Isa y Ward en antípodas

New member of the family

eduardo6527 — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 07:59:14 +0000

Isa and myself have the pleasure to announce the welcoming of our new family member; Carla.

Born the 27 th of july night around 23.00. Weighting 3,740 grams and 52 cm big is our new little Janssen-Marin!!!

2 new happy parents

Rumania Rugby Tour Quimic QER

eduardo6527 — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:52:35 +0000

Wednesday night we left from Barcelona for our yearly rugby tour, this year to Rumania. Rumania (18^th on IRB ranking) is on paper a better rugby country than Spain (25^th on IRB ranking). This was also confirmed during the two games we had during this tour. More on this later.

We took a Wizzair flight from Barcelona to Cluj-NapocaCluj, the fourth largest city in Romania and capital of the Transilvania region. We arrived there late at night and went straight to the University Hotel which was located near the rugby pitch. The next morning we went into town to change some local money (leu or ron) because although Rumania is member of the European Union the euro will be introduced in 2014 or 2015 depending on the economic situation. We also visited the centre with some old buildings and some nice squares. After our morning walk we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the game.

The opposing team is a strong team which playes at the highest level league of Rumania (division de honor) and during our warming up we could see that this was going to be a difficult game. Lots of the players played in Italy and France. Before the kickoff of the game and the local procedure of coming on the pitch they gave us their local flags and some caps to gives us welcome to their ground. The game itself was hard for lots of us because the players we´re big and strong but they weren´t playing 100% (luckily and we also had the help of the referee. The game ended with a lot of tries from the home team and one try from us (with help of the referee).

After the game Cluj invited us for a nice dinner and we we´re introduce to the local drink, palinca, which is a traditional Hungarian and Transylvanian fruit based brandy. Later on we exchanged some presents and we thanked them for the hospitality and invited them to go out tonight with us which some of them did.

On Friday we all slept late because of the party the day before and went in the afternoon to visit the surroundings of Cluj and had a lunch in a small nice town, Turda. Afterwards we made a nice bush walk near the mountains that surround Cluj with 2 players of the local rugby team.

Saturday morning we had to get up early to go to play a local team at Sibiu (about 200km of Cluj) but there the highways are not of the best quality, it took us almost more than 3 hours to get there. The team was playing in the second division of the Rumanian league so we knew this game wasn´t going to be easy neither. The first 20 min of the 1^st half we started leading the game but then they pushed down the accelerator and we started to notice the difference. In the second half we we´re washed away physically and also the field was not in the best conditions (lot of water). But at the end we fought till the end and did our best. Afterwards the local team took us to a restaurant we´re we song and had fun together and had some local food and more palinca… After the lunch we went to visit Sibiu which was designated European Capital of Culture in 2007, together with Luxembourg. It is also ranked as “Europe 8th most most idyllic place to live” according to Forbes. The center is very beautiful and it looks like you´re living in a fairy tale. Nice colorful buildings and well maintained. At night we watched the Barcelona game against Athletic and explored a bit the nightlife in Sibiu (there weren´t a lot of people due to Eastern and because it´s an orthodox country).

The next day we visited in the morning a bit Sibiu and around mid-day we took the bus to Sighişoara which is a small medieval fortified city, which has been listed by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It´s also the village where Dracula, aka Vlad III, the Impaler, was born. This is a really nice small medieval village and you can experience that time has stood still for some while here…

On our last day we went to see the Salinas (near Turda) which are salt mines that we´re converted in an attraction park. Really amazing!! You´re 140 meters below the ground where they used to extract salt and you now play there minigolf, bowling, basket, row a boat… It´s very futuristic. After this activity we headed to the airport to make our return to Barcelona.

Tour Sur de Francia

eduardo6527 — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:39:14 +0000

We left friday afternoon with a lot of sun Barcelona heading to Carcasonne (3,5 hour drive) to see the Fortress, le Cité, which is really nice conserved and belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 1997. This fortress was restaured in 1853 and you can see it because it´s looks really nice and you really have the idea of being in the medieval times when walking through this fortress. After one hour we left to Castres to have some dinner. It´s a little village and it reminded us to Girona with the colourful houses near the riverside (the Quai des Jacobins). Lovely place!!! We had a nice dinner in the center and made a little walk through the center. You can notice that rugby here is the sport by excellence and every bar had the blue-white colors hanging out (Castres is for the moment number 1 in the Top 14). Afterwords we drove near Albi to sleep in one of the chains of hotels Campanile which are very good price/quality.

On Saturday morning we went to see the Toulouse-Lautrec museum which is a nice museum about the painter, printmaker Henri de Toulouse Lautrec. The poor guy (only 1,52 metres died at an age of 37 due to a genetic disorder (something with the bones, now called sydrome Toulouse-Lautrec).

This museum lies in the middle of the red-brick coloured center near the Cathedral of Albi, which is the biggest building of the world made out of bricks. Pretty impressive to see the vertical walls!! Also the city center is really lovely. On Saturday in most of these cities you have local markets where you can taste the good cheese, charcuterie, etc… mmm….

In the afternoon we went to see the derby rugby game Albi-Montauban which was lost by the local team and this means they will go down to the second division next year. After the game we went to see Cordes-sur-Ciel which is a fortified town of the 13th century built on top of a hill. The trip to get to the village is quite impressive with steep and narrow streets on cobbled roads. You also have some nice views over the region from up there. On our way to Toulouse we also stopped in Gaillac, which is renowned for it´s wine and we had some French tapas (foie-gras, jambon,etc.. ) with a nice glass of wine of the region. In the evening we headed to Toulouse and slept near the the space city (le cite de l´espace).

The next morning we went to the center of the village and had a nice breakfeast on the Capitole Square with some french nice pastries. Afterwards we went to see the Basilic of Saint Sernin, the Church of the Jacobins, the Pont Neuf at the Garonne River. The city reminded me to Bologne in Italy with the red bricks and the renaissance style. It´s a very dynamic city with a lots of students and it´s university belongs to one of the oldest of Europe (founded in 1229). In the afternoon we headed back to Barcelona and passed by Carcasonne again where we could see the cité from the highway (E61). We stopped at Narbonne which is a nice city near the mediterrean coast and has a very nice cathedral which is in the middle of the center. Afterwards we went to see Narbonne-sur-Plage. To get there we had to cross the very nice Massif la Clape. The beach itself doesn´t has a lot.

New home @ Barcelona

eduardo6527 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:48:58 +0000

We just moved in our new appartment in Barcelona. It´s in the middle of Gracia, which is a nice neighboorhood with not too many tourists THe appartment is well mantained and it has a new bathroom and kitchen. PLease find enclosed the pictures of our flat.

BULA – Fiji

eduardo6527 — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:00:42 +0000

We left to Fiji with Air Pacific at 14.00 in the afternoon. When we arrived at Nadi International Airport (a really small airport) it was raining like cats and dogs. But the people we´re very nice and we we´re brought to our Hotel at the mainland, Nadi Bay Hotel. It was a very nice hotel. The next morning we had a healthy breakfeast (lots of fruit, pineapple, Mango, dragon fly, etc…) and we we´re picked up by a bus to bring us to the Marina we´re the boat will leave who will bring us to the Yasawa Islands. The boat trip was quite long but we enjoyed the viewings of all the little islands and resorts. After 5 hours on the boat we got to the Northern Part of the Yasawas and stopped at our first resort: Coral View. We got received but all the staff of the village and they we´re singing and handclapping. The bungalows we´re very nice and the location was also very nice. The had a lot of hammocks under palm trees.
We´ve done some snorkling and got a feeling of what is the “Capital of Soft Coral” according to David Cousteau: A lot of fish and very nice corals. The next day we did a cave visit where we needed to swim through a black hole for about 5.-7 seconds to get into a sacred cave where there was no light, quite scary actually. In the afternoon we did a kayaking tour to the famous Blue Lagoon Island where we did some snorkeling and we´re we saw a huge moray swimming and also a little one. At 17.00 we played some touch rugby with the locals. This is a crazy minded rugby nation. You can see they really enjoy playing it, like little kids, like me
The next day we went to our next resort, which was Korovou resort, which was also a very nice resort and the food was delicious!!! It had a swimming pool although we didn´t really used it there we have a BIGGGG OCEAN with nice corals and ton´s of fish…Isa was bitten by small fishes in our first intend to snorkel and she ran away… This is because they feed the fish everyday so they feed and think about food
Our third resort was Wayalalei and this was the island with the nicest scenery. A big hill in the middle of the island and we climbed to the top in 1,5 hours with astonishing views of the village and the Yasawa Islands.
The bungalows we´re quite basic and the roofs we´re of hay with living aninals in it Very traditional living style. We`ve done some reef shark snorkeling and this was really cool. They feed the sharks and than you can touch them. The reef sharks are harmless but still impressing to see. In the afternoon I did a dive and there I was the only one, I could choose what to do: SHARKS. So here I went with my buddy (instructor) who had a bag full of fish looking for big fish . The material was quite crappy (I actually had to use my reserve regulator because the main one was entering water ) but that makes it authentic!!!
We went to the spot called the pinnacle, A big reef in the middle of the sea. We´ve seen a huge cod. When it opens it mouth it´s amazing how he swallows the food. We also got company of 5 reef sharks which I feeded and I could touch them!!! Really cool experience. We also played with a nemo and saw a Lionfish, very venemous! It was a perfect dive!!!
The next day we did some snorkelling with Manta Rays and this was really a cool experience. We saw a school of 5 huge manta rays!!! THey even swam right at us and Isa and I we´re a bit scared when we saw those big mouths but they´re harmless … A really recommended experience!!! The way they move and their size makes you feel very little…
Our last island we visited was Bounty Island and this is what I call an island, to walk the island around you only need 30 MIN!!! The snorkeling was really cool and also the resort wasn´t bad but only a bit more expensive than the rest.
We also did a day sailing with the Seaspray which was a day on a sailing boat with 50 pers. The cruise was through the Mamanuca Islands, and the views we´re astonishing. We visited a village where they did the tipical kava ceremony, which is a ceremony where the chief of the village accepts your visit. You have to drink kava which is a drink made of plant roots and which leaves your tonque and lips a bit senseless. They say you can get drunk of it but we didn´t like it at all…
We played with the children of the school and that was really cool. Very nice kids and they even catched a deadly snake and we´re playing with it!!!
We got back to the mainland and visited Nadi and did some shopping in town. In the afternoon we took the airplane to Sydney and this was the end of our nice Fiji experience. Very nice people and very beautiful islands. It´s also not expensive but the only thing is that you have to watch out for theft…

SYDNEY y alrededores

eduardo6527 — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:42:28 +0000

Sydney - Opera

Bueno, ya hemos llegado a nuestro ultimo destino australiano ;-( Nos morimos de pena….. Antes de llegar paramos en una playa de dunas bastante chula: One Mille beach, cerca de Ann Bay. LLegamos justo en el atardecer y no nos dio mucho tiempo para disfrutarla pero era muy bonita!!Salimos hacia Sydney paramos en Palm Beach, al norte de Sydney. Yo flipo con la gente de aqui: a las 7am ya estan todos paseando por la playa o en el agua (16graditos) . Los abueletes con el neopreno y las gafas cruzando la playa a crol! o sin neopreno dandose el banito vespertino para quitarse las leganas! mu fuete! Asi que, como dice el dicho, “donde fueres haz lo que vieres”, y ahi esta ward corriendo y banandose en las calitas todas las mananas preparandose para el triathlon de Barna. Yo me meti un dia a 16,9 grados y meterse es dificil, pero despues estas tan agusto que ni quieres salir. Era un poco dificil nadar xq del frio, te dan tirones, pero se consigue!!;-) Nos quedamos atrapados un par de dias por estas playitas: manly, balmoral… Y por fin llegamos a Sydney en un dias hemos visto lo mas interesante: la opera, jardines botanicos y pasear por distintos barrios.Hoy, ultimo dia estamos en Bondi Beach, hay nubes y chispea, asi q dias tranquilo, ultimando preparativos para fiji y singapore! Muchos besos y nos vemos a la vuelta!!!!

Surfing @ the east coast

eduardo6527 — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:53:52 +0000

We’ve headed down from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. Our first stop was Surfers Paradise and this was a big suprise because it looked like New York… A lot of skycrapers, huge buildings and a lot of big cars. Nothing to see with the surfers spirit . We’ve stayed there on a beach that was far away of the centre to avoid all the tourists and we enjoyed the surf. We’ve also visited Burleigh Heads where we got the experience of a lot of snapper waves The see was so rough that I even lost my wedding ring We’ve spent 2 days in Coolangatta (at Rainbow bay) where we enjoyed the surf a lot and there wasn’t too many people.
Yesterday we arrived at Byron Bay and this is really nice village and the surf is perfect with a lot of beaches and waves. Isa is also getting in form and took her first pair of waves and she is superating her agony for high waves . Four days left before we head on to Fiji. We’re heading to our end destination, Sydney where we’re leaving the 17 th of September… Snif, snif….

En espanol

eduardo6527 — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:19:44 +0000

Esto va por todos aquellos que no entienden muy bien el ingles y me insisten que escriba algo en espanol!!!!Hemos estado por las whitesundays islands, que son alucinantes. Arena con alto % de silice…blanquita,blanquita….Los americanos la querian para utilizar el silice!!Fueron 3dias de cruceritos con snorquel y buceo. Yo me cogi la otitis de las vacaciones, q no falla cada veranito y he estado tomando augmentine 6dias. Despues 2 dias de tour a la isla de arena mas grande del mundo!!TODO ARENA!!os lo imaginais??? con laguitos y bosques, muy muy chula. Desde alli, hemos estado en la sunshine coast unos dias haciendo surf, bueno, yo me tiro con la tabla, aunque ya me he puesto depie,eh!!molaa!!y hoy vamos a ver un partudo de rugby. Al final me estoy aficionando; Nos quedan 25dias!!a disfrutaaaaaarrr!!!!!

Wallabies – Springboks

eduardo6527 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:52:11 +0000

We’re in Caloundra where it’s raining today!!!! First day of rain since a month!!!! We’re heading to Brisbane in some hours where we gonna see the Tri-Nations game: Wallabies – Springboks Hope the Wallabies can make something good this game because they’ve lost all there games till now Go Aussies!!

Whitsunday Isands and Fraser Island

eduardo6527 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:07:35 +0000

We’ve just got back from our 3 day cruise to the Whitsunday Islands. This was a really nice experience. Isa and me where a bit anxious about the sea sickness but we got 3 days with blue sky and no clouds and a flat ocean Perfect conditions!!! These Islands are really a popular destination but they’re really worth it… We went to see the Whitehaven Beach, with white sand and really turquoise water and for us the most beautiful beach ever seen. We have done some kayaking for spotting mantas and turtles and we have seen some really big ones. We also did a lot of diving and snorkeling. There are some really nice soft and hard corals (too many to name them…) and a lot of fish. We swim with green turtle and saw a lot of manta rays. THis is a highly recommended!!!
From Arlie Beach (where we left to these Islands) we booked also a 2 day tour to Fraser Island, the biggest sand Island in the world! We got on a 4×4 bus and lucky we didn’t decide to drive ourselves because they’re having a drought here in Queensland and the driving conditions we’re really bad and we saw a lot of cars stuck in the sand. We’ve seen the famous clear and beautiful Lake Mc Kenzie!!! It appears to have some healing features for your body so we had our natural spa for these days We also visited the 75 Mile beach with awesome views. It’s quite funny to see all these cars driving at the beach and signals indicating that you ONLY can drive 80km/hour ..
Before yesterday we drove the whole time to get to the surf beaches. We made a stop in Agnes Waters and Town 1770 for some surfing and I teached Isabel to get her first wave and she did it!!! Yesterday we arrived at Noose beach and the ocean is getting wilder with a lot more current and more waves!!!! It was a reality kickback yesterday but yesterday with a fresh mind it’s going very well!! Also Isa got the virus and we’re enjoying the beach life!!! Saturday we will be in Brisbane to see the Wallabies against the Springboks!!!! Ol’eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! Go Bokke!!!!!