Spain - Madrid

Madrid was a wonderful time. What a fun city! I really enjoyed my stay. I met so many people at Juvenil Albergue all friendly and very fun. It was very exciting to get to spend some time with Dad and Joy in Spain so I'm really glad I left a little early from Sardenga. Mirrasierra suites was awesome and a fantastic luxury for me thank you 10x.
I wish Kels and Marisa the best in Madrid. I know they will have a good time once they get settled and spend some time immersing themselves in the culture meeting new people and putting themselves out there with the Spanish language. I know you both will have no problem doing this. Madrid was a wonderful city, but very tiring. There was people on every corner at every hour of the day and night, very crowded, and lots of walking. If you go out you don't come back until 6 or 8 sometimes even 10 o'clock in the morning. This made siesta completely necessary.
Kelly and I found this market that everyone would have loved. It was called Mercato de San Miguel. This was amazing because it had all sorts of different shops including a wine bar, cafeteria, oyster bar, flower shop, pastries, olives, nuts, appetizers, and an open area to sit and eat and drink for lunch or dinner or whenever. It was a very nice place to go always busy and always delicious. I ate oysters almost everyday after we found this place. On my last day in Madrid, Kelly and Marisa met up with me at the Mercato and we got a bunch of snacks and lunch items and went to El Retiro park for a picnic. It was so nice it made leaving really harder. I didn't want to leave and wish I was still there. Madrid was a beautiful city and I'm sure Kelly will have a wonderful time there. I can't wait till I go back in October to visit once more. I miss Kelly a lot already but am so excited for her that she is on this trip doing something so new and exciting.



This video upload has taken hours. Sorry, I tried. I will put it on youtube soon.

Love you Kelly!!

Sardenga

Absolutely Beautiful. I loved this island. The people were very nice (for the most part) and the weather was absolutely perfect. I got the worst sunburn of my life on the first day and had to spend the next few recovering in pain. It healed and was all good. THE FOOD was absolutely delicious. The Guarro family made some wonderful meals and I made sure to keep a close eye on what was being cooked. We ate pizza almost everyday though as well. I also made sure we had a fresh piece of Gorgonzola to enjoy everyday as well. I loved all the bread and cheeses and was excited to get to try all these new things. The vino was ridiculously cheap you could buy 2 liters of wine for 4 Euros. I collected business cards from the eateries that were particularly spectacular and will save them to remember. I also loved the Gelati... amazing. I will add more to this soon..

Overall the rental car experience was pretty awful. We had to pay an extra 18 euro per day for a young drivers fee and only 1 person could drive the car and it wasn't me. This was pretty inconvenient but oh well we lived with it. Finally arriving to Sardenga was so exciting we all had huge grins on our face and couldn't wait to get into the water. The beaches were insanely crowded everyday everywhere we went but it was fun to watch the Italians and their interactions on the beach. Similar to Mexico there was vendors selling all sorts of things on the beach but none of it appealed to me at all. Most people that were there seemed to be visitors from the mainland and weren't actually Sardinian locals, but we did meet one or two people that lived on the island year round. I really enjoyed staying at Marcello's house. It was small but cozy and very practical for a beach house and luckily every room had AC. They had amazing view of the surrounding hillside and a view over the ocean that could see all the way to Corsica on a clear day. Sunsets were absolutely amazing. Each sunset everyday was different but most days you could see every color in the spectrum it was absolutely beautiful. They had a hot tub with speakers so most days at sunset we would get in the hot tub and play some music and watch the sun go down. This was perfect; such a relaxing vacation. Unfortunetly, Sardinians also have a very slow construction and property management processes so there were still some unfinished features of the house mostly lighting but the funny part was that the contractor lived next door. Either way the house was awesome and it was really nice to have a home base for nearly 3 weeks.
We went to different beaches Capo Testa, Stintino, Alghero, Santa Teresa (to name a few), and all sorts of other beaches surrounding the northern part of the island. The waters at the closest beach were filled with Medusa (Jellyfish) so each of us got stung, with Shawn winning the medal with 7 stings. We also went on a boat tour that stopped at a bunch of different little beaches and island attractions including one stop at a beach in Corsica. This was a fun day, Sam and I had fun walking around an arts and crafts market near one of the beaches drinking some wine and seeing the sights. Sam and I also went out to a really nice restaurant called Mediterraneo that was delicious and a wonderful time. It was nice to go out and do something with just the two of us because it was hard to satisfy everyone all at once in a bigger group of 6-9. Overall this Italian island experience was a joy.

View from Marcello's House

Marcello's House

Stintino

Bye Sardenga...

I really enjoyed Sardenga. I hope I can go back someday.

Berlin to ROMA

Hey everybody!!!

Berlin was awesome. After all the drama missing trains and changing trains 5 different times to get to Berlin I was extremely happy to have a place to stay and meet up with Shawn. Berlin was a really cool city. We went to all the shops around the Crown Plaza where we were staying and visited all sorts of different places I had a hard time pronouncing. There was a beautiful park in the middle of the city and filled with several beer gardens and cool places to hang out. Marcello met up with us and took us around to some cool sites. One particularly cool place was the Reichstag which is basically Berlin's main goverment building. We went to the Haus Der 100 Biers and tried a few new flavors. On the last day we were in Berlin, Shawn and I rented bikes and traveled all over the city and ended up at a Harley Davidson festival. This was pretty cool and we had a good time walking around checking out the hundreds of different bikes and ate some good food. Overall Berlin was fun.

House of 100 Beers

Harley Davidson Festival

Rome was beautiful. This first video is taken in a train station in Frankfurt on the way to Roma. Give you an idea of how we have been traveling and I thought it was pretty funny. I don't have of the pictures that we took at the Vatican on my computer, but I have some cool photos of other things we did in Roma. We ate pizza and drank wine everyday and walked around to see different sites including the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, and Coliseum. Roma was a wonderful place to visit but we came at the hottest time of the year and were anticipating the ocean breeze and sunny beaches to come in Sardinia. I really enjoyed the Sistine Chapel and all the artwork at the Vatican particularly the map room. It was neat to see how geographers viewed everything back then and were able to record everything including topography. We would end up at the Coliseum every night really late and were pretty much mesmerized for hours. It was beautiful. I really enjoyed Roma and hope to go back soon.

Coliseum

Miss you all!!!!!!