Don't forget your drugs. (NSFC)

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Since the last time

First off, apologies for the time span since the last update. Internet connectivity has been surprisingly shitty in places ranging from Barcelona to Rome. It's partially Windows 8 being stupid. I won't bore you with the technical details or why I haven't changed my OS yet but suffice it to say that it's all Bill Gates' fault. Gimme money, Billy. Surprisingly, Croatia/Montenegro connectivity has been very good so far. Even on this small island of Hvar, my throughput is pretty damn good. More on Croatia/Montenegro later.

Second, you'll notice that rather than fucking around with trying to artfully insert pictures into the following text in any strategic or meaningful way, I have just provided hyperlinks to my google drive that contain folders with all the pictures we have taken so far. I tried and tried and I have failed. Or this site just doesn't want to allow me to have modern internet standard formatting. Sorry, Savage.

We parted ways with Rory and Arndis at the airport in Marrakesh, as they were heading to Madrid. We'll see em again in Iceland in June. We left Morocco and flew a weird budget-ish airline based out of Barcelona called Vueling. We waited until about a week before flying to book the flight, which was a terrible move. Even for a budget airline it was still $200+ total for both of us. Whoops. If you ever find yourself travelling for an extended period of time, try to know where you're going at least two weeks in advance. It will end up saving you lots of money, even flying shitty-ass RyanAir or EasyJet. There is something to be said for spontaneity, but there is also something to be said for avoiding the destruction of two $100 bills in a fire because you didn't think at least a little bit ahead.

Having had zero booze in Morocco for eleven days, we immediately spent eight or so euros on a couple glasses of wine (as our, as well as I'm sure most other passengers' livers collectively rolled their eyes) and a charcuterie board on the flight. Leave it to Europe to class up a cheap flight with a meat board on a plane. We weren't complaining. Back to Europe and €8 sandwiches.

Spain

We spent a few nights in Barcelona before heading down to Valencia for Las Fallas, an annual festival held in the early spring. If you didn't click that link, allow me to explain. Each neighborhood in the city builds large (sometimes giant) wooden sculptures that, at the end of the week, the entire city votes for one of them as the winner. They burn the rest. We could never quite discern the entire history of the festival, or the symbolism behind the burning of the sculptures, but suffice it to say that it was magnificent. Another point of interest: there are children setting off a range of small to very large fireworks randomly, in public, at all hours of the day. I respect the locals, but goddamn if it didn't get annoying having the shit scared out of you a couple dozen times a day.

We then headed back to Barcelona. Barcelona was our favorite Spanish city. It just has everything goin' on. Fan-fucking-tastic hostels, friendly service people, delicious tapas, and truly unique architecture. We stayed in a hostel called Hostel One Gaudi or something to that effect. Part of a chain of Hostels in Spain and Prague. We will definitely be staying at the one in Prague.

France

We decided at this point to buy a Eurail pass. These passes allow you to take trains on most lines with most carriers all over Europe. With a little research, you can reserve seats on a fast train a day or two in advance and, because you have the Eurail pass, just jump on and off where you please. Or you can take the slower regional trains (sometimes with a billion stops along the way) and not have to reserve shit. The one that we bought works for two months, with ten days of travel time. This means that the pass is valid for two months, and for ten of the days during those two months you can jump on basically any train you want and go as far as it will take you, if that's what your heart desires.

We headed from Barcelona on a regional set of trains up to Nice (Nice!). It took about 16 hours on the regionals. We couldn't take the fast trains because a) there wasn't a fast train to Nice without having to take a regional at some point and b) the french air traffic controller strike was happening so all the trains were sardine cans due to a lack of flights. It was fun standing on a packed train for three hours with 20 kilos (44 lbs) of backpacks on my person.

Nice was pretty great, although the off-season finds a lot of places closed until probably late April or May. This was to be the story of our lives in a lot of places for the coming weeks. We'll be coming back through France later, so this was the only place we visited so far.

Italy

Cinque Terre. This place is a trip. Old, picturesque, filled with amazingly warm Italians and delectable pastas. It is a small collection of villages on the Italian riviera connected by hiking paths. Up until the 19th century, walking was the only way to traverse between these bad-ass little towns. Rindi was here about thirteen years ago and says the place has changed a lot. She says it used to be much less popular, with maybe a few tourists around and nothing open past 9pm. Now, even in the "off season" there was an ass-ton of tourists and there were at least a few bars open until midnight or 02:00. I wish I could have experienced it when she first did. The beauty of the place seemed diminished somehow by all the tourists demanding some sort of quaint Italian countryside experience and all the feux camera shutter sounds drowning out the sounds of the crickets. I guess I'm one of them, though, cause my camera makes that same noise and I wanted something different from the cities, too. So it goes. Check out those pics, though. This place is worth it, even with the human density equivalent of a white dwarf star.

We next went to Firenze (Florence) but not before first stopping for an hour and a half in Pisa. Cause ya gotta, right? That whole sloppily-constructed tower thing they have there, ya know? It really does have a wild juxtaposition relative to the ground on which it sits. I refused to do the poses, as you can see. It just made me feel dirty. It's worth mentioning at this point that there is a new face in these photos. We met this American named Chance on the train to Florence/Pisa. He, much the same as Rory and Arndis from our earlier adventures, had mainly the same itinerary as we did for the next week or two. So we adopted him as another travel buddy. He is from Utah and is kind of a big deal there, from what I can glean. I actually have no idea about that last statement. He has been teaching English in Spain for the last few months and was doing some traveling before heading back to the states in a couple weeks.

On to Firenze... during Easter! In the country that invented Catholicism! Whoops again. This city is exquisite. I'm really going to need a pocket thesaurus while describing all these cities in Italy. Anyway. Other than the fact that there were six point seven million people in the streets everywhere, I found this city fascinating. I am going to have to come back here. You can practically feel this city oozing it's own history. I am going to have to come back here and read every placard posted beneath every work of art and listen to every dorky Rick Steves walking tour mp3 I can get my hands on. There simply wasn't enough time to see all the stuffs.

We took a train to Rome after only a couple days in Firenze. Some of you know whats coming. Shhhhh, don't spoil it for everyone else, asshats.

I find myself writing on a blog about what its like to be in Rome. It is what you'd expect. That being said, I can't do it justice. It is an incredible city. I kept finding myself thinking "This was the capital of the known world for a long time. Like, a really long time. So many people have lived and died here. Wars were fought for the ground where I am standing by people whose names I've known all my life. Our current civilization was shaped, for better or for worse, in some way or another, from this spot (or near it). I have no idea how to feel about this."

The ancient buildings are fantastic. The newer ones (still old) are crazy. The Vatican is obnoxious. The dude that lives there is pretty cool, though. From what I know about him. He needs to melt down all the gold in that place and sell it to help fix the social issues he keeps talking about, though. The Colosseum is still there and they de-gilded that place hundreds of years ago.

Then I broke my face. Admittedly, I was slightly inebriated. Ever seen those big doors with the smaller door embedded within them? Well this particular door was arranged in the aforementioned configuration. The small door was open. You have to step over the bottom of the bigger door. I did not do this. I tripped and landed on my face, lacerating my lip into two pieces and breaking off a large chunk of one of my front teeth. Don't forget your painkillers. We went to the hospital the next day where I received a consult from an Italian doctor who decided that my lip did not need stitches because it had already closed up well enough.
"If I give stitch, you scar much more badly than if no." Roger that, doc. We then walked practically next door to see the dentist. They man-handled the remaining tooth, took X-rays to make sure I hadn't fractured the dumb thing up into the root and sent me on my way.

Bill for both medical professionals and two X-rays: €0. $0. Fantastic. We went to another dentist the next day and he took another X-Ray and then put a new fake tooth-piece on for €142. $161. He even matched the stained, blotchy inconsistent coloring of the tooth next door. I love Italy.

OK I'm done writing for the night. Next time: Croatia/Montenegro and probably Hungary. Maybe even Prague, too, depending on how reliable the internet is/how motivated we are.

Good night!

Jordo

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