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!