Hola, 

We’re spending our last few days in Europe in Lisboa, Portugal. It has been an experience to say the least.

We apologise once again for not updating this as regularly as we should but I guess we can blame that on only spending 3-4 nights in a certain place which entails a lot of packing, travelling, arguing and obviously having a shit load of fun.

Since Berlin took the following route: Amsterdam > Brussels > Paris > Nice > Marseille > Barcelona > Valencia > Sevilla > Madrid > Lisboa.

Just looking at all those cities brings so many stories and memories back, there’s no way we’d be able to fit them into one post without writing some kind of master degree length thesis.

We met our good friend Cam in Amsterdam and stayed there for about a week. The city was beautiful with all the canals but what was far more interesting was the obvious cultural differences that this city has to offer. We frequented a few coffee shops and were pleasantly surprised to find friendly cats lurking around the couches and tables. Unfortunately they were exposed to a lot of second hand smoke so most of them were overweight, presumably from eating too many mice while having the munchies. Since our hostel was pretty much in the middle of the red light district, we did get to know the area pretty well..although it seemed that Cam was much better at navigating his way through the dark alleys! Although we probably managed to kill a few brain cells in Amsterdam, we were sobered up by a visit to Anne Frank’s House. The history of the house alone and people who stayed there was extremely moving and emotional, definitely an experience we will never forget. 

We only spent one night in Brussels, checked out Delirium Bar which boasted over 30 beers on tap and over 2,500 available by bottle. Aside from the incredible selection of beer, Brussels also had a mouth watering selection of waffles (we recommend melted white chocolate and strawberries!). Even though we were only in Brussels for one night, it felt like enough time to visit this city. 

France was different to what we expected, we had a private apartment for a few nights in Paris before migrating to a hostel. People rant about it being a romantic city but we just didn’t see it, give us Venice any day. It wasn’t without it’s charms though, we took in all the sights ie – Arc de Triomphe, Louvre and the Eiffel Tower (we wanted to go up but the line looked like it would take about 3-4 hours so we skipped it) We took a boat cruise with Fran’s friend Tess and her traveling companion Sarah. Fran did a bit of vintage shopping with them while I did a bit of vintage drinking. We were pretty quick to pick up basic French so we didn’t have too many issues with communication, although you can definitely tell some people are sick of tourists..maybe thats why nobody picks up after their dog in Paris. 

We took an overnight train to Nice and although we really liked it, the weather just wasn’t on our side. We rented a scooter and took a trip to Antibes and checked out the Pablo Picasso Museum (which didn’t have a single Picasso painting in it). The hostel we were staying was right near the beach and had heaps of Australian backpackers staying there. Unfortunately one of the guys who worked at the hostel had a sleepover in one of the Australian girls bunk… in our 8 bed room. Needless to say, we booked a private double room the next place we stayed. I played a tournament at the casino around the corner, € 120 buy-in, 70 players and got to the final table, after I knocked out two people it was down to 8 and there was a lot of conversation which I couldn’t understand, they were discussing a deal and one of them asked: “Are you happy to take € 900 and we’ll stop playing now?” I thought about it and I kind of wanted to play on since I had a big stack but it was almost 2am and we’d been playing for about 5 hours so I just took it (first place was € 2k so it wasn’t a really tough decision, took care of the variance). Nice overall was pretty amazing, on the morning we were to return the scooter I took a ride up to the very top of the hill, the views were amazing, I wish I’d brought the camera with me! 

Marseille was the next stop, we hiked up to the Notre Dam, and then back down and around the dock to the old side of the city, needless to say we didn’t do too much walking the next day. It was a pretty cool city but felt a little dangerous in certain areas after dark. They are currently doing a lot of redevelopment near the port so there was quite a lot of scaffolding and gravel around the restaurants overlooking the water. Apparently all the construction will be finished in 2013…

Our transit from Marseilles to Barcelona was horrid, we had to take 4 different trains which included an 8 hour stopover in Montpellier. It’s a struggle to kill 8 hours when there’s no luggage storage at the train station. We had to track down a hostel and sneakily store our bags there. Although the city looked beautiful and had a lot of character, we were too tired to appreciate it properly. 

When we finally got to Barcelona, we were exhausted. The hostel we stayed at was really cool and we rendezvoused with a couple of Canadians we met in Berlin, Derek & Griff. We had planned on staying 3 nights but booked extra night after extra night and ended up staying there nearly a week. Barcelona was amazing, the contrast from France was startling. We certainly felt more welcomed in Spain. We checked out La Sagrada Familia which was a 5 minute walk from our hostel. The building was designed by a famous architect named Gaudi. It has been the most breathtaking building we have seen on our travels so far and it isn’t even finished yet! Building was commenced in 1880’s and is expected to finish in 2026, 100 years after Gaudi passed away. Another highlight of Barcelona was watching the soccer match between Barcelona and Celtic at an Irish Pub. Most of the fans had been drinking since early morning and were passed out of chairs/couches/tables before the game even started! Probably lucky that they missed the game because Barcelona scored the winning goal with about 5 seconds left on the clock. We had so much fun hanging out in Barcelona, especially with the Canuck’s who had a steady supply of absinth to warm the belly. 

Valencia and Sevilla were nice cities and our love of Spain just continued to grow exponentially. The people, the architecture, the food, the scenery just have to be seen to be believed. We checked out the museum area of Valencia which is just incredible, took in the Oceanografic and witnessed a dolphin show and some very very standoffish seals. 

When we were in Sevilla, we were undecided as to where we were going to go next. It was either to be Madrid or Lagos. As the weather had been pretty bad, we decided to skip the beach town of Lagos and go see what Madrid had to offer. So glad we did! Madrid was incredible, we stayed on Gran Via which is the main street, littered with broadway theatres, shops, tapas restaurants… and homeless people. We bought tickets to go see Real Madrid v Zaragoza. Ended up being 4-0 and we, along with 90% of the spectators at the stadium were pleased with the result. Fran did a lot of shopping, I detoxed for a few days.

So now we’re in Portugal, enjoying the last few days of Europe and looking forward to getting to NYC where we’ll be able to talk to people without needing to learn new words. But that’s all part of it, we have loved Europe and although we’ve seen so much, it feels like we’ve only just scratched the surface. We’ve even taken a shining to soccer. Never thought that would happen!

If you’re reading this, we hope you’re doing well and we miss you.

¡Hasta Luego!