Bonjour Paris!

The trend of crap weather continued he we arrived in Paris, and, for the first time in a long time, it was cold! Andrew met us at Gare du Nord train station, so we wouldn't get lost getting to his place (not that we would have anyways), and after a couple metro trains, we were perched up at his apartment.

Sly knew of this authentic French restaurant in town - good food and cheap-ish. Awesome place, they scribble your order on the table top and work the bill out from that. Pretty impressive, as the writing is nearly illegible! We hit that up for dinner, then hit up one of Sly's old locals - awesome little pub/bar with massive pints.

Paris has these rental bikes scattered across the city, where you pay €1.70 for 24 hours and you can pick up a bike from any station, ride it round for half hour, then drop it back at any other station. Awesome system, more cities should implement it. We ended up using these pretty often. Anyways, after a few beers, we jumped on the bikes and went on a bit of a biking mission through Paris - was pretty buzzy biking through Paris at 2 in the morning, especially with sly leading us out in front of cars!

Bastille's day, France's national day, was the next morning. We had intended on getting down and watching the procession, but that took a definite backseat when we woke up the next morning. Ended up watching some of it on tv. By lunch time, we thought we shud stop being lazy shits and do something, so we went for a bike round the town during day time and then had a good perch in the Luxembourg Gardens. 

At 11pm there was going to be a epic fireworks display at the Eiffel tower. We left with a decent amount of time in hand, but didn't factor in the jumper on the metro line, so that threw a spanner in the works.

We boosted outta the station, jumped on some bikes and boosted towards town. A puncture to my tyre juted us getting anywhere close to a good view. Nightmare! We ended up just metro'n to the champs élysées for the festivities - luckily, we managed to catch the end of the fireworks. The rest of the night turned out pretty messy - we met up with a few of Sly's friends and headed out in Grand Boulevardes. 

Sly is signed up to some car rental scheme where he gets car rental for €9 an hour, with no fuel or mileage charges. The only catch is you have to specify how long you will hav it for, and if you run over time, you get stung. We decided that we'd grab a car and head out to check out a Chateau outside of Paris. The chateau (Fontainebleau) was awesome - epic buildings and gardens. We didn't end up headin out til mid-afternoon, due to the festivities of the night before, but it was still worth the trip out there.

The Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, stands around 300m high. If you plan on getting the elevator to the top, you need to line up way before they open, otherwise deal with a 2+ hour long wait... We found out the hard way. The way better option (that we took) is to climb up to the second level and take the elevator from there. We only waited about half hour, but got to climb up around 500 sweet stairs - apparently the equivalent of 43 floors. It actually wasn't that bad, so if you plan on going up the tower, stop being a fatty and climb the stairs... or get up early... It's pretty chilly up top, but the views from there are awesome! I can see why people propose up there. I didn't see any proposals when I was up the tower, but gutted bout that. Also, didn't receive any proposals... Haha. 

Another site worth getting up early for are the catacombs. If you don't get there well before the opening time, you will wait over 2 hours. Asty was feeling bit under the weather, so I headed out solo dolo. I got there round 10:10am, 10 mins after they opened and waited in line for one and a half hours and made it halfway down the queue to the door. Time wasn't on my side tho, as I had to get back to to catch the train back to London, so after 2 hours had to call it quits. Guts.

And so with that concludes 4 and a half EPIC months on tour. Pretty mixed emotions about it. gutted to be at the end of it, but looking forward to set up in London.

I'm back in London now... Back to the real world... If anyone knows of any jobs, let me know, I'm down. Prob should go on a massive detox to sort out the last 4 and half months, but we'll see how that goes... Olympics and all... haha

I guess this will be the last blog for a while... but i'll still post the odd thing about london and any random trips that happen. 

Delirious on Delirium

The country of beer, mussels, frites, and chocolate. Our time in belgium would consist of 3 nights in Brussels. Locked in a hotel room near the centre, so everything is prettying within walking distance. The weather hasn't been amazing while we've been here. Got drenched on our first day, so much so we ended up buying umbrellas for €5.50. They were shit. Asty's didnt even stay open for one. Meh, they did the job. We cruised the streets checking out the main sites round central Brussels. The MIM (musical instruments museum) was recommended by Lonely Planet, but without an English audioguide, or any english-translated info, it wasn't really that informative. Pretty much a bunch of instruments in display cases. We found the Mannekin Pis and it's opposite, the Jeaneke Pis. They're both statutes, one of a boy taking a pee and the other of a girl taking a pee. Pretty classic. Mannekin Pis is located conveniently round a bunch of Belgium waffle and chocolate shops. Was rude not to get a waffle, even though we'd just had breakfast.

On our way to Jeaneke pis, we bumped into Mark Scott. Random as hell. He'd been at Delirium Cafe. I was keen to check it out, as it's the pub/cafe that held the Guiness World Record for most beers on its menu
(2500+, but at any one time they've got 2004 on offer). Awesome pub that plays sweet music. We had a couple of the delerium tremens (elected as the worlds best beer, apparently...) and one delirium nocturnum. Both beers were tasty, the tremens was very good. Turns out both beers were around 9%, so we were feeling pretty good after the pub. As per usual, after a couple beers you get a bit peckish. We hadn't had lunch, so decided to indulge in a bucket of mussels and frites. Rue de bouches is a street that is packed with all these restaurants that offer the same menu and same prices. One waiter was like "eat here, this whole street is the same shit, at least here I will look after you." we didn't eat there. We did find a place that did mussels tho, and man we were musseled out after... After the mussels, we pretty much wandered thru the grand place and back to hotel for a kip. Not much eventuated after the kip.

We'd heard good things bout Gent, but since we'd locked in accom in Brussels already, we decided that we'd day trip it to Gent. Gent was awesome, small place with cool buildings. They were gearing up for a festival on the weekend, so there were Marques and stands being out up all round the centre. There was supposed to be a sweet street art street in gent, but it was more graffiti then "art" - still worth a look tho. After a late afternoon beer on the river, we jumped on the train back to Brussels. Later that night, after a sweet feed of roast duck and char siu in rice, we headed back to delerium for some more tasty pints, one of which was a banana beer. it was interesting, definitely worth trying, but not one you'd want too many of.

The Cantillon Brewery is one of the last breweries to brew natural lambic beers. They run tours through there... well, they give you a book of info and let you wander round through the brewery. It's pretty cheap and they give you a couple free samples at the end. The brewery itself it pretty choice and informative, but the beers aren't really my kinda beer - slightly sour and have no sugar in them. Not that good. 

Next stop (and last stop) is ol' Paris. Staying with Andrew, so that shud cut down on accom costs. We've got five nights here before we head back to London. We also have managed to keep up our ability to stumble upon random festivals; Bastille's day in France happens while we're there, so that shud make things interesting!

Ein Masse, Prost!

As nearly two weeks in Germany winds down, I'll try recap what's been happening...

Munich

Crossing from Austria into Germany wasn't much of a change - both countries speak German and I don't understand a drop... Except "scheizen". München (or the land of the monks) is the capital of Bavaria and overall a pretty ideal place to be if you like beer and you like meat. Alex and I had pretty much hit the jackpot. Biergartens are everywhere, and the famous beerhalls are dotted round the place. There is an epic fresh produce market, where u can pick up ur fruit and vege, but also, you can grab some awesome freshly prepared food and perch up in the biergarten with ein masse (a stein) of beer.

First night in Munich (much like many places so far), we hit up a pub crawl. The actual crawl itself was lame, but we got to visit the famous Hofbäuhaus. Slow start the next day, our first activity was a bike tour at 4pm... It was worth the "wait", gave us a good summary of the history of Munich, saw some sweet buildings and statues, but even better was the swim in the river that runs through the English Gardens and the visit to the 2nd biggest biergarten in the world. Further up from where we swam was the famous free standing wave, where surfers can jump in and ride. The biergarten was just as good tho. I got beaten by a plate of ribs... Well more like two racks of ribs. One rack was enough, but two is ridiculous. These German really know how to do meat. Even after offloading a couple to Asty, I couldn't finish them!

Third day in Munich was a pretty eye opening experience. Dachau, one of the longest operating concentration camps used by the Nazis, was a half hour train NW of Munich. So much wrong doing went down there (and even more so at other camps). We got a guided tour round the grounds, which was LONG (3+ hours) but worth the €3 we paid. Our guide didn't hold back on his opinions of international government and politics, so by then end I was a bit over his preaching. After getting back to munich, we needed some beers to unwind from the day. We ended up at the Augustina beer hall and luckily for us they showed the Euro final, where Spain destroy Italy 4-0.

We ended up locked an extra night in the hostel so we could train up and see the Neuschwanstein castle. This castle is the one Walt Disney based the Disney castle on. Crazy King Ludwig II blew a shitload of tax payers money to build this castle for no real purpose.It took an hour and a half to get up there, but it was worth it. The whole area is picturesque - there's actually another smaller castle and a wicked lake. The Neuschwanstein castle is awesome. You get a free tour included in your ticket, but you can only go at specific times. We got there round 2:45pm and out tour wasn't til 5:20pm. It's was sweet tho, gave us heaps of time to check out the lake, the other castle and time to hike up the mountain to the Neuschwanstein. We didn't end up getting back to Munich until after 10:30pm. It turned out the the German twins were in Munich as well, so we caught up with them (just Lena, as Sarah was busy) the next morning before our train up to Stuttgart.

Stuttgart

The first thing on the train you notice when you get near Stuttgart is the HUGE Mercedes-Benz Arena just south of the town. A direct quote from Lonely Planet's description of Stuttgart: "For tourists, come for the car museums and then leave." I have to somewhat agree with their description, all that's to offer there is the car museums.

Our first full day in Stuttgart, we spent an hour frantically wandering the streets tryna find a place that would air the State of Origin league game 3 decider... Nowhere showed it! The deceptive "SKY" sport signs don't actually mean that the bar will show sky sports! We ended up having to stream it at the hostel. Intense match, but NSW went down for the 7th year in a row... Pretty gutting that... After that devastating loss, we headed out to the Mercedes-Benz museum. This is definitely worth stopping in Stuttgart for - even if you're not big into cars. The museum doesn't just give you a run down f the company (or companies as we found out), you a bit of a run down of German history. Definitely good value - especially on a half price student ticket! It took us just over 2 1/2 hours to get thru it, which was lucky cos they were about to close when we left. There was still the Porsche museum to check out the next morning before we headed to Frankfurt.

Frankfurt (... Or Frankfurt-am-Main as the locals call it).

We arrived in Frankfurt a little delayed... 20 mins, first time that we experienced Germany INefficiency. There was a free pub crawl that night. Bang on! The pub crawl left at 10, so we had plenty of time to smash a feed and a couple beers before it. There was a pretty big crew, I guess there always is if it's free. The leader stopped us outside a convenience store so we could pick up a roadie, as the first pub was 20mins away. The 20 min walk turned into 45+mins... So everyone was pretty much sober by the time we hit the first pub. We ended up hitting only 3 pubs. Still a decent night out, but the 45 min return trip was death...

The next day, we wandered round Frankfurt and checked the sights - not that we knew what we were
looking at. Later that night, there was a free night walk, so we joined (why not? It was free!). There's this shopping mall that up you can go up to the roof for free and has a swt view of the Frankfurt skyline. Most of the other sites, we'd already covered during the day. Next day, we saved some euros and took a 3 hour local train to Cologne (or Köln, as the locals say). As we were packing up, there was a bit of commotion outside on the street. Bit of a scuffle between two groups. Words exchanged, bottles thrown. One dude was wearing red from some cuts on hit chest. The police rolled up 5 mins too late, but some good excitement for the morning. I guess that's what you gotta expect when you crash in the red light district!

Cologne (Köln)

We arrived in Köln late afternoon. Afta a small battle to locate the hostel, we were asked by the hostel owner if we were in town for the summer jam music festival. We weren't. He then paused and asked if we
were here for the other festival. We had no idea what he was on about, then he was like "the big gay pride festival." ...Apparently, one of the world's largest gay pride festivals was on on Köln this wknd... We weren't here for that, but it was definitely gonna make our visit to Köln a whole lot more interesting. We headed into town to check out the Cathedral (one of the largest in Germany) and for a couple beers and a feed, nothing too large, as we had to catch the last train back to the hostel before 11:30pm. After being dominated by a pork knuckle for dinner, we had a wander through the town/drinking area of town. There were gays everywhere. I'm not a homophobic person, but even this many of them weirded me out a bit.

The next day was the parade for the gay festival. We found out that the name of it was "Christopher Street Parade." this lead to a bit of stick from Alex... The parade was mental. So many people around... After  backing up the pork knuckle with two racks of ribs, we had a quick look at the parade and then tried to find a pub to watch the Wimbledon mens final. After many failures, we found a swt american themed bar and perched there and watched Federer take it out. Pretty satisfied, as we were going for Federer. The rest of the night was pretty chilled. Grabbed a feed at Früh (a local joint that sells pretty decent food) - I went easy with a schnitzel. Alex on the other hand, locked in another pork knuckle... 

Köln was our last stop in Germany. Just over a week before we're back in London... 

Next stop: Brussels. Time for some mussels and frites!!

P.S. Happy B'day to my Bro for the 5th! Hope you had a good one!

Once an Austrian went yodeling...

We scored a free train ticket to Vienna off the hostel in Bratislava, so we only needed to buy one at the station. The next train to Vienna departed at 12:46pm and we arrived at the platform just in time to see it roll off... Son of a bitch! The first thing I noticed about Austria is the greenness. Lots of trees around the place. Our hostel was west of the city, so we had a wander round the west side of the city. I needed to get some cash out, which turned out to be a semi-nightmare. Everything on a Sunday is closed. I found more cigarette vending machines than ATMs. After and hour, I finally found one and got my first €100 note. Looks pretty sweet in the wallet, but is a massive bane when you try to buy anything... Once I had my cash, first priority was an authentic wiener schnitzel. Found a joint nearby that did an authentic veal wiener schnitzel. it was alright, pretty damn expensive tho - definitely lock it the ribs next time, they looked EPIC! After dinner, we hit the local travel bar for the footy and watched England play like England and lose to the Italians. Even though it went to penalties, England didn't deserve to win.

The weather was shithouse the next morning - first shit house day we've had so far, but we manned up and went sightseeing anyways. By the time we got into town, the weather had cleared up a bit anyways. We spent most that day just aimlessly wandering round the centre. We managed to stumble upon statues and impressive building everywhere. When we checked later, it turned out that we'd pretty much nailed all the sights round the centre! We had dinner at a local restaurant nearby the hostel. It's been owned by this Austrian lady and her American husband for ages. The feeds there are decent and the guy is hard case. I can't explain what he's like, but he's a real beauty. After the feed, we hit up the travel bar again... No footy, but didn't hav anything else to do, so why not? After an hour or so, a contiki bus crew rocked in, so that Monday night turned out to be pretty messy.

I woke up feeling a little seedy, but after an ice coffee (probs best ice coffee I've had since leaving NZ), and a feed, I started to come right. While we were waiting for our feed, this guy on another table got pickpocketed by this kid. The kid bolted and the dude chased after him. Was pretty buzzy and happened so quick. The kid actually ditched the wallet in a garden next to the cafe, so must've just taken the cash and run. Was a pretty eye-opening experience. Def look after my wallet a bit more now!

A kiwi pair in our hostel told us bout this palace and gardens, where the royal family used to live, so that afternoon we went and had a look. The gardens were awesome, massive area, flowers, fountains, statues. There was a hill that you could walk up and get a view out over the whole grounds and Vienna. Wasn't real keen to tackle it, but glad I did. Didn't hit up the zoo that was there, but did hit up the mazes. They were pretty sweet, not too hard - although I made some pretty bad decisions and prob hit every dead end...


Next morning, we trained it to Salzburg. The train was a booster, highest speed I remember seeing was 180km/h. My reading had taken a backseat since I lost my book on Topdeck, so I picked one up written by an author with a particularly entertaining name: Patrick Woodhead. We got in round 2pm and checked into our hotel. No hostels had vacancy, so we had to splash out for two nights in a semi-hotel. Was pretty swt tho, got our own room with air-con, tv, bathroom. Best part was no bunk beds! We dumped our packs and went for a wander into old town. Old town is across the river from the main part of Salzburg, but all the boutique places are in old town, so if you want to shop, that's the place to go. We didn't want to shop, but there were still some sweet buildings and statues to see. We grabbed a late lunch, round 5pm to tie us over til the euro semifinal that night. Portugal put up a decent effort, pushing Spain to penalties, but ultimately stoked Spain won it. Especially cos Ronaldo is a crying sook.

We didn't cover the whole of old town the day before, so the next day we checked out the rest of it and tools the tram up the hill to the castle. The castle at the top of the hill is pretty much the symbol of Salzburg. It's pretty sweet. Awesome views out over Salzburg and to the south. The wait to get up the tower was over half an hour, too long, so we boosted. The Mirrabell gardens were pretty good. We perched up there for most of the afternoon... Well pretty much the whole afternoon. Tuffy moi-perched most of it. We met these Aussie chicks there who were tryna recreate a scene from sound of music... They looked like beauties, but I filmed whatever they were tryna do for them. I don't think I've seen sound of music, so can't tell u what scene they were doing... Germany played Italy in the other semi of the euro. If they won, it would've meant a good night and an epic final for us, especially cos we would be in Germany for the final! BUT they blew out BIG time. The Italians to their credit deserved it. There was a pretty sombre mood after the game. We didn't end up heading out, so got one of the morning trains to Munich.

We're in Stuttgart now, just checked out the Mercedes-Benz museum. Pretty choice, but i'll fill you in on Germany soon.

Bratislava

Shortish blog this time...

Our train into Bratislava... jks

Rolling into Bratislava, I had images of that city the guys on eurotrip rolled into - run down, dirty and cold. Couldn't have been more wrong. Bratislava is wicked. It's a small town, so can pretty much walk everywhere. Beers are cheap as here, round €1.60! Our hostel gave us directions from the train station to the hostel, but after spending half hour trying to find bus 41, we gave in and tried to find help. The problem was that it took us another half hour to find the information desk! Even then, they only spoke minimal English... Turns out bus 41 stopped running to the train station a few weeks ago!

We finally checked in, and went for a wander to check out the historic centre before the second euro 2012 quarterfinal between Germany and Greece. We hit the main square and this big brass band were playing for the crowd. Sweet tunes and show, then we stumbled upon some street performance round the corner. Shit happening all over the place here, must be some festival thing on or something... There were two streets that were line with bars and restaurants. This is where we found the Dubliner Irish pub, where we spent most of our time in Bratislava! We perched here for the footy, a feed and beers. A two piece acoustic band came on after the footy finished, so we watched them for a bit then pissed off.

The next morning, we were back at the dubliner to watch the all blacks thrash Ireland in the third test. Pretty decent effort from the boys. After the game, we had another wander round town and tried (failed) to find a money exchange for our Hungary forints... That night was the big game between Spain and France in the euro. I was supporting Spain because: 1) Spain is awesome and I've just spent a month there, 2) Spain rules at football, and 3) France is shit. We thought we'd change it up and go to a different place other than Dubliner, so we went to Allstars, which was opposite dubliner, about 3 meters across the path... We ended up sitting down wit an Aussie and a South African and talked rugby for a couple hours before the footy started... Real typical... Spain dominated the footy and there weren't too many annoying frenchies around us at the pub, so I was stoked! We went out for a bit after the game, but still got back at a reasonable time.

So the rough plan from here is Austria, Germany, Belgium, Paris then back to London. May try tone the blogs down to once a week, or once a country, otherwise it's gonna get ridiculous...

Gee Wizz, that was Budapest!

With time running low, we needed to sort out our next destination. A quick look on skyscanner and we locked in cheap flights to Budapest on Wizz air. Knew next to nothing bout Wizz air, and they knew next to nothing about operating an airline... We turned up at the airport on the and checked in. The boarding time was 8:15pm and take off was 8:45pm. you needed to board on time, as seating was on a first in, first seated basis. We queued at 8pm anb at 8:30pm there still wasn't a plane at the end of the airbridge. 8:45pm rolls round and we hadn't moved an inch, but atleast a plane had turned up. Round 9pm another plane load of people turned up. Turns out the flight to Prague had had its bags loaded on our plane, so we had to switch planes with them... By round 9:45pm we were finally boarded and ready to take off... What a fricken nightmare... Oh, also, Wizz air cram you on their flights, there is no leg room, Asty couldn't even sit up straight for whole the 3hr flight!

We finally made it to Budapest at 2am. After a taxi driver attempted to scam us into a taxi, we caught the airport shuttle to our hostel. The hostel room was ridiculously hot. I'm talking that everyone was sweating in bed. Very damp sheets in the morning! It was almost as bad as the overnight bus to Nha Trang in Vietnam... Almost. We slept in the next day, but joint the afternoon free walking tour. The walking your gave us a good tour of the city and a good run down of the history of Hungary and budapest. One thing that I didn't know before coming here was that Budapest used to be 3 individual cities; old buda, buda, and pest. We crossed the Chain Bridge to Buda and climbed the stairs up to the castle, where you got a sweet view of the city. That night, we grabbed a sweet feed at a restaurant in the Jewish quarter. We joined on a pub crawl that night - was expensive at €15, but was good value. We hit most of the popular bars (apparently - I can't remember any of the names of them), but finished up at a sweet night club with an wicked rooftop bar. We were well past it by that stage tho. 


We had another lazy start to the day... Again it was fricken hot during the night. Not good, especially if you've got a slight hangover! We did find the best solution for the problem tho: the baths in budapest. There are a number of baths round the city, each a lil different (one holds "sparties" where it opens at night and turns into a night club, so you can drink, party and have a spa all in one!) Unfortunately, the "sparties" weren't happening while we were in town, but def sounds like something to come back for. Budapest parties hard man, so def get here at least once. It's cheap as well, well the forint is round 250 to one euro, so you seem rich. We perched in the baths all afternoon, hopping from one to another, even had moi-perch in one of them. Feeling recovered and refreshed, we headed back to the hostel to drop our stuff and them head out for a feed and to watch the euro quarter between Portugal and Czech Republic. Portugal won 1-0 with a stunner header from Ronaldo. We met these classic old English dudes there and had some classic yarns.


This morning, we checked out and jumped on a train to Bratislava in Slovakia. Not staying long there, we were told one day is plenty. After that it's on to Austria (Vienna and Salzberg at this stage), so time to crank that annoying yodeling song again...

We've booked the Eurostar from Paris back to London for the 16th of july, so looks like the real world is approaching fairly soon... Dammit... Still got a couple of weeks to work our way back to Paris tho!

Madrid Madness

It was an emotional farewell to our buddy Hielo who had safely got us around on our road trip from Barcelona to Madrid. We left him (or her?) at the Madrid airport, covered in dust and with only one tiny scratch (that the avis dude tried to sting us with even though we had full, no excess insurance). It was back to the legging it for me and tuffy. We metro'd it in from the airport to Charlotte's (Alex's friend who lives in Madrid) and her directions were bang on, so even we couldn't get lost. She had a room for us all set up to crash in. Was gonna be interesting sharing a double blow up matress for two rather large sized blokes - I opted for the side against the wall, to avoid getting double bounced outta the bed. That night, Charlotte and her flatmate Louise took us out into the city for some drinks and dinner at Templo de Debod. Heaps of people in Madrid were out in the park, chilling and having drinks in this park - seems like the thing to do. Was a sweet view from up there and the Egyptian temple was pretty cool.

Charlotte had written a huge schedule for us to get through whilst in Madrid, it was like having our own personal travel guide! Super sweet, as tuffy and I would have had no idea what to do... Our first full day in Madrid, Charlotte and Louise took us on a sight seeing tour of the city centre, while we waited for Sly to perch his was into town. Charlotte's free walking tour covered most of the main sites, highlights being the churros shop (deep-fried sticks that you dip in chocolate), the museum of ham, and the sangria and tapas feed. Andrew was gonna meet us round 4ish, so we decided to hunt out some new jandals, cos our other ones had blown out big time - mine had worn through the bottom, so I was essentially walking round barefeet... After the ultimate perch arrived, we grabbed a beer in town, before cutting loose at the girl's place. This was the beginning of a pretty epic night out, and some pretty heated discussions about burqas... After we became friends again, we hit Madrid town, and it was nuts. Epic times. Madrid know how to party man. We hit a few bars and clubs til the sun rose... the next day was gonna be a write off.

We surfaced around 1.30pm, when Andrew came round from his hotel. We weren't all in that gooda shape, but decided to change up the schedule and head to the pools in Casa de Campo. The pools were awesome. We nailed a perch under a tree on the grass, just near the pool and pretty much perched and swam for the rest of the afternoon. That night Denmark were playing to stay alive in the Euro, and because Charlotte and Louise were danish, we went down to their local to munch some tapas and watch the game. Denmark lost in the end, but we had another round of some epic tapas! gonna miss this stuff when we leave...



Monday rolled round and we needed to seriously start thinking about the next part of the trip... We decided that we'd just book flights to Budapest and see how we went from there. So we found some flights for around 100 euro and locked them in. By that time, it was round 2pm and Charlotte's plans had to be readjusted. First we boosted to the cable car and took that across to the middle of the park at casa de campo. Was a pretty sweet ride, good views and shit. There was a theme park near the otherside, but didn't have time to check it out... guts. The rollercoaster there looked pretty ean! When we got back, we headed to Retiro, the big park in the city. It used to be the park of the king and queen, but they opened it up to the public (or so the story goes). It was an epic park. We checked out the crystal palace, and the turtles that were swimming in the pond outside the palace, then headed to the lake for a perch/siesta. Round 6pm, we headed back to the flat, as tuffy and I had to get our classic NZ feed on for the girls. We decided to go with a Lamb roast. We actually found exported NZ lamb in the supermarket - although it was frozen solid... It was gonna have to do. We had a shit show of finding mint sauce, so decided to make our own, but didn't have any idea how to make it. Tuffy nailed it tho and it turned out pretty sweet. The feed itself was massive. Roast lamb, roast veges, mint sauce. awesome! The girls loved it. We cranked the NZ music, starting off with all the Flight of the Conchords stuff, but i think the jokes got a little lost in translation for the Danes... Afterward, we just sat on their balcony having beers and yarns, with a Kiwi soundtrack. Awesome way to spend our last night in Spain!

We fly outta Madrid tonight, so today is the last day in Spain... kinda sad to be leaving really. Spain is awesome man. Our spanish is still pretty limited, but it's a sweet language. Not sure of the plans for the day, but haircut is up there. will keep you posted how that turns out - the language barrier means anything could happen...

Next stop: Budapest, Hungary. Bring it East Europe!

Obrigato Portugal!

The border between Lagos and Spain was pretty much non-existent - just a bridge across a river... We hit a massive traffic jam just out of Seville. Not really sure what the issue was, all we saw was a car pulled on up on the shoulder... The only other event of note was Tuffy voluntarily pulling himself into a speeding stop. The police officer thought he was an idiot, told him to drive on and "be safe". Lonely Planet told us that Tariva was worth a stop on the way to Lagos, so we pulled in for a look. It was lunch time, so that solved that issue as well. Tariva wasn't really worth a stop... so we high-tailed it outta there for Lagos.

Lagos is a relatively small, but intense place. We checked into JJ's Yard and were told that we were in a character room called the "Love Nest" - not 100% sure why it's called that, or why we were put up in it... the roof was barely 1.5m high, so we couldn't even stand up straight in it. But we dealt with it... kinda. I managed to smash my head on the door frame straight away - the first of multiple painful head smashes. The "hostel" was something between a hostel and a guesthouse, but it was cool - real chilled, but still had a friendly atmosphere. Jay and Lorena (the owners) were awesome - real friendly and chilled.

Lagos is crawling with young Australians (take that how you will). I'm sure they outnumbered the Portugese, or at least it seemed like they did. We arrived just in time to see the stream of drunken Aussies crawling back from the booze cruise. They were gone-burger. Euro 2012 had just started up, and Portugal were playing Germany that night - so we cruised to Nah Nah bar for some beers and a feed. Nah Nah Bar have "one of the top 10 burgers in the world" and no shit, these burgers were off the chain. If you ever hit Lagos, definitely grab one of these! Portugal lost the match, but afterward everyone was heading off on a semi-bar crawl. We tried to get amongst but were well behind the pack (most of the peeps were from the booze cruise). Catch up didn't happen, so called it quits.

The next morning, we perched HARD. Got up round lunchtime and headed to Sagres, the most south-western point in Portugal (and Europe). There was this huge fort there that kinda looked like the entrance to shutter island (if you've seen it). Massive cliffs surrounded by water - was pretty sweet. We didn't have much time there, cos we wanted to catch the final of the french open, so boosted round the fort and headed back to Lagos. We hit up one of the western beaches in Lagos (Praia do Porto de Mos) and grabbed a feed at Antonio's beach side restaurant and perched for the tennis. Djoko wasn't going so well, but the rain saved him (and us) so we hit the beach. The beach was nice, but the water was freezing! Asty's legs started to numb, so we decided to warm up on the beach before boosting back to the hostel.

The last day in Lagos was pretty epic. We locked in a kayaking trip that went round the coast. We kayaked through some sweet caves and the coastline was pretty awesome (there was a nude beach as well, but it was crawling with saggy oldies...) On the return trip, we stopped off at one of the little bays (not the nude one, unfortunately) and had a quick snorkel. Quick being the operative word - the water was fricken cold... We battled a pretty decent head wind on the way back, good work out tho... arms were feeling it the next morning tho... That night, Jay and Lorena organised a bit of a bar hop for their guests, so obviously me and tuffy jumped on board. The bar crawl ended up destroying everyone on it. The whole crew (2 aussies, 2 french canadians, and us) were back in the hostel after 3 hours. Was a very messy night. The french canadians were vomming all night! haha, they were good value tho. Tuffy had a run in with a rubbish truck, but apart from that not too much drama.

The drive to Lisbon the next day was death. I've never seen Asty so hungover before. That meant that me in the hungover state, would end up driving the majority of it. was tough, but made it there safely! We weren't prepared really for what was facing us in Lisbon. We once again managed to hit a public holiday... St Antonios. The streets were being closed off and traffic was a nightmare - the last thing you want when ur hung over driving... We managed to find a "park" (piece of path outside a building) and the guy said it would be sweet cos the police closed the roads off. We checked into our hostel (Alfama Patio Hostel) and they put on a sweet dinner party for the festival. We took part in most of the festivities, but couldn't muster up the energy to deal with the crowds. The beds at the hostel were epic tho. real comfy. It made it hard to get up the next morning, but we did it and created our own walking tour of the city. Saw most of the main sites. Found an epic street art alley and climbed up to an epic castle. The castle was real sweet, had some awesome views over the city. That night, we grabbed a sweet local feed of seafood, kinda like a seafood stew.

The next day, we mished it out to Sintra - a town near the coast in Portugal. On the way we checked out Belem, in Lisbon. There was this famous pastry shop there. Had some epic pastries and other foods. We hit up Sintra in the afternoon.This place was awesome! The old Moorish Castle was probably the highlight. Perched up on top of this mountain, had some epic views out to the Atlantic and then all over the main land. Reminded me a little of the great wall of china, only a million times smaller... haha. it was still pretty epic tho! There were some sweet gardens and also the National palace that was cool. We took a roundabout detour on the way back and headed to Cabo de Roca, the most western point in Europe, before heading back to the hostel. We had a sweet feed provided by the hostel, before heading to bed before the epic drive to Madrid! We learnt from our previous experience in Lagos, and called it in early for a quiet night, as the drive to Madrid was gonna take 7+ hours...

Anyway, this had dragged... and the beers are flowing cos Spain won their Euro match tonight, so time to head to La Latina to hav a few drinks!

Madrid post to come soon. Maybs tomorrow, if ya lucky!
(photos are baning, but maybs put in some effort tomorrow morn to sort some out...maybs)

...And then there were two... again...

It's been a while since the last blog and we've covered a decent amount of ground since then, but i'm gonna try keep this brief cos it's too hot and awesome over here to spend time on a computer!

Granada:
If you are looking for a hostel to stay in while in Granada, Granada Inn is where it's at. This place was seriously the nicest hostel I've stayed in. It was almost like staying in a hotel. We rocked into Granada late afternoon after a pretty sweet drive from Torrevieja. My average speed would have been in the vacinity of 130-140 km/h... and i wasn't anywhere near the biggest booster on the roads. Pretty sure the speed signs are just for decoration over here. There are some crazy road signs here, but i'll let you come see for yourselves, some just don't make sense...
Granada was a sweet place. We met up with Liz and Dylan (a couple from the topdeck trip) on our second day. They boosted down from Barcelona on an overnight train and were pretty juted when they arrived in the morning. Tess sorted out a walking tour for us to do to check out the sites, pretty decent job she did (didn't tip her tho). Ha. That night, we locked in a pub crawl (seems to be becoming a trend for us). The actual pub crawl was pretty average tho - the first bar was cool, but waaay too small. they other two "bars" were smaverage, and the night club at the end was full of 16 year olds.
Alhambra in Granada is Spain's #1 Tourist attraction (apparantly), so we locked in tickets to have a look. Alhambra was cool - was up a pretty decent hill, but the views up there were pretty sweet, and the gardens and palaces were cool. That night, Sayuri (japanese girl who is kinda working for the hostel for rent) hosted a sushi buffet and free sangria night. This was wicked. She basically had all the stuff for sushi, but we all sat round the table rolling our own mini sushi rolls. Was a good munch, and the free sangria was pretty awesome as well. This was our last night in Granada, so Sayuri took us to this epic bar/club up in Sacremonte that had an epic view of Alhambra. We didn't plan a big night, but they always turn out the biggest, which made the drive next day a bit rough...

Malaga:
For being a beach town, Malaga had some rubbish beaches. We had high hopes for finding the elusive epic beach in Spain, but Malaga didn't have it. We checked out the beach at Malaga, but it was rubbish. And by rubbish I mean the "sand" was more like dirt and the water was full of floaties (probably washed over from the port). We were pretty jaded from the night before, so decided to have and AFD (alcohol-free day). Sounds lame, but actually needed one i think.
Because the sun doesn't go down til roun 9:30pm here, all our meal times have been shifted back a couple hours... welll everything seems to have shifted. We don't really get up til 10ish, lunch is usually round 5pm and dinner around 9 or 10pm. At first it was strange, but i'm kinda enjoying it now. The sun setting at 9:30pm means that the usual late afternoon beers turn into just normal beers and you get so much more time for activities, which makes up for sleeping til 10 or 11am. ha.
Day 2 in Malaga, we decided to scout out an epic beach nearby. We ended up heading to Nerja (about an hour east of Malaga). Today was going to be a beach day, so we had to pick up some supplies. Tess suggested sun umbrellas, so we wouldn't end up lobstered at the end of the day. We wanted some liquids for the beach, so we headed to a supermarket for some waters. The supermarket were running a promotion on San Miguel beers, where if you bought a 24 slab, you got a free sun umbrella. We bought 3 slabs. So off we went to the beach with our 3 free sun umbrellas and our beers. The beers were warm, so we got some ice (hielo) and made a sort of reverse beer hangi to keep the beers cold (we dug a deep hole in the sand, lined it and filled it with ice and beers). Turned out to be an epic idea and set up our day perfectly. Epic day - 5 kiwis, beers, and 7 hours perched on a beach, all topped off with Taco Bell for dinner! haha.

Gibraltar:
Next morning we packed up and headed for the bottom of Spain. Tarifa was a small town in the bottom of Spain. We didn't know much about it, but wanted to check it out for shiggles and it'd also mean we could stop off in Gibraltar.
Gibraltar was cool. Was kinda strange driving into a place that is technically in Spain, but speaks english. We grabbed a feed from a pub/restaurant called the Horseshoe. It was pretty rubbish. I think it would've been easier to order in back in Spain. They had no clue what they were doing. Each waitress had a different table numbering system... was a shambles.
If you do go to Gibraltar tho, definitely get the cable car up to the top on the mountain. There's some epic epic views from up there, not to mention the monkeys that are all round the place. You could spent more coin and check out all the stuff up the top, but we ran outta time.

Tarifa:
Finally, we found our beach. Tarifa is probably the find and the coolest place we've been to so far. The beach was epic, proper sand like back home, none of this dirt/small pebble crap, and nice decent water with some small breaks. The town is wicked also. Old town has all these small winding alleys with little hidden cafes, shops, bars, restaurants, etc. We were gutted that we had only locked in one night here. There must be some decent wind round here at times, cos there were heaps of kitesurfing/windsurfing schools round.
We arrived fairly late at night, but the next day we perched up and had another epci beach sesh - except this one was at a decent beach. Didn't nail the whole "avoid getting burnt" idea, but was worth a little lobstering for the epicness of the beach.
After some pretty intense yarns on the beach, we didn't end up leaving Tarifa until around 7ish, but our drive to Seville wasn't too far, so that was sweet.

Seville:
Seville is another inland town in Spain. Being inland means that it gets freakin' hot. We left Tarifa were it was a warm 28 degrees and headed to Seville where it had been a ridiculous 36... did not bode well... We arrived late at night - around 10:30pm, but then we were faced with the task of finding a parking spot. We dropped the crew off at the hostel with our bags, while Tuffy and I went car park finding. After circling the free-parking stretch by the river for near an hour, we threw in the towel and headed to a carparking building. cost us 25 euro for 24 hours (after being told it was only 12 euros), but by this stage I was over it. really over it. Especially given the car park building ended up being over a half hour walk back to the hostel...
When we finally got back and showered, we headed out for a feed and some drinks. We ended up having dinner at 1am and were out til around 5am. Seville was pumping for a Wednesday night. The next day, when we finally emerged round lunch time, we went for a wander round Seville and found out why it was pumping the night before. There was a public holiday today, all the shops were shut and people were round everywhere. We were hot walking round wearing f-all, while there were local guys wandering round in full suits and were fine... Last night of the trip for the crew, so we decided we'd better end it the way it started - a massive night on Don Simon Sangria. We definitely over-estimated the amount we'd need, but to Alex and Dylan's credit, they stayed up and finished it all off. Liz hit the hay round 2, and Tess and I were done by 3. Not sure when Alex and Dylan finally finished up, but it must've been somewhere after 4.
The guys were flying back to London at 9pm, so we decided to go on a lil mish outta Seville for the afternoon. We ended up at some random site just a bit north of Seville, which turned out to be pretty epic. There was an old site of ruins in Santiponce with an ampitheatre and baths. We had a wander round for a bit, then retired to the pub across the street for a feed. The men's tennis semi between Djokovic and Fedex was on. Win. We ended up perching and watching that til the others had to fly out.

Now it's back to just me and the Tough One. We're heading to Lagos today, so get to cross another country off the list. If anyone's in Portugal, hit us up!

sorry peeps, no pics this time. will add some once I find some time.

Hasta luego! Catch you in a week spain!

ROAD TRIP!!

Driving in Europe is mad! We got up early and headed to the airport to pick up our rental car - VW Golf 1.6L Diesel. It boosts man, way more than i thought a 1.6L diesel would. It took a while to get used to driving on the right and changing gears with the right. Yea man, not wasting time on getting an auto, if you're gonna do it, do it right! haha - nah, we had no choice in the matter. I took the first leg of driving, a short-ish drive to Tarragona (where we were gonna stop for lunch). Our final destination for the day was gonna be Valencia, which was about 4 or so hours down the coast.

After getting stung by road tolls on the way to Tarragona, we decided to avoid toll roads for the rest of the trip. Also meant we'd get to take more scenic roads. After we got off the damn roundabout our tomtom GPS had us keep turning back onto for about 20 minutes, we were off on our way to Valencia. We decided to name our tomtom "Kate" after the name of the voice we chose. Kate was pretty good at giving us directions on the open roads, but man, she struggles when she's in a town/city. We got about halfway down the coast to Valencia, when we decided to make a random stop off at a beach. I think the beach was Torrenosta. Awesome beach, but it was dead there, no one was round at all. It was a little creepy how dead it was. Asty had a quick dip, but Tess and I decided to perch on the beach. After a quick snack stop, we jumped back in the car and hit the road to Valencia. Somehow, i'd managed to get Kate trapped in the centre console, but some quick thinking by Tess got her out.

Valencia is a sweet place, but damn their roads are narrow. Kate battled to direct us to the hostel, so we parked up and legged it the last bit. We stayed at Home Hostels and managed to lock in a 6 bed dorm for the 3 of us. Apparantly Valencia is the home of paella, so we were frothing to get amongst some decent paella. It is also the home of Valencia oranges, but we weren't so amped about that... It was pretty convenient that that night was the hostels 5 euro paella and 1 euro sangria night. The whole paella and sangria was a bit of a let down tho - not the best. We decided to drown our sorrows, with more sangria. The organiser of a bar crawl came round the hostel tryna recruit people for the bar crawl that night. We had nothing else on, so decided to get amongst. 10 euro and free drinks at each pub. Once again, we got written. We didn't even make it to the night club... The same gig ran a free walking tour, so the next morning we dragged ourselves outta bed at 12 to join in on that.

The walking tour leader was a classic scottish dude, Paul, who was out til 6am with the bar crawl from the night before. Half the walking tour had been on the bar crawl, so we were all feeling pretty rough. Paul still managed to do a fairly decent job tho. The crawl ended round 2pm, and by that stage we were starving. We found a decent feed near by the hostel and hit up some grub.  Valencia has some sweet street art painted on walls throughout the town as well. We saw some on the walking tour, but i reckon there's more gems if you spent time looking.

After a mid-afternoon siesta, we decided that we'd better not waste the whole day in bed like the other day, so we jumped in the car and headed down to the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Science). The buildings there are a buzzy design, pretty cool and worth a look if you have time. We didn't pay to go in and see anything, and missed the aquarium altogether, but by that stage we were pretty keen to check out the beach in Valencia.

By the time we hit the beach it was round 6pm at night. Before you call us idiots, it doesn't get dark til round 9 or 10pm and it's still pretty warm. The water was a little be cool to swim so we just lay on the beach... well, we slept for just over an hour. Probably a good thing it wasn't real sunny out, otherwise there would have been 3 bright red lobsters in the car the next day! When we finally woke up, we navigated our way back the hostel, parked up and went looking for a decent paella. We found a joint that did a pretty sweet paella not far from the hostel. It came out in a big dish that the three of us could just serve ourselves out of. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty epic. After dins, we headed back to the hostel and hit the hay.

We decided that we'd break up our drive down to Granada by stopping off at a random little beach town called Torrevieja, which translates to "Old Town". We left Valencia pretty early (around 9am) to avoid having to pay anymore for parking. After a couple days away from the wheel, I decided to drive the first part of the way. It wasn't gonna be a big drive day, but on the way we managed to past what would normally be classed as ladies of the night, but they were working in the middle of the day... random, but that must fly over these ways.... We stopped at some random beach in a town just outside of Benidorm, where we checked out if the beach was decent or not. It wasn't that great, but Tessa did manage to finally skip a stone in the water there! We decided to head straight to Benidorm for lunch and a possible dip. Benidorm was fairly build up, and felt like a retirement town. The beach there was good, but packed full of oldies. We had an epic lunch and decided to try our luck at a beach in Alicante. One of the great things about Spain is the siestas. This mean that between the hours of 2 and 4pm, there's free parking as the meter-maids are on siesta. This worked out perfect for our stop in Alicante, one hour free parking! The beach was pretty sweet and the water was good, so we perched there for an hour, had a couple swims and got our tan on for a bit. At 4pm, Alex jumped in the drivers seat and we boosted the rest of the way to Torrevieja.

Torrevieja didn't turn out to be the quiet little beach-side town we thought it was gonna be. It too is fairly built up. The beach front/port area is fairly nice though. We checked into our hotel and Tess loaded up some walking tour notes, and we headed down to the beach front to check it all out. We had a bottle of Don Simon sangria leftover from Valencia, so we brought this along for the tour. The beach front has this massive 1.5km long spit/boardwalk, so we decided to walk to the end of that and watch the sun set. Half way along, we stopped for a drinks break and downed the bottle of sangria. There were a bunch of dudes rock fishing at the end of the spit, we counted 28 rods in the water and after about half an hour, they got nothing! not even a bite... The sun set was pretty sweet, and after we pretty much headed back into town, grabbed a feed and headed back to the hotel to chill.

Tomorrow, we we've got an epic drive to Granada. Should be another sweet journey. Still have yet to give our car a name, so will keep you posted on that. Pretty late now, so i think it's time to sleep. catch u soon.