Ro Live! - Blog of Ro Mathew

Of startling resemblance to Perth is Valencia, the third largest Spanish city located between Madrid and Barcelona. The populations of the both cities are around the same and while Perth is much more sprawled, both are seaside cities with remarkable cleanliness and greenery.

Our short visit to Valencia housed us at the ultra-funky Red Nest Hostel. Having a kitchen in the dorm and grocery store saved us a whole heap of money and we managed to eat our first really filling meal since arriving in Europe. Packet pasta never tasted so good.

We arrived in Madrid after an overnight change of trains in Irun, a Spanish town on the border. We took a couchette – a sort of sleeper class carriage separated into compartments of four bunk beds. It was quite a comfortable trip. Coming from Irun ment lots of mountain scenery and the train snaked its way through some quite breath-taking sights. Because of the speed we were travelling and the glare inside the cabin the pictures don’t quite do it justice.

We landed in Charles De Gaulle early Tuesday morning and after no less than 3 security checks of our passport (absolutely no customs) we were stamped and collected our luggage. Charles De Gaulle airport has a reputation for being one of the busiest in the world but you’d be surprised for thinking otherwise from the scale of the facilities in the arrival terminals. We put on our backpacks and legged it to the connecting Paris metro.

After saying goodbye to family, making our way through immigration and a short wait at one of Perth's very dull looking departure terminals we boarded our aircraft and made the uneventful 7 hour flight to Hong Kong.