The end has come. 90 days of living out of a backpack. Same clothes. Different routine. Every day for 3 months. Over 1200 hours. 12 countries. 13 languages. 2 continents. And 5 currencies. Living the life of traveling the world while staying in hostels - some sketchy, some pretty cool. The languages and terrain constantly changed. We experienced the foods, the lifestyles, and immersed ourselves in the history of each place we visited. It was a long road that once seemed to go on forever. One that we never wanted to end. The 6 overnight trains. 11 separate flights. And the [View Full Entry]

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Just our luck. The weather immediately turned to the better as we stepped back on the mini cruise ship/ferry as we returned to Athens for our final days. I owe it to the Greek gods. The sun came out, but it was still a bit chilly. Good thing it didn't rain though as the umbrella was left behind. The city is not what I would have expected. It's not exactly a nice city to look at, but the archaeological sites led us not only on a journey through the landscape but through time as we witnessed the legacy of Europe's greatest [View Full Entry]

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We flew into Athens on Oct 30 to some misfortune. It was cold and rainy and we found ourselves at the luggage claim belt a bit longer than expected. The belt was empty and Ryan's bag didn't appear. So while we were already tight on time, we had to put in a claim and then run to the metro, which we just made. They actually had to reopen the doors for us. It was about a half hour ride to the Port of Piraeus where we scrambled through the rain to purchase our tickets and find the ferry. It wasn't hard [View Full Entry]

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It's amazing to think that we were walking around a city with more than 2500 years of history. Old ruins stand next to modern, present-day buildings, cafes line every street, and scooters zip in, out, and around traffic. There are fountains, monuments, or columns at every turn. You can never get bored in this city as there is always something to see and explore. We missed our first train in the entire trip by mere seconds as we tried to connect to Rome from Cinque Terre. Our train was late to arrive as was the ongoing train to Rome. We ran [View Full Entry]

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Cinque Terre. Five Towns. A UNESCO protected national park along Italy's northwestern coastline. We arrived to this rolling, green hillside from Florence leaving the rain and cold weather to be welcomed by warm, bright sun and blue skies. The train took us through tunnels along the coastline until we arrived at a village in the hills. Literally in the hills. Riomaggiore is the first of five towns that make up Cinque Terre, and it also served as our home for three days. As mentioned, we arrived to gorgeous weather and hiked through the tunnel and up, up and up to our [View Full Entry]

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I didn't think we would ever make it. Our exit from Seville began before the crack of dawn to make our way back to Italy. We flew to London Gatwick and bored ourselves for over 6 hours during our layover before landing in a chilly Pisa. We were there. It took 16 hours. But we were there. Our bus driver never informed us of our stop so we took the loop on the route and almost ended up back at the airport. A few hours of sleep later we were in the Campo dei Miracoli enjoying the Leaning Tower of Pisa [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Seville via train without a hostel reservation. We´d tried to find something online from Morocco, but things weren´t working out smoothly and we didn´t wish to waste our time in an internet cafe, so we decided to just swing it and find something when we got into town on the 13th. Well, Columbus Day is a bit bigger here and not only did they have the 12th off to celebrate, but also the 13th so Spaniards had a four day weekend...and lots of them went to Seville. From the train station we called numerous hostels, only to be [View Full Entry]

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The waiting was well worth it. After a few flight delays and a trip northeast to Barcelona before we could fly south, we were there. We finally landed in Africa. Morocco. The northwestern tip of the continent. The airport was small, immigration was packed, and the taxi haggling to "la madina" (city center) had begun. We arrived to the famous Djemaac el-Fna Square and were overwhelmed with what was going on. The place was packed. Women were covered from head to toe peering out at us from behind their veils. Some older women proudly displayed their tattoos on their faces signifying [View Full Entry]

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Sunday morning we arrived to Madrid from Barcelona on the last overnight train of our trip. We liked Madrid better than Barcelona immediately as all the signage was in good ol' normal Spanish (the written anyway, we later enjoyed listening to the spoken form...lisp and all) AND the metro was attached to the train station rather than three blocks away as it was in Barcelona; however, due to some health issues on my behalf, we were off to a slow start. After a fever, headache, complete weakness, and congestion, we made it to the hostel and I slept for hours on [View Full Entry]

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We arrived from Nice, France via Montpellier to Barcelona after a full day on the train and waiting in the station. At first, we were excited to finally speak spainsh again but soon realized that the Catalonians speak their own tongue. It´s not a spanish that we heard before, seen written before, or even studied before. The foundation is the same, but it´s just different. Weird. At first, we were thinking that our 11pm arrival was late and were surprised that so many people were out late on a Wednesday night. Then we remembered perhaps one of the greatest innovative advances [View Full Entry]

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