After we arrived by bus in Marseilles we sought out and found a hostel named Vertigo. A nice place, but very expensive at 24 Euros a night. After arriving, we spent a few hours wandering around the city, mostly in what seemed to be a North African immigrant neighborhood. We were reminded very strongly of Morocco by the street vendors, touts, atmosphere, and mint tea. Marseilles as a whole seemed to me to have character, despite boring and fairly unpleasant buildings and an almost complete lack of parks, monuments, and other niceties we enjoyed in Spanish cities. I ended up liking [View Full Entry]

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Our night bus brought us to the city of Nimes early in the morning. We originally missed our stop, and were let off a mile or so from the station. We had found a hostel in Barcelona, and so we took a bus to where we believed it to be. The bus however had different opinions, and we ended up 2 or 3 miles from it and downhill. We arrived at the "L'auberge de Jeunesse" sleepy and tired, but after a short break left the empty and boring place and went to explore Nimes. We had originally chosen Nimes because it [View Full Entry]

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Barcelona was yet another amazing city in Spain. My first impression was that of a fashionable place filled with art and stylish clothing, and my time there pretty much confirmed this. Of course, there are other sides to Barcelona. I spent my first day there, after arriving late the night before at my hostel "Gothic Point" (named for the Gothic district) walking around on my own. I ended up visiting the southwest section of the city, a large hill covered with museums, gardens, restaurants, and a massive modern castle/fortification. On my way there, however, I apparently walked through a bad [View Full Entry]

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Our stop after Granada was Valencia, a city we had heard only good things about. Unfortunately, when we arrived we discovered that everything we had heard was somewhat misleading. Valencia turned out to be an decent city, but lacking anything really special or riveting. In addition, from the moment we got there something just felt off to me, and I ended up just not enjoying the time spent there. We ended up only staying a day and a half. There are only a few interesting things that I can talk about regarding Valencia. In the bullfighting arena they had a bazaar [View Full Entry]

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Well, its time for another update, only several weeks delayed. Granada was in many ways the best place we have visited so far. But I will start from the beginning. We got up early on Wednesday the 5th to catch the 12:00 bus to Granada and meet Katie and Elizabeth (The two Americans I met in Seville.) We made it and began a three hour journey across Andalucia, through which Yohei napped and I chatted with the girls. As we talked, I noticed that the entire time we drove all the land in sight was cultivated in the same manner with [View Full Entry]

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After disembarking from the ferry in a small town named Tarifa we took a free bus to Algeciras, a small city located next to Gibraltar. Unfortunately, we did not have time to visit the Rock itself but instead saw it from a distance, looming imposing on the horizon. From Algeciras we decided to go to Seville and so hopped onto the next appropriate bus. Our time driving by the coast of Spain was pleasant, with warm weather and picturesque wind power plants turning slowly on green hills, but once we got off the coast it began to rain and we saw [View Full Entry]

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I have discovered that waking up at 6 AM is always a mistake. The idea, originally suggested by Abdullah of Auberge de Jeunesse, was to catch the 6:50 train to Tangier so that we could arrive by midday. This turned out to be foolish, as even though we managed to catch the train we were so exhausted by the time we reached Tangier that after finding a hotel, the "Promenade Palace," we turned in until 6 pm. The one good thing that came out of the whole affair was the sight of Venus in the morning sky, closely conjuncted with another [View Full Entry]

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Our second destination was Fes, one of the biggest cities in Morocco. We took a train there, which was a ride of seven or so hours from Casablanca and not very expensive. We were able to get a good look at Morocco, and I must say I am impressed with how beautiful it is. Long flat vistas of green, dotted by picturesque towns and grazing herd animals, watched by young boys or men with sticks. Where there were hills, they were similarly smooth and green, and despite the complete lack of clouds in the sky for our entire visit the land [View Full Entry]

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My trip began on January 25th, 2008, a month after finishing college in upstate New York. I had, through several unfortunate and uncontrollable occurrences, failed to apply in time for the job I had been coveting and so decided to take the opportunity to travel for as long as I possibly could. The goal is to travel for a year, using up most of my savings, then return in time to apply for the JET program once again in November of 2008. I am accompanied by a Japanese friend named Yohei who I met in college, and weighed down with only [View Full Entry]

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