managed to walk around the city quite a lot. The story around the city was very curious, especially everything related with the wall. I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the USA-centric propaganda with the whole thing. I mean, of course what was done there by communist rulers was horrible, but the texts explaining the history behind the wall talked about all the atrocities the USSR had done around the world and then just mentioned like in passing "oh yeah, and there were some little wars in Vietnam and Cambodia and such with Kissinger behind it, plus USA helped these nice freedom fighters in Afghanistan, nothing important related to any of these to talk about". These omissions, I feel, taint the comments about human rights and such, feels very hypocritical, and puts in doubt any historical accuracy of what is presented(if they are not reporting atrocities made by USA in the same period in other places of the world too, who's to tell they're saying anything truthful in general??)
The city felt very nicely connected, very orientated to walking and moving around, and it was curious that most typical food tended to be kebabs and such. We couldn't leave without trying Mustafa's kebab, and it was really amazing, very tasty. We didn't experience the night-life though, and this is something I'm still curious about, I have to say.
In June we three did a short trip to Andorra. It was the first time there for my partner and my son didn't remember the last time much, he was very little still by then. Andorra has amazing mountains and hikes, but you need to be in very good shape. We were not in very good shape, but still managed to take a nice route that went around several high mountain lakes, very beautiful, although we ended up very tired. We also tried to look at the stars since there are several places in there with very little artificial light, but since it was summer it was hard to wait till it was pitch black and didn't caught the full milky way view that is so impressive. We also visited a bit a few towns around, but they're very little and we were more interested in the mountain views anyway.
In August we visited Montreal, my partner's brother lives there with his wife and children. We already had been there in 2022. It was a family visit but we managed to do a bit of tourism too. Montreal feels very european for a Canadian city, there are walk-able neighbourhoods and nice corners that reminded me as well of similar streets we found in Berlin, with cute shops and cafes and such. However there's also suburbs, of course, and even if you can live nicely in there and people have lots of money, I cannot help but feel I wouldn't be able to live there comfortably, where going to buy bread requires a 20-minute car drive there and back. Reminds me that this is the result of asshole car companies pushing for this and it makes me mad.
Apart from that, nature there is amazing and we managed to do a couple of trips to some close mountain ranges, very beautiful. We also went to Ottawa, the capital, and managed to do a short little visit around this other city, that also felt European because of it's old government buildings and the Canadian parliament, resembling a bit the British parliament. Canada in August feels very green and nice, even if it does rain a lot, and it seems like a very nice place to live (till you remember what's the weather like in December).
In October my partner and I visited Tolouse. The first time we were in Tolouse was in 2023 and it was accidental, we were stranded on our way back to Barcelona from Paris because of a train track issue. They woke us up in the middle of the night, made us go down, and didn't offer any alternatives, so in the end my parents helped and picked us up. We were tired and sleepy and in a bad mood, and even then it felt like the city was very beautiful. So we went back this October to properly visit it, and we really loved it.
The small streets with the clay bricks, the channels and rivers, the food (omg the food, the streets had an amazing smell of amazing food), the giant Minotaur, Spider and Naked Scorpion-Woman....ah yes, quite by accident we went at the same time they were doing a street opera with giant mechanical monsters moving around the city. It was accidental and amazing. We actually didn't catch them moving much, because they didn't tell you where they were or at what times they moved, you had to walk around and be lucky, but we managed to catch them a few times, and it was an extra-nice detail, also because they had closed street traffic when doing this, so we could walk more freely around the centre. Really loved this city and we ended up so full of amazing food....
Finally in November we went to Edinburgh with my son. My partner's cousin from Hong Kong was visiting family at the time in there, so we arranged to meet. We took the chance to visit it too, and I re-did some of the tours I did before (it was my second time there), but with me telling my partner and my son a bit about the history of the city. Edinburgh is very very beautiful and medieval, very green and humid too of course, and quite cold, but beautiful. I have to say though that the centre feels too tourist and starts to feel very....artificial, very polished for tourists.
We did visit the cemeteries, the hills and the castle and old-town, although we didn't enter any museum nor guided tour or anything. We ate too much greasy food though and ended up a bit indigested, but we tried the haggis and liked it.
And this is my 2024 trips. I realize I didn't talk yet about my 2023 trips, which includes Paris, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but hopefully in another post soon I can talk about that^^.
