Spain

Madrid
Our next stop on the trip was Madrid, Spain.  We stayed for 3 nights and got a chance to experience some of the unique Spanish culture.  We spent our days walking about the central touristy areas including Gran Via (busy downtown street packed with pedestrians, stores and restaurants), Plaza Mayor, the royal palace and gardens as well as a day trip to Toledo.  Our first night we spent in a nice hotel and received a free upgrade to a junior suite which was a nice change from our usual hostels.  We then went for dinner at an Italian restaurant that specialized in gluten free dishes, allowing Holly to have a pizza and a beer for dinner.  The most interesting thing about going out to eat in Madrid is the normal hours that people go out.  For example, the Italian restaurant didn't open its doors for dinner until 8:30 pm and nobody was in a rush to get in except us.  We were the first ones in and it didn't start to fill up until well past 9.  We had heard that typical lunch hours were between 2 and 4 as well.

 Toledo
 Our day trip to Toledo was a very neat experience as we got to see all the steel swords and armor that is made there. This is where The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc. gets all of their gear from. The town itself was gorgeous as well.

 Barcelona

Barcelona was the next stop.  We ended up staying for 3 nights and spent our time during the days walking around La Rambla (the happening place) and the surroundings area mostly.  It was full of street performers, markets, "hungry hustlas" (sketchy salesmen selling illegal goods) and a lot of interesting people.  We saw the end of La Merce festival on our second night which was a collection of bands performing and people partying in the streets.  The highlight of Barcelona for us was definitely the football match of Barcelona vs. Real Sociedad. We sat in the top level of the 100,000 seat Camp Nou stadium and watched Barcelona run them over 4-1.  Lionel Messi on Barcelona is said to be the  best player in the world right now (maybe some bias from the sources) and had a nice header goal against Real Sociedad that we got to see.

Holly's Heaven

Holly with chocolate dessert and red wine at a traditional Portuguese restaurant

Portugal - updated

Lisbon, Portugal

We made a last minute decision to book a flight to Lisbon, Portugal as it was the same price to go to our planned next destination of Madrid, Spain.  It cost us about $150 CDN but saved us a very long train ride, a Eurail Pass travel day and we were able to get there in just over 2 hours. It has been the best decision we've made so far.  We have titled it the "vacation within a vacation" as it seems to be a more developed version of Mexico.  Everything is fairly cheap (relative to the cities so far).  We booked into the Good Morning Hostel for 4 nights, costing only about 20 bucks CDN each per night and providing the best hostel accomodation we´ve had so far.  We spent our first day on the beach laying around and going for the occasional dip in the ocean.  The water is a bit chilly (Holly doesn't seem to think it's that bad) but is very refreshing when it is over 30 degrees outside.

Our plan for today is to hang around Lisbon and do some shopping before attending a Portugese dinner and then who knows what for the evening.  Tomorrow, we plan on heading to Sintra for the day, a small town outside Lisbon with castles and palaces to explore, and Sunday we will head out to Lagos, Portugal to stay there for 3 nights. Lagos is supposed to be a gorgeous beach town with lots to do, according to other travellers.

We will fill you in on these upcoming events when we get the chance.

Kevin

On Saturday, we visited Sintra, a small town outside of Lisbon (roughly a 30 minute train ride). It is considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and it is easy to see why. There are a large number of fantastic castles, palaces, convents, and other neat old buildings and structures on the Sintra mountains. Furthermore, the landscape and foliage is extremely lush, it reminded me of the forest in Montana.

Since it would take a couple of days to see everything, we had to choose only a few sites to see. We started out at the Moorish Castle, which was a relatively small area in total but had a wall all the way around it with turrets and stone walkways around the perimeter of the courtyard. It also boasted a breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside. After some time exploring this castle, we went to Pena Palace, the great palace on the uppermost part of the Sintra mountains. It was really interesting exploring the inside of the palace, not to mention the surrounding landscape was fantastic. We spent a good hour in the woods enjoying some time off the beaten track as well.

Lagos, Portugal

We arrived in Lagos after a relaxing four hour bus ride. Our first stop was our hostel which has great staff and a relaxing atmosphere. After a quick bite to eat, we hit the beach for a couple of hours and spent the night visiting with people at the hostel. Yesterday we got up, went for a run in the hot sun, then went kayaking on a tour through all the grottos along the beaches. We also got to kayak through some pretty tight caves, and got to snorkel at one of the secluded beaches. Last night we went out for a really good Portuguese dinner, and couldn't keep our eyes open past 11.  

Today we went and walked the cliffs that overlook the ocean and run above the beaches. We then spent the afternoon reading and swimming on one of the beaches along the walk. Tonight we're hoping to go out because tomorrow we're bussing back to Lisbon and taking an overnight train to Madrid.

Holly

Lisbon from across the river

Pretty nice beach view

Bruges, Belgium, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg and Paris, France

Bruges, Belgium
After discussions with fellow travelers in Amsterdam, we decided to change our Belgium destination from Brussels to Bruges and it worked out great.  We stayed with a 25-year old guy named Pieter in what was a traditional Belgian home just outside the city, very cool.  He was an awesome guy that we got along with very well.  He gave us bikes to use for the days and nights for transportation which was very convenient for such a small city.  We spent the majority of our time exploring on the bikes and even went for a day trip to a small town just outside of Bruges.  Pieter was busy studying for an exam on the Friday, the day we were planning to leave, so we decided to extend our stay a night and celebrate him finishing his exams and my own birthday.  We had a barbecue with some of his friends and hit the town for a night out.  Pieter wasn't strict on curfew so we returned to his residence by 5 am after a very fun night out.

Our host Pieter

Pieter´s friend Kelly

The Birthday Boy outside Bruges

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Luxembourg was another interesting experience, although we figured we would've been satisfied with just spending the day there instead of 2 nights.  It was very weird (and inconvenient) that everything closed so early and made it difficult to find food the first night. We eventually hit rock bottom and found our way to the golden arches in desperation. We spent our time walking around the city and exploring the underground tunnels where they hid their entire city during major wars.

Luxembourg City

Paris, France
In Paris, we stayed in another AirBNB with Isabel who was nice but basically met with us once, gave us the keys to her apartment and we never saw her again.  Our time here was rushed but we got to see some of the major attractions.  Our first was the catacombs where over 6 million skeletons were transferred to an underground necropolis from other cemeteries.  All of the skeletons were arranged in these underground tunnels in an artistic manner.  It was kind of a creepy place but very neat (worth the 2 hour wait). We also visited Notre Dame Cathedral which was an incredible structure.  Then the grand finale of Paris was of course the Eiffel Tower.  We booked online which allowed us to skip a massive lineup (est. 2 hours) and walk right into the elevator going up.  From there, we bought tickets to the summit where we looked around the city from 282 metres in the air.  It was gorgeous at night with all the lights lit up.
 Kevin

Amsterdam - days 1, 2, and 3 AND 4

Our time so far in Amsterdam has been really relaxing and enjoyable (and no, that is not referring to the city's infamous recreational pastime). Our hostel is situated on beautiful Vondelpark, where you see a variety of people running, biking, picnicking, sleeping, enjoying the scenery, and, of course, smoking pot. Everyone here seems to be quite fit, and the biking part of the culture is fascinating. Fun fact: families here have, on average, 4 bikes, and often they own more bikes than the number of family members.
The day we got here, we checked into our hostel in the late morning (we were up at 4 to make our way to the Edinburgh airport for our 7 am flight), and went right to Vondelpark to check out our surroundings. Since our hostel has a kitchen (small but functional), we have just been going to the supermarket Albert Heijn and cooking our own food. After initially being overwhelmed by the total Dutch packaging and signs, I became extremely thankful for a very handy label addition to all Albert Heijn products: a picture of wheat with a line running through it for anything gluten free. Very helpful indeed.
That night, Kev and I headed downstairs to our hostel bar after eating, where we met two guys who we ended up going out with after a couple of drinks at the hostel bar. Jason, an American, was just here for the weekend, but is currently working in marketing in Dusseldorf, Germany. Louis, a french-speaking Swiss student, is finishing up his mechanical engineering degree this year. Both very nice guys, we just walked around the heart of Amsterdam and ended up at a little corner bar.
On our second day here, we rented bikes for three days (until we leave) and started exploring the city by bike. It's fascinating how the city revolves over the use of bikes, the right of way goes bikes, cars, pedestrians (or bikes, pedestrians, cars.. It's hard to tell). It's extremely efficient and doesn't take us any time at all to get around. We checked out the Red Light District first by daylight, then again by night. It was a very surreal experience, it was extremely eye opening seeing all the prostitutes in the windows and interesting characters wandering the streets. We met a fellow Canadian named Cody (from Vancouver) who's applying to law school this fall. The three of us went out to check out the Red Light District last night, and afterwards met up with two Australians that Cody had previously met. The five of us ended up at a club where they had live jazz music, and a man in his late 60s with amazing foot work, out-dancing everyone on the dancefloor.
After a late night out, we slept in a little later than we would have liked today, and went to Vondelpark for a run (rollerblade for Kev - hostel rents them out). We then biked to the train station where we officially got our eurail passes validated, because we're off to Bruges, Belgium on Wednesday! After some additional sightseeing, we came back to the hostel to make food before spending the night out roaming the canals with some traditional Dutch ice cream from this place they have called McDonald's.

Our final full day in Amsterdam included visiting the Anne Frank house and going out for a nice dinner and bike ride around town and the Red Light District for the final time.  The Anne Frank house was a very moving story based off a Jewish girl, Anne Frank,who wrote a journal while in hiding from the Nazis. We got to walk through the business where her and her family and friends hid before being ratted out by an unknown informant while reading quotes from her journal and watching tapes of those close to her speaking of the situation, including one from her dad, Otto. Otto was the only one of his family to survive the German concentration camps.

Off to Bruges, Belgium for some beer, whaffles and chocolate..

Holly and Kevin

Amsterdam

We have arrived safely in Amsterdam!

Dublin, London and Edinburgh - UPDATED

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in updating our blog.  We have been very busy and too cheap to get wifi while in the London hostel.

Dublin is a very cool city and always has lots going on.  Our first day was trying to get over jet lag so we just explored downtown Dublin.  The following day, we first checked out the Kilmainham Gaol which gave a history of the rebellion and civil war that took place in Ireland along with talking about all of the politicians and showing us where they were executed.  We then spent the night on a pub crawl with 2 local professional musicians that played traditional Irish music for us and explained everything there is to know about Irish music - very interesting.  We concluded the evening by hitting up Temple Bar (the party area) to watch some local talent perform.

The next morning we headed to the Guinness Storehouse to learn all about the brewing of Guinness Beer.  Holly related to the process from her background in microbiology and myself from by background in drinking beer. The tour included also a taste testing, a pouring lesson and a free pint in the Guinness gravity bar.  The gentleman I am, I offered to drink Holly's gluten-filled pint as well which was filling enough to serve as brunch for the day.  After Guinness, we took a train out to a little town along the coast called Killiney.  We went into the local pub on what happened to be huge carnival for the little town which gave us a real inside look at the Irish culture outside of a tourist area.  We stood out like sore thumbs but it was a really cool experience.

Dublin - Guinness gravity bar

London was a quick 2 night stay but we got a chance to see all the major tourist attractions that we wanted to, including the London Bridge, the Tower Bridge, the Royal Palace and the changing of the guard.  The hostel we stayed at was the only downside of the London visit as it was not very pretty.  Our stay at the B&B in Edinburgh made up for it though.

London Bridge

Edinburgh was by far the most gorgeous city with the Edinburgh Castle and all of the amazing architecture.  We spent our time walking around the city center, touring the castle, shopping on the Royal Mile and we took a day trip out to New Brenwick on the coast to see the Scottish countryside.  We walked the beach, ate lunch there and took a visit to the candy shop for some fudge.

Our B&B host was awesome!  He was a supper friendly guy with a lot of energy and traveling experiences.  He gave us access to the whole "flat" except his own room so it was like staying in a 5-star hotel.  We also used his kitchen to make mostly our own meals to cut down our costs. 

Off to Amsterdam...

Kev

Edinburgh Castle

London Eye