August 12, 2012  

Portugal – Days.. I lost count… but its the end of the road :(

The last leg of the trip post is a little late but better late than never right?

So, the last week in Copenhagen was devoted to exam writing, paper writing and thesis writing and the worst was saying goodbye to everyone 😦

Orest and Lindsay (who met up with us in Amsterdam) left on the 2nd, Chirag left on the 3rd and Darcy and I travelled to Portgual on the morning of the 4th.

I should correct that… we were supposed to travel on the morning.. and for the first time in my life, we actually missed our flight. I was up at midnight talking to my Mum to let her know we were off to Portugal for a 6 am flight. I had the intention of getting up at 3 , finish packing and we would head to the airport at 4 am. At 2 am I was still awake, praying to at least get an hour sleep. I got up, did some yoga (don’t ask…) and went back to bed…  all of a sudden it seemed too light in the room… and I leaped out of bed… at 5:53 am…. DAMMIT !

Both of us set alarms and nothing.. we figure we weren’t meant to get that flight. So after booking a second flight with EasyJet (Norwegian didn’t give a rats ass that we missed our flight) and taking a train to Faro Portugal, we arrived at our destination, 13 hours later than planned.

Faro was beautiful, it was a nice little town and we stayed at Blablabla Hostel (yep that its name). Francesco and Noelita were super nice and the place was small but had a very homey feeling. I preferred it over some of the more mainstream hostels we stayed at in other cities. We liked it so much we stayed an extra night ! Our first  day there we went to Praia de Faro and had a nice beach day. The next day in Faro we just walked around the town and had sangria and ice cream (when on vacation, you can have whatever you want, that was my Grannie’s rule anyway !) Apparently Faro is a real touristy area but compared to places we have been too, it didn’t feel at all touristy.

I heart Faro!

I heart Faro!

We then travelled up to Lisbon on train and stayed at the Independente Hostel. Again, this one was pretty new and they had these really neat triple decker bunkbeds and the swankiest lobby for a hostel we have ever seen. Everyone there was really nice, it was a shame we were only there one night. For the day we took the ferry from Cais de Sodre to Cacihas, then took the bus to Costa De Capricia. I really liked this beach, ya it was touristy but it was a really nice beach, the water was pretty calm and there were lots of options to eat and drink.

Customary Picture of Feet on the Beach

 

For the last two nights (last night for Darcy) we stayed at the Dom Pedro Palace, which I got a super good deal at through bookings.com. It was so nice to be in an actual hotel again with our own shower  and clean towels and everything. Darcy had an early flight at we set three alarms and two wake up calls (thanks Darcy’s Mom!) and I was alone for my last day in Lisbon.

I walked a heck of a lot around Lisbon, from the Estrella Park, down to the downtown area with the shops, up to the look out point and then over to the Castle (Castelo de San Jorge). Apparently Lisbon is the city of Seven Hills and I’d believe it that it was the city of a hundred hills.. whew it was a good workout. At the end of the day I treated myself with a pasteis de nata, yum!!

I really loved Portugal and definitely will go back there again when I can. I was surprised that Portugal was the first place we were at that had actual recycling bins like we do in Canada (go Portugal!) but I was really sad to see that there was so much grafitti. It really detracted from the prettiness of all the architecture and the cities. I guess it used to be like that in the UK back in the ’80s and we visited there my Dad said he was afraid to stand still or he’d get spray painted.

I can’t believe this whole journey is over, it seemed like a long time when we left in June but it just flew by. There are some things I would have done differently but all in all it was a fantastic trip and I’m so happy that I got a second chance at thirty-something to do a trip around Europe. This trip has made me appreciate even more of what I have and realized how much more there is out there. Also, you appreciate the simple things. The best things in life are:

1. A Hot shower

2. A Cold Beer

3. Fun times with good friends

August 1, 2012  

Of course I have to post this (after all we are all just a statistic…)

The Internet Travel and Social Media
Infographic by- Funsherpa.com Experience Gift Company

July 31, 2012  

Amsterdam – Day 46 – 48

It’s all getting a little bittersweet.

Our last destination as awkward threesome (with company) was Amsterdam.

We arrived on Thursday night and our hostel, St. Christopher’s Inn at the Winston which was right on the edge of the Red Light District… so of course we had to tour around there first. Saw some interesting stores and I was surprised that the girls in the windows didn’t look as ‘scary’ as I thought. Actually, many of them just looked so young and innocent I find it hard to believe what they do for a living.

I was hesitant about Amsterdam as all you hear about is weed and the red light district, but there is so much more to the city, it is quite beautiful and has a very unique history.

Morning in Amsterdam

On our first day there, Orest and Lindsay went on canal tour and Darcy and I went to the Anne Frank house. This is a must see for any one travelling to Amsterdam. It’s definitely a moving story and it’s amazing to actually be in the place where they hid. I can’t believe they couldn’t make noise or go outside for two years. It is a sad story of course but very inspiring as well.

Then in the afternoon we did a bike tour with Joy Ride bikes (thanks very much to Chirag for letting me go on the trip since there was only room for four and he’s done the bike tour… didn’t think he had any chivalry left since he took my bunk bed 🙂 ) Our tour guide was awesome, she is originally from the states but has been in Amsterdam for 13 years so had a lot of good stories to tell us and advice on places to go and see.

So we decided to play foodies for the weekend (and make our friend Rae proud ) The first night we ate at a restaurant that served amazing steaks and stew and had a million side dishes. The best was the potato croquettes which were like fancy tater-tots. Not so good, was the leeks with cheese… but at least it had cheese. I can’ t remember the name of the restaurant though :(.

The second place we ate at was called Moeders and wow, the food was delicious. I had the ribs and it was a challenge getting through them all. The restaurant is really quaint, it is covered in pictures of people’s mothers and all the tableware is mis-matched because it is what people brought with them on the opening night. The last night we ate at the Pancake Bakery which was oh so yummy… there are sweet and savory pancakes and they are the size of a large dinner plate!

On Saturday, Darcy, Chirag and myself did the canal tour. It is a great way to get an overall picture of the city. The city itself isn’t too big so if you aren’t keen on bike riding (which btw it is insanity on the busy streets to ride a bike!) you can definitely walk to all the major sites. We did notice a theme though, over the course of the trip we were in the vicinity of the Anne Frank house at least five times.

Amsterdam at Night

That evening we met up with another MBA student Fil who is working at the Canadian Embassy in the Haag. He also had some very interesting stories (I believe he’s living in a frat house with 10 other guys…. so you can imagine) And of course Fil hadn’t seen the red light district so we had to take him on a tour of the area. You aren’t allowed to take pictures of the girls, but I took a picture of the area in the evening and it is really actually pretty in its own weird way. Also a must do on the list is to go to these Jenever drinks place (I think its a dutch liqueur) called Wynand Fockink. Its hidden down a side alley way (thanks to Lindsay for spotting it!) and they have all sorts of different appertifs. My favourite was the quarter to five, another popular one was the ginger.

On our last day Lindsay and Orest had to catch an early flight so Darcy, Chirag and myself took a leisurely stroll down to Vondelpark which is huge! We caught a bit of a reggae/jazz band before we had to make our way back to the hostel and then catch our flight.

We realized when we landed in Copenhagen, this would be the last time we would fly into the city together…. I can’t believe it is almost over !!

The gang at the I AMsterdam …thing

July 23, 2012  

Paris – Day 40 – 41

On Friday (my birthday woo-hoo!) We took the metro to St Paul and walked around Marais. If you like to shop this is an awesome area. Also, there are lots of different kinds of food places and the bakeries smelled amazing. Then we walked towards Il-de-Cite and Notre Dame. There was a huge line up so we didn’t go inside. From there we walked (whew, we did a lot of walking!) to Jardin du Tulliries and the louvre. Chilling in the garden was so nice, especially since the sun started coming out!

Notre Dame, Paris

Then we toured around the Lourve for a bit and I got my art nerd on. We ok in one section for getting in for under 26, but in the other section the guy wouldn’t let us in without date of birthday ID (fyi its free for those under 26).  My friends are awesome and surprised me with a birthday cake when we got back to the apartment, then we went down the street for a birthday dinner. Unfortunately they forgot my meal and it ended up not being very good either (and I’m not a picky eater!). The night topped off with us going to the sex museum… lets just say don’t take someone there on a date… people are just weird….

On our last day in Paris (Saturday), we took it easy and instead of doing the Fat Tire bike tour we did our own little wandering around. First we went to Montmartre area, and Darcy and I successfully got kicked out of Sacre-Coeur for wearing shorts (we must have looked like slutty heathens as many others were walking in with shorts). Needless to say it pressed a hot button of mine and I overreacted.. but walking around looking at all the hand-painted (albeit mass produced) art brought me back to a happy place 🙂

Just chillin by the Eiffel Tower

After that we walked along Champs d’Elysees for a bit and ended up at the Eiffel tower where we sat and had wine and chocolate. No big deal,  just your every day average Saturday… 🙂

Finally we met up with Chirag’s friends Sara and Nicholas and had a yummy dinner at Little Georgette, a cute tapas style restaurant near Jardin des Tuileries.

July 21, 2012  

Paris – Day 39

So we arrived in Paris last night and the place we are staying at is through AirBnB. Its a cute little apartment near Pigalle station, unbeknownst to us (until later in the evening) that we are near Moulin Rouge and the “red light district” street. I was amused by the supermache erotique… didn’t know they had Erotic Supermarkets.. wonder if Wal-mart will get in the game?

We also had dinner at restaurant near by and had Croque Monsieur… so yummy ! Trying to make our way to the Sienes and getting horribly confused (no road here goes straight) we ended up at Biblitotheque-musee de l’Opera. It was an impressive building and very pretty at night.

Today we took the 12 metro from Pigalle to Montparnasse-Bienvenue stop and went up the Montparnasse Tower. The view was quite impressive, but I thought the price was kind of steep at 9 euros. However you can see all of Paris and it is amazing how big the city is! It would probably be really nice to go up there at night time.

After that we walked down to the Catacombs. Luckily we made it in before the cut of time of 4pm. I found it fascinating (I’m also kind of morbid too, so it was right up my alley). Originally the Catacombs were quarries that were forgotten until the 18th century when roads collapsed. They re-enforced and blocked some, and then decided to use it as a dumping ground for the Cemetery of the Innocents which was condemned (and then many more after). At first they just dumped bones down there, but then realized they should make it a proper burial place and set about actually creating patterns and structures from the bones. Very cool.

And in the gift shop across the street at the end the guy gave us each a shot of absinthe. Again very cool.

Later that night Darcy and I walked along the Siene to the Effiel Tower and at Midnight celebrated my birthday. The tower sparkles every hour and everyone cheers. It was possible the best birthday moment I have ever had 🙂

July 16, 2012  

Madrid – Pamplona – Day 36-39

So we had a whirl-wind adventure these past four days, travelling from Madrid, to Pamplona and back to Madrid and now we are back to “reality” in Copenhagen. All in all we used 4 different forms of transportation and took 4 flights, 4 inter-city bus trips, 4 metro trips and one shuttle.

We arrived in Madrid Wednesday afternoon and met up with Charles at the Way Hostel. The staff was very nice and the rooms were decent. We walked around the area where our Hostel was and then had Sangrias and Tapas at an outdoor patio called La Taperia. We decided to embark on a pub crawl that evening which included lots of dancing, sangria and tequila shots but had to call it an early night to prepare for the epic travelling on Friday.

After five hours bus ride (with a stop in Soria) we arrived in Pamplona. It was 31 C (soo hot!) and our hostel room was fantastic. It was actually more like a hotel room. We then met Peter Griffin (Pete), not the family guy (I know, I should be used to lame name jokes) who joined us for most of the rest of our time in Pamplona. From the hostel we took the bus to the downtown area of Pamplona to check out the route of the running of the bulls and to try and catch the bullfight show.

So, I had no idea the bullfight was not really much of a fight, but more like
matadors teasing the bull and slowly killing it before giving it one final blow
while the crowd cheered on. Needless to say, we only watch one bull (even then I stopped watching when they actually killed the bull, it was pretty intense and ya I’m lame and got upset) but to focus on the good parts, the Sangrias were like 1 litre cups, the madators are quite impressive in their skills and the “top matador” looked like he was actually dancing with the bull.

After that we toured the streets of Pamplona, and holy crap do they know how to party there! There were bands playing in the street, hundreds of people crammed in and out of bars and Sangrias that were 1.5 Litres! I really liked that it was a family affair, there were lots of old people and young people and even little kids out until midnight! We called it an early night because the boys were going to run in the morning and didn’t want to feel like crap, but if we wanted to we could have stayed up and drank/partied for 24 hours.

We got up around 5:30 am and headed down to the ‘track’. We scoped out a spot that was close to the entrance of the bullring. I attempted to get on the fence for a good clear view, but some jackass guy literally tried yanking my arm off! Luckily I’m a tough cookie but would have sucked if I fell, lame injury from not even running!

So before it starts they push everyone in the track back to the start, and
they sing a prayer to San Fermin. Then the boys moved up to their ‘starting’ point.they said that when the first rocket went off, everyone was tense and it was like “Shit just got real”. They started to jog for a bit when others did and were trying to see where the bulls were, when at one point people just start pushing and you have no choice but to run for your life! They made it successfully into the bullring and over the fence and no one was injured (except Chirag’s tiny boo-boo on his elbow). During the run they were around 5 seconds ahead of the bulls which is freakin close!  Even as a bystander you could feel the adrelinane rush of everyone. It was quite amazing.

So we were supposed to stick around Pamplona to catch a bus at 1 am (note, this was 8:15 am in the morning…) but managed to switch to a 4:15 pm bus. Charles headed of to San Sebastian for some more surfing and we travelled back to Madrid. Luckily we were able to get a room for ourselves back at the Way Hostel and we found a really yummy place to eat on Calle De Atocha at Plaza de Jacinto.

The next morning I got up early and decided to walk around a bit of Madrid before we had to head to the airport. I really loved the architecture there and I wish I could have seen a bit more of the city. I walked to Plaza de Mayor, then along Calle Mayor through Sol and to Plaza de Cibeles. Accidently I walked onto a movie set and got yelled at by a woman in Spanish before another woman said “No Espanol”.. and then explained that they were shooting.

Three top things I liked about Spain:

  1. The crazy partying,
  2. The architecture,
  3. There were short people! (In the land of tall blondes in Copenhagen it was nice to fit in for a bit!).

Three things I didn’t like:

  1. Smelled like pee in a lot of places
  2. Pushy jerks at Pamplona
  3. Did not get to see enough
July 10, 2012  

Berlin – Day 29 – 32

Ya, I know, I haven’t posted in a while. Might be 20% laziness and 80% I’m just saving up all the awesomeness for this post.

The team went to Berlin this weekend. Lets just say getting to and from the airport on transit was a bit of an ordeal. I don’t know what others think, but the transit system in Berlin is hela-confusing… I’ll let you decide by this photo…

We stayed in the Heart of Gold Hostel, good location, friendly staff, no complaints really, fairly standard as far as hostels go! I still think they could have upped the Douglas Adams theme a bit more but I am kinda partial to the author 🙂

On our first day we did a bike tour with Fat Tire Bikes and it was fantastic. The weather was great and we saw tons of different sites around Berlin such as Checkpoint Charlie, site of Hitler’s bunker the book burning site which has a very cool memorial, unless you’ve been there I can’t describe it very well. I didn’t realize how nice the city was considering its torrid history. However now it is very touristy and it is unfortunate that it still has a very high unemployment rate. Our tour guide Niels was great, and he had a fun time making fun of Chi Chi 🙂

The second day we were there we went to the Neues Museum. Ok, not very German like, but they had a very cool Egyptian exhibit. I guess back in the day when people started excavating tombs in Egypt, they just thought it was totally ok to take what they found back to their home country without asking anyone. It was a bit of a free-for-all. Therefore a lot of Egyptian artifacts made its way to Berlin. I was excited to see the bust of Nefertiti, I didn’t realize that the artist actually didn’t sculpt it as a ‘youthful’ version which was popular at the time (and what most women probably want :)).

On our third day the weather was a bit crappy, but we decided to do some touring around on foot and made our way back up to tiergarten and the awesome cafe there and had some yummy schnitzel ! Later in the evening we walked along a remaining part of the Berlin wall which is now painted with various murals. I’m still amazed with the Berlin wall, since so many things

Berlin Wall – Mural

happened with Germany before I was alive, yet I was old enough to remember when the Berlin wall went down. Its hard to believe that such struggles happened so recently and there are still so many countries dealing with similar problems today.

Our last day there was Sunday and on Sundays you have to go to Mauer park flea market. It is just a miss-mash of strange people, entertainment and stalls with everything you can think of from old furniture, to Polaroid cameras to neat vintage jewelry. Oh and of course the park has fun-tastic swings !

All in all Berlin was not a city I was really thinking of going to but I’m very glad that we went there and would recommend that people visit Berlin at some point in their travels!

July 1, 2012  

Copenhagen – Day 25

This gallery contains 22 photos.

This is going to be another image post, not a whole lot to write. Yesterday was a beautiful day here, so we went down to Nyhavn (the new harbour area – basically most pictures you see of Copenhagen) and sat by the water and had a drink. Then we went over to Christiania which is […]

June 28, 2012  

Copenhagen – Day 22

This gallery contains 7 photos.

So, I don’t feel like writing much, therefore this post is just pictures of the beautiful park behind our residence. I did get my cat love on (and instantaneously started sneezing, stupid allergies). Last night we went to Kings Garden (aka Rosenberg garden) to watch the Italy vs Portugal game, which was really cool, they […]

June 25, 2012  

Copenhagen – Finally ! Days 15 – 19

New Harbour, Copenhagen

We have finally arrived and settled in to residence in Copenhagen. Time to put down the tourist hat for a bit and put the study hat back on (Ya, I know… first world problems…)

Our first actually day here we had orientation and got our room assignments. The residence we are in, Porcelaeshaven is pretty nice, we each have our own rooms, I have my own bathroom (woo-hoo) and Chirag has a room big enough for his ego 🙂 (J/K) . But each room has a little kitchenette which is awesome (food saaavinngs !) Things are kind of expensive here but not everything, for example diary products, like a carton of milk that is usually around 2.50 – 3 in Canada is about 1.40 here.

Okay, talking about milk prices probably not too exciting. Anyhoo, on Saturday we had a welcome  BBQ (yummy food!), watched a witch burning (if you are curious…click here ) and busted a move on the dance floor at the school bar.

We have met some great people already and I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone better and having some good times. Part of me wishes I didn’t wait until the very last semester of my MBA degree to do an international exchange but I guess its better late than never !

So, the real reason we are here (or supposed to be) is for classes, and the two courses I have are Psychology of Decision Making and Authentic Leadership. I know, they sound like fluff courses but I am actually genuinely interested in them. So far I really like my prof for the Authentic Leadership, she strikes me as one of those people that really inspires you to think and develop into a better person. Reminds me very much of my buddy Scott McCurdie, my first mentor and one of the most amazing people I know !

So a couple of things about Copenhagen I have learned so far

  1. Everyone rides bikes here, and when I say everyone, it literally is everyone ! There are more bikes here than people apparently, and after seeing the bike racks, I believe it ! I wish Toronto could be more like Copenhagen that way… oh ya, we have Ford.. so nevermind!
  2. It rains a lot here apparently… boooo… I thought I left that behind in Scotland ! So far we have had a couple nice days and a couple rainy and a couple that were a mix of both
  3. The people are really nice ! At least so far from what I can tell anyway ! And there is a disproportionate amount of tall blonde people, not that I am complaining ! They are good looking and I’m perfectly okay being the odd man (errr woman) out !

Charles is coming to Copenhagen tonight for some birthday celebrations, some of you may see some shenanigans online, but we will try to keep it a minimum !

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