The end of Spain and Beginning of France

Sooo sorry for the long absence but weve either been on the road all day ornight or in hostels with fre internet but lots of people waitingso no time for blogging. Firstly i would like to thank uncle rob for bringing to my attention that adrien has a website....if a family member would kindly inform me of the address, that would be swell (why am i always the last to know everything???).

Lots hqs happened since last post. we took an overnight train from lisbon to madrid and ended up loving madrid. unfortunatly there was some sort of huge championship football thing in the city the next day and you know how europeans are with their football sooo we were left homeless. we called every hotel imaginable and searched the entire city but there wasnt a bed ANYWHERE! sooo instead of getting to enjoy madrid for two days we had to have a quick visit instead and then catch an overnight train for a way to have shelter for the night. if this was amazing race, madrid was our worst leg ever. buuuttt we did manage to get to the modern art museum where we got to see lots of dali and picasso and the GUERNICA which was so amazing. Steve, who had earlier liked the idea of going to an art museum in europe, could be overheard saying ^art is boring^ within ten minutes. in his defence tho, it was boring, except for the dalis and picassos.

anyway, Barcelona was incredible, i absolutly loved it. Its filled with crazy dr.suess looking buildings by the archetect Gaudi. we went to the park by him (which ive been to before with the fam) and the sagrida famillia (or something like that) which is his church that will take 200yrs in total to finish! so cool. the first time i went to Tam tam in montreal i was re,inded of this park and going back now i realize how amazing tams is; even with all the crazy archeticture it cant beat tam tams! we also visited the stadium that FC Barcelona plays at and hit up the beach. at night we ate the greatest paellia at 10pm nightly and took in some barcelona night life which was so much fun. altho i think im getting old, i couldnt make it to 6am like a true barcelonian, not even close.

so after 3 blissful days in barcelona we were off to Nice to start our france trip. But of course i wasnt that easy...a lovely train strike forced us to take a 14hour bus ride that cost us 50euros instead of a free 10hour comfy train ride. it sucked, lots, but after those bus rides in laos; i will never ever complain about an air conditioned normally seated bus!!!!

now we are staying at the greatest hotel ever in Nice with a huge dinning room / bar where we partied last night. its huge and aussie run and the greatest. Yesterday we took a short bus to Monaco and enjoyed the ritzy life and swam in the med, it was such a nice day. Monaco is so beautiful and so much fun! now we are off to the beaches of Nice nd more swimmi,g in the med!!! off to bordeaux tomorrow!

Then the Sea Cucumber Says to the Mollusk....

PORTUGAL is wonderful! We really, really love it here. Everywhere we have gone people have been so nice and everyone speaks english which makes everything so much easier. We started our POrtugal tour in Lagos which is in the south in the Algrave part of the country. It was soooooo beautiful. So many people at home told me I had to come here and that the beaches are so great and the town so nice, etc etc and it totally was....although truthfully its got nothing on SE Asia (though nothing really compares so far). Unfortunatly it was the crappiest weather for the first few days we were there which was devastating for me as all I wanted was a day at the beach and the return of my tan. But finally, on our last day, the sky finally cleared up and we got our beach day!

One plus of traveling with Steve: intense sand castle building. Check out this beauty, took us like 2hours. So worth it, our castle totally kicked the ass of the castle kids had built a few meters down from where we were. Ha!So sadly we had to continue on from Lagos even though it would have been nice to get in another day at the beach. We headed up to Lisbon, the capital, where we are now. Sooooo nice here. And its relatively small so we have managed to walk the entire thing and in 4 days we now get around so easily. Our first full day in Lisbon we checked out the ocean side of the city where we found an Oceanarium! Honestly, it was the coolest thing ever. Although there were school children in large groups everywhere (with matching hats and t-shirts), the oceanarium had so much cool stuff that we managed to look past this unfortunateness. The coolest was this fish below:They had sharks, tons of sting ways (a huge manta ray too) and huge fish with eyes on just one side of their bodies. The penguins werent as cool as the biodome though (and they had the north pole penguins and the south pole penguins altogether - the biodome would NEVER allow that!) but i enjoyed them a lot more than last time if certain people recall hahaha....

Anyway, after our thrilling few hours at the Oceanarium we found a movie theater! So of course we had to take advantage and saw Oceans 13 annnnddd saw a preview for Harry Potter thus this day in Lisbon in total was the greatest ever!

That night we went out to educate ourselves on the Lisbon nightlife. Right now the city is crawling with Marines, so random! We,ve met a ton of em. Cant believe how different we are from them, they are like American through and through. Total army boys, they are all our age but married, and they seem to be mostly from the South (and tell us they eat gravy for breakfast and think its wierd that we think thats wierd). But yeah, baisically anywhere we go we end up talking to some Marines.

Next day we took a train about 45mins to Sintra where we visited some palace that was sooooo cool, it looked like a fairytale Disney castle! Loved it-

This morning we awoke to find an inch of water surrounding us. Our room was completly flooded from some pipe in the wall or something and somehow only my stuff managed to get wet, sweet! bahhh! but otherwise our hostel was pretty awesome. ALthough the other night i overheard Steve telling one of the army guys we were staying in a gay hostel to which i thought he was lying...but when has anyone ever heard the boy lie? So i asked what in the world he was talking about...well turns out I had missed all the signs: a massive rainbow flag above the door, gay club pamphlets at reception, and numerous amounts of older men in groups of two traveling together....yeaahhh i guess im pretty unobservant!

So now we are just killing time as its back to Spain tonight on an overnight train. Im kind of excited though, after all those overnight buses with steph where the lights come on and off like every hour, stops in the middle of the night, honking all night long, and the general feeling that you might not be alive come morning (crraazzyyyy busdrivers), i think a train that has a bar and resteraunt car will suit me just fine!

See ya back in Spain!

Tarifa-ed in Tarifica Tarifa

So we ended up making it to the Feria. It was crazy! Its a traveling fair that comes to each city in Spain for a week each summer. Kind of like the Ex but with Spanish flamenco dresses everywhere and with a merry-go-round with real ponies instead of plastic ones! Also it had tons of tents with bars and clubs along the sides of the fair. So we ate fair food, walked through the rides and games and had some drinks in one of the makeshift bars and had so so so much fun! Even managed to get a bus back 30mins home and everything with no waiting! perfect night and a good way to finish off Granada.

After Granada we headed South to Tarifa where our friend Pascale is currently living the greatest life ever. Tarifa is the most Southern point of Spain and is where the Atlantic Ocean splits into the Medeteranian Sea. The greatest part of all - you can see Africa from the beach! Its amazing! Morroco is only a 30min ferry ride away (see below, mountains in back is Morrocco). Tarifa is also the windiest place ever which makes for tons of kite boarding and wind surfing and mostly everyone there is VERY into all that. Soooo of course, we had to try it. It was fun....not that we ever got the sail up....but I think i would have just been happy enough trying to balance on the surf board without having to try to lift a huge giant sail that i was scared of. Also wind makes things COLD. and the atlantic is COLD. and wind happens to be my least favourite form of weather....so i think its safe to say wind surfing is not for me!

Annnyway, we stayed with Pascale and her ''boss'' on a camp site 5km away from the bar they are painting and fixing up for its opening next week. It was cool cuz steve and i would spend some time on the beach while they slaved away and Pascale could always come hang out with us on one of her many breaks! A few days Franz, the boss, would let Pascale stay on the campsite for the day and one day we decided to help her work. This resulted in the three of us constructing 25 stools for two days straight. But it was fun....mostly since we´d build two or three then take off for either wind surfing lessons, tapas, etc. A typical working Pascale and our first stool!

The greatest part of Tarifa tho was definitly the lifestyle. We absolutly loved camping. It was super cheap and pretty much like luxury camping! We had a sweet tent and theres a resteraunt that seems to give out free beer and store like right next to where we slept. It was actually much easier than staying in a hostel! and no mosquitos!

the people on the campsite were awesome too....though very, very random as most of them have big campers and have been there for a loooooong time (for ex. Franz whos been camping there for FOUR YEARS). Our absolute favourite was Paul whos been traveling for 7 years and has been to more than 150 countries, driving a sweet RV the whole time (its serisouly a house on wheels) or when he cant drive that he drives his 'trike' which is a VW bug converted into a motorcycle type thing. We all got to ride on it twice!!!! its SOOOOo fast, we went up to 140km!!!!!

Anyway, we got Tarifaed, meaning we could manage to leave the place. But unfortunatly today we dragged ourseleves onto a bus and now we´re in Seville and missing Tarifa terribly already.

Campfires on the beach

Tomorrow we have an early early early bus to Legos, Portugal!!! Can´t wait!

On Our Own in Spain!

So found cheap internet place but I think the problem in Europe will be lack of internet places.... BUt we´ll see, maybe there will be more places at our next stop. EIther way, here are some pics from Cinque Terre, Italy that we couldnt get up last post.

View while hiking Me and the boys in our home of Riomaggorie.

So we had one last night with the Andersons and our sweet villa. It was Kari´s birthday so we all we took the train to Vernazza and had the greatest meal of all time (seafood pasta, calamari, killer dessert, it was fabulous). Then we ventured to find the Pirate Bar we had seen a sign for the day before. THe Andersons seems to have quite a thing for pirates and thus Kari planned her entire night of celebration on this Pirate Bar...but alas, aftre much searching in the cold hard rain, uphill the whole way, it turns out the signs had lied, this was no bar, just a closed Gelateria. BOO! So we had to drag ourselves back home and found ourselves spending yet another night at Bar Centrale. In the end tho, we had lots of fun and stayed up way too late after the bar playing several intense rounds of cards that Andy never won. Pretty much he can´t beat me at anything (ESPECIALLY mario kart!).
Anyway, I'd like to take this moment to thank God for two things 1. The Andersons - Partington parents for forcing Kari and Andy to rent a car and 2. GPS systems. Out of some crazy coincidence Kari and Andy were heading to Bergamo the very same day Steve and I had a flight to catch from there (and only realized too late that no trains run there! oooops). So we had a nice little road trip before parting ways. Well nice for me and Kari who slept, stressful and scary for Steve and Andy who navigated and drove, respectively, in sudden downpours and tight time scheduling.

Now Steve and I are in Granada, Spain on our own and we loooovee it here. Its such a bautiful city with lots to do and the people are so stylish. We spent a good part of yesterday sitting in a plaza and just people watching. The families are all outfit coordinated and everything, I got very excited. Eating is pretty good here too, though doesnt start until about 9ish but its nice cuz its like being back in Montreal all over again....except its nice outside....and people speak Spanish instead of Quebecer French! Today we slept in for once and visited the Alhambra, a Muslim-style and archeticture castle or fortress or something like that. It was huuugggee with amazing views and crazy carved ceilings and walls. Now we are gonna go have a siesta in keeping with local culture followed by a late dinner hopefully in the outskirts of the city where a huge fiestival is going on (or so we hear, altho the details of which sound too good to be true...). Tomorrow we might head to the shore, right across from Morrocco to a place called Tarifa but not 100% sure yet as its a camping beach area and our friends tent is not really equipped for 3 people.....

We´ll update when we can, till then xo

Kevin Bacon, Kelly Ripas and Two Andersons aka Eurotripping Begins

Back at the traveling life - Steve and I are now in Italy and leaving for Spain tomorrow!! No pictures today as this internet place has too many rules (im already missing Asia and their inability to limit any behaviours) but promise pics to come. Anyway, here is Andy with the first entry of this trip:

Hi everyone, for the enjoyment of your eyes Andrew Anderson is taking over today's blog entry (not to worry, Natalie is safe and sound after much protesting and threats that this better be funny).
Since Asia Natalie has spent many hours with Oscar and her imaginary friends. More recently Natalie and Skim have met up with Andy and his sister Kari in Cinque Terre, Italy. As Natalie was here a few years ago she has been our resident tour guide (which was decided based on who had the largest backpack).
Natalie and Skim arrived in Cinque Terre via a train from Milan after a flight from Toronto to Montreal to Zurich to Milan but were suprisingly clean upon the arrival of the Anderson's who drove down from Zurich after a car rental debacle. Since Kari and I were late Skim started to get nervous as to whether we were even serious about coming to Italy, Natalie (the seasoned travelling pro) took it in stride with a few glasses of wine. We spent the first night enjoying more than a few more glasses and lots of seafood.
The hostel we're staying at is really nice aside from the Chinese torture device that is the futon. But we have our own kitchen, a big bathroom and reside above the only bar in town (truly a blessing and a curse).
Anyway, yesterday we hiked almost the entire length of Cinque Terre, battling the elements, hunger and sibling rivalry. Upon reaching Vernazza we decided the rain had won and it was worth taking the train home (so naturally the skies parted and the sun came out as we stood on the platform). After getting back to our home of Riomaggiore we decided a home-cooked meal would really hit the spot so went and buoght a giant bottle of wine (at 3.50 euros) and ordered a pizza to go (essentially all the cooking I learned in University). Of course it was delicious and the bottle ran dry so we ended up down at the bar for a night cap and a gellato for a midnight snack before I (Andy) destroyed everyone else at cards and playing the Movie Game.
Ok, that's all I got. Sorry it couldn't be more humourous but Natalie's going to check this over before posting anyway and would have deleted any major Kelly Rippa's. Ciao everybody! If you want more stories come to Calgary!

- Andrew E. Anderson VII