Photos
Even though we had internet access in Greece, it wasn’t wireless, so we couldn’t use my laptop which means it’d be a pain in the ass to try and post pictures. And so in the spirit of not paining ourselves in the ass, we didn’t post any of the photos we took. Here they are now though, pics from Zurich-Athens-Santorini, and even one from Strasbourg. The order in which the photos appear is inspired by actual events.
Freitag store in Zurich entirely made up of shipment crates. They specialize in different types of bags/wallets made out of recycled tarps and other industrial material.
Showing overall support of the European championship in Zurich..
From the Acropolis in Athens
Our place in Santorini (building to the left)
Cathedral in Strasbourg
Riding an ATV at breackneck speeds of up to 30 MPH
And some random moments..
Our room in ferry from Athens to Santorini
Bathroom and shower in the ferry
About to drive our dirty clothes to the laundromat, the traditional Greek way
Hanging out on the balcony with a big, nasty, cheap plastic 2 Liter bottle of wine that we never got to the bottom of
Last days in Greece..
Today is our last full day in Santorini, tomorrow night we fly to Athens, and then about 14 hours later, fly back to Zurich, and then take a train to Strasbourg where we will stay with a couchsurfer for 3 days, and then to another couchsurfer in Paris for 2 days. We have been just waking up late and spending most of the daytime at one of the beaches here… Our room is pretty far from most of the central touristy places, and that’s really nice. It’s really quiet at night and we don’t run into any other tourists as often as we do when we’re near the beaches. We rented an ATV today and basically went up and down the entire island, and ended up in a pretty secluded red sand beach on the southern coast. It was nice to to have to wait for the bus to go somewhere (which may or may not come when its supposed to), and it was really fun to drive the ATV, even though it only got up to about 35mph.
Ouzo for the louso.
We got a free ‘welcome shot’ of ouzo at the ‘bar’ in our ‘hostel’ in Athens… and it was pretty gross… it’s like some kinda’ clear Jager with a strong, long-lasting aftertaste. But it was free.
Crazy last day and a half. We went to get on the ferry to Santorini expecting the worst, and it turned out to be nicer than anywhere else we’ve stayed. It was less like a boat, and more like a hotel that happened to be going where we needed to go. The room was pretty small, but not claustrophobic like the train couchettes…and we had our own bathroom with a shower, and fresh sheets/blankets, and chocolate on our pillow. There were also a few restaurants and a gift shop, which were surprisingly all pretty fairly priced. I guess it helps to have extremely lowered expectations going into situations like this. We meant to wake up at 630am to watch the sun rise, but that of course didn’t work when it came time to actually wake up. Oh well. Will definitely update with pictures of the ferry-room, Santorini, and other random junk in the next few days.
The Canadian part of Chicago.
Apparently there was some national public service announcement in all of Canada sometime prior to this month, urging all travelers to stitch Canadian flags onto their bags. The reason is understandable, but I would think that you could trust in your own personality and behavior and not have to rely on a little label to avoid problems… because we’re not wearing any flags, and didn’t last year and had absolutely no strange run-ins or problems anywhere… knockonwood.
At this point this trip is feeling very different from last year, which is a good thing. The hostel in Nice was great, but was basically 80% Americans and the rest split between Canadians and Australians…which is fine, but it sorta ruins the experience. After Nice however, we stayed 2 nights in Geneva with Titus, a very last minute find on Couchsurfing (its an online community of people offering their couch for a night or two to travellers). It was nice to talk to someone local and get a different perspective/opinion on everything. And now we’re staying with our friend Thierry in Zurich, who we also know from the internet (have known/talked to online for years, so its not as weird hahaha) …and its very nice to have a little guidance in a new city and to avoid touristy shit. And now some random pictures from the last two weeks…
Our hostel in Nice, the explosion of clothes and random stuff was courtesy of the two drunk American girls.
Beach in Nice on a super windy day
Me enjoying a tire-on-a-spring in Guell Park in Barcelona.
Can’t get enough of the picture-esque-ness in the old part of Nice.
Our home for two nights in Geneva with our Couchsurfing friend Titus. Their kitchen was in their living room, which also happened to be our bedroom for those two nights.
These waves is crazy.
I’ve seen weather.com be slightly off before, but never like today. Their forecast for Nice for today was Cloudy with 90% chance of Rain… so we were basically planning on not doing a whole lot today. It was basically the sunniest/warmest/nicest day we’ve experienced so far in Nice, and maybe in Europe alltogether on this trip. We spent hours on the beach, swam, got pretty burnt, and as of about 8:15 PM there’s still not a gray cloud in the sky. So fuck weather.com for failing to do the one thing that they’re there to do.
The waves here are pretty crazy compared to the ones we experienced in San Sebastian. They’re a lot more unpredictable in size and frequency….which, in non-scientific terms, means you get knocked on your ass unexpectedly all the time. At one point we were just floating around in the waves when one of them basically lifted me up and threw me back onto the beach. It did the same thing to Adri later, but when she tried to stand up, another one knocked her down, and then another one came over on top of her after she fell.
I didn’t take too many pictures at the beach today mainly because chances are someone’s toplessnes or ass would end up in them…and I don’t want to look like one of those people.
Ooh-la-la
Back in France now, Nice to be specific. I heard an old woman on the tram say ooh-la-la and mamma mia! one right after the other, which I guess makes sense since this town is so close to the Italian border. Seems like a pretty good place so far, its a bit bigger than I thought, I was imagining it more like San Sebastian, where you could walk from one end of the town to the other (the center anyway) in a half hour. Parts of it feel a lot like the older neighborhoods in Paris, and a lot of the buildings are old and colorful, kind of like in Rome. Haven’t ventured out to the beaches yet because of the weather, should be warmer tomorrow so we can hopefully do that. The water is a 10 min walk and a 15 min tram ride from here, but since our hostel is on a hill, we can see it from our window. Onto some pictures now, some of these are from Barcelona, and the rest from Nice.
Here is a sampling of some of the fine dining we do whilst on our trip..
At the train-station in Montpellier waiting for our next train:
The cacti at Guell park in Barcelona. I later realized that I had dozens of little needles on my arm/hand from taking the pictures. Apparently they work just like in cartoons.
View from the top of the hill where Guell park is.
And the rest of these are from walking around Nice today.
My favorite picture from this trip so far:
Patch of asphalt that evidently gets soft quite often, and also people with different tires like to drive over it.
Ting-a-Ling!
Our first hostel in Barcelona was sort of in the suburbs, and it looked sort of like this:
And inside the room, to quote one of our roommates, “Is like a Banana”..
In one of the metro stations, we saw what was the biggest vending machine I’ve ever seen:
Later in the evening, in our suburbs, we went up to this hill park from where you could see the whole city:
A few people from our hostel who came with us:
Aaand a rusty old scooter:
Night Train Pt. 2
Got to Barcelona safely… the night train wasn’t bad at all. It was a bit weird at first because the “room” really has just enough floorspace for one and a half people to stand, and six beds (2 stacked rows of 3 bunks) instead of 4, like I thought it would be. Once you got into your bunk though, it wasn’t any different from a regular bunk bed, and was pretty spacious. The little pillows they give you were about an eight of an inch thick…I don’t even know why they put that in there, it’s like a little tease. I tried to get some photos of the couchette, but there really isn’t a good way to take a photo that would be comprehendible unless you took the train apart, so you’ll have to use your imagination and/or take my word(s) for it. Here are, however, some other photos from our last days in San Sebastian:
Our 4 bed home in San Sebastian, where we actually only had roommates for the first night… and we really only paid to be in a 6 bed. Very Nice!
The beach called La Concha at night, when the tide would draw back an insane amount and you could walk right out to where the water was a few meters deep only hours earlier.
It’s-a-me!
We do laundry on the last day of each city so that we move on carrying clean clothes, and so that we don’t have to do laundry on our first day in the new place when we’re exhausted as it is. The weird part about this place was that the lady who owned it left for her siesta about half way into our procedures, she closed half of the store down with an automatic garage door and just left… weird. These days one average sized load of laundry costs us about 10 Euros, which is about $17-18.
The weather getting all apocalyptic on our last day there… Completely dark clouds on one end, full, bright sun on the other. Don’t be makin’ no sense.
Night Train
We´re about to take an overnight train to Barcelona from San Sebastian…it takes about ten hours to get there, which is only because they don´t have the high speed trains here. If you look at a map of Spain, the two don´t really look that far at all. Will report back tomorrow with impressions of how the train sleeping was.
Some Photos
It’s really impossible to show some things through photos.
A few photos from Paris..
Some shots from San Sebastian
Fancy standing in San Sebastian
Click to view panoramarama below.
