I´m going to talk about the most beautiful place I have ever visited. It´s Mont Saint Michel, which is placed in the North- west of France between the regions of Britanny and Normandy but it belongs to Normandy.

I´m going to tell you when I discovered this wonderful place.

In my last year at high school, in our french class we had to give an speech talking about a region in France, I chose Normandy because I was interested in knowing more about it so when I started looking up for information I was shocked when I saw the picture of Mont Saint Michel, and at first I though it wasn´t real, because it seems to be an sculpture, a model or something like that, but I continued looking up for information and I confirmed it existed.

So, I wished I could visit it someday in the future, but what I didn´t know was that I was going to visit it really soon…

At the end of the same year, I received a grant to go to France to study French, I was really happy and I obviously accepted it.

I didn´t know where I would go until few weeks before because they organised the travel for us, we couldn´t choose the destination.

So, my destination was the French Brittany. We were 45 people from the North of Spain and we went by bus, so we spent all the night in the bus. When we arrived, we had our host family there waiting for us. We spent there a month, in the mornings we went to class, and in the afternoons we made trips…and one of those was to Mont Saint Michel.

I was the only one who knew that it existed and it was really really exciting for me because it was as if I was dreaming, I couldn´t imagine I was going to be there.

So I felt very nervous at first but later I enjoyed the visit very much.

I’d like to tell you something about the history of the Mont Saint Michel.

According to legend the archangel Michel appeared to Saint Aubert, bishop of Avranches, to order him to build a church on the rocky islet but Aubert ignored him for three times, the last time it´s said that the archangel burned a hole on his head with his finger.

So, little by little that huge sanctuary was built and around it millions of pilgrims were installed there, building their own flats. But one year later, the tide rose enormously making the sea come into land flooding all the place, letting Mont Saint Michel completly isolated.

Since then, the mountain became a big fortress, because the tide rises and falls twice a day, being half an island because nowadays it´s never completly covered, it´s joined to land by a road.

To arrive to the abbey you have to go up lots and lots of stairs, it was really exhausting. While you are walking in the streets you can see lots of souvenir shops, in fact nowadays the most important thing in Mont Saint Michel is Tourism but in my opinion it´s overcrowded, here we have a photo of one of the streets full of tourists.

I´d recommend you to visit it because in real life it ´s even more astonishing than in photos.

MAITE ROZA GRANDA

History

• Very old game
• Unclear origins
• The origin of golf is open to debate as to being Chinese, Dutch or Scottish.
• The most accepted golf history theory is that this sport originated from Scotland in the 1100s.
• The word golf derives from the Dutch kolf meaning stick, club or bat.

Golf course

• Golf is played in an area of land designated as a golf course.
• A typical golf course consists of eighteen holes, but many have only nine.
• There are some very important golf courses such as St. Andrews.

Play of the game

• Every game of golf is based on playing a number of holes in a given order.
• A hole of golf consists of hitting a ball from a tee (where you first shoot) and once it rests, hitting it again until the ball is on the cup.
• The player with the lowest number of strokes wins.

Scoring

• Each hole is classified by its par (number of strokes a golfer should require to complete a game). Depending on the number of stokes you get a score.
• Scores for each hole can be described as follows […]

Handicap System

• Handicap.

Types of shots

• A drive is a long-distance shot played from the tee.
• An approach shot is made with the intention of placing the ball on the green.
• A putt is a shot designed to roll the ball along the ground.
• A chip shot is a very short lofted shot.

Equipment

Very important in golf:

• Ball: 45 g. They used to be made by leather. Nowadays they are usually made by surlyn or balata.

• Clubs: every player uses several types of clubs depending on the kind of shot. On a golfer’s bag there could be a maximum of 14 clubs.

-Woods: woods are long-distance clubs. There are five kinds of woods. They are numbered from 1 to 5. The most famous one is the called “driver”. They are more or less 1 meter and 40 cm long. This kind of club needs a special wooden or plastic object that is placed on the ground to rest a ball on top of it for an easier shot.

- Irons: irons have shorter shaft than a woods. They have the widest range of uses and they are numbered from to 1 to 9.

- Wedges: the wedges are used for short-distance and high-altitude shots such us approaches or chippings. There are several types of wedges such us the pitching or the sand.

- Putter: Which are designed to push or roll the ball along the ground.

• Shoes: Golfers wear special shoes with exchangeable spikes attached to the soles, designed to increase grip.

• Gloves: Golfers also often wear gloves that help grip the club and prevent blistering.

By Victor Nieto

Petra

 

Some years ago, we did a wonderful trip, it was our honey moon, and we decided to travel to Bali.

We flew with Royal Jordanian, and the plane stopped over Jordan for one day and a half, so we took the opportunity to visit Petra which is about 300 km. from Amman.

Petra is one of the seven marvels of the world. When you arrive at Petra you have the sensation of being in another time, in the past, it’s impressive, you can walk for the whole day, it’s enormous and some people rent a donkey to cross Petra.

You can walk between impressive rock walls. In your visit to Petra there is an exciting moment, when you are arriving at “The Treasury”, you have an incredible view. The palace of Petra is called, as I said before “The Treasury”, it is 42 metres high. It’s totally sculpted in calcareous rock.

The monastery is another important building in Petra, it’s so huge that the doorway is taller than many houses. When Petra was inhabited, people lived from aromatic plants trade. In the year 60 before Christ, Petra was conquered by the Romans.

The wind has sculpted wonderful shapes in calcareous mountains.

Petra was the setting for the film “Indiana Jones”.

You can observe in these photos the colours of the rock inside the buildings. The hydraulic system was very sophisticated for that time, with chambers and tunnels.

The theatre has a capacity for 4000 people. In the year 551 Petra was destroyed by an earthquake and it has never been inhabited again.

Nowadays, you only can see souvenirs sellers and tourists.

Now, you can see some photos that we took in Petra.

Bali

The second part of the trip was Bali, after many hours of flight we arrived at Yakarta, and after that, we took another plane to Denpasar (the capital of Bali).

Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17.000 islands, but only about 6.000 are inhabited. Yakarta is the Indonesian capital, and Bali is the most touristy island in Indonesia.

Once we were in Bali, we spent about 10 days in Ubud and 10 days in Kuta, but we travelled around Bali on a motorbike that we had rented.

Ubud is the artistic heart of Bali, the streets in Ubud are full of handicrafts shops, silver, wood figures…you can spend many hours and rupees (Rupee is the Indonesian currency) (1 € = 12.000 rupees), there is a traditional market in Ubud´s streets. Ubud is a very quiet town. You can go to watch traditional dances. There is a famous forest called “Monkey Forest”, where hundreds of monkeys are in complete freedom and the tourists can enjoy themselves with them.

In Bali, religion is very important; most of the population is Hindu. There are many rituals and ceremonies, every day women put tributes to the Gods and Spirits in front of their houses and shop doors. These tributes are made of flowers, rice and incense, on a little bamboo tray.

Women carry spectacular towers of fruit on their heads, to offer them to the Gods in the temples.

Gamelán is the traditional music of Bali and it’s played with bronze bars, bamboo chambers, small gongs, drums….It sounds nice but, in my opinion, it’s a bit boring and mindless.

A temple is the most important structure in the Balinese culture.

There are many important temples, Tana lot is one of them, it is on a big rock and it is only accessible when the tide is out.

Besakih is the largest and most important temple on the island, in fact, it’s a collection of temples, it’s known as “The mother temple”.

You must enter the temples with legs and shoulders covered.

In the north of Bali we find Bratan Lake, with some temples in the middle of the lake.

Batur is an active volcano, there are some beaches near Batur, (Lovina, Candidasa …) they have volcanic sand.

Kuta beach is a very long beach, the sea is not very quiet, and there are big waves, it’s the surfers’ paradise, it’s full of Australian and Japanese surfers.

On this beach you can see many women with a particular hat that give you a massage for only a few rupees. They have a number written on the hat, so you can recognize them if you come back to the beach.

The landscape in Bali is wonderful, with an exuberant vegetation, waterfalls, coco-palms, flowers and rice terraces.

The rice crop is very important in Balinese economy.

There is a very common small lizard in Bali which you can find everywhere, on the walls, ceilings, inside the houses, outside the houses, it’s called Gecko and it makes a peculiar noise.

This was a wonderful trip, but the distance and the amount of hours of flight, make it difficult to repeat.

Now, you can see some photos that we took in Bali.

By Isabel Canal