Blown Away

The title is both literal and metaphorical today.

Firstly, the wind today is something incredibly fierce. I´m giving 50-50 odds as to whether our tent collapses tonight or not. But boy it´s beautiful here.

We toured Empuries today: it was the furthest west Greek colony settled in c. 550 BC and later taken over by the Romans. Pretty cool. It felt pretty incredible to be sitting amongst so much history.

Now we´re set up on a campsite close by to that, and in the morning we break camp and head to Carcassonne in the south of France for a couple of days. It´s a medieval walled city and I hear that it´s really cool. After that we had to Nice for some French Rivera action and then our foray into Italy begins with Florence.

I wish I could say so much more but my time here is, as always, very limited by the ticking clock. I wish I could convey all that I´m feeling and experiencing, but I´m not even certain of it myself!

Anyways, until next time...

Barcelona the Beautiful

We´ve been in Barcelona for two days now and its been great so far. We go in around supper time yesterday and after supper a bunch of us decided to bus into Barcelona for the night to experience the Saturday nightlife.

We strolled down "Las Ramblas" - a continuous section of pedestrian only street with lots of people thronging it for all hours of the night. You can drink in public so we kept buying cans of beer from guys on the street and strolling on down. We actually spent most of the night doing that and had a brilliant time. Boo to stodgy Canadian liqour laws.

Today Jac and I went to the Picasso museum and saw a bunch of his earlier works. He actually painted recognizable stuff then.

There´s so much more that I would like to say, but this is a ghetto computer and it´s going to die.

Ahh Madrid

So, we´re in the heart of Madrid right now and loving it. The city is beautiful, the weather is hot and the people are definitely not North American. The communication barrier is very real - we just came from a tapas bar where our server did not speak any English and this made things very difficult. Chalk it up to cross-cultural adventure!

So far we´ve seen castles, cathedrals, art galleries and the inside of our tent the most. Every day feels like a whirlwind, but when you can buy a bottle of wine for $0.70, life is manageable! (you can get a nice bottle for 3 euros)

We travelled for over 24 hours from SSU to Madrid. We had two flat tires on the bus ride to Halifax, an intensely rough landing in St. John´s NF and a four hour layover at Heathrow before arriving at the beautiful Madrid airport. We´ll show you pictures when we get back, but we have not way to upload any while we´re here.

Our campground is super posh. It has three swimming pools, a grocery store and very well maintained grounds. And the showers are excellent - a must after a long day´s travel.

We just finished up at the world famous Prado Museum prior to this. We saw masterpieces by Raphael, Bosch, Durer, Velazquez, Goya, etc. We then tried to go to the Rene Sofia but they´ve closed the Picasso wing because they´re lending out the Guernica right now so we didn´t bother.

What else to say... we miss you all and wish you could be here with us! The weather´s hot (so far) but the sights are just beautiful.

Until next time...

And We're Off!

So, this is our travel blog for our European adventures. Check in here often, or, even better, subscribe to our feed in the sidebar. If you have no idea what a feed is, enter your email address in the space provided in the sidebar and you'll be emailed every time we update this blog.

Europe, here we come!

Our Itinerary

Well, I remember that somebody (Maria I believe) asked about our itinerary, so here it is. I also added a Google Calendar itinerary for you nerds out there. Add the iCal link to your favourite iCal compatable program, or click to add it to your Google Calendar list:

leave Halifax for Madrid, via London - May 22

arrive Madrid, transit to campsite at El Escorial - May 23

Avila and Segovia - May 24

El Valle de los Caidos, El Escorial - May 25

Madrid - May 26

transit to Barcelona - May 27

Barcelona - May 28

Barcelona - May 29

transit to Golf de Roses region for visit to Empuries - May 30

transit to Carcassonne - May 31

Carcassonne - June 1

transit to Nice - June 2

transit to Florence - June 3

Florence - June 4

Florence - June 5

Siena - June 6

transit to Rome, visiting Orvieto en route - June 7

Rome - June 8

Rome - June 9

Rome - June 10

transit to Sorrento and Bay of Naples region, with a visit to Monte Cassino en route - June 11

Pompeii - June 12

Amalfi Coast - June 13

transit to Assisi - June 14

Assisi - June 15

transit to Ravenna - June 16

Ravenna - June 17

transit to Venice - June 18

Venice - June 19

Venice - June 20

Venice - June 21

transit to Munich - June 22

Munich - June 23

Munich - June 24

transit to Zurich - June 25

Zurich - June 26

Zurich - June 27

transit to Strasbourg via Colmar - June 28

Strasbourg - June 29

transit to Paris - June 30

Paris - July 1

Paris - July 2

Paris - July 3

transit to Chartres en route to Normandy region - July 4

D-Day Beaches: Omaha/Juno - July 5

Mont St. Michel - July 6

transit across English Channel (Roscoff, France to Plymouth, England) - July 7

Exeter - July 8

Plymouth or Exeter - July 9

Wells and Glastonbury - July 10

Bath - July 11

Winchester - July 12

Winchester - July 13

London - July 14

London - July 15

London - July 16

depart London for Halifax - July 17

Tune in!

This space will chronicle Matt & Jac's trip to Europe with the SSU study-abroad program.

And there was much rejoicing.