Tsunami Sara
Sara Smith Joined: September 7th 2009
Logged in: July 22nd 2010
Logged in: July 22nd 2010
Travel Blog Posts
It's about 7pm here and in the wee hours of the morning Kuba and I will be heading back to the states. We're equipped with wine and cheese and planning on just staying up until 4am when we head to the airport. I hate flying, but especially with awkwardly large bike boxes. I can't believe I've been gone for three months. It seems like I left so long ago. Rome was nice but I wish I would have came here towards the beginning of my trip. It's pretty, but a lot of things about Italy have lost their novelty since I've been here. The cobblestone streets, insane traffic, teeny espresso cups all seems normal now. I keep trying to remind myself I won't see these things anymore after today. It's pretty hard to sum up a ... read more
Today Kuba and I took our bikes to the bike shop and had them packed up into boxes. It's a sad day :( On the other hand though, it was already a pretty uneventful ending to our bike touring. We were so close to finishing 1000 miles that we decided to just go for it and bike through Rome. Yesterday morning we woke up early and set out for the finish despite the rain. On the way we ran into a bike protest to raise awareness about climate change. So of course we joined it and and rode our bikes around the piazza while they yelled stuff through megaphones. After riding around for awhile we were all pumped to finish our bike tour. So we started riding away from the city and got onto a path ... read more
Kuba and I stayed on the olive farm in Piazza Armerina for a week helping to pick olives and do other random things. Like at the other farm the description said that they don't eat much meat but they actually ate meat all the time. For the most part it wasn't too bad because Sicilian food has more spice, which I like. Usually when I travel I try hard to not turn my nose up at the local food. I eaten some strange things in my days, including piranha, pretty much an entire octapus (more on that later), and salivia-fermented corn. But I finally met my match. One night the mom brought out bean soup. Fine, I like beans. It had pork in it, which was alright with me. But when she sat the bowl down ... read more
Ah! It's been so long since I've written I don't even know where to start. We finished up the olive harvest in Pisa and got to watch the olives be pressed into olive oil. It was pretty exciting and they sent us home with a jar of our own handpicked olive oil! It was so strange though, the olive oil is kind of spicy when it's first made. I think I'll miss it so much at home because I don't think I'll be able to find fresh pressed olive oil. From Pisa we made our way down the coast by bike to Naples. It was my unfortunate choice to spend the night in Rome on the way because I thought it would be less expensive. We planned to take the train one stop out of Rome ... read more
Wow it's been awhile. We've been biking almost every day since Florence in some pretty remote parts of Tuscany so it's been hard to find time to write. Biking through Tuscany has been an interesting experience. On one hand the food is amazing and everywhere you look there's olive trees and fields of vineyards turning yellow and orange. But on the other hand those "rolling hills of Tuscany" are not quite what I pictured. They're actually more like little mountains with roads that run straight up and straight down them. We found this out the hard way on our first bike trip from Florence. After finding a fill-your-own bottle wine shop we began to plan the next few days over too many glasses of cheap wine. Some point in time, somehow, we decided that we should ... read more
In action up the alps
We've been in Florence for the last few days, and I'm sad to leave this morning because it means biking every day again. Not that the biking itself is bad, just that our lack of planning causes a panic every day at 4pm about where we're going to stay that night. It always seems to work itself out though. Florence was really nice, though it rained yesterday. We visited the statue of David (what a teeny weiner!) and went to the Uffizi art gallery yesterday. Wish I was more into art because the guidebook said it would take a whole day to look at everything but Kuba and I blew through it in an hour and a half. Such uncultured fools. More interesting though, last night Kuba and I tried Florence's speciality bistecca alla fiorentina. Pretty ... read more
The last week has been so crazy! Kuba and I have been biking almost every day. After Ferrara we went to Bologna, which was nice but pretty uneventful. Besides all the meat! So much meat! Their speciality is ham, and we spared no little piggies. We also visited a place that strangely reminded me of an Italian Horseshoe. This bar has served only alcohol, no water or food (people brought their own), since the 1300s. It was also slightly trashy, so we fit right in! From Bologna we went through Modena and Parma, where we continued to eat like beasts. Modena is where balsamic vinegar comes from and Parma is where they make Parmasan cheese. I thought I would loose weight biking and everything, but I think I might come back obese instead. All these biking ... read more
Kuba and I met in Berlin a few days ago and I was reunited with my bike! We took a 24 hour train ride down to Venice from there. It was...interesting. Apparently I booked the wrong ticket for the overnight train so instead of beds we just had chairs. The next morning I woke up not feeling well at all. I hadn't been feeling well all week, but suddenly it was way worse. I threw up so many times into the nasty train toliet. When we got to one of our stopovers in Milan Kuba gave me some nausea tablets he got from Poland. They were black, and when I ate them they turned my entire mouth black. So, I take a drink of water to rinse my mouth out. But I was so sick I ... read more
and we never got caught with them...or so we think
We made it through Romania and came back to Budapest this afternoon. I never thought I'd be so happy to be in Hungary again. Romania was the most interesting country we went to, but only because of its challenge and bizarreness. The people in Romania were very nice and helpful, but the policemen were a little odd. Again today on the train back we kept getting asked and asked again for tickets or passports. They would disappear with our passports, which made me uneasy. One policeman began questioning us where we went in Romania. In the middle of me listing off all the places we went he abruptly stormed off with our passports. At one point when they were asking, yet again, for our tickets the Romanian woman in the cabin with us said something snarky ... read more
Wine in Eger
Last night we left Budapest and took a night train to Brasov, Romania. I didn't expect things to be so different here, but they really are. The night train was alright, kind of cramped but the bunk beds were better than any of the hostels we've stayed at. Jessica and I were watching a movie on her mini-computer when the cabin door flung open and a train attendant sharply demanded something in another language. Everyone gave him their passports and tickets for inspection so we did too. About an hour later the door flung open again and another train attendant asked for passports, but this time only from Jessica and I. He took our passports and wrote down information from them. I found it pretty alarming because it was a different person, which means they're keeping ... read more
