Janielle
Jan and Danielle Joined: May 31st 2008
Logged in: August 15th 2008
Logged in: August 15th 2008
Travel Blog Posts
2 days left!!!! Well we thought that this day, or week, or time would never come. We just kept telling oursevles that we have lots of time left on our fantastic adventure and that it really would never end. Alas, the end is near, this is not to say that we are excited about returing. We have 2 full days left, then our flight home is on the 18th, when we arrive in Calgary at 7pm. But we'll catch you guys up on the trip up to that point. We moved on from Porto to Santiago de Compasilo in Northern Spain. Porto seemed beautiful, but because I (Danielle) was sick, we didn't see much of it. Although we did try some port...all medicinal of course. Santiago is an interesting town. It was recomended to us by ... read more
Hey all, So, we wrote a blog earlier to catch everyone up on our travels but as soon as we pushed published, for some reason, all was lost. That was back on the 3rd. So now begins the somewhat painful task of catching up since before that. Jan and I have agreed that we would do best just to summarize: (July 30, 31, 1) Malaga: Shit Hole. (August 2, 3) Seville: Great City. (August 4) Night Train from Seville, Spain to Lisbon, Portugal (August 5, 6) Lisbon: FANTASTIC CITY. Great two days. (August 7) Porto: Expected it to be a shit hole, but its not! Like what we have seen, although that hasn´t been much, as I am sick with some sort of throat cold. Should pass in a couple of days....I am hopeful. Tomorrow we ... read more
Ok, so ever since we picked Valencia as a travel destination, I was super excited because we read in our travel guide that Valencia is home to the ONLY Vatican-recognized Holy Grail! When we found that out we had visions of our own monty python-esque skits of trying to find it. But I get ahead of my self.... We arrived from Barcelona in the late afternoon, which ment that it was a scortching 35 degrees when we got off the train. But our hostel was easy to find, so we didn´t spend too much time in the heat with our big bags. Walking to the hostel we saw some of the old town, which looked really interesting, but we decided to leave it until the next day to explore. Instead we walked to a park. This ... read more
Hey guys, we have free internet again!!!! Something that we didn´t expect, so we made sure to take some time and write another blog. So we last left off in Zaragoza, and have since headed to and finished our stay in Barcelona. It is a pretty amazing city, everyone who hasn´t been you should mark it down on your list as something to see. We got to our hostel no problem after a 5 hour train ride from Zaragoza (no problems this time). Now Jan and I were really looking forward to getting to this hostel in particular solely for the fact that it was called Hostel Lenin! Yeah, that was totally for you Courtney, I know its not Stalin, but it was the best we could do. It turned out to be sort of mediocre, ... read more
We last caught the blog up while we were still in Bordeaux. Since then we have crosed the border into Spain! Our last month will be spent seeing what we can of the Iberian Peninsula (we are still trying to work in a couple of days in Portugal). Our first stop was Pamplona. Yes, this is where the bulls run. No, we did not see them run. We had the option of Bastille Day in France or the running of the bulls in Spain, and we chose France because we could get accomodation in France. Our trek accross the border was not without its own difficulties though. We actually got a train that took us to the French side of the boarder. From which we had to catch a "connector" train to the Spainish side. The ... read more
We are sorry that us wayward travellers have been unable to update all of our readers. We do have a good excuse, we have been very busy, and internet in southern France is quite expensive. We left off in Italy. We had left Genoa, which was of not much consequence mostly because we spent most of our time on the beautiful coasts of Cinque Terre. Two words Stuning Beauty! But backt to getting to France. We were trying to leave on July 7, which was a Monday. We woke up that mourning bright and early to catch the earliest train to France. To our great surprise we were informed that there was a National Italian transit strike, for both trains and city transit starting at Monday at 9 am shape..... Great, so our early train to ... read more
Venice! SO COOL! Did you know that Venice is made up of 117 islands? It makes sense, doesn't it, that a city famous for its nurmerous canals that those canals carve up the land into islands? But I hadn't ever thought of it that way. So, every bridge Jan and I walked across was fun because we were crossing over to another island by just walking over a bridge! The canals do make Venice a special place, and the buildings which loom over them are enchanting. The city itself is surprisingly dead, in that there are more tourists than there are Venetians now. More and more of the old buildings quickly fall into disrepair, and charming old back streets become errie. It is sad to see it now, for what it once was, especially at night. ... read more
Rimini, which was our stop prior to this one, was nice, but a tad bit too hot for our blood since it was situated right on the coast. With this proximity to the ocean the city was extremely humid. We arrived off the beautifully air conditioned train to enter the swealtering heat, a scortching 38 degrees which even Danielle was not excited for, and ever since then we have been dripping in sweat at all times! Rimini is nice but quite a change from Florence, it was much hotter, near the ocean, and catored to a far different breed of tourists. Instead of loaded tourists, honeymooners, and art enthusasists from North America, we found Italians and other Europeans looking for some sun on the very crowded but really long beaches of Rimini. This meant that though ... read more
We left off in Rome heading to Florence. The train ride was very enjoyable, we got to see and watch the beautiful countryside wash by us as we sped on to Florence. Tuscany really does match the romantic notions that we have had instilled in us by Hollywood. Florence is really a spectaclularly city. It has a killer city scape, and where we are staying has a brilliant vantage of the city. We are staying at the Camping Michealangelo. It is a nice, cleanish place. Our first night was very pleasent we had run into some travelers we had met awhile back and had a great time drinking cheap wine and catching up on our adventures. We retired to our tent, which was modest but had a lock on it, to find that during the evening ... read more
As the saying goes all roads lead to Rome. We left off on our way to Rome from dirty Naples, and we have now visited many, but not all of the great sights that the marvelous Rome has to offer. When we got into Rome, we went to our hostel, which we found out to be a large camping installation. It had a full bar, restaurant and very nice swimming pool. However, we had booked rooms in the 16 bed dorm. Our travel compaignions were able to get into the much more private female dorms that boasted a key to their door. We on the other hand did have a sheet that brought some privacy to our °room° (hovel). It was slightly better than we thought, instead of a room with 16 beds in it the ... read more
