First blog in ages...

It's been awhile since I've sent a post, but here I am sitting at Casamurada, the amazing recording studio/villa in the middle of nowhere, though 500 metres from a freeway. I've just come back from a mini Eurotrip, travelling up to Paris, then across to Lille, Brussels, down to Luxembourg, further down to Lyon and then back to Spain.
I actually can't remember what I last said, but I know that since that last post I have had plenty of fun, tripping around the European countryside.
We travelled to Ireland for awhile, staying with our dear friends Maggie and Eamon, and their kids Eleanore and Samuel. We stayed with them for awhile, in their country cottage aka two storey fully renovated nirvana in the Co. Wicklow. We made friends with the local Organic store owners, Stephen and David, and they took us to Damien Rice's house, which was fairly exciting, as I had been listening to the Blowers Daughter on repeat for the last 6 months, and then suddenly I'm sitting across the table from him, eating tofu and boiled nettles soaked in lemon juice. He was a fairly reserved guy, popping out for a spliff once every often, and researching this Brazilians girl's theory on nerve tension. She looked just like Gisele Bunchden, really skinny, tanned with blonde hair, so we nicknamed her Gisele, because we couldn't remember her name.
Stephen and David also took me to a hippy dance-a-thon at the concert hall in Dublin, a no drinking/drugs event that reminded me slightly of Freezer, but it was just lots of hippies dancing to world electro music. They had a food stall set up, so I ended up hanging out with the Canadian girls who were helping them, and then a guy I met (I think his name was Justin) who happened to have stayed with our friends on Salt Spring Island. Fucking small world hey!
We mostly just hung out at Kilmullen farm, feeding the lambs, hanging out with the kids and watching movies. I tried to get as much homework as I could done, though I really, really failed, as I was too distracted by phone calls to Em, Al, Gret, Pete and Rosie, and MySpace, Facebook etc.
We went to Dublin twice during our stay, once for a night, and then for a week, staying at an apartment on the left side of the river. I went on a massive shop-a-thon, which is for me searching through endless op-shops to find interesting stuff. I bought gorgeous things, leather boots, a black coat, sequinned vest, bowler hat etc etc, and spent under 100 euros, so it was a worthwhile trip for me! I loved hanging out in Dublin, it is such a cool city to walk around in, and just look at. There are so many different places to visit, I found Grafton street fantastic, and found a gorgeous Cuban cigar shop/cafe that sold really, really, really yummy coffees. Probably the best I've ever had in the western world, really strong, caramelized coffees. Yum. I also found this gorgeous dress shop where this woman made really extravagant dresses from silk and lace, and I saw my wedding dress. It was a vision in white, and I fell in love instantly, despite the price tag (250 euros). Though not much, I only had 5 euros in my purse at the time, enough for the coffee I was going to buy down the street at this cafe, the Queen of Hearts, which had many gorgeous looking tarts and cakes, and made really good coffee.
After our little stay in Dublin, and Dads return from Sri Lanka (he went there for nearly three weeks to work with World Vision on refugee projects after the Civil War had finally ended. Apparently the country was just full of insane devastation.) we headed down to Co. Cork, to stay with our very old friends who were originally students at a course Dad taught in Maleny in 2002, when he was working on the Fountainhead project. Grainne and Derek, and their kids Dan, Rian and Clara, opened their beautiful home to us, down in Ballycotton and we stayed there for a week, enjoying the five days of sun Ireland gets a year in their mini glasshouse. I actually did get homework done there, got all my Media and English shit out of the way, and got all A's (so proud of myself, haha).
I went out one night with their neighbours, and got really stoned doing old school compression sessions in Jesse's friends car. It was like I was with my girls, the three guys I was with resembled Greta, Em and Al in so many different ways, they were like the driver, the stoner and the nutcase, but guys, it was fantastic.
We spent the rest of the week drinking a lot of wine, eating yummy food, and travelling to Cork to tour around the city. It had some really cool alleyways and I found some great cafes, and a really lovely secondhand book store where I bought L'alibi by Isaac Menasse. It's basically a psychology book based around the life of one guy during the second World War, and is a really, really interesting book, fulled with philosophical epiphanies.
We left Cork, and travelled back to Dublin to catch our flight to Spain, arriving in Barcelona at 11pm, and travelling to Charlie's house.
Charlie and Mika greeted us at their humble abode in Bonastre, with a yummy coleslaw and organic bread, and we retreated back to their cabin, which they so graciously gave us while we stayed there, to sleep.
I hung out there for a couple of days, wandering into Bonastre to get a coffee every day, sleeping till 1, 2 or 3 and enjoying the Spanish sun. I contacted my friend Joan in Lleida, and planned to go and stay at his house for a few days leaving on the Friday.
I travelled to Lleida via train and arrived at Joan's, setting in before we went out for dinner with his friends, Guillem, Francesco, Jew, Natalia, Adriana and Luis, to a little tapas bar for beers and sandwiches, before heading to the amazing Lleida cathedral high high up on the cities hill for cocktails. Joan and I descended back to his around 2 with Luis and Guillem, having a few beers and some whiskey and chats before going to sleep. I introduced them all to Bon Iver and Cat Power, and they loved it, and said I sound just like Cat Power - ooh compliments! Haha.
The second day Joan went to rehearsal with his band, and I went to an art thing with his friends in a nearby village where the children of the school right stories and then the artists draw them and it all gets put into a big book. I met a funny character, Manuel, an old guy who kept holding my hand and asking to sell me things, and I wrote a story about him that I gave to Guillem and Luis to interpret.
We headed back to Lleida and I went with Francesco to his house and started making dinner. Pasta with a tomato sauce, eggplant fried in parmesan cheese and tomato and onion salad, doused in olive oil. We ate with the rest of the gang, and then went to a Pony-like bar to drink a few g&t's before going out. We accumulated a few more, and headed to a rumba club, that played electro, rock, and rumba, and lots of eighties and nineties hits. I don't remember a bit of that night thanks to Tequila (I should really learn to stop having tequila shots after I am already obviously drunk), danced until 5, with me pestering the DJ every five minutes saying, 'Put on this!' or 'Put on this!', and him exclaiming, 'I hate Daft Punk.' and me sulking. I stayed at Francesco's house as Joan had gone home early, and woke up in the morning still a little drunk as we went down to have coffee at a nearby cafe.
Joan and I had decided I would go to Casamurada with him as he and his band recorded their debut album on the Sunday, so I went back to his place, and we headed to his mum's for lunch, and his early birthday cake. After he collected all the things he needed from there, we walked back to Joan's house and were picked up by other Joan and his father to drive us to Casamurada.
I fell asleep during the drive, and woke up as we arrived at this phenomenal Spanish villa. We had to wait for awhile until the owners showed up, and then were let inside to find this amazing, amazing, amazing (there are not enough words to describe how beautiful this house is) place, with its state of the art studio and very elegant/modern living quarters. I immediately made myself at home, and we all settled in, playing the PS3 and lounging around before I prepared dinner (I had said to Joan I would cook while I was there) and we sat outside with the newly arrived Pablo and Albert.
We spent the next week living the life of rock 'n' roll, while I cooked and surfed the net, and the Cronistes recorded their new album. It was so relaxing to do whatever for that time, just to hang out and socialize. It was Joan's birthday on the Tuesday, so I prepared a big dinner, and we sat outside and ate and drank and talked and eventually descended back to SingStar and drinking some more, as Albert and I had purchased a lot of booze on our shopping trip on Monday.
But all good times must come to and end, and I was picked up on the Thursday evening to travel across Spain/France to Paris with my family.
We drove through the night, with me keeping mum awake until 3am and eventually falling asleep. We arrived in Paris around 2 and after a bit of trouble finally found our apartment in Bastille and settled in.
We had an amazing feast for dinner, salad, pasta, meat, chocolate mousse and cherries, lemon tart, all organic, as there were many organic stores near us.
For the next few days we wandered around Paris, enjoying the beautiful city that it is and taking in all the culture that came our way. Mum and I went for a walk on the Friday night and ran into some guys who convinced us to come with them to a bar where we drank Absinthe (the bar had 80 different types of licorice liqueur, heaven much!!!!) and other different licorice spirits until grandma decided she needed to go to sleep as it was her 43rd birthday the next day.
She had a really lovely day, having real French croissants for breakfast (we have had a tradition at home, for as long as I can remember, that we always have croissants for breakfast on our birthday, and mum is the first of us to have real French croissants on her birthday) and going out for lunch with her husband, and wandering around the city. While I was babysitting Pearl and Zane we heard all this music coming from outside, and went downstairs to find this massive trance street festival going on, with all these acidheads and stoners parading through Voltaire (with a million Jean Dam's just waiting to strike at any sign of a revolt) pumping their music through a million different vans, with one guy on top of a truck stripping, much to Pearl's excitement. We eventually caught up with mum and dad, and I went off on my own to find my friend Jean, who had his phone stolen, so I didn't actually end up meeting with him. I came home at 9 to mum and dad watching Cadillac Records.
We met up with Sarah (mums friend for 30 years) who was in Paris for her sisters 40th birthday and had lunch and champagne with her, before heading back to her apartment near Champs Elysees for an amazing feast and a lot, a lot, a lot of wine.
On Monday we headed to Lille to visit my great great great grandfathers grave, who was killed in the second world war whilst fighting the Germans near the Belgium border. We stayed in Lille that night, and headed up to Brussels the following day.
I was really excited to go to Brussels as I heard it was a really cool city, but what we saw when we arrived was unbelievably underwhelming. It was boring and ugly to be quite frank. It seemed like the only exciting thing about it was the EU's base. So we wandered around it for awhile, but decided that if there was something special about Brussels, we couldn't be bothered and didn't have time to find it.
We drove to Luxembourg, after a suggestion by Anni who travelled there in the eighties and said it was amazing, and found this majestic city.
We settled into a 4 star hotel that we found for 100 euros a night (bargain!) and then headed downtown to check out the inner city and the Duke's birthday festival that was happening.
There was a massive concert going on with a huge outdoor stage and a few imported acts from Brazil, America and Poland. We stayed and listened to the music, and danced until heading back to the hotel where I surfed the net and smoked some cigs off the window until 4am.
We waltzed around Luxembourg some more the next day, enjoying the amazing park with was situated in a huge gorge below the city, and played around in the really, really fucking cool playground we'd discovered the day before (seriously, despite my age, I found this playground fucking amazing, it was so much fun!) and enjoying some gelati before going on our way.
We stayed in Lisseu that night, a few kilometres away from Lyon, at an apartment block that took us about five years to find thanks to Google Maps misdirecting.
In the morning we set off back to Spain, and eventually, after 10 hours of jazz and drawing, and a stop at Dali's museum in Figueres (positively amazing, seriously, his artwork is so much more phenomenally beautiful up close than in photograps), we arrived at Casamurada to drop me off with the Cronistes again.
So now I am sitting on the couch, watching the Muse live at Wembley dvd with Joan, Joan and Rose, drinking lots of red wine and enjoying the free life (away from the family, that is). What a wonderful life I live, yet I still wish I was living it in Bendigo. What is wrong with me?!?!
So goodnight dear friends, enjoy Australia and until next time (aka three months from now), I love you dearly.