Sevilla photos

inside the Alcazar (castle)
a very passionate flamenco dancer

Barcelona photos

a mix of the old with the new on La Rambla street
a fountain in the picnickers' park
the Sagrada Familia, a church designed by Gaudi and in construction since 1882
picnic lunch at the "castle" that doesn't exist

Nice, France photos

sunset on the boardwalk
A fountain near the boardwalk

at a square with elevated statues

Venice photos

a canal
St. Mark's square
gondoliers

Florence photos

Il Duomo
Michelangelo's painting of the Duomo ceiling
Amir and the David (or, at least, his larger twin)
the Ponte Vecchio bridge

the Vatican Museum

One of these things is not like the other.

famous painting

Why does the Vatican refuse to return to Egypt the stuff they stole?
the Pieta

Rome photos

The Colosseum

















Ruins in the Roman Forum


















Amir and I overlooking the Roman Forum












Funny Asians

Aegina Island, Greece photos

Amir with our bottle o'rose wine. It's vintage, I swear.




Aegina Island beach near Agia Marina
A















Amir and I in front of all the yachts




















Aegina Island from the Aegina port

"Stupid French" and "What's the matter with bridges these days?"

Our trip from Porto to Amsterdam started at 2pm that Sunday and ended at 2am on Monday (technically Tuesday). It would have been terrible if we hadn't managed to get sleeping berths on the night train. That made all the difference in the world. We were doing fine on times and connections until we got to Paris' Gard du Nord station and sat on our rather expensive Thalys train for over an hour waiting to depart.

Apparently, someone had thrown their body under a train 2 stations away and that person's suicide was gumming up all the works. When the train conductor announced this news to us, we knew we'd never make the rest of our train connections. What's the matter with good, old fashioned bridges these days?

We finally made it to Bruxelles Midi station at 9:50pm, having missed our connection to Amsterdam. Fortunately for us, there was another Thalys train to Amsterdam that was delayed an hour forty minutes for the same suicide as ours so we ended up hopping it. The desk wasn't able to get us reservations for the train because it was no longer in the system so we boarded the train with fingers crossed hoping we wouldn't get kicked off.

Our stars were all in alignment that train trip because not only did the female train manager ignore our presence entirely (and possibly on purpose because she just didn't want to know), but we had met the two cute train conductresses while waiting for the train to show at the station the one serving our carriage took extra good care of our refreshment needs. The train got us into Amsterdam Centraal at 12:45pm where we waited outside in our first taste of fall weather on our trip so far for a good hour before catching the night bus to our hostel which cost us the ridiculous price of 7 Euros.

Finally, at 2am, we checked into our hostel only to discover that the two free dorm beds in our dorm room looked used and were covered in our dormmates' stuff. Also, the room reeked of weed smoke and we knew smoking wasn't allowed in the rooms. When we asked the manager to take care of it for us, he responded by waking up our dormmates to bawl them out loudly and then told us we could go right in. Not wanting to be strangled in the night by people who hated us from the get go thanks to the manager, we insisted on another room. The room full of girls that we ended up in was not only smoke free and clean, but no one was snoring! What a treat.

We sent our half day in Amsterdam by walking the city from Leidsplassen back to the Centraal train station laden with groceries obtained from the Lidl near the Vondelpark. Then we got our luggage out of storage and hopped a local train to Utrecht and then a commuter train from there to Zaltbummel, the nearest station to the hostel we chose. The hostel manager, Michael, picked us up in an open air, WWII-era jeep and we shivered our way to the hostel. The hostel was a house with private rooms upstairs and a dining room, movie room, kitchen, enclosed patio room with TV and restroom facilities. Attached, there was a small barn housing a pig, goat and several unnamed bunnies.

This is where we will spend as long as the next full week enjoying the peace and quiet of the Dutch countryside while relaxing, reading and generally doing nothing. It will be a nice segue into our visit to my host family, the Mosveens, in Norway and then our final 2 weeks in Ireland with Amir's Irish clan.

Porto, the Radias and Oh, Porto!

Our travel day from Madrid to Porto began at 6am and ended at 11:30pm at the doorstep of Vibha and Tina Radia, friends of Amir's dad Fee when he was growing up in Uganda. We were pretty tired at the end of that day and ended up sleeping in the next morning. Tina and Vibha are amazing hosts and took such good care of us while we were there. Tina cooked up delicious meals like potato curry, chicken curry and shepherd's pie! And Vibha opened up a vintage bottle of 1985 port that he and 11 friends had bought from a winery and bottled with their own label. It was the best port of my life.

Tina took me on a long walk down the boardwalk along the beach. There had been a storm up until 8am that morning. The waves were HUGE, coming in three at a time and breaking into huge sprays against the wave barrier. The beach was covered in sea foam and the local kids were in 7th heaven playing in it.

On our last morning there, we awoke thinking we would leave the next day on an evening and then overnight train to The Netherlands. When we started looking up train info so we could book our tickets, we found a warning in German that, thanks to Google's Translator, told us the French rail system would be on strike the next day starting at 8pm. So we booked ourselves a hostel in Amsterdam for the next night, packed up our things, received the world's best lunch/dinner care package from Tina and left for the Porto train station unexpectedly.

Madrid and the homeless shelter

When we arrived at the Madrid central train station, we had to then take a suburban railway train and a bus in order to reach the industrial park where our hostel was located. Yup, an industrial park. And not one of those nice parks with lots of green grass and landscaping. Then, when we walked inside to the lobby and the entirely glassed in reception desk, we thought we had the wrong building and had found a homeless shelter instead. There were old, crazy-looking people in wheelchairs, people walking around dazedly like they were on something and loads of unhealthy looking kids running around screaming.

Our room and the floor on which it was located were much quieter and more normal. So we decided to stay there. On our first full day in Madrid, Amir and I slept in late and then headed into town where I spent a few hours ogling the portraits in the Prado Museum and Amir went to exercise in the nearby park. Afterwards, we met up in the park for a picnic lunch and then headed back to the hostel for a relaxing evening.

The next day, we took a 2 hour local train to Segovia where we spent the day. Segovia is home to a picturesque castle still furnished with Isabella and Ferdinand era thrones, four poster beds and armory. We also stopped inside a gorgeous cathedral built by Charles V when he was feeling particularly guilty about some pillaging or other. For lunch, we had a lunch special with the local specialty dish, roast suckling pig. It was accompanied by a lovely white bean soup and a rice pudding for dessert with some kind of fruit wine with the meal. Not bad.

And that's all we did in Madrid.

Athens pictures

Amir in front of the Temple of Dionysis
















The Parthenon














Amir with a statue at the National Gardens

Macedonia's Lake Ohrid-pictures

Amir and I with Lake Ohrid in the background












Boats on Lake Ohrid















Lake Ohrid

Nice & Spain

Nice

We hit up Nice, France on our way from Venice to Barcelona. It's a place I had been wanting to see having heard about it from some French exchange students from Avignon that my family hosted for a few weeks when I was in high school. See it was about all I did, and for a relatively brief time at that. We booked two nights at a dorm in a hostel near the train station but we didn't arrive until pretty late on the first night. That left the next day for sightseeing. I awoke that morning with a sore throat and a low fever so we ended up spending most of the day in the room, with me lazing in bed reading. We did venture out in the evening to catch the sun setting behind the hills along the gorgeous Nice coastline. It was a lovely view from the boardwalk and beach (all pebbles) but the downtown wasn't what either of us expected. Instead of some quaint French seaside town, Nice is a lot more bustly than that, heavy on the designer stores and a bit light on the charm of Paris. Still, it was worth that coastline view.

Barcelona

The train trip from Nice to Barcelona was not without delays, but we made it to our hostel by 10pm, just in time for all the supermarkets to have closed. Everyone says that Spain is full of night owls who go out to dinner around 10pm and then stay at the clubs until the wee hours of the morning. When we went out looking for restaurants at 10:30pm, most of them were closing their doors. We had to settle for a Mexican restaurant. Go figure. The portions ended up being tiny so we went back to the hostel for midnight sandwiches with our lunch leftovers.

On our first full day there, we started at La Rambla, the city's main tourist street lined with vendors and street performers. We saw a super old church (aren't they all?) and then gaped at the gothic cathedral but couldn't get inside because we had just missed the 12:45pm to 5:15pm daily closing time. Those Spanish and their siestas...even the priests get nap time. It didn't matter that we missed it because the outside was spectacular and we spent a lot of time admiring the interior of the first church we went into on the way.

Being then lunch time, we made our way to a nearby park that is famous for picnickers and set ourselves our own little picnic just on the other side of the gigantic woolly mammoth. The flies were fierce but we managed to enjoy our usual bread, cheese, meat and wine in relative relaxation amidst a smattering of other picnickers and botany students. On a little hillock by the park's exit, we took a post lunch siesta and then walked 13 blocks or so to view the still incomplete Sagrada Familias church designed by the famous Gaudi. This church has been under construction since 1882 and is currently expected to be complete in the year 2026. However, if you would like to contribute to the church's completion fund, you can pay 12 Euros to view a tiny part of the interior. Can you guess whether Amir and I decided to do that? Right. The outside was way cool. It's very modernistic with lots of fun angles. The Jesus hovering above the entryway is definitely the coolest, grooviest looking Jesus I've ever seen. If you're in Barcelona, I definitely recommend checking out the exterior.

Our second day, Amir took charge of our agenda which resulted in us first walking by the outside of the Barcelona football stadium and then trudging up a giant hill on dusty dirt tracks to view a castle that ended up being nothing more than a damn 4-foot high stone wall with a few turrety-looking things. I was still feeling under the weather so a lot of outdoor exertion in under the hot sun was not exactly on top of my list of things to do. It was hard to tell whether I was sweating more from the heat or my fever. We did have a nice picnic lunch at the top, though, on a bench under some shady conifers near the ping pong tables.

Spain decided on a transportation strike that day which cut short our goal of seeing the Gaudi designed section of town and resulted in us heading back to the hostel from our castle hike to take a nap instead. We made some awesome dinners while at that hostel. One meal was a pasta dish with a Bolognese cum aoli sauce served with a side of sliced tomatoes and chicken. Another was pork chops done up in barbecue sauce. Red wine for both, of course.

Granada

I got fully and irrevocably sick with a nasty cold and low fever the day we took the train from Barcelona to Granada. Fortunately, we met a cool LDS couple, Chad and Allison, on the second train which made the time pass by quickly. They were a couple of years older than us with three kids traveling by themselves through Spain for a two week vacation. We were both impressed that they were able to leave a 10-month old, 2- and 4-year old to travel, something they try to do on an annual basis.

We had one day in Granada and intended to use it to see the Alhambra. I had booked our tickets online in advance because they sell out quickly so we had our time slot for the Nasrid Palace at 5:30pm. It ended up being a blessing that it was so late in the day because I spent the entire first part of the day in bed trying to shake off the medicine head I had leftover from Nyquil the night before. We took the walk up to and through the Alhambra pretty slowly. The gardens were extremely well manicured and lovely to walk through. The best part was definitely the Nasrid Palace, though. It was delicate, intricately carved and tiled and just generally gorgeous. We could easily picture royalty wandering about the grounds back in the day.

Sevilla

Sevilla and Grenada are only a few hours away by train so the trip was blissfully easy and short to get here from Granada. My 6-day fever finally broke on day 7 which was a boon. We checked into our hostel and dropped our stuff before finding out with great dismay that there was only one bathroom/shower for the entire hostel. Had we known that, there is no way in hell we would have booked it. Can you imagine? Let's just say it isn't pleasant. Thank god we only have two nights to deal.

We set off sightseeing and ogled the gorgeous gothic cathedral and got to the Alcazar just in time to see the doors close for the day. Then we walked around and saw some amazingly cool semicircular plaza before heading off to the grocery store to stock up on dinner materials and more wine.

On day two, we queued up and toured the Alcazar, which is Europe's oldest castle that is still in use and is very reminiscent of the Alhambra but on a much bigger, more colorful and somewhat more intricate scale. After that, Amir's ability to sightsee further diminished to zero and we spent the afternoon hanging out at a Festival of Nations drinking wine, enjoying the people watching opportunities and eating the world's best charcoal grilled chorizo in a sandwich served with an awesome chopped garlic and herb sauce. Tonight we plan to see a free flamenco show at a nearby bar.

Tomorrow, we head to Madrid for a few days before going to Porto to meet some family friends of Amir's, Vibha and his wife Tina. Hello, port!

Budapest photos

View of Pest from the top of Buda (got that?)

View of Bergen, Jess & Amir's armpit

View of the bath house

Italy: Roma, Firenze & Venezia

Rome

Getting to Rome from Greece was a daunting undertaking but we managed to do it in only 36 hours without missing any major transit connections. From Aegina Island in Greece, we took a ferry to Piraeus port. Then we got on the metro to the train station in Athens where we found ourselves just in time to catch the next train leaving for the Greek port city of Patras. As an unexpected surprise, part of the train line was down so we ended up on a bus for the last half of the trip. From Patras, we got on board the Minoan Line's massive ferry and situated ourselves in "airline chairs" on the cheapo deck.

The ferry boat was much nicer than expected. There was a swimming pool but it was roped off and drained-bummer. We wiled away the 17 1/2 hours comfortably drinking wine on deck while watching the antics of a college tour group before going below deck to sleep. The boat docked in Ancona, Italy where we hoofed it a few kilometers to the train station where we were just in time to catch a fast train to Rome. Once we had safely made it to Rome, we only had to take one metro and one bus before we arrived at our hostel, awash with relief at having made it to a bed and a shower.

We spent two full days exploring the absolute wonders of Rome. We started off day one with the Colosseum. It was so gloriously Roman. Then we wandered across the street to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill where we roamed the ancient ruins of a stadium, several churches, other buildings and even some "protohistoric ruins" featuring something similar to early dugout Athapaskan huts.

From there, we hit the more modern sights of the glorious, ornate, white Capitol building adorned by its numerous golden men, women and lionesses with wings. We ate lunch sitting at the base of a fountain in a square while people watching. After that we walked to the Trevi fountain and the Spanish Steps. We must have seen at least 10 or so more sights before making it back to the metro to head home but I can't be bothered to list them all so am sticking to the most famous ones.

Day two was spent queuing at Vatican City waiting for 2 1/2 hours in front of the world's most annoying group of Japanese tourists who kept trying to get ahead of us in line. It was with extreme relief that we finally entered the Vatican complex at noon and were able to distance ourselves from the line cutters once and for all. The Vatican museum took us several hours to walk through. There were exhibits with sculptures, busts, tapestries, paintings, stamps, and marble baths all set against a backdrop of Papal splendor. At the end of the museum, the grand finale was the Sistine Chapel which was, as is internationally recognized, impressive. Everyone stood around straining their necks gawking at the ceiling. Every few minutes, the grumpy security guards would hiss "Shhhhh" and yell at people for taking pictures (it's not allowed). It took a good while to work our way through all the magnificence above and actually take in the glories of the lower works and then the painted curtains at eye level. Just as we had left the chapel and trying to rub the soreness out of our necks, we ended up craning them again to gawk at the opulence of St. Peter's. I had no idea how HUGE it is. My god but it was impressive. St. Peter must have done something right to have had that massive monument dedicated to him.

Florence

The trip from Rome to Florence was short and painless. Our hostel was only a few blocks from the train station which made it a dream because it was also close to the city center. Since we got in so early, sometime around 2pm, we dropped our things, claimed some beds in the dorm and then set off immediately to explore the city. We did most of our sightseeing on that first day, fitting in Il Duomo, the Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio, the Ponte Vecchio (bridge), and several churches. I was flabbergasted by Il Duomo. It was so large and so beautiful. I just wasn't expecting anything so green on the outside. Everything was fantastic.

On the next day, I spent the morning at the Uffizi seeing hundreds of renditions of the Madonna with child, the ascension, Jesus in the manger as a baby, and Judith decapitating someone. I also got to see a Caravaggio exhibit all set against deep, blood red walls. It was fantastic. Then I met up with Amir and we set off to conquer the hill en route to Piazzale Michelangelo where we enjoyed a fantastic lunch of Vin Santo (a local sweet white wine), fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and baguettes while overlooking a spectacular view of the city.

Venice

Definitely the most beautiful city in the entire world in our opinion. Also ridiculously expensive, being an island. We ended up staying at a campground outside the city in a trailer optimistically dubbed a "bungalow" by management. It was cheap and only 40 or so minutes away from Venice so we made a go of it. The one super plus of staying there was that there were bathrooms and showers galore and never a wait for either.

We had one full day in Venice which we used to wander around and get good and lost. The city is so amazingly beautiful that it just didn't make sense to try to follow a map. Every street or canal we walked down was just as pretty as the last. We did make a point of seeing about a hundred churches, all beautiful and ornate, and all the must see major sights. For lunch, we stopped by a take out window and ordered a homemade lasagna bolognese that was dreamy. We ate it sitting on a doorstep on one of the wider roads just on the other side of a bridge and watched all the faux Chanel and Gucci bag sellers irritate all the wealthy tourist passersby.

The whole day was filled with literally one gorgeous sight after another. Our eyes were dazzled by all we saw. A day was enough time to see what we wanted to see and get a good feel for the city but we both agreed we could spend months living there...if someone else was footing the bill.