And so the journey begins....

Arrived in Brussels... well there isn´t that much to say about this city. There isn´t that much to see or do here. The main square is terrific... and the light show at night was good, but apart from that there isn´t that much to hold your attention for more that a day at the max, so I was questioning my decission to come here for 3 days? I am still miffed as to why From there I headed to Ghent... now this place is terrific, after deciding to walk to the place I was staying... why I keep persisting with walking to these places has be beat... but it was a fair walk, which I repeated when I left too. I was only here for one night, but could have spent a few more nights here. The place has a great vibe about it. From Ghent I headed to Bruges, this place is cool as well, but with heaps of tourists. Despite the weather, it was still a great little place to check out. Belgium really is the place of chocolate, on every street there is a chocolate shop shortly followed by a pub with plenty of Belgium beers! The next and last stop for Belgium was Antwerp... I have decided that I have some excesss baggage at the moment, namely the weather... everywhere I am going at the moment the rain is following me... I hope I am ditch it some where along the way. Antwerp is another cool town, from what I saw of it between rain storms and from under an umbrella. Next stop is the Netherlands.

I headed back to St Girons where my cousins live with the intention of only staying a couple of days to say hello. When I arrived they asked if I was going to stay till a cousin of mine from Australia arrived. So that was at the end of the week and then they asked if I could stay till their daughter comes on the weekend after. So all in all I spent 2 weeks of sunning it up at the beach, relaxing, eating and drinking as the french do. While I was there it was Bastille Day. We headed to the local town Leon. Where they have a wooden bull with fire works jammed in it. Well I didn't know that they were going to set this thing off in the middle of the crowd. But they did. And pretty much everyone got rained on with hot embers from the fireworks. Completely insane! The next monday they had a show called Torro Piscine, bull pool. Basically they get a whole bunch of guys in an arena playing games like sack races, football, etc but they let out a bull or two with them. So sort of running with the bulls but with a greater chance of getting nailed by a bull. Very funny night. They even get the kids in there to run with a calf. And then at the end of the night they have donkey races. Sounds easy, ride a donkey 3 times around the pool, Try riding a bucking donkey around. Well i found out how hard that was, I blame the decission on one too many appertivs (pre-dinner drinks) for the choice, but before I knew it I was climbing over the fence to give it a crack. And that was the sound by head made as it hit the ground. Good thing I am not a rodeo rider as I would be broke. I sucked at. After 2 weeks in St Girons, I headed to Paris where I was pretty sure I wouldn't find any crazy donkeys to ride. I spent 6 days in all in Paris. The place is great but 6 days was enough. I saw heaps and enjoyed it all. High lights for me were the Arch de Triophe and St Sulpice cathedral, the da vinci code tour of the Louvre is well worth the €10. I had contemplated going to St Mont Michels and the D-Day beaches but after finding out it would cost me €70 to get to St Mont Michel, it put me off. It had cost me €75 to get from Dax in the south of France to Paris, so I couldn't work out how it was going to cost me €70 to get there. As I found a day or two later it was going to cost €75 to get to Brussles in Belgium. To me it looks like it france has a one price fits all policy Next stop for me is Belgium the land of chocolate and beer!

Back to spain and this time lugging an extra 15kgs of gear. Doing a couple of girls a favour to get them out of a bind. Ended up arriving into the port of Tarifa instead of Algercias. Tarifa is a fantastic little place, it has great beaches and the town has a real surfie feel about it. I got a ride from a couple of guys I met on the train ride from Marrakesh to Algrecias as it has the nearest train station. Well I had completely forgotten about the 2 hour time difference between Morocco and Spain. So the one and half hours I thought I had up by sleeve to catch to train ended up being 30 mins too late. The next train didn't leave till later that afternoon, which meant arriving into Seville late at night. Lucky for me Spain is a late nighters paradise. I spent a couple of nights here. Seville is a nice place to visit it sort has a bit of a madrid feel about it, but with more to see. From Seville I headed to Pampalona. I was going to make my way over to Portugal but a friend I had met in Morocco was going to Pampalona and it all sounded too exciting to miss. Pampalona during the festival is quite frankly INSANE!!! The opening ceromony lasts for about 10 minuted, but everyone is gathered in the town square for about 2 or more hours before hand dancing, chanting, food fighting with eggs, flour, tomato sauce and mustard. And then they start spraying sangria and champagne around. After that the party starts! And it doesn't stop at all. Every street and every bar has people in it drinking, dancing, eating, and eventually for the ones that can't handle the way Spainards party are passed out in parks, on benches, and on footpaths across the city. There is tonnes of rubbish every morning that the poor city cleaners clean up every day and then the next day it is all back again. For the running of the bulls I had scored myself a balcony. I had a great view of the main straight and where they turn to go into the arena. One bull fell down just near us and didn't get up for ages. The runners were jeering at it to get up. And when it did, there was a great surge of people trying in vain to back up. The bull had gotten up and was now facing the runners, there was one guy that was hanging on to its tail to try and turn it around. Lucky for the runners it did and the race was back on. A couple of people got injured in the run, a kiwi and an american. Just when you think that is all over. There is more. In the arena they keep all the runners locked in and then they let one bull out at a time to have a go at the trapped like rats runners. And when they think it can't get any more dangerous they let out a steer as well. So now 2 beasts are running around trying to gore some poor soul. This goes on for about 20 minutes. After that guess what everyone goes back to bar from where they crawled from for the run. That night I stayed to watch the fire works. Well I thought I had seen fireworks before, but this was like nothing I had ever seen before. It went on for about 25 minutes or more, and it was like they had just thrown a match into a bulk storage shed of fire works. There were so many and all types, even ones that I hadn't ever seen before. You could feel the procusional boom from some of the fireworks as they went off. It was amazing and they had a show like that every night for the whole feastival, 9 nights. After a couple of days of madness I had had enough. I headed to Bilbao for a couple of days before heading to France. Well Bilbao was almost deserted, there was barely anyone around, especially after the thousands upon thousands of people that were in Pampalona anything else felt like a ghost town. From here I am heading back to France to see my cousins.

I have arrived in Morocco. I can now say I have been to all 7 continents! I arrived in Tangier. A city that I was warned not to go to by friends and by travel books. The surposed horde of people that is ment to greet the ferries and try and rip off unsuspecting tourists consisted of about 5 guys standing next to their taxis and didn't even bother making the 50 meter walk over to acost you. I arrived at my hotel. Woh, i have to say, I picked a fantastic place. It was just magic. I met a lady there that had just bought a house in Tangier. We headed over there later that evening to watch the sunset over the city. What an amazing introduction to Morocco and Tangier. The place as a magic vibe about it. By the time the sun setted I was so relaxed and had fallen in love with the place. I ended up saying in Tangier for another night just to get a chance to wander around the old Medina and the kasbar by myself. Well I didn't get too far when I noticed I was being followed, a little boy who lived near the hotel had followed me, so for the next 3 hours he proceeded to show me all the sites of Tangier. Admitedly I had no idea what he was going on about as he spoke french and arabic and I don't speak either. From Tangier I headed to Casablanca. Well firist impressions, this place is a shit hole! And that isn't being harsh. Tangier was fantastic and should have stayed there another night or two instead of coming here. But the damage was done and I was here. Casablanca doesn't really have much going for it. There are so nice places along the water front further out of town and the mosqic, one of largest in the world, was really worth seeing. Other than that, I wouldn't bother going there. I ended up joining up on a tour to do Morocco as I didn't know what to expect, as it happens could have come here without a tour and would have been fine, but you live and learn. From Casablanca we headed to Meknes. Here we had our first tasting, so to speak, of local markets. On walking in to market, what we thought were swarms of flys turned out to be swarms of BEES, yes bees, we had just walked into the sweet section of the market. Even the produce that had glad wrap over it had bees inside, there were persistent little buggers. After that we walked into the meat section, and then the smell hits you just after you see a huge bulls head just sitting on a bench. I pretty much held my breath for as long as I could the smell was that bad! We were all glad to get out there, one girl throught the rabbits in cages were for pets, it was hard breaking it to her that they weren't pet rabbits. The next day we headed to Fes, the business hub of Morocco. Here we visited this huge old grain storage area. Sounds boring right? Well amazingly it wasn't. This place was massive and it could hold enough grain for 3 years supply of the armies horses, all 20000 of them. While in Fes we visited the tanning ponds. Pretty interesting to watch the process that hasn't changed in centries. The old medina here is HUGE!! It is fantastic to walk around and get lost in, and you would get lost, there are so many twists and turns here. From Fes we headed on a very long drive to get out into the Sahara desert. We got to the Sahara about an hour before sunset. We hoped on our camels and rode away from the sunset. With the sun setting in the background we headed to our desert camp. We arrived there well and truely after dark. We sat around on rugs in the centre of the camp and watched the kittens eat bugs. We were all happy when a kitten ate a huge spider! No-one wanted to be sleeping with that tonight! We climbed up one of the sand dunes later that night, after being entertained with drumming and singing, to look at the stars. It was a lovely night. We were all up early the next morning to watch the sun rise, unfortunately it was cloudy and it was a bit of a non event. We headed back to the hotel on the camels. After there we headed to Todra Gorge. Our hotel was in the gorge with the huge cliffs looming over us. From Todra Gorge we started to make our way to Marrakesh stopping a various places along the way. Marrakesh is wonderful. As you walk into the main square there are snake charmers with cobras, I even saw a cobra strike at a guy, there are guys with monkeys, heaps of people trying to sell you things, and story tellers. It is in the evening when this place really comes alive, the snake charmers are still there, there are fire breathers and heaps of food stalls, even ones serving sheeps heads, and local musicians. The markets behind the main square are great to wander around in and get lost. There is so many things to see and buy. I enjoyed just walking through there and watching everyone else haggle. From here a small group of us headed for the coast to a town called Essaouria. This place was great for just chilling out and relaxing. It was completely touristy, but you could get way from that pretty easily with just moving a few streets away from the main drag. On one of our walks through the maze of streets one of the store owners offered to buy me from my friend for 30000 camels, he started out with a bid of 20000 camels. This is an extremely good price because up until then a couple of girls had had the offer of only 4 camels. I was very flattered and my friends thought it was hilarious. I turned down the offer to have mint tea with him later, can't knock the guy for being persistent. We all had a lovely time there, it was really relaxing. I had a great time one morning exploring the city, with one of the ladies i had met on the tour, before anyone was up and before the hussle and bussle of town started. We climbed city walls and wandered down alley walls. We watched the local fishermen come in with their daily catch and load it from their boats. I was like well corrigraphed performanace, One scoops the fish from the bottom of the boat and throws the basket of fish to another guy in the boat, this guy then throws that basket to guy standing on the whalf, the fish are tipped out and the basket thrown back to the guy in the boat. And this just continues in one fluid motion till the boat is empty, no one missing a beat. From there we headed back to Marrakesh. We were nearly back in Marrakesh when one of the ladies we were travelling with realised that they had left their passport in the hotel in Essaouria. Once at the hotel we organised a taxi to go and pick it up. It was a 3 hour bus ride there, so 6 hours later she had her passport back. The next day everyone was leaving. I had the rest of the day to kill as I was taking the night train back to Tangier. The high light of this trip was the last afternoon/evening that I was in Marrakesh, I was just about to walk into the markets to have a final look around when a Moroccan guy starts chatting to me and asks if he can join me to practice his English. So with that we headed into the markets. The highlight was when he took me into a drum store, one of his mates stores, but instead of trying to sell me things we spent the afternoon playing drums. I was shown how to play the morrocan drums. It was very cool, I had a great time and it was definate highlight of the trip.
A couple of girls on the tour were takng the afternoon train to Casablanca.They tried to send off all the things that they had purchased while in Marocco but the post office only sends things once a week. So I got them out of a bind by taking their parcel of goodies with me and sending it from Spain, this parcel of goodies end up being 15 kilos!! The night train to tangier was fine, I couldn't get a sleeping couch, so I got a seat. It ws very crowded for most of the night. I didn't get much sleep. I did a mad rush to the port, where I almost missed my boat because the customs line was so slow! There was only one guy stamping passports, the other two guys were reading the newspaper and having coffee. But I made it all the same. next stop Tarrifa Spain.

Second attempt in Spain. Started off in Barcelona. I have to say I love this place. It reminds me of South America minus the high rates of poverty and with better hygine The vibe of the place is just intoxicating. It has made it on my list of places that I could live in. So I hit all the major tourist sites with one of those hop on hop off buses. I would have normally walked but I was feeling particulary lazy and the sites are so far apart from each other... a good excuse as any to take a bus :P From Bacelona I headed south to Valancia. This place is pretty cool. It has a very different feel about compared with other cities in Spain. It is sort of a cross between Madrid and Rio. Very interesting all the same. While I was here I checked out the so called Holy Grail, a gold and amber cup. I could so see Jesus hauling that thing around with him :/ Anyway it is sort of but not really sanctioned by the Vatican. Valencia has some really cool park lands in an old creek/river bed! Some pretty funky play equipment for the kids. Next stop on my route south was Granada. After a midnight train ride there via Madrid (a touch out of the way) I arrived. Decided to walk to the hostel, bad choice! It was so hot and so far to walk and it all ended with a decent climb up a hill, I was also packing an extra 4kgs of photos that I hadn't sent off yet. Granada is a cool place to check out. The Alhambra was amazing I wandered around in there for about 4 hours. From Granada I headed down to Algeciras to catch a ferry over to Morocco for my next adventure.
Algeciras is horrible, well around the port and the train station is. I got my ticket and then they cancelled the fast ferry due to bad weather. But not bad enough to cancel the normal boat. Well as I found out it was more likely cancelled due to lack of people. The normal boat was just about empty, and the sky was blue and the ocean calm... go figure.

I have arrived in Italy after an interesting time getting here. I flew from Frankfurt Hahn to Rome. Well Frankfurt Hahn airport is nowhere near Frankfurt, it is an 1 hour 45 minute bus trip, so it is closer to Belgium then it is to Frankfurt. So my plane left at 0600, so a 0200 wake up to get the 0300 bus to the airport. The poor guy at the reception desk was mightly confused onto why I was checking out so early, he even asked if I was aware that it was only 0230 in the morning. A fact that I was oh to well aware of. So I made it to Rome a little blurried eyed but fine all the same. I had organised a transfer from the airport to the camp grounds that I was staying at. After 2 hours of waiting and many phone calls, my pick up arrived. Then we proceeded to wait around for another 40mins or so for other people he was meant to pick up, but they never showed. The camp grounds are pretty good. I stayed in a bungalow dorm thing, basically 3 beds sqweezed into a room the size of a small garden shed. I thought I had scored big time when evening came and I still had the place to myself, but that was short lived when an Aussie chick turned up. 2 in the room isn't too bad, and then moments later, the 3rd arrived, so now it is a very full house. The last to arrive hated Rome already, he was pickpocketed twice in 30 minutes. And his story wasn't the only one like that, nearly everyone had a tale like that, happy to report that I didn't and haven't had any troubles thus far and with any luck (touch wood) I won't. That evening met a whole bunch of people who also had only arrived that day, so that plan was made to hit the sites tomorrow...they were happy to be in a group, safety in numbers and all that
First site on the hit list was the Colosseum - pretty cool! From there we wandered through the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. I love the fact all these old places are in amoungst new buildings. The Pantheon was the stand out for me for the day. I just loved the huge hole in the ceiling. From the outside it looks ordinary but inside is just wonderful. The Trevi fountain was cool, and I add a coin to the thousands already in there. And as the legend goes, one coin thrown in will ensure you turn there, well, I did return there, even if it was for only 40 minutes for a train transfer I think the most disappointing thing was the Spanish Steps, there aren't a grand as I was envisioning, from what I had seen in movies. But we climbed them anyway, even in the soaring heat. The next day we headed to the Vatican Museum, that place is OTT to the max. I loved it, the paintings, the ceilings! the wealth!! I pretty much lost everyone as soon as we got in after 2 hours of waiting in a line that went almost back to Saint Peter's Square. After several hours of looking all the art, I managed to stubble across one of the guys in the Sistine Chapel, that was after I had a good giggle to myself in the modern christian art where there was a sculpture of two hands cupped together, one of the hands is clearly giving the finger (very religous I thought!) The paintings in the Sistine Chapel are just amazing, I just can't put words together to describe them. They have an amazing 3D feeling, like they are coming out from the ceiling at you. After sitting in amazement for ages, we headed to St Peter's Basilica. Now that place oozes money and over indulgence! Had a very interesting dicussion about the wealth of the Catholic Church and the poverty in the world. Went and visited John Paul II. Sat in the sqaure for ages soaking up the atmosphere and energy of the place. Tomorrow the Pope is doing an address to the people. Up early to get in and see the Pope. The line was huge when we got there to get in. So we jumped the railings and proceeded to go and get a position. We ended up at one of the fountains. The Pope came out and did a lap through the crowd, no bullet proof glass for this guy! He was waving and smiling, the first time I have seen him crack a smile. It was pretty cool seeing all the performance. That afternoon I headed North to Arrezo where I was catching up with an ex-workmate, his family and friends. They had rented a villa in Tuscany for a few weeks. I ended up spending 2 weeks there and saw heaps of the area, I had only intended to spend a few days. The best place we visited was Assisi, it is just breath taking on approach. The area is full of cool old towns to explore. After spending 2 weeks of living it up in the lap of luzury it was time to hit the road again. Back to Rome for a flight to Barcelona.