Couchsurfing & Cathedrals

So! Ten days has felt like a lifetime! I've been in Toledo, Sevilla, Cordoba, Malaga & Cadiz and today I ride trains for ten hours to Caceres. And all I have is an ipod with no battery and the Notebook by Nicholas Sparks(remember the movie?). Oh and I've already read it, and it's even more sappy than the film if that's possible. But I am in high spirits, looking over my diary to see what I've been up to and yeah it's been great so far, despite feeling nauseous whenever I see another church you need to pay to get into.

So my first couchsurfing experience was brilliant! I was staying with a lovely Canadian/Spanish couple and their dog, sleeping in a real bed, with my own bathroom and even had breakfast made for me. Twas lovely and homely. It's so nice to be able tosit around naked/pick at your toes/spontaneously dance without wondering whether any of the other ten people in your room are looking at you. Hostels so far have been pretty great(apart from me taking a key and forgeting to empty my locker leaving a credit card :| after leaving one place) and yeah meeting randoms and chilling/chatting/drinking is really quite nice!

Toledo was nice, if touristy, Sevilla was really beautiful and felt so quintessentially Spanish; orange trees everywhere, plazas filled with sleazy old men and families and the sound of flamenco occasionally at night, aah! Also in Andalucia the weather has been so beautiful, have gone swimming in the Mediterranean, in underwear and hairy legs, delicious...

So I'll stick some shots in here so you can bea jealous!


Market in Cadiz, I actually do not know what that hunk of head meat is


Sunset in Cadiz


My first real meal after a week of bread, I thought I would eat like two bags of pasta; I was wrong, sharing is caring yo


La Mezquita Mosque/Cathedral in Cordoba, Andalucia

Ireland, Spain & Portugal on a Big(ger) Budget

I thought I would do a little picture summary of the six weeks I spent with my mum in Ireland, Spain and Portugal before my solo voyage comes into the picture.

So basically I came to Europe in the first place because I had half a year before university started, I had three jobs putting money into my v poor bank account, and a wedding in Ireland came up. So Mum & I went over to Ireland for this wedding, spent three weeks, one of them tripping around the countryside, before heading to mainland Europe for some post-family fun. The following three weeks were spent variously in Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto in Portugal & Salamanca, Granada, Madrid in Spain. And a lovely six weeks all this was, plus we could afford the odd drink and we take photos of each other as opposed to the awkward self-takes my camera will have to endure for the next three months. These are some photographic tidbits from those six weeks with my Mum.


Where would one be without guinness in snugs?


Pub mid-afternoon in Ballybeg, the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking part of Ireland)


Grumpy horse that doesn't like english speaking foreigners in the Gaeltacht


Staying at a relative's house in County Galway


Annual Maam Cross Connemarra Pony Fair,for lovers of toothless farmers and horse shit


Tractor jam


Nannageddon


Contemplating tea, County Kerry


Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (UNESCO world heritage listed monastery), Lisboa, Portugal


Student resistance, Coimbra, Portugal


Fine Dining in Porto, Portugal


Chilling in church, Salamanca, Spain


The magnificent Palacio Nazaries in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain


The Albaicín, Granada, Spain


Space age, Madrid, Spain

Lonely Planet

Yo!

I know its been like fifty years since I've updated this, I was travelling through Spain and Portugal with my mum! Sweet family times! Hotels, full meals, a companion, twas great! Anyway I bid goodbye to my mum yesterday morning at the airport...so now its me and my lonely planet(I can't think of a worst companion,it's heavy and gives the worst advice-like advising me to stay at David Beckham's hotel c'mon).

So today I went to a flea market. Now I can't eat for five days. My budget is ten euro a day, it consists mostly of bread, and uh, bread. Seems like a decent amount of money but it doesnt go that far(yet). Yesterday I bought a beer at Imogen Heap, bam, half my budget gone. Anyway market was El Rastro in Madrid, the biggest flea market in Europe, and I don't think I even saw a third of it, but was brilliant, plenty of buskers and old men, both of which can be enjoyable.


Dapper buskers


Slightly less dapper buskers

I spent last night at a Imogen Heap's concert, at a fraction of Perth prices, and she was magnificent. Mostly she played stuff from Ellipse but also a couple of songs I didn't know(which were delicious), Hide & Seek surprise surprise, and also Let Go, by Frou Frou, one of her past musical partnerships. Good times minus expensive beer.


Imogen & her band

My hostel seems pretty grool, which is satisfying seeing as I read reviews of various places saying 'A MOULDY PRISON CRAWLING WITH CUCKEROCHES, DO NOT COME' or 'I SLEEP ONE HOUR HERE, WATER LEAKS FROM TOILET, MANAGER COMES TO ME AT NIGHT ASKING FOR MONEY' etc.

Anyway, just to update that I am actually alive, and not having any travelling companions(I was befriended by an old man who saw me shivering in the street and told me to come back to his house for coffee, he also called me his babe...) I should be updating this more than annually, woop.


Chilling at Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

lolz

Irish Castle-Trim

You know, we really need to stop saying lolz, or so Shona tells me, and she knows her stuff, I guess. When Julia and I were coming back from Brasil, we were like yeah lolz lolz, he is so são paulo(gay), vai se fuder(go fuck yourself) etc. etc. We thought we were so cool with all our hip private joke slang. I kinda realised we were not so cool when we arrived in the airport and in the next couple of days, not only did people not get lolz, but I realised what massive losers we had become by saying it. And you know we could've overcome that sad period in the life of our vocabularies and started saying something really indie like, well, I don't know what hipsters say, I think they're not allowed to laugh, only snigger I guess. But whatever, instead of completing some transformation to become street-worthy with our words, we just converted all our immeadiate friends, and then we embarrassed ourselves, but because we were all doing it, it was OKAY. But now that I'm on my own here, and I am sure as hell not going to be able to get my granny to say lol, I have again become soo, um, six years ago with my lolz.

Anyway I found this pretty lolz;


I met an Irish shaman


p.s. Remember I got my ear done a while before I left, and like they were all like YOU MUST BATHE IT TWICE A DAY FOR TEN MINUTES IN SALINE SOLUTION AT A NINETY DEGREE ANGLE WITH 3.75% SALINITY, or wotevs, yeah well, I thought it was healing and stuff, and like I did bathe it sometimes, and I wasn't that bad, like come on I couldve been worse! Anyhoo, now it is sort of excreting weird yellowy pus that smells really really bad. Like the smell follows me, it's probably the reason why I do not have 321983748 irish friends already. or whatever. what should i do??

First is worst woops

Buying paper, being happy



I am having an uber great morning! Woohoo! I feel like I should write one of those shitty self-help books for someone who’s at home depressed, and I definitely have the recipe for instant euphoria only it’s too simple to sell a book to an idiot on. I started off hungover with four hours sleep but then I came home and put on some clean clothes and brushed my teeth(delicious), skyped my groovy friend Zain back in ye olde convict land, and then I had to go buy papers, cue smokes and ipod in pocket of the jacket, sun, in this usually dreary place. Shuffle came on with Harold Melvin, followed by Feist, Cat Power and the Hives. So good, right?! So, yeah, the search for happiness ends in the configuration of your ipod. I danced down the street and stood outside the cornershop finishing my smoke, and what with the pub next door gathering old ogling alcoholics outside, and my loser outfit which consisted of like leggings, I started feeling a bit like an innocent ten year old being accosted by dangerous stares. Not that it’s the first time, old irish men, like very old, the type that you wonder how they can even sustain any sort of lust, they’ve taken a shine to me. Yesterday walking down the street this octogenarian was ambling along there, and as I got closer he gave a real penetrating state, not like into the hollows of my soul, more like xray vision, and then he stopped, and well, I stopped, and he said to me, as he brought his face closer to mine(real romantic like),going in for the kill, ‘you’re a very beautiful girl’. Like, pick-up line of the century, right? I thought I was back in Brasil. lolz.



Gangsta cousin



But yeah, so, Ireland is really nice, my granny grew a few more wrinkles and now she offers me smokes as well as tea and cake, which is schweet.

Missing you all in Nepal, Australia, Russia, Finland, America, you globetrotters you lot. Much love,
tchau & beijos
Chloe