We arrived in Barcelona at around 10pm, just enough time to get on the train towards the centre of town.  After 3 stops, we saw a station that vaguely sounded like the one we were meant to be at.  We got off the train, looked around and decided hells, we’d only been travelling for 15minutes and this can’t be the right stop, so we jumped back on again.  Almost an hour later I’d finally convinced Marcelo to stop being a damn man about things and ask someone where our stop is.  A quick conversation in Spanish occurred and Marcelo comes back to our seat, looking sheepish.
“I have bad news” he tells me.
“We were meant to get off at that stop and hour ago, weren’t we” I replied.
“Well yes, there was that.  We’re also not even in Barcelona anymore.  And this was the last train”.

After a lot of arm flailing and swearing, we briefly considered a taxi then decided against it, opting for the cheaper bus alternative.  Then the bus didn’t show up for 45minutes and another kind person told us that the buses had been cancelled and there wasn’t another one for an hour or so.  Taxi and £25 each later, we finally arrived at the freaking hostel.

Our first day was beautiful.  Sunny and warm, time to whip out the short shorts.  We wandered down to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s greatest work.  It is an incredible building.  It’s also one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.  It’s still in construction, the inside of it hasn’t really been done at all, which we paid £10 to find out.  Barcelona reminded me a lot of Wellington.  The little boutique shops, every one of them burning incense, the goths, the emos and the hippies all chilling.  Everyone has a piercing or a tattoo.  You don’t really get that as much in London.  We returned home to the hostel late with Marcelo sulking as the rest of the hostel had gone out to watch the bull fight, something I flatly refuse to support.  In the distance, thunder boomed.  I thought that was odd as, like, it doesn’t rain in Barcelona, right? I mean, I only packed summer clothes.

It HOSED down for 2 days straight.  Not be put off, we still attempted to go sight see.

It was a bit of a failure.  We ended up in a mall and then randomly at an aquarium which was pretty awesome.

The sun finally made another half hearted appearance and we joined up a free walking tour of the city which was fantastic.  I think the free walking tours are the best ones, obviously because they’re free, but also the guides work for tips which means they just put a whole lot more love in there.

Our trip to the airport was once again, harrowing.  Despite leaving on time and assuming we were going to be early, Barcelona’s one train to the airport came almost an hour later than we thought it would.  Another mad dash to the gate, which left me mentally making a note to do a bit more time on the treadmill and we got there just in time for everyone to start boarding.

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Jerusalem was exactly how I pictured it.  Actually, this might have more to do with a very old photograph I can almost remember in my mum’s old Bible, I think it’s fair to say the old city probably hasn’t changed much over the years. The new city outside the Jerusalem walls was just like any other city, actually, modern with lots of cafes.

We spent our first day exploring and found ourselves on the Via Dolorosa or “The Way of Sorrows” which is a climbing, unevenly tiled alley through the old city, where Jesus carried his cross.  Along it were 15 or so different “stations” of various Christian importance, the last one being in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of the crucifix.  The church was filled with people praying and kissing various things and we suddenly became aware that we had no idea what any of the beautiful decorations and monuments in the church actually were.  So after a 5 minute peek in, we ended up back in the Souqs to try find an information pamphlet.  The church was actually huge and went up and down a few levels.  We had to queue up to crawl into a tiny space inside a monument which housed the site of the cross.  My camera just REFUSED to take any pretty pictures in here, the incense makes everything look dull and grey, when really, it was brightly coloured and very pretty.

Back at the hostel, we shared a common room with the Ultimate Type 1 Annoying Opinionated Backpackers.  You know the ones that are so damn pretentious and up themselves.  I’m trying not to swear in this post.  You know those type of people that are all “You are a Lemming, a slave to the MAN, you know nothing of other people’s sufferings, McDonalds is Satan” etc etc etc.  See, I don’t mind a difference of opinion right, but I honestly can’t STAND the people who have changed their lives slightly and visited lesser off countries then declare themselves Supreme Knower and Better Than You and Your Shallow Life.  For example, one girl sat in the common room with a newspaper which she proceeded to read OUT LOUD followed by her opinions.  I just, what is this, I don’t even.  We ignored her and got talking to some friendly Germans and she kept interrupting our conversation to have her own input.  When it was clear we were ignoring her, she strolled over to the computer, brought up her blog and told the room loudly about how she had written something controversial about Israel and Palestine and how she was now being insulted by readers who said she was ignorant, but how could she be, because she had BEEN THERE, MAN.

We took a free tour through the Quarters of old Jerusalem, lead by a guy who looked EXACTLY like Dave Grohl.  We saw the first church ever built in the Armenian Quarter which was location of the Last Supper.  We also went to the Western Wall, a very religious place where it is said that God had promised to always be at and watch over.  People believe that you have more chance of having your prayers heard here.  The ancient wall has folded paper prayers stuffed into every crack and crevice and I didn’t hesitate to submit my own.  In his usual “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” logical way of thinking, Marcelo says “But there are only a finite number of cracks in that wall.  What happens to all the bits of paper?  They can’t stay there forever.”  The tour guide looked a bit sheepish and says he usually doesn’t say this to tourists and was also devastated when his father told him that priests come and clear the paper away, bless it and dispose of it.  ARGH.  Sometimes I LIKE not knowing.  I hadn’t even thought of that.

Our last day was a Sunday and we had the privilege of bouncing round different churches on the Mount of Olives and sitting in for their services.  Now, this is not some guy at the front of a congregation speaking.  All the churches we visited were all unlike anything I’d ever seen before.  There was much swinging of incense, many people in different robes, much ceremony and actually, hardly any of a congregation at all.  It was actually really odd. One of them was underground, from memory.

We were really struggling for money at this point.  I had to find a crappy net cafe to email the parentals and ask for assistance.  Nothing works better than “Halp, I am in Israel, need food”.

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As glad as I am to visit different countries and I believe every country has an unique experience to offer, I have to admit I came away from Belgium with a bad taste in my mouth.  For reasons that were only half my fault.

A pet hate of mine is when strangers ask where you’re from and then exclaim “but WHY would you come HERE?” I’m sure this is a comment made to compliment your home country, I have said it myself to tourists in New Zealand.  On the receiving end, however, it implies that you’ve made some sort of stupid mistake and are wasting your time and money.  I never know how to react to this.

The side of Brussels we ended up in did make us question if it was in fact a good idea to be here.  It could simply be described as The Dodgy End.  We found a cheap hotel, the decision to stay there made entirely due to a giant Great Dane sitting in reception.  Obviously, we are hard seasoned travellers who check the essentials when choosing lodgings.  “There is a big dog.  We should stay here”.

The hotel, as my brother observed, was probably also useful for patrons at the strip club next door.  Nevertheless, it was clean and staff were friendly.  I’m bursting to say WHICH IS MORE THAN THE FUCKING HOSTEL IN BRUGES but I’ll get to that in a minute.  Our first night in Brussels was spent wandering out of the dodgy end into the city centre which was actually quite cute.  We accidentally found Delirium, an amazing bar that sold a range of 200 beers on tap.  I hate beer, but the fruit ones they had were amazing.  Apple, Mango, Cherry, Coconut – ok I didn’t try the last one, cuz, bleh.  We poured over their beer catelog and tried out hardest not to skull the first deliciousness before we’d even gotten back to our seats.  The deliciousness was also bragging a 10% alcohol content in most cases.

5 minutes later, everyone was twatted and cheerfully talking shit to some lovely French guys we had sat next to.

We headed out to Bruges a bit hungover the next day.  It was actually quite a bit bigger than I expected, still, after a good couple of hours of walking you can pretty much see the whole thing.  It didn’t take long to find one of the only youth hostels in town, Charlie Rockets.

If you ever decide to go to Bruges, do not under any circumstance, go to Charlie Rockets.  Unless you want flea induced trackmarks down your arms and legs, no hot water and a broken toilet.  I did complain about the bed bugs and was given a bottle of iodine handily stashed at the counter.  Not the first person to complain, I suspect.  I decided to take the mature stance on the situation and took a dump in their broken toilet.  Wankers.

Other than that, Bruges was pretty albeit a bit boring.  Our diet consisted solely of frites and stew, waffles and beer.  We wandered round a chocolate museum, did a lot of sight seeing.  It was ok.

Then, of course, this happens.

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I figured I’d start the trip properly and actually book hostels in advance rather than the usual us turning up randomly and wandering the streets for ages.  Surprisingly, almost everything was full.  It made no sense, just a random weekend in winter.  A few phonecalls were made and I discovered there was a huge rugby game on that weekend, England vs Scotland.  Sigh.  I hate sports people.  Ok, let me clarify this.  I hate dodgy overweight guys chugging beer on the street, getting into fights and getting in your face.  “YOU RIGHT LUV, YOU’RE A PRETTY WEE THING, YOU NEED SOMEONE TO WALK YOU HOME?”.  Hell, no, kindly fuck off.  Marcelo says I am biased because the part of London we live in has the worst behaved soccer fans in the world.  I guess the rugby ones aren’t as bad as all that.  ANYWAYS.

The first hostel I booked and then immediately had a panic attack about as further research confirmed that it was voted the worst hostel in Edinburgh on 3 different websites.  Cancel that, start again.  I found another one that was the cheapest place we’d stayed in ever, and oddly enough, it was the best one.

We spent most of our time sight seeing and drinking in the gorgeous Grassmarket.  I got a chance to wander round Edinburgh castle which I hadn’t been able to do last time and we took a tour out to the Highlands to visit Loch Ness.  The funniest part of the trip was taking another ghost tour around and underground.  My brother is scared of his own shadow, I swear.  To be fair, we’re both as bad as each other.  We don’t do well with scary jumpy-outy things.  Turns out the tour we went on is one of the only ones that pays a guy £10 to suddenly jump out and scare the piss out of tourists.  Aside from that, the tour was quite fun and I love the stories and history this city has.  My brothers friend volunteered to hold a candle in a creepy corner whilst the tour guy told us stories.  She woke up the next morning with a ghost story of her own, as did I, AGAIN, one of the next nights.  I swear that hostel was haunted.  I swear that whole city is haunted.

Our day trip out to Loch Ness was fun.  We got on a boat and spent a good half hour peering over the side for Nessie.  We also met Hamish, the cutest cow in the world.

On a side note, OMG SCOTTISH ACCENTS.  I WANT TO TAKE THEM HOME AND KEEP THEM FOREVER AND EVER.  Gav, if you’re reading this, don’t get creeped out.  Hur.

MOAR Edinburgh Photos

Today, on my way home from Belgium, I congratulate myself for getting on the bus so early, for giving myself 2 hours before a flight and  for generally not causing heart stopping anxiety that I usually have whilst running for a plane.

Then I realised that Brussels has two airports and I was at the wrong one.  In fact, the airport I needed to be at was about 15km out of the city centre I just left.  About an hours drive ago.  My first thought was, fuck it, I will just buy a Ryan Air ticket and go home that way.  Then I remembered that Ryan Air doesn’t fly Brussels to London, due to the Eurostar crying it could no longer extort its customers.  BALLS.

I don’t even want to tell you how much the emergency taxi trip to the other airport costed me.  I think I will still be paying that one off long after I get back home to New Zealand.

Below is probably the best photo I took.  The rest seem to consist of Marcelo eating icecream.

Tel Aviv was an enormous culture shock for us after spending so much time in very conservative countries.  It is the San Francisco of the Middle East.  I felt highly ridiculous in my Syrian Souq garb and was immediately desperate to put on my short shorts and a revealing top.  Due to the border fiasco, it was about 11pm by the time we arrived at Tel Aviv’s central bus station.

It looked -exactly- like a post apocalyptic zombie film.  Exactly.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  The fast food shops were barred shut and there were drunk teens drinking cheap beer under flickering florescent lights.  There was trash everywhere, piled up in some places, lazily drifting over the floor in others.  As we descended down a slow, creaky escalator, we were waved and yelled at by a young trans-gender couple from the mezzanine above, swinging a bottle of wine.  Outside an old man lay on the footpath with a beer box as his pillow and his prosthetic leg lying next to him.  It was zombie town.

Nightlife Tel Aviv was a little intimidating for me.  There were clubs and raves everywhere and we struggled to find a hostel with any vacancies.  It had been a hell of a long day.  We had a quick drink with the manager of our hostel and trotted up to yet another craptastic dorm room.  We found out pretty damn quickly that Israel was HELLA EXPENSIVE.  I would say on par, if not more so, than London.

Our next day in Tel Aviv was wonderful.  What had seemed to be a seedy city by night had completely disappeared into a beautiful beach life town full of girls in bikinis and very fashionable people.  Absolutely no dress codes here and we spent all day at the most amazing beach I’ve ever been to in my LIFE.  Warm water with a perfect surf.  Wicked.  There was even a 24/7 breakfast cafe called “Benedict” dedicated entirely to the  awesomeness that is Eggs Benedict.  Homemade breads and spreads, OMG, Best Restaurant Ever.

We freaked out a bit about our dire money situation at this point.  It was a shame because the city is amazing and we desperately wanted to spend more time there, possibly have taken a day trip out to Jericho, even.  Instead, we boarded the bus the next morning for Jerusalem.

We ate some amazing street food and met an American who had been in the region for the last 5 years.  He led us around a bit, chatted, bought us dessert then wandered off again.  Now that I think about it, it was sort of weird.  He was surprised at seeing us, I think, so made an effort to come up and introduce himself.  He shook my hand slowly and laughed, saying, it was the first time he’d shaken a ladies hand in 5 years.

We started the crossing by taking a taxi to the bus station then a sort of group shared taxi thing to the border, the King Hussein / Allenby Bridge.  Both taxis ripped us off, white man tax, but for a minuscule amount of money so it didn’t bother us much.  The border looked like every other Middle Eastern border, neat, tidy and secure but disorganised and laid back.  The first window took our photo and we presented our passports to the second window.  At the third window the guard looked at us and simply said “No”.
Wait, what, No what??
“No.  You came into Jordan with a group, I can see you have a group stamp.  Where is your group now?  You cannot cross at this border.”

I have to admit, we knew getting into Israel would be difficult but we didn’t expect such a flat refusal.  We stood there like mugs for a bit and tried to figure out what the fuck to do.  Worst of all, we’d carefully been spending all our Jordanian dollars before we left, had nearly nothing left and there were no ATM machines.  We talked to a few guards and few randoms outside, who like to get involved in tourist drama, and they told us that this border was really strict on certain rules.  From memory, and I might be wrong about this, I think it was a Palestinian controlled crossing as well, which meant rules were slightly different.  Whatever the problem was, it is NOT FREAKING MENTIONED in Lonely Planet.

A taxi driver talked us into letting him drive us to the next border which was really far up north and by no means a short trip.  Luckily, he knew the exact ATM machine that would work with foreign cards.  Fancy that.  It is a lot of fun driving through rural areas, the sights and SMELLS, hell, are a lot different once you’re off the beaten track.

Right, the next part was such flapping around, it took us a few hours to get through it.  After the taxi to the border, we had to get on another group taxi to the border.  I dunno what was up with these group/service taxis but they seemed to be the only ones allowed near any crossings.  From there, a Jordanian guard peered in the windows at me and asked a multitude of irrelevant questions like, what exactly is the name you call the ring in your lip, ahh, a piercing, did it hurt, etc and we were finally dropped at the border patrol.  From there, we marched in to get the Israeli passport stamps, which, in themselves, can cause a bit of an issue.  Basically, if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport, a lot of Middle Eastern countries will not let you into their country.  This is basically the reason why no tours go through Israel and why it’s best to leave this country till last.  The border office offered us a choice of having our passports stamped or just a piece of paper instead.  However, I have heard that some guards won’t offer this and will get offended if you ask.

I got my passport stamped as it only has a few more months left on it anyhow and Marcelo got his on a bit of paper.  We then had to wait for a special bus that took 20minutes to arrive and 5 minutes to drive us over the border.  Finally, finally, we were on Israeli ground.  But it wasn’t over yet.  We still had to actually get IN to the country.

The girls working at passport control were all doing their compulsory military service that they do after leaving highschool.  They were the hottest, most fashionable and ultimately the most terrifying, security guards I’ve ever seen.  One girl took one look at me and stuck a purple sticker on my passport.  I’ve been pulled up at enough airports to know this is the part where they drag you out the back to make you feel like shit and go through all your stuff.  When she snapped on the rubber gloves I thought I would die, right there and then.  As it happened, it was just another extra vigorous metal detection search.

We got split up and sent to different windows where we had to answer a barrage of more questions.  Our Syrian visas didn’t go down to well.  We were asked for our parents names, grandparents names, all email addresses, all telephone numbers – NZ and London, cell phone numbers a list of places we had visited previously.  Not just for this trip but for all time.  They sat us down and took off with our passports for 3 hours, another thorough security check.

I think, all up, it took us about 11 – 12 hours to cross from Jordan to Israel.

Last week Marcelo and I headed over to Sweden to meet up with our brothers.  My brother is moving there for a year away at University and Marcelo’s whanau was based in Sweden with his brother still living in Malmo.

We flew cheap cheap £15 Ryan Air into a airport about an hour and a half out of Stockholm.  Travelling on the cheap is such a pain in the ass.  However, it was a lot cheaper than it should have been thanks to the parentals paying for accommodation. Our first thoughts of Stockholm is that there is just NO PEOPLE.  Perhaps they were all hiding inside to escape the extreme cold instead of wandering out and about like the insane tourists.  Or perhaps we’re just so used to London now that if I’m not constantly dodging people on the footpath then anywhere else looks vastly empty.  The old town reminded me a lot of Amsterdam with its cute winding footpaths and boutique shops.  Damn it was cold though.   There was one point on the second day where I thought my toes had actually died and I would have to amputate.

We spent most of the afternoon in the park where we had found a hill.  We’re easy to entertain.

Jordan and I had our very first experience in an IKEA.  We were both very excited, however, due to no buses running, cold and lost we were all pretty shitty once we got there.  Well, I was.  It was much, much harder than I expected.  I didn’t know if we were meant to grab items off the showrooms or find the right section or where the damn ramp to the next level was argghhhh.  The worst part is that we’d neglected to find out what size bed Jordan had in his dorms so we couldn’t buy bedding – which was the entire reason we went there in the first place… There were tiny hotdogs that cheered the boys up though.

We then SLOWLY made our way back to the University to move Jordan’s stuff in, it was 5pm at this point but looked like midnight.? We let ourselves in the building, couldn’t get the code to work for the corridor then couldn’t get the key to work for the room.  Then we we realised we were in the wrong building entirely and flailed round for a bit to find the right one.  FINALLY, we were sorted and Marcelo and I headed out that night for good time drinks with a friend.

It was about 5 hours hungover on the train to Malmo which is a tiny city but a helleva lot warmer than Stockholm.  We we so shattered with all the travelling that we spent an entire day in the flat in our pajamas playing Grand Theft Auto and eating.

We could have done with a few more days in each city to be honest, it was far too short a trip.

Sweden Photos

Our group took a convoy of jeeps out to a Bedouin camp where we were to stay for the night. We saw families of camels trot by, they are just so graceful. We raced up and down huge sand dunes and stopped atop one to watch the sunset. Just as we saw the last glimmer of sun dip below the horizon, Marcelo jumped up and screamed “LOOK BEHIND YOU”, like a girl, which led to a chain reaction of girlish screaming and a scuffle to quickly stand up and run away. We had been told of CAMEL SPIDERS you see. Instead, a merry dune beetle about the size of my palm cheerfully totted past us on long legs. It was almost cute. Marcelo has an acute fear of insecty type creatures.

It gets dark quickly in the desert. 15 minutes later when we got to the camp it was pitch black. We were treated to another Bedouin dinner that they cook deep in the ground, quite similar to a New Zealand hungi. Our Bedouin hosts played guitar and danced around the fire, it was really awesome. We then headed off to put our sleeping bags out under the stars and get horribly drunk. A pack of cards was produced and collected alcohol and mixer. We decided on Circle of Death which quickly degenerated into I Have Never, a game that should never be played outside where the rest of your tour is sleeping around you.

The next day we headed out to Aqaba and onto a glass bottom boat to see the Red Sea coral. Again, the Middle East’s horrible HORRIBLE environmental awareness pretty much ruined this as it became a game of “guess what brand of can that is” instead of looking at the coral. I saw a small black and white snake while snorkelling and refused to go back in the water after that. Average. It was here we said good bye to our tour group and made our way on our own again, back to Amman for the crossing to Israel.

Wadi Rum Photos

We walked through the winding ravine for ages until it began to slowly open out:

Into this: Petra’s Treasury

It was truly one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever seen.

There’s not all the much inside it anymore though.  Apart from a guard who insisted on tying Marcelo’s turban correctly.  The site of Petra is actually huge and twisted on for ages past this.  Despite threatening to die from heat stroke a few times we decided we would brave the 800 steps up the cliff to the Monastery, which was similar to the Treasury, but bigger and less decorated.  To prove we were truly hard-asses, we climbed further up to a look out point which housed a Bedouin tent at the top.  I think we actually let ourselves in and conked out on the cushions where nice Bedouin men gave us tea out of little cups of dubious hygiene.

The Bedouin men were quite classic.  Every single on of them wore some sort of bandanna, had long black hair and carefully smudged eyeliner.  They were all Jack Sparrow.  All of them.  Others on our tour said they saw one Western girl doing the Marathon of Shame out of a tent the next morning.

We spent the rest of our time in Wadi Musa at a Bath house, getting washed and massaged then, regrettably, scrubbed a new shade of white.  I had a tan.  I did.  Up to that point where a shirtless Jordanian man scrubbed it all off.  Tear :(

Me at the top of the hill with the Monastery behind me:

Petra Photos