Valencia, Spain

Valencia is nice. We got here at around 12pm after a 3 hour train ride. The hostel is quite nice, the walls are painted off very bright colors that give it character. It seems small but I don't know how many people are actually here. so far we have only seen about 10-15 of them. We cooked some burgers for ourselves tonight in the friepan, so we eat well.We also got a 6-pack of Heineken for a treat (it only cost us 3 Euros!). It was very hot here today about 35C. But we walked around and we found a place to eat this afternoon that at the door it said that it was home- cooked food, and it really was. We ate great.

 

We walked around the city and over a river which was turned into a park. We got really tired so we decided to take the bus to the Science Museum. This place (architecturally is amazing) I think I saw it before in the Discovery Channel (you should look it up).

 

Then at about 8pm we when to Carrefour (very famous French supermarket, which we also had in Argentina) to buy the food for dinner. On the way to the hostel we saw some transgender getting picked up at a corner. Well, we thing they are transgender, otherwise they were very ugly women. And it is now close to 11pm and we just finished dinner.

 

Tomorrow at 2pm we are off again to Madrid for 2 nights with the possibility of extending for one more night.

Barcelona

So we ended a nice 3 days at St. Laurent with our "relatives". They turned out to be really nice Brits that fed us A LOT. 

Yesterday we made our way to Barcelona, Spain. We got here quite late so we couldn´t do any sightseeing. We tried to look for a place to eat with no luck for over an hour. Our hostel is in a very business location but there are no restaurants that stay open at 12am on a Sunday night! Finally we did find something...That was a relief. 

 

Today we started of at the famous "Rambla". Human status, flower shops and other touristic things are found here. 

We were shocked when we came to this stand where this guy was getting a portrait of himself. When we got closer we realized that he was completely naked. YEAH, we could see his privates. We were shocked but most people didn´t think to mind it.

 

We now spent 2 hours trying to register Joel for his first U of M courses. Apparently, the servers can´t handle the traffic so it took extra long. We were lucky that we were warned about thieves in this cyber cafe because they just kicked one out.

 

We are off now to some more sightseeing.

Little village

So when we last sent our email we were still in Bourdeax.

 

The day after that we went to Toulouse (about 1.5 hrs away).

We did quite a bit of walking there visiting some old churches along the way. After a very hot day we decided to join the French people at the park for some shade. Over the corner we notice this woman laying down on the grass, so we decided to join her. We were almost falling asleep when a policeman came over and told us that we couldn't lay down on this part of the park. We started laughing but he didn't mind it.

 

On Thursday we made our last stop for our first France lap in Narbonne. We got picked up by our long relative from the station. He took us to a place called St. Laurent a 700 people village 30 minutes from Narbonne. As planned we arrived on the 13 of July to be present at the July 14th celebrations of Bastille (the biggest holiday in France). Most people in the village got together at night time to have a feast and all you can drink wine from the wineries in the area. After the meal was over, all the kids turn some candles on and we started walking around the village following a car blasting "marching music". The funny part was that the car looked like a car from Corydon, all suited up with fire painting on the sides and a awesome stereo system. It was sort of a clash of cultures.

 

Anyways, we made our way around the village until we got to this hill and we stopped. From there we had a good view to the church up the hill were fireworks were displayed. It was a very great night.

 

We finished our night talking to a local whos parent were actually Spanish. He complained about all the foreigners and their money showing but he seem to like us because we spoke Spanish.

 

Anyways, we are now heading to the town center to play some bochi. It is quite hot so we don't know for how long we will actually stay.

 

As a side note: I have never imagined how much do French people smoke around here. Unreal!

Tour de France here we are....

Logging in from Bordeaux, France. We arrived at this city last night. As soon as we stepped outside the train station, I noticed a little sign on the road that said "11 julliet depart Tour de France" which with our bad French we came to understand that the Tour de France will be departing from the city we are at the next day. Anyways, we went on to our Hotel. This was a shitty 1 star hotel but to our eyes it was a GREAT hostel! 

 

We woke up today and we went to the main square to find out the timing of the race. We went for some groceries and later we came back to check the Tour. It all started at about 11:30 with a parade of cars with advertizing. There were people throwing stuff at us, some useful others not so much. Once that was over we walked around to get some nice spots to watch the cyclist go. It was great, there are about 100+ of them with their whole team following them. The only thing is that it all lasted about 2 minutes which went quite fast. 

 

After waiting for 2 hours and seeing the cyclist for 2 minutes we decided to do somethihg productive and walked all the way over to the train station to book our ride to our next destination, Toulouse. We were soaking wet from the sweat so on the way back we dicided to take the tram back. Turns out, the ticket machine was broken so we just got in there anyways and got a ride for free.

 

As some of you asked... yes, the French were not feeling that happy about their defeat against Italy. There was even a survey on T.V. asking the public if they forgave Zidane for the head to the chest at the end of the game, and most people said that they had forgivin him. While watching the game outside on the street with a massive amount of people it was quite an experience, and even though they lost, the people were still cheering. 

 

Well our timer on our computer is coming to an end and we really dont want to spend more money on internet, especially money that could go to a good Kebab. 

 

We will try to write as soon as possible so stay tooned for more!

 

(Written mainly by Joel)

From Tours, France

Hello everybody

We just finished watching the finzl world cup game with 1000 other people in the small town of Tours. It was a fun experience no matter the final result.

So it turn out that food is quite expensive here, so we are not eatting quite q lot. Anyways, we get by... We hqd q wonderful time in Paris, a fantastic city. Our feet really hurt from all the walking... A funny moment we had, not so funny for the people involved; was when we got to the Arc of Triumph. The traffic there is nuts and we were saying that for sure there are a lot of accidents here. 2 sec. later, right in front of our eyes, walla! Anyways, we really liked the city but very crowded. Today we cqme to Tours and we went to two chateaux and the house of Leonardo da Vinci. Very nice and interesting places.

Tomorrow, we are off to Bourdaux for more sightseeing. Hippy Hurray!

We are loggin off now but we will keep you posted about our trek through Western Europe.

In London now leaving

Hello everyone,

First of all sorry for the people that are not really interested in receiving my emails. If you really don't want to please let me know that I will take you out of our mailing list. No offence will be taken.

We just finished our first and last day in London. We really didn't do much. We arrived yesterday morning with only 2 hours of sleep (totalling 5 hours for me in 2 days). We did some walking, following an itinerary recommended by our book. Unfortunally, we couldn't finish it due to our exahustion.

So we came back to our hostel, which by the way it looks really good. Here we napped for a few ours and then we caught the game (No Portugal!!!). It is now passed 6am (people in the room snore a lot). I am going to wake up my brother soon.

We will be taking the Eurostar to Paris at about 9am and I am very excited.

Regards to all and I will keep you guys (whomever wants to get this of course) informed of our trek.

A day before ...

Well, it is 1:35 am the day of the trip. As you can see I can't sleep due to the anxiety.
I been running crazy all day. I didn't know packing would off been so hard to do. I have never taken so little clothes.

We think we got everything in. Now we need to decide what will we give to our far relatives that we are staying at: will it be Canadian Maple Syrup (approx. weight 40 oz) or Argentine "Dulce de Leche" (net weight 16 oz). For those that don't know, I will give a bit of background on how we meet our relatives.

About a year and half, we put our family tree online (http://glogowski.argentinos.ca). A person contacted us saying that they have common relatives with us. It turns out that this Englishman is a blood relative of my dad's. His grandmother and my dad's grandmother were sisters! Anyways, he owns a summer house in the south of France near Narbone. Lucky us, they invited us. We are very grateful.