James, Leah and I had been waiting for ages to escape the Spanish heat by having a swim on the north coast at San Sebastian, but as luck would have it, it was the one overcast day! We only had a few hours here, so started off with some sightseeing. We randomly wandered into ‘Plaza de la Constitucion’ where a local brass band was playing and people were dancing. It’s so neat to come across things like that which fill the place with such atmosphere! We had a look at the waterfront and climbed the big hill, Monte Urgull, which presented [View Full Entry]

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1 town: Pamplona; 2 colours: white and red; 3 days and a whole lot of carnage! We’ve made to Pamplona for the San Fermin festival, Leah and I came prepared, and James has just brought his ‘whites’ ready for the opening festival tomorrow. We’ve met up with Leah’s friend Dan and the four of us are starting the festival the only way allowed: trying some of the local sangria, which is actually quite good! Day One of the festival - The Opening Ceremony - if you can survive today, you can survive anything! Leah and I were woken up early by [View Full Entry]

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Every trip seems to have an overriding theme, unfortunately, its starting to be quite apparent that this trip is going to revolve around transport, and perhaps the lack of it. First stop of the day was to Madrid’s train station to join the long queues to sort out our trains to Pamplona… but the return trains were all fully booked… so we reverted back to our trusty buses instead - better than a bridge collapse I suppose. Now with half the day already wasted, we could finally start our sightseeing… We spent a couple of hours in the ‘Museo del Prado’, [View Full Entry]

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With a bit of touch-and-go, Leah, James and I finally made it to Valencia, and hadn’t missed out on the all important America’s cup race - thank goodness for no wind! We’ve even managed to re-gig our itinerary so we can stay for Tuesday’s race. After actually getting here, the first place we wanted to see was ‘Port America’s Cup’ and headed straight for Team New Zealand’s base with its enormous NZ flag flying proud. After a bit of a goose chase, we found ‘The Woolshed’, where apparently all the kiwi’s hang out to watch th [View Full Entry]

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Day 1 of our two week trip across Spain and Portugal… Leah and I set off from London to rendezvous with James in Barcelona, Spain. We’ve got a jammed packed itinerary, so hold on to your hats and enjoy the ride…. After major delays in Heathrow and in arrivals, Leah & I, and our bags were finally in Barcelona, and were surprised to see James still waiting to meet us at the airport ... some time after mid-night! Feeling a bit more refreshed, we started the following morning by going straight to the city centre, dropping James off at the pub [View Full Entry]

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Carlo, Jimena and I headed up to Cambridge for the weekend as an escape from London and to see more of England while we’re here. On the way in the city centre, we found a farm show at the park which we had a good look around before dropping our gear off at the only backpackers in town. We had organised a walking tour around Cambridge, starting off at The Eagle, a pub where top academic minds would come together over pint and discuss / nut out their latest theories and the lab where Ernest Rutherford, a great NZ physicist, spend [View Full Entry]

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Mix: one round of double Gloucester cheese one extremely steep hill, preferably muddy one group of kamikaze people Release round of cheese at top of hill, wait one metric second before adding kamikaze people, cheese should reach 70mph. And there you have a recipe for disaster.. I mean, what could possible go wrong?? Haha everything!! Which is really funny when you’re standing on the sideline! Also the number of ambulances at the bottom certainly proved his is not for the faint hearted! It was a ‘welcome to the UK Dean, people are crazy over here&rsquo [View Full Entry]

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The next two whole months were spent in London… well... almost (had to have a couple of excursions out of the big city in the following blogs) Beth and I had our reunion with the friends that we’d made during our tour through Turkey. My mate Dean from Uni arrived a few days later and I therefore put on my tourist guide hat and showed him around the main sights of London... starting at Oxford Street and Hyde Park of course! Matt and his flatmates had an awesome idea of having a wall party. Object of the evening: painting a wall [View Full Entry]

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Zürich, our last stop for this trip, and probably just as well since Leah and I were starting to run out of zing. Our hostel was located in the middle of what seemed to be the main café and restaurant area, and more cobble-stoned streets which seem to make everything just that much more authentic. We climbed the mass of stairs up to our room, and both decided to have a rest for 15 minutes….an hour later we ventured outside to see the beautiful and vibrant Zürich. The River Limmat dominates the whole city, cutting the centre in two. It seems [View Full Entry]

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Leah and I didn’t think Bern would have that much to offer, but we both fell in love with it instantly! We were so intrigued by our bus journey to our hostel, we just wanted to get out and explore this beautiful and quaint city! Our hostel was located just beside the River Aare - what a way to enter the old city! The aqua river was lined with large trees and old Swiss houses, and lead us to the cobbled-stoned streets of central Bern. Leah and I felt like we really had gone back in time, as if nothing had [View Full Entry]

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