Fire!

3/17 - 3/20

Fallas is probably the pyromaniac's dream festival. Hundreds of huge paper, wax, wood and polystyrene constructions are built up around the city. Every day a ridiculous number of fireworks and firecrackers are let off and on the last night everything gets exploded and burned. A 5-storey polystyrene sculpture going up in a tower of fire is something everyone should be able to see at least once.

Couchsurfing Montserrat

3/14 - 3/17

Didac replied to our last-minute couch request and gave us a place to stay before the start of the Valencia Fallas. Didac's a really nice guy, a teacher who loves his work. We realised how lucky he is to have work at all when we heard that unemployment in Spain had topped 50% for people aged 16-24. Terrassa is just 20 kilometres from Barcelona but we didn't really spend much time in the town itself; Montserrat and climbing were our goals. Thanks to the Oatmeal for helping me check that that semicolon wasn't misplaced.

Gaudi Barcelona and The Ring

3/7 - 3/13 + 3/29 - 4/3

Got drunk on 1 Euro wine and had fun chatting with fellow travellers a few times in Barcelona, which was great. Don't drink much these days, believe it or not, especially when unemployed (Montenegro being the only other occasion that comes to mind).
The street performers are fun and the overall ambience of La Rambla is great. Nice place for a stroll. We spent quite a lot of time in Barcelona, almost two weeks in all, hanging out and sometimes just killing time. Good place for it.

Naples, or 'Margherita heaven'

3/4 - 3/7

Naples was surprisingly filthy. Rubbish everywhere and tons of people just hanging out on a Sunday afternoon, discarding their wrappers, cups and plastic wherever they were standing. Nice atmosphere though. Lively. Naples is famous for its food so we made sure to hunt out one place that appears in all the travel guides. 'Da Michele' is renowned for taking the 'no nonsense' approach to pizzas to its extreme. Margherita and Marinara pizza are the only two items on the menu, and the ingredients listed for both are the bare minimum required. You take a scrap of paper from the guy on the door and wait outside on the pavement with everyone else until enough seats are free.

Piano di Sorrento, Amalfi and Capri

3/1 - 3/4

We took the train to Naples and the Circumvesuviana line to Piano di Sorrento. Met a Neapolitan (not the ice cream) on the first train who was both really friendly and helpful and rather upset we weren't planning to spend any time in Naples. So we promised to return later.

Anyway, the place we'd booked on the strength of ridiculously good reviews on TripAdvisor was a slightly too expensive B&B run by the super enthusiastic and excitable Rachelle. She was so happy to be hosting someone Japanese, apparently because of the love her father had for the place when he was the captain of a ship. She got steadily less enthusiastic and excitable each day we stayed, which we can only hope was due to something other than our presence. She was very helpful though, and loaded us up with more sightseeing information than we could process.

Rome and pope country.

2/28 - 3/1

All the Colosseum shots with us in them were blurry or otherwise screwed up. I like this one though. Rome is a great place, and I think both of us wanted to spend some extra time there, but we got kicked out of our hotel and went to Piano di Sorrento in a huff.

Burnt Siena

2/26 - 2/28

I have fond memories of dozing in the sun at the sloping piazza in Siena, and the place is still much as it was then, if a little larger than I remembered. The signs saying 'no sleeping' and 'no eating' might be new though, but no-one was paying them any attention.

Florence: Gold, conspiracy theories and ice cream

2/23 - 2/26

Very slow train to Florence. Florence is alright, I suppose. I'm sure it's a fascinating place if you're interested in religious renaissance art, but I'm no more enamored of the place than I was 10 years ago. Having said that, by skipping all the boring art galleries we were able to see more of the city itself, which is quite nice in places. The Ponte Vecchio is now famous for its goldsmiths after all the butchers were cleared off it for the visit of some lord or pope. We spent a while looking for rings there, but found that one manufacturer had pretty much bought up all the shop fronts still open so they all sold the same stuff at inflated prices. Although we didn't find anything we liked we did get a few helpful pointers about comfortable fits from one of the few remaining independent goldsmiths.

Not-a-wedding party!

Still 6 countries and several months to catch up on, but we've been getting everything ready at the last minute for our grand not-a-wedding party in the UK. This world tour is done, but the party is just getting started.

The Carnevale

2/17 - 2/23

From Amsterdam to Milan by plane. So excited by the funghi porcini pizza, but we got sick of eating pizza all the time soon enough! The duomo is the biggest gothic cathedral in the world, 600 years in the building, and the surroundings also featured guards dressed like M. Bison (aka Vega), which was a definite plus.

Overhaul

The problem with keeping a blog going for almost 8 years is that there's a lot of old html code and clunky formatting left lying around. Today I did my best to update things and make navigating around the archives easier and I think things are better now.

One weird bug that's come up a lot is the text of old posts getting whited out. The text becomes visible if you highlight it and I've corrected a dozen or so instances where I noticed it happening, but please let me know if you come across any blocks of text still obscured.

Yes, I know there are lots of other reasons to visit The Netherlands...

2/12 - 2/17

...but one of the main reasons we're travelling the world is expose ourselves to different cultures and broaden our horizons. When it comes to drug culture most Japanese are so blinkered that really, it would have been wrong not to experience as much as possible in our short time there, right? Responsibly, of course.

Anyway, our bus from Prague was first heavily delayed, then broke down halfway so after a long wait we had to transfer to another bus at stupid o'clock in the morning. We finally arrived around 5pm the next day and were too tired to do much other than find the riverboat hostel we'd booked, get connected in the wonderful central library and sleep.

No puns in the Czech Republic please

2/8 - 2/12

Prague was a little warmer than Budapest, albeit still covered in snow. We initially checked into the popular Chili Hostel, which turned out to be a horrible dump. We weren't expecting great things from a 20-bed dorm room, but one combined shower/toilet room between 30+ people? Please. We moved to a hotel masquerading as a hostel shortly after.

Buda and Pest

2/3 - 2/8

We arrived in Budapest without a plan, but since we'd heard we could book hostel rooms at the tourist information office we weren't too worried. We found the tourist information office just before they closed, only to be told they 'don't do hotel bookings', contrary to the business card I had in hand. After a quick bit of internet searching they did give us a list of potential hostels to try out, but after an hour or so traipsing around in the snow and dark we realised that the first two places they'd recommended didn't even exist!

A big helping of Croatia

1/24 -2/3

Leaving Montenegro we soon arrived in Dubrovnik. The same guy that greeted us in Kotor was waiting (for us?) in the bus station and not having any better options we accepted the lift to his home near the city wall. Dubrovnik is all about the wall and what a wall it is. In all our travels through Europe we saw a lot of impressive walls, but we've yet to see one that tops Dubrovnik's. It's not just the wall itself, it's the seaside cliffs, the moat/canyon that's now a road, the red roofs and the chunky architecture that all combine to make the wall special.

Heavy-drinking in Montenegro

1/21 - 1/24

First impressions of Montenegro were not so good. From Shkodra to Ulcinj, then to Budva, which I can only describe as an empty off-season party town. The old town was alright, but even that had been rebuilt after an earthquake and was rammed with tourist shops. The only real highlight was the heavy-drinking red-nosed fisherman Adrovic whose home we stayed in.

Albania

1/15 - 1/21

First impressions of Albania were pretty good: Very casual border control, an offer of directions in Gjirokaster and even a 3,000 leke loan from our chosen B&B since the old town money changers were closed. In fact most of the old town was closed, and a fair few of the listed buildings' roofs were caved in, but the stone-roofed building, cobbled streets and huge castle made the hilltop town quite attractive in a cold way.

Skipping the Oracle at Delphi

1/12 - 1/15

I left my laptop - oops, sorry 'netbook', on the bus to Delphi. Resigned to never seeing it again I was very surprised when it came back on the same bus six hours later!

The temple of Athena was cool and free, the Oracle already closed and quite expensive. The beautiful scenery was much more impressive than the ruins anyway.

Encounters in Athens

1/9 - 1/12

Athens was an interesting experience for us. Having tried and failed to Couchsurf in Athens and a few other towns in Greece we were surprised when an Athenian host used a new Couchsurfing feature and contacted us to offer a couch, even though we hadn't sent him a request. In other words he had logged on to Couchsurfing, saw a list of people looking for couches in Athens (a list we had opted into) and decided to invite us to stay.

Multi-pitch Meteora

1/5 - 1/8

So we checked our maps, checked the times, bought a ticket to Larissa from Istanbul leaving at 16:30. We figured that if the bus arrived in Athens around midday we'd get to Larissa in the morning, find onward transport to Meteora and everything would be shiny. Didn't quite work as planned.

Istanbuuul!

12/30 - 1/5

In Istanbul we stayed with Metin and Yasemin, another wonderful Couchsurfing experience. They treated us like family, and assured us we'd always have a home in Istanbul if we were to return. Really, it's hospitality like that that made our stay in Turkey so special. For New Year's Eve a few of their friends came round, we all got very drunk, a few us a little stoned and a good time was had by all. Chilled.

No Turkey in Turkey at Christmas

12/24 - 12/29

So apparently Turks only eat turkey at New Year, and despite being all excited at the pun I didn't plan ahead and couldn't find any turkey for Christmas, oh well.

Evan and Gamze's party was awesome, as was chatting to a couple of other culture-crossed couples. There seemed to be a surprising number of similarities between Turk/American and Japanese/Brit culture clashes, as both Japan and Turkey are quite traditional and conservative when it comes to marriage.

Pamukkale is amazing.

12/23 - 12/24

Inspired by Jami's remarks about Pamukkale we decided to visit it and we're very glad we did. A truly amazing place, one of the most beautiful, bizarre natural wonders we've ever seen. Walking up toward the big white fluffy mass on the horizon we had no idea what to expect. Passing through the ticket barrier we were confused by the order to remove our shoes 100m further down the path. The ground was freezing cold, with a thin layer of icy rainwater running across it, but as we progressed along the travertine the water warmed up to the point where we our feet weren't painfully numb any more and we could appreciate the vistas that opened up.

Kalkan, Kas tries and Fethiye isn't given a chance.

12/15 - 12/22

Having never travelled with a mobile phone before I was all excited at the prospect of the extra connectivity that the phone given to me by Simon in the UK would provide. After three messages sent over the course of a day failed to arrive at Altan's phone until an hour after we were meant to meet I was less excited, but resolved to buy local SIM cards everywhere we went. That's worked out OK for us so far, as some countries give them away and local numbers are much cheaper to use. In Turkey however, we got royally ripped off for the card, and two weeks later got disconnected for not registering our phone.

Turkish delight #1: Ayran is good for the gut.

12/12 - 12/14

Turkey was full of unexpected delights, though we didn't much care for the lokum. Before we even got there we had plenty of adventure, looking for a midnight tram that didn't exist in central Manchester, dozing until 4am in a quite corner of the airport until woken by some astoundingly noisy staff skiving off work and finally taking off in a broken plane that had to circle Manchester for 5 hours to burn off enough fuel to land, get fixed, refueled and take off again. During that last escapade the passenger next to us was utterly terrified and even cried "How can you sleep?" at us at one point, but we were both too shattered to worry.

Pirates and zombies

Reunions!

So many people to see, so much time to see them in. How did we manage to make it seem difficult? I don't seem to have a single picture with James, Jonny, Bano, Emma or Iain in it either, which sucks.

And then we spent 5 months in the UK.

I have no cultural commentary or observations to make here.

Tel Aviv and back, back in the U.K.K.K.

6/19/2011 - 6/23/2011

That title seems dated and implies the UK is horribly racist. Perhaps I should have thought of a better one, but it is kind of catchy.

Haifa, Hadas and Sruli

6/11/2011 - 6/19/2011

Our penultimate stop in Israel was an idyllic ten days at Hahotrim kibbutz with the wonderful Hadas and Sruli. The kibbutz isn't really a kibbutz so much any more, at least not in the traditional sense, with most of the people there working outside the kibbutz and just pooling some money for communal resources.