Italy and Portugal Are Next!

So its may 17th and we've been traveling for 22 days now. It seems like this whole trip has just been a big blur so far, which is probably because of the booze consumption since we landed in Glasgow. Thank god for pictures and this blog to read to reflect on everything that has happened. Yesterday I started playing poker at Casino Barcelona and in my first session of 2 hours at 1-2 Euro I made 65 Euros. The entire table was full of donkeys and as soon as you get any sort of decent hand you get payed off which isnt normal. After dinner and a few rum and cokes I decided to try my luck again so I headed back down to the casino and played for another 2 hours. This time around I made 114 Euros. At this point I was starting to plan out where I could rent a flat and just live here and play poker because the tables were so loose and profitable. But, thats the way I get when things go well a few times in a row lol.

Today we woke up around noon and headed down to the fresh food market and bought stuff for breakfast. After breakfast I decided I would give the poker another go because it was so profitable yesterday. Graham and Anna went to the Cathedral they have been building since the 1800's which I heard was gorgeous. They also checked out a few little parks with live performers and some impressive fountains and ponds. I played poker for 6 hours and ended up losing all the profits I made yesterday. I'll quote the famous Doyle Brunson by saying "Thats poker folks". You have to be prepared for the upwings and downswings of poker if you want play it regularly. It was still a lot of fun to play a nice long session though so I have no regrets. When I got back to the flat after poker Anna and Graham were passed out sleeping. After I woke them up they made an amazing Curry chicken dinner. The way its been working here is that they cook and I do dishes which isnt that bad of a deal. Graham and Anna both passed out early tonight so I snuck out to write this and talk to some people back home.

I think this is the moment I`ve officialy realized I am addicted to traveling. There`s nothing like waking up and heading down to the market and getting food for breakfast for 3 people for 4 Euros and then hopping on the metro down to the beach where the casino is to play some poker or relax on the beach and catch some sun. It`s like the perfect world here, not to mention the fact that everyone is so relaxed and laid back here. It`s not like Toronto where everything is go-go-go.

 On Friday Anna, Graham and myself are heading to some beach about an hour from here to do some camping. Graham and I bought a 2 man tent for each of us when we were in Amsterdam so we will finally get to put them to use. Instead of buying the roll out sleeping mats people generally get, we bought inflatable pool mattresses because they were cheap and they a easy to carry when deflated. They probably arent the best for our backs but were not sleeping on them every night so who cares lol. After a few nights of camping we will probably head back to Annas to pack up our stuff and head to Italy. Italy and Portugal are our next 2 stops because we can not leave the warm weather and beaches. Anyone that has experienced Southern Europe will know what I`m talking about when I say it`s next to impossible to leave here. Anyways, that`s all for now, I have to get some sleep because Graham and I are heading to some small town outside of Barcelona tommorow morning to explore and see what its all about. I`ll try and post again before we go camping. Bye everyone!

Enjoying Beautiful Barcelona!

We made it to Barcelona finally with only one last hitch. While we were waiting for our train to pick us up from Narbonne, somebody committed suicide on the tracks at the station before ours. There was police everywhere and it was mayhem in the train station. There was a bunch of trains that were delayed 2.5 hours but luckily ours was only delayed 50 minutes. We were lucky because we had to catch a specific train into Barcelona that we thought we would miss due to the accident on the tracks but they held that train because it was the last one running for the night into Barcelona. We arrived in Barcelona Just after midnight and called Anna. Anna is our couch surfing host. Couch surfing is an internet data base of travelers who open up there home to travelers and let them stay with them for a little bit. We took a cab from the train station to Anna's because at the end of a 37 hour travel day the bus system in a foreign country is the last thing you want to try and figure out. The cabby dropped us off in some back alley off one of the main streets in Barcelona. It seemed pretty sketchy at first but it was the street that Anna lived on so it was a bit easier to justify to myself that it was safe. She lives in a flat on the 5th story of 6 story building. Once we got upstairs and introduced ourselves, we all decided to get some sleep because graham and I were pretty tired from travelling and Anna had to get up to go to work the next day.


We woke up around 9 and headed straight to the beach which was about an hour long walk. The beaches of Barcelona are gorgeous and I have never seen so many topless women in my life. At 430 Anna finished work so we met up near the casino for a quick beer and then we wondered around and she showed us a few cool spots in Barcelona. After stopping at a bar for mojitos and beer we went back to Anna's to shower and head out to meet a few of her friends for dinner. After the dinner, her friends went home and we headed out to a pub and bought 3.5 liters of Sangria to split between the 3 of us. The sangria came in a huge jug with ice and a built in tap. After about 40 minutes of drinking Sangria we had about a litre left and it was looking impossible to finish. But drunk me was not going to be defeated by this "sangria machine". We managed to finish the whole thing and we were all tipsy. After that we stumbled over to another bar that people drink at before they go clubbing. I have to explain the way it works over here though because it's completely different then the north american way of "clubbing". First you go for dinner which is around 930 and have a few drinks. Then you go to a bar/club that you predrink at before you haed of to the real club. By the time you are actually heading to the real club its about 2 AM and then you party there until 6 am. S around 130 we left the predrinking bar and made our way to the club and we danced and drank like machines for 5 straight hours which is unheard of for me lol. I don't know if it was the booze, the music or the lights in this club but I was dancing all night. It was the most fun I've ever had at a club. We came back to Anna's flat and we all passed out. Our first day in Barcelona was a great success.


The next morning Graham, Anna and myself went to the local market and bought ingredients to make a spanish Omellette. It was a really thick pie like omellette that was made up of potatoes, onions and eggs. It was very tasty. After breakfast we headed to a famous Barcelona park that was created and designed by a guy named Gaudi. He had a very unique style of constructing architecture. One of his most famous pieces was a park with a court yard with a very famous lizard sculpture. The entire court yard was raised about 30 feet off the ground with a buliding underneath. The court yard had benches all around its perimeter made of broken pieces of tile. It was very artistic looking and the way it was designed was really unique because all the water that gathered on the ceramic benches when it rained would go through holes spaced evenly throughout the benches and gathered in troughs on the back side of the benches and flowed to these dragon heads where the water would then pour out of the dragon's mouth. We then headed back towards Anna's flat and picked up ingredients to make some pizza from scratch and also a 40 of rum and some pepsi. We had a very relaxed night of drinking rum and making pizza and listening to music. We finished the 40 fairly quickly and had to move onto some other booze that Anna had laying around. Anna played some guitar for us and at that point the hole couch surfing thing seemed surreal. I never ever suspected that you could meet someone online that would take you into thier house and treat you like family. Two of her flat mates (room mates) showed up around 2 AM so we all played a round of Kings, the drinking game. Around 530 AM Graham, Anna and I hopped on the subway and went down to the beach to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately it was cloudy and started to rain so we only lasted about an hour there and didn't get to see the sunrise. This morning we all headed down to the beach around 130 in the afternoon and stayed there for 3-4 hours. I tryed to play some poker because the casino is right on the beach but I didn't have pants with me so they wouldn't let me in. Luckily Graham had pants so he let me where his pants. When I showed up at the casino with the pants on I figured everything was good to go and I would be playing poker shortly but that was not the case at all. Apparently you only need ID to get into the casino but you need a passport to play poker and other table games. Who knew! Anna headed off to tutor her brother so she gave Graham and I the keys to her place and she's going to meet us back here around midnight. We're just about to head out for some dinner and then head back to the Casino where I'm going to play poker and he is going to see some live music.

Stuck in Narbonne!

Graham and I left Bathmen yesterday morning to make our way back to Amsterdam. Anne drove us to Deventer where we caught a train into Amsterdam. We walked around Amsterdam for a few hours befaore we started making our way to Spain. We walked through the red light district which wasn't quite the same because there was no red lights on and all the windows had curtains in them rather then women. Just before we left we ate a smoked Herring sandwich. It wasnt very good at all. We hopped on a train in Amsterdam at 2:53 which was supposed to get us to Spain for 11:48 the next morning because of the tranfers and such. We made our first few trains no problem and then it was time for the sleeper train which we excited for because we were totally beat. The sleeper train had about 30 cars and while we were walking to our car to get on we saw that every car was made up of rooms with 4-6 beds. At this point we couldn't wait to get on the train to fall asleep and wake up with only one more train to be in Barcelona by the beaches. As we approached our car, number 19, we then realized that we were stuck with normal chairs that recline just a bit more then usual. It was a huge downer because those chairs suck to sleep in. Of course sitting beside us was a drunk guy who was mumbling to himself in french the whole time. Not to mention the fact that he some how found the light switch to our car and was playing with them for a good few minutes before he moved on to the next car to play with there lights. Next he was picking his scabs and looking at them. It was probably the most discusting guy we've ever seen. Thankfully after he finished his mickey of Vodka he passed out. We both probably only got an hour of sleep in total on the train. We caught our next train that was taking us to Gare De Narbonne. Unfortunately the train showed up late and we ended up missing our train to Barcelona. We asked at the information desk when the next train to Barcelona was and she told us it was at 4PM. That left us with 7.5 hours to kill. We found a round about with a bunch of grass that we layed on for about an hour before deciding to go find some food and a nicer spot to lay down. We found a decent little park that we layed down in for a while before wondering around some more to kill time. W found a pretty cool cathedral from 1272 that we went in and wondered around before going to get some food. There wasn't a lot of options for food because the lazy french people shut down everything for a couple hours every afternoon. How they make money is beyond me. We met the "leader of le resistance" while making our way back through a back alley towards the train station. She was a pretty cool old lady. She travelled the world and has lived in many different countries including Vancouver for a few years. She was on welfare because she couldn't find work over here but she justified it to herself because her dad payed taxes for 50 plus years. Her views and beliefs were like that of a hippie (very open minded, not into T.V. or internet and loved to read because she believed knowledge is freedom). We must of talked to her for a good 45 minutes while keeping an eye on her cat that she was taking for a walk.


We arrived at the train station around 330 to make sure we caught our 4:15 train to Barcelona to find out that there was no 4:15 train to Barcelona. We asked at the information desk about catching the next train to Barcelona and we were told there was onlly connecting trains to Barcelona now. It wasn't too bad up until this point but then I asked if our previous train ticket was still valid and she said that it wasn't. Now there was a problem! We were stuck in Narbonne with a wasted train ticket because our connecting train arrived late and no apparent way of getting to Spain tonight unless we bought new train tickets. After a slow argument due to the language barrier of me not speaking french and her not speaking english we managed to get everything sorted out. She wrote a note on the back of our expired train ticket saying that we missed our connecting train because the ticket exchange people were on strike (which they are) so we are currently waiting till 7:45 to catch a train to Figueras. which we will then transfer to a train to Barcelona. Our 15 hour trip from Amsterdam to Spain turned into a 36 hour trip with about 1 hour of sleep. Not a big fan of the Eurorail Pass right now. Hopefully the next post will be from Spain and not here in Narbonne!

3 More Days Till Barcelona

Its just before midnight here and we're getting ready to pass out. We had our most relaxing day yet. We walked to Anne's Mom and Dad's house which is just up the street in the most beautiful little town I've even been in. It's about an hour East of Amsterdam and it's called Bathmen but its pronounced bautem. We went up to her parents house to do our laundry because we were all out of clean clothes. I learned how to hang up clothes on a line because that is something I've never done before lol. There is actually some skill involved because the first few articles I hung up kept falling off until I was shown the right way of doing it lol. Everything here is so relaxed and laid back. Everyone here rides there bikes around and walks there dogs through the parks. The streets and sidewalks are all made of bricks and every single plant and tree is perfectly groomed. I'm pretty sure that the town is fake because everything is so perfect. While we were waiting for our clothes to dry Anne took us to a little spot to swim on the canal behind her parents house. Graham actually went swimming even though the water was ice cold. Anne and I just put our feet in and layed there in the sun and tanned. After we walked back and picked up our laundry we went out to a little restaurant in her town for some croquettes and fries with apple pie and ice cream for desert. We ended up back at Annes place and just ordered some pizza and watched a movie.

Yesterday morning Anne met us at De Dam (a big square in Amsterdam with a memorial monument) to take us on a canal tour. The tour was pretty cool because we go to see many streets of holland from the canals as opposed to the streets. The boat took us past Anne Franks house and the narrowest house in Amsterdam which was only 6 feet wide. After the canal tour we were all hungry so we went to a restaurant and ate a farely odd dinner. It was a massive pancake with bacon and cheese and a dutch syrup all over it. It tasted amazing. From there we went on to do the Heineken Brewery Tour which was much more then I ever expected. It was only 12 Euros and we got an entire tour of the place along with 2 pints and a tester beer. They also let us eat the hops and barley in it's pure form. The barley actually tasted pretty good. It was very similar to deshelled sun flower seeds but with a unique flavour. When we first walked in for the tour and checked our bags in the lady gave us our bracelets that were good for the 2 free beers during the tour but she told us if we put our bracelets in our pocket we would get another bracelet at the door. This worked so when it came time for the 2 free pints at the end of the tour we all enjoyed 4. We met 2 guys from Vancouver in the bar at the end of the tour and while we were talking to them 2 different people came up to us and gave us there beer tokens that they didn't want to drink. I'm not sure if it was our Canadian hats that caused this but I'm not complaining.

Last night Anne took us to her friends Husband's birthday party. It was just a little back yard patio party with drinks and some finger food. There was also to chickens and 2 huge rabbits which was pretty cool because you generally don't have that at parties back home. There was only 3-4 of her friends that spoke english so Graham and I were limited to who all we could talk to, however, by the end of the night we were pretty much talking to everyone because apparently after you drink a lot you learn to speak Dutch lol. Her friends were all very nice and always made sure we had a beer in our hands. As soon as you have a sip left in your beer there was a fresh beer being handed to you. At about midnight they pulled out a few bottles of liquor that we were all doing shots from. Graham really took a liking to this Dutch liquor and drank more then his fair share of it. Anne and I had to carry Graham back to her place because he could not even function enough to walk back. All in all it was a great party with a lot of great people.

Were heading back to Amsterdam Wednesday morning and we are going to spend the day there until we catch a midnight train to Barcelona where we will be spending atleast 4-5 days.

Paris To Amsterdam

Our last night in Paris was definitely one of my favourite nights here. We did a walking tour through Paris and learned quite a bit. We met a few Americans and a few Canadians that we hung out with after the tour. We all grabbed some wine, cheese, meats and baguettes and headed down to the Eiffel Tower to eat. It was a nice spot. After that we went back to the hostel to drink in the basement but there was a live band playing so we decided to grab some wine and head back to the Eiffel Tower for the light show they put on every hour at night time. We ended up getting pretty drunk because we made a drinking game that coincided with the lights of the Eiffel Towel so the wine disappeared pretty quick. After the wine was gone we headed back to Aloha Hostel and drank some more wine and beer from the vending machine. Created a new drink called Leffie Juice that is a mix of Orangina and wine. At about 3 am Graham and I headed back to our Hostel to try and get a room but it was booked so we went across the road and slept in the park. We woke up freezing so went back to our hostel to warm up and have some breakfast.

We went to the train station around noon to buy a Eurorail pass to save some money over the next month or so. We grabbed the train at 3 to make it to Amsterdam for 8PM. It was a connecting train and of course we missed the second connecting train because we don't speak french and couldn't make it to the next train in time. We had to then find our way through a series of other trains and arrived in Amsterdam at 10PM. Anne didn't make it out to meet us so we grabbed a hotel on a side street a block away from the Red Light District. We went for a quick walk through the Red Light District and its the real deal here! "Coffee Shops" everywhere and ladies (not sure they really qualify to be called ladies) in windows half naked ready to be purchased for a good time. I'm not sure if it's an Amsterdam thing but our room came with 2 cats. Tarzan and Jane. They came and went as they pleased through the window. It was pretty awesome!

Just woke up and had a quick breakfast in our hotel and now were off to meet Anne to do a Canal Tour and a Tour of the Heineken Brewery. Might also go see Anne Franks house.

Homeless in Paris..... Almost!

We took the bus from London to Paris today. It was a 10 hour trip in total including 4 hours on the bus, 3 hours on the ferry and then another 3 hours by bus. We arrived at 10 PM with no where to stay so we thought we would take the subway towards the Eiffel Tower and find a place to stay but while we were trying to decipher the ticket dispensing machine because we know next to nothing about the french language, a random guy from Ivory Coast told us that he would take us to a cheap hotel because it would be too expensive near the Eiffel Towel. So we made the excellent decision to go with him and take his word. He seemed pretty Legit because he spoke french and english and apparently lived in London but had family here in Paris. We got on the subway for free because he snuck us in the exit. He took us to a part of Paris called Chateau Rouge. Sounds like a nice place but little did we know. We were in the ghettos of Paris and trying to get into sketchy hotels but they were all booked. After we saw one drug deal go down we decided we should probably walk towards a safer area. We must have checked 15 hotels while but had no luck because its the end of school or something so everything is booked up. We ended up talking to a local that sent us in the direction of a hostel so we arrived here around 1230. With our luck it was totally booked so we had to wait till 2AM to see if there was any cancellations. Luckily there was a few cancellations so we just got some rooms. Heading to sleep now after a long tiring day of travelling and looking for a place to sleep.

London Was a Whirlwind But Still An Awesome Time.

This post is 1 day late because the netbook died just as I was about to post it! So here it is!

I'm laying here in my hostel bed at 1:08am listening to the 2 other random guys in the room snore like 8 year old girls! Pathetic! Graham and I just got in from a great day in London! We arrived by bus at 7am and started wondering around London soon as we got some breakfast in us. We saw a few of the major attractions such as Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, The London Eye and a few Museums. We started drinking Sapporos from the local chinese conveinence store and got a good buzz on before heading off at 8 to meet the wonderful Cristina Ferriera (a friend of ours through Mike Drzazga). She took us on our own mini pub crawl to some of her favorite pubs and bars around London. Mind you, some how we ended up at a gay bar for our first round of drinks but none the less it was a good time. We must of went to 6 or 7 bars/pubs before Cristina had to catch the 12 o'clock tube (Britains term for the subway). After Cristina left Graham and I decided it would be a good idea to waonder a bit before heading back to the hostel. We ended up getting free passes to get into a high end dancers club if you know what I mean. We went in and instantly the ladies were after our money. They were very agressive and wouldn't take no for an answer until about 20 minutes passed and they realized we weren't spending any money in there other then the beers we grabbed.