Long time....

So it has been quite a few days since we posted last. I think the last post we were in the South of Spain. I guess I will pick up from there.

We headed to Madrid for a night where Joe and I both got the revelation that we are WAY to old to stay in hostels. We are always the first ones to bed and the first ones up in the morning. And the fact that we are married puts us way over the hostel age limit...

Next we were greeted by our Kiwi friends in Barcelona. Where we spent the next three days together. We were lucky to find a hotel in Barcelona as I guess Barcelona is a happenin' city. We laughed alot and spoke ALOT of English, which was very refreshing. It is nice to have friends who will act as stupid as you do...ha ha ha. This was a great way to celebrate the halfway mark of our trip.

Yesterday we trained to Nice, France and stayed the night and now today we are off to explore Italy. Our first stop in Genova, Italy for two nights. We cant wait for some good Italian food!



This is the place we stayed in Barcelona with our friends Strahn and Racheal. It was called a Pension, but we have yet to find out what Pension really means.


This is down by the water, we had stopped for a snack and became fascinated with the dirty fish below.


This picture may not mean much but it is quite funny. We were down by the port and they had this huge mirror, so we were there for about 30 min. acting stupid and taking multiple pictures of ourselves as people watched and wondered "what the heck are they doing?"

Rock of Gibraltar

Today we traveled to the Rock of Gibraltar, which is a peninsula in the south of Spain controlled by the British. It was a lot of fun as we hiked up the rock and got to hang out with the Barbary Apes that live on the rock (the only wild monkeys in Europe). The monkeys did not seem to mind that we were around...as one came up to me grabed my leg then reached up and pulled my rain poncho out of the side pocket of my backpack. Kinda crazy!!

The pictures from the Rock of Gibraltar.

Totally Outta´ Control

Our trip to Marrakesh, Morocco was totally outta control. Joe and I dont even know how to start this blog, bc the things that happened and the experiences are hard to put into words. So we will do our best. First off I think we need a little defining of some Moroccan words:

A Riad- is a traditional Moroccan house or palace with an interior garden. Recently there has been a surge in interest in this form of house after a new vogue of renovation in towns such as Marrakech. Many riads are now used as hotels or restaurants and make a peaceful break from the hustle and bustle outside.(This is the type of place Joe and I stayed)

Medina- (حي, مدينة) is a distinct city section found in many North African cities. The medina is typically walled, contains many narrow and maze-like streets, and was built by Arabs as far back as the 9th century CE.

We started our trip at the South of Spain in a city called Algercias. We were up early around 4:30 to catch a ferry that took us across the Straight of Gibraltar and into Africa. This ferry ride took us about two and a half hours, this was our first crazy experience as we were the only Westerners on the ferry. Once the ferry docked we were now in Tanger, Morocco.

From here we needed to get to the train station for our train to Marrakech. As we walked out of the port we were immediately swarmed with taxi drivers trying to get us to get into THEIR taxi and they wanted to charge us about 10 times too much. With much negoation we were able to get a fairly priced ride but the driver tried to convince us to let him give us a tour of the town for just a bit more money....yeah right.

And here leads us to one of our crazy Morrocan stories: (told by joe)
We trained 10 hours (bought 1st class tickets which only meant we had a seat not so much that it was luxury). We arrived to the train station in Marrakesh after dark and a million men outside the train station doors wanted to be our driver. Between the train and ferry we had just traveled over 13 hours and I not in the mood to barter so we got taken. We paid him 140 dirham (or about $18 USD, which we learned later the trip should have cost us about $2 USD). No big deal we just wanted to get to our hotel, right?

Well, I had made reservations online for a place called Riad Shaden in a traditional neighborhood in the Medina. First, I didn´t understand what the Medina was and I definitely didn´t have a concept of what it was to be in a traditional neighborhood in the Medina. A Medina refers a distinct city section traditionally the Old City which I believe are found in many North African cities. The Medina typically is like a walled fortress area. The streets are very narrow (which cars can not travel down). The streets are filled with vendors selling everything imaginable from live chickens to bottles of Coke and are packed with people, bikes, motor bikes, donkeys pulling carts, everything!!!

So, when our taxi pulled up to the Bab Aylen gate (one of many gates into the Medina) and stopped I thought the taxi driver was trying to pull a fast one on us. I told him I wanted to be dropped off at my hotel (not a very crazy, maze like fortress gate with no other tourists or for that matter anyone resembling a westerner in sight). He told us that we just need to walk 200 meters straight down the main road which was more like a tight alley with hundreds of native Moroccans loitering around...some selling meat or fish, some selling grains or figs, some having tea and smoking. The taxi driver then said we needed to take a right then a left and we would be at our Riad (or hotel). Seemed a little sketchy to me because to put it bluntly it looked like he was dropping us off in the middle of a Arab ghetto. Not exactly where two very American young people want to be dropped off at night. So some guy told the cab driver he would walk us to our Riad, this meant that we would have to pay this man for walking us...but I guess we didn´t have too many options. So after we walked for about 5 minutes following some man we didn´t know through streets with people staring at us like we were aliens we walked down a very, very narrow dark alley and ended up at a giant red door that was in the wall of the alley. The door opened and we stepped into paradise. Safety and a warm glass of mint Moroccan tea awaited us inside our Riad. I guess I should have researched what a traditional neighborhood was going to be like!!! I felt like we really got a true Moroccan experience.

I didn´t explain but a Riad is something like a mansion build into the walls of the Medina. They build them with a courtyard in the middle that typically had fruit trees and flowers. This way Muslim woman could be outside under the sun without covering their entire body.

These are the gates when entering the Medina.


This is the dead end alley where our Riad(hotel)was located.


This is Joe at the door to our safe haven-Our Riad.


This is at the center of the Medina at night. It was lively and crowded.

A day in the life...

We traveled from Lisbon to Faro (Algarve) to Seville to Algeciras

The Hotel Reina Cristina in Algeciras, Spain

Ok, so yesterday we reluctantly left our seaside resort near Lisbon, Portugal to attempt to travel to Algeciras, Spain. I say ¨attempt¨because the train does not connect the southern part of Portugal to the southern part of Spain. So, we had to leave our trusty euro rail trains and switch to a bus for a section of the trip. This is not that big of deal except that the bus schedules we researched online were not complete or accurate so we were traveling kind of blind...not really know where we would end up that night or what our final destination would actually be. This is how the day went...

4:30am - wake up

5:10am - checked out of our hotel and on the road (literally) because the bus in Cascais does not run at 5:10am so as we rolled our bags through the cobble stone streets of a very still quite Cascais we woke up every dog in town. So, if our bags rolling through the street didn´t wake everyone up...the dogs surely did.

5:35am - arrive at local train station and board train to travel from Cascais to Lisbon

7:00am - arrive in Lisbon and metro to another train station

8:40am - leave Lisbon on a train heading south to Faro, Portugal

12:00 - arrive in Faro and head to the bus station, buy our tickets and find out the next bus to Algeciras, Spain does not leave until 4:00pm

12:45pm - go to the local McDonald's to use their bathroom

1:00pm - find a Internet cafe and search for a hotel for the evening...decided to stay at the Internet cafe for a bit as it provided refuge from the 80 degree weather (which is nice except Ashley and I both were wearing jeans)

3:45pm - arrive back at the bus terminal and head for Seville, Spain which is where we needed to transfer to another bus headed to Algeciras.

8:00pm - arrive in Seville, Spain where the bus driver takes Ashley and I along with two gentleman from Mali to a city bus stop and gives us directions on how to get to another bus terminal across the city where we can find the bus that will be traveling to Algeciras (mind you the directions are all in Portuguese...the sun is setting...we have never been in Seville in our lives...good thing we have the two guys from Mali with us...because i was hoping they knew what the heck we were doing).

8:30pm arrive in another part of Seville and to a different bus station where we boarded a bus to Algeciras (I don´t have a clue how we got there we just followed the guys from Mali that didn´t speak a word of English)

11:58pm arrive in Algeciras which is a port city (from Algeciras you can ferry across the strait of Gibraltar to the continent of Africa). We walked around looking for our hotel for about 20 minutes before Ashley convinced me we needed a cab. We flagged down a cab who took us in the complete opposite direction we where walking to the Reina Cristina Hotel...which happens to be a fairly nice gated compound with palm trees that line the long driveway to the hotel...which after a long day traveling was a nice surprise.

Joe is having major hair trouble so....

we are asking America to vote, which hair-do do you prefer?
a. Joe Cool
b. Crazy Jose
c. The Hat
d. The Comb-over
e. or should he just shave it all off...

Resorted to a Resort

We couldnt find a host in Portugal so we resorted to a resort. HA HA HA

So this is the story, we really could not find a host and saw an amazing deal on the internet so we decided to go for it. We are just ending our time in Cascais, Portugal about a 45 min. train ride for Lisbon. We have enjoyed our time on the beach and in the sunny weather. It is hard to leave. We are leaving tomorrow for Morocco and let´s just say it will be interesting. We not really sure how the train/bus system is going to work. So we are kind of flying by the seat of our pants. Now for me, this makes me very uneasy, but for Joe it is just another part of the adventure.

More Pictures
The first two are just of the Cascais area and the third one is of our hotel.

One Month Down

ONE MONTH DOWN: We have offically been traveling for one month and here are the stats:

1 sketchy host
8 sweet hosts
9 countries
6 curriencies
1 creepy hostel
1 welcoming hostel
1 super small hotel room
1 room in a apt. building-not a hotel but not a hostel- it is called a pension
12 games of phase 10- I, Ashley, am in the lead
3 duck dinners
and multiple packs of these delicious chocolate cookies

So for all of you Rugby fans out there, the World Cup is here in France and is going on right now. So our first host in Paris( we stayed with two hosts in paris) invited us to stay a day longer to watch France vs: England in the Semi-finals. This is a huge game because france and england beat new zealand and austrailia to get to the semi finals which were huge upsets. So we lugged all of our belongs back over to Gilles house-the guy who cooked us duck- but little did we know that Gilles was a bit confused and there wasnt even a game that night....we laughed alot about this. So instead of watching the Rugby we played this board game called Spices from Around the World. It was hilaroius. It was a game of trade, but you actually had to smell different spices and try to figure out what they were. We decided this might be better than Rugby.

We are leaving Paris today and are heading for Portugal. This is going to be a long train ride about 20 hours.....I am not looking forward to it, but I will get alot of reading done and joe and I can play multipe games of Phase 10.

Here are a few pictures to enjoy.

1. The is at the Palace of Versailles in the Gardens. This is where Marie Antoniette lived with Louis the XVI, if you have seen the movie I beleive the Garden scenes were filmed here. The Gardens may be my favorite sight yet.

2. Our second host family, they also had a 9 month old baby-Joseph- but he was in bed. We think they could have walked right out of a JCrew magazine.

3. We had pizza with them one night and it had an egg on top so we had to take a picture to show all of you.

4. And here is our final night in France plying a Spice Game and not watching Rugby.

Paris

1. A warm chocolate covered waffel - our european diet isnt really working.
2. On the Eiffel Tower at night enjoying the view of Paris
3. The Eiffel Tower at lit up at night
4. Gilles our host (who is a professional musician) sitting down to a dinner with us of duck leg; duck breast steak; mushrooms; potatoes; red and white wine; 4 types of cheeses; french bread; salad; and pumpkin soup. We woke up with big bellies.

Pictures of Berlin

1. The Holocaust Memorial: very overwhelming as you walk into the cold; grey; cement-like tombs.
2. Holocaust Memorial
3.Brandenburg Gates
4.Berlin Wall

Berlin in a day and now in Parieee

Okay, so Joe and I both know that Berlin deserves more than one day but that is all we had before our host expected us in Paris. Although we were only there for a day we felt like we made the most of it. We did a three and a half walking tour, it was free too!!!!!!! Then we managed to see the town on our own. Here are a few of the neat sites we saw: Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Holocaust Memorial-this is my fav site so far on the trip, Hitlers Bunker where he commited suicide, Parliment-which was super sweet bc it was built when the wall fell and west and east Germany joined together, and many ww2 historical sites. Oh and we stayed at a clean and cool hostel....brownie points for joe.

Pictures to come.....

Prauge Pictures

The first picture is Joe next to a HUGE church near Parliment.

The second picture is of a famous walking bridge. The Charles bridge, it was built in the 1300's. Our hosts house is only a few blocks from this bridge.

And the third picture is our sleeping quaters right in the middle of Prauge. YES!!!!

Prauge- the coolest

So everyone needs to google Prauge on the internet, bc it is the coolest city ever! We arrived here yesterday and was greeted by our host-who reminds me of my dad-he informed us that he would be leaving for the next 4 days and that we could have his flat all to ourselves. We are right in the middle of the city and are staying in a flat that was built in the 14th century and it even has a wash machine, we are in heaven!!!!!!!! It really couldnt get much better. Prauge is great bc alot of the city was not destroyed in WW2. Prauge is also said to have the best beer in Europe...hmmmm. Today we walked to see parliment and saw the changing of the guards. I think that i like the arlington cemetary changing of the guards better but i may be a bit partial. Tommorrow we are going to the Jewish Quarter of the city, I am very interested to see this part.

Livin' like Hippies

Life on the Road:

Our laundry is long past over due- joe has turned his underware inside out, not once, but twice

we go days without showering

and we have no home,

BUT are enjoying every bit of it.

Here are a few pictures of our time in Bucharest, Romania:
The first picture is of me sleeping in the 6 person train car on our way here. Why joe wanted to post it, I dont know. Tonight when we leave for Prauge we are going to stay in a two person train car, so we will have it all to ourselves.

The second picutre is of "The Peoples House,"( a bit ironic) the dictator that I mentioned in the previous blog built it. It is the second biggest building in the world, right behind the Pentagon. Now it is used for Parliment.

And the thrid picutre is of our hosts. Irina made us a tradational Romanian meal, polenta and cheese. yummy.