Last day of Summer

Last day of Summer,

Because tomorrow I leave Madrid, Spain and fly to London. This will sadly conclude my 'summer' travels. I say sadly, although I am ready to go back home (England home). Being in the same pair of clothes for 3 days.... I would actually like to take a shower with some soap you know??

To pick up where I left off last I was in Prague. My second last day there I spend wandering. I wandered through gardens in the city, saw a few more cool structures and monuments and chilled out. That night back at my hostel while cooking dinner I met these two English guys, had a good chat over dinner and then I expected to go to bed, listen to Hamish & Andy or something yeh? Well... what I didn't expect was to meet more cool people! While getting tea I got chatting to these two German guys and they were great to talk to. The hostel was getting a bit packed and two girls and a guy and I sat on the couch I was on.... it was a tight squeeze. Now since we were like centimetres away from each other we got talking and they were from Paris! Ahh the French, they have been very nice to me this trip :) So! We got talking and they had all only been back a month after their year studying abroad, one was in Argentina, one in the USA and the other in Melbourne! We had a bit more to talk about so we went out for a drink. A good way to end my last night in Prague.

Now Wednesday morning, flying out of Prague to Barcelona. Good flight, no complications in transferring in Germany... until. The conveyor belt at Barcelona airport. It was going, going, going and I was waiting... maybe waiting a little too long... most people had gone and then the conveyor belt stopped. Great. I asked around, it wasn't anywhere. I was told close to nothing and surprisingly I wasn't even worried. Maybe it was because I have only 3 nights left. So I left to my hostel hoping I would be receiving a call the next day.

Thursday, wearing the same clothes as Wednesday (Mind you jeans, long sleeve t-shirt, high tops) in the Spanish summer. Awesome. I walked to a lookout, saw Santa Familia, and just a bit of the city centre and went back to my hostel. Still no call. I had a bus booked to Madrid for 11pm as well. Soooo yeh. At the hostel I met a lot of Canadians and Australians, one of them gave me a beer for my troubles haha. And then I was off. Got a night bus to Madrid, arrived at 7am, straight to my hostel. (Oh the airport called saying my bag would be sent to Madrid! But I'll save the happiness for when I actually get it)

Friday, today, last day :(
I was so tired. But somehow I checked in etc, went to the Aus Embassy to vote... successfully! Then I went on a 3 hour walking tour of Madrid because I only have one day here! Now comes the good part, the nap.... ahhhhhh what a relief, it took maybe 13 seconds for me to be completely out. Best nap ever. I woke, received a call again saying my bag should arrive tonight! (now it's 9pm... still not here) oh wellz
I cooked some great dinner, so delicious. It has been just one meal I constantly cook now.

Tomorrow I leave, hopefully with my bag. By the way what I have in my carry on is my camera (hardly any battery), deodorant, wallet, phone, ipod, water bottle, passport and the clothes I am wearing, and have been wearing for far too long.

to conclude.
France.... the wine. Great wine, even better people.
Italy... walking along a Sicilian street and seeing two boys practicing spinning pizza on one finger, also Cinque Terre, possibly the most beautiful populated area in Western Europe.
Malta... cooking for, dining with, and seeing my parents
Prague... people, meeting people from Scotland to Turkey, from Canada to France. My favourite capital city.
Spain... having to suck it up and have a few challenges... by having no luggage.


So goodbye... i'm a little sad I won't be writing a blog anymore, if I do, I will let y'all know.
Thank you so much for reading, Bye for now.

Curtis

Ahoy!

Helllooooo

I am in Prague, and Prague is awesome. Okay again I must backtrack though....

I was in Catania, Sicily right? That went by pretty fast, the first 2 or 3 days there I didn't really meet many people and I just kind of wandered the streets etc. It was okay. On my second last night there I met an American guy who was really cool, but unfortunately he had to leave the next day.

So Friday was my last day in Sicily, my plan for the day was to go on a sunset tour of Mount Etna and then sleep in the airport as I was due to fly out the next morning.
For most of the day I went into the markets, and bought real Italian tomatoes from an Italian in Italian markets! Anddd they were 30 cents for half a kilo! I cooked my delicious lunch (pasta in Italy!) and was picked up at 3pm for my tour of Mount Etna!
It was great, so great. There was a group of maybe 20 or so people and most were Italian, I was the only one there who didn't speak Italian so the tour guide had to translate everything just for me! We didn't actually go on top of Mt Etna because that is a massive trip to do and expensive. We walked up some of the mountain to a point where we could see the sun fall behind the massive mountain, it was amazing. I mean this is the biggest active volcano in Europe, it has destroyed towns and the city surrounding it countless times. Pretty cool. On this tour I met a few Italians that were really nice (something I hadn't really experienced in most of Italy...), they were from Milan and around my age so it was really cool to meet Italians because from what I can see, it seems that they stick very closely together, you only see Italians with Italians, and when they travel they stick together in their group. Anyway now I have 3 friends from Milan! On this tour we also had some wine, some foccacia, and went into some caves formed by the lava flow from Etna. Good tour.

When I got back to the hostel I was getting ready to sleep in the airport when the hostel lady offered the couch to sleep on for free! I was pretty stoked, but this even got better because somehow I got talking to two girls from Prague (don't worry, they are like 27!!) and they had a spare bed in their room so I actually got a free bed! It was quite funny because the next morning at the airport, we saw each other again because we were on the same flight! Except the flight was delayed for 5 hours. Just my luck. But I got to know my new friends Lenka and Andrea, I learnt a bit of Czech in preparation ("ahoy" is hello!), and just chatted. They actually invited me to go to the pub with them when we got to Prague because they are having a get together for the return of their friend who had been in Australia and NZ for a year!
We arrived in Prague finally, I found my hostel and I was straight off to the pub. It was great, like, the best. When your travelling the best thing I've found is being lucky enough to meet the locals, and hang out with the locals. So at the pub, it was me, and 15 Czechs. So much fun. Their friend had little souvenirs for everyone from NZ and I ended up getting one! So now I have a Maori necklace from Prague (from NZ) haha. Then when I was saying goodbye Lenka offered to take me around Prague! So now Sunday, I walked around Prague a lot and met with them at a tower that is pretty much a smaller, much smaller version of the Eiffel Tower. From there Lenka, Gabby and Martin took me to a art cave thing, but weird but cool, and to a famous bridge and it was great! So now I have Czech friends!

That night I returned to the hostel to cook some dinner and somehow again I got talking to travellers, some French girls from Paris. We talked for a bit and then somehow two Turkish guys joined us and then somehow two Scottish guys joined us!! Crazy stuff! So we got a beer and had a good chat! Oh and some more Turkish people joined us too! Now I have Turkish and Scottish friends! They were all so cool and talkative it was just great.

So basically my last 4 days have been a blast, today is Monday and it is my second last day in Prague, Prague is amazing, I love it. Anyway I have to go because people are waiting for the computer!!

Bye bye friends and family! Hope you are all well!

mamma mia!

Hey there,

Well! I have just had a week in Malta, wait... make that a GREAT week in Malta! It was mostly just a big catch up week with the parents. We spent a day in Valletta, Malta's capital, spent a lot of the time relaxing in our apartment and going to the beach just a few minutes walk away.

Most of the week went as a blur. A lot of snorkelling was done, I saw this awesome fish that was camoflagued with the sand, it was pretty cool. My parents and I went to Gozo, an island off Malta one day and hired a car. We got to see some amazing creations on this island, have gelato and go for a swim. Good day I say.

I have been a bit distracted while writing this blog, this is because I am listening to the latest Leeland album "Love is on the Move"
Far out I love it. I can see why theological arguments can be important at times, but I love relaxing in God and realising the simple things. I was inspired by listening to these lyrics...
"As I lay down my life and pick up my cross
What a joy it is to give my life away to you
All that i need
All that I seek
Is you here with me
Holy spirit have your way in me"

You should give that album a go, it is goooooood!

So now I am back in Sicily!! I have been to Sicily earlier this year but this is a first in Catania. Catania is famous for being shadowed by Mount Etna, the hightest mountain in Europe supposedley. Arriving by ferry when the sun was setting I could just see the silhouette of this great mountain. It is big. I was hoping to climb it but I could not find any day excursion that wasn't ridicuously priced. The good thing about this is that being 18, I can quite easily say "I can always come back another time"

I have 4 days here, going to sleep in the airport again on Friday night joy oh joy and then I fly to Prague! Hopefully I will have a couchsurfer by then.

So another awesome thing happened to me, my computer got a virus, yay!! And I am quite sure that now my SD card for my camera has it as well! Double yay!! .....
It still works in the camera. But no more uploading photos until I get back to England. Soz!

Internet is not cheap here which sucks. So I am going to go.

Bye bye!

Curtis.

p.s. If you didn't see my facebook status then read this... I was walking in some local markets like 5 minutes ago and I walked past an exhausted Italian woman. I kind of laughed to myself after I heard her express her exhaustion by saying "mamma mia".
hahaha great stuff. My 'Italian experience' is complete.

wowzers

Ciao peeps!

I'm in Malta now. With my parents. It's sweeeeeeeet!

But prior to that I have a week of catching up to do!

So I left Venice last Friday to go to Florence. Unfortunately my week with Jordan in northern Italy had come to an end but it had been great fun and we have so many stories together now. So he ventured south to Rome while I had a stop before I hit up Rome (for the second time this year), Florence!!
Basically I loved Florence, such a beautiful city. When I arrived I found my youth hostel pretty quickly and got to skype my brother which was great! I was using the interwebs for a bit and suddenly this guy and a girl came up to me and asked if I wanted to go out with them that night. Out loud I said "yeh that'd be great" but in my head I was like "OH MY GOSH I don't have to spend the night by myself!!!" I love it when that happens. I think it's certainly the big man upstairs doing that kind of thing for me :)

So me, an American girl, Polish guy and a French guy went out that night. It was good fun, that night I also got to meet up with my roomie Lucy which was cool but was very short. At least we can say that we met up in Florence now.
The next day I spent in the city. I saw some really awesome things like human statues, great guitarists, real statues, but the most amazing thing I saw was the statue of David in a museum. The wait was totally worth it. It is just so massive! And so perfect, I think I'm beginning to find myself really appreciating good art now as I find myself in awe of some of these museums and spending 4 hours in them at the least.
That night I got some food and went up to a lookout of the whole city and saw the sun set. Again, it was just beautiful. Would seriously recommend it to anyone, as well as the hostel I stayed in because around the corner was a gelato place that had 2 euros for the best flavours including blueberry, blackberry, biscuit, and nutella. Turned out that the nutella 'flavour' was actually nutella. I cannot express enough the magnitude of joy I had in purchasing this gelato.

So that was Florence! Next was Rome, when I arrived it was very strange because I had actually already been only a few months ago. This time it was a lot busier. I stayed in a bit of a dodgy hostel but there were cool people there so that always makes it better. That night I got to meet up with Jordan again which was cool, we caught up for a bit in front of the Colosseum and then something disturbing happened. We got hit on by a 40+ year old Slovakian dude called John who although knew little English he was still able to express his feelings for both 'boys and girls'.
I gag every time I think of those terrible few minutes.

Now Monday, today I would finally visit the Vatican city. It was pretty great. Again, a lot of people but great. I actually went into the Vatican museum, spent a good part of the day there. Oh and the best feeling was remembering that I had pre-booked my ticket so I could straight past the lines of people that would wait for hours, and enter immediately.
The museum was great, I got to go into the Sistine Chapel and everything. It was a bit of a weird feeling because I felt the same as I did about the Lourve because I knew it was great art, and I did learn a lot about it. But somehow it was more the sheer quantity of this great art that amazed me. Anyway maybe that's just me.

Sorry this is a bit long but I'm almost done! After the Vatican I walked around Rome a bit more and finally left to the airport as the next day I would fly out (hopefully with no problems) and see my parents in Malta!!
Yeh umm turns out my whole 'no problem' attitude would not come true at all. To say it simply my ticket had some problem which meant I didn't have a seat on the plane forcing me to spend over double of the initial price to get a seat, and then there was a 5 hour delay on the plane actually arriving. Fun fun fun! Not as bad as the bunch of people I met in the airport that night who had been stuck there for 4 nights already.

So now I'm in Malta, got to see my parents last night, it was sooo great! When they arrived I had dinner and a bottle of wine ready for us to start our week long catch up. Immediately it felt like we were back at home again and we have to continually remind each other that we are in Malta haha. Today we went into Valetta (the capital), had a tour of the city in a horse carriage and got to have my first beer with Dad.

Top day, top week, top holidays, top life pretty much.
Will be writing again before I go to Sicily. I'm tired, Hamish and Andy time and then sleep.

Night night :)
Curtis.

Need a title quickly!

Oh cool well yeh.... I'm on my big summer holiday! In Venice... WOOO!!!




NOT!

It has been raining allllll day. So my day in northern Italy has been spent in bed.
Stupid "summer". Anyway time to catch you all up on the last week....

Last time I blogged was in Nice, which was nice. (Dad joke)
I had a great host, we went for swims in the ocean, to the Nice Jazz Festival for free, it was sweet.
After that I had to meet up with Jordan Welsh in the Cinque Terre, I arrived when he was in Barcelona. So I was by myself for the night at a camping site (which I wasn't too excited for) as Jordan was on an overnight bus arriving the next morning. Well I thought I was going to be by myself anyway. That afternoon when I arrived I was searching for directions to the camping site when I saw a group of about 25 people all around my age looking a bit lost as well so I asked if they were searching for the camping site as well. After that I met a lot of them, we went out to dinner together and it was so much fun and now I have about 20 or so American connections!

The next morning Jordan arrived so we went into the Cinque Terre (national park in Nth West Italy on the coast). It was beautiful. Just beautiful. We did a walk from one village to the next and when we arrived we got to have a swim in the ocean. It was just so awesome, lovely temperature and not too many tourists. I remember just thinking 'this is what I expected my summer to be like'.
For lunch it was Margherita Pizza (what else?) and in midst of conversation we were talking about meeting up with Jo Wilcox as she was in the same area with her sister. As soon as we started talking about this Jo and Kate walked by! It was quite funny, so for that afternoon we caught up over some delicious gelato.
For the night we went back to our camping site but the next day we met up with Jo and Kate again. Together we went for a swim, jumped off rocks into water, searched another village and had a great day! That night we stayed in Jo and Kate's apartment and had another delicious meal of pasta with some white wine.

The next day was Monday, we departed Jo and Kate and the amazing Cinque Terre to go to Milan. In Milan we had a couch surfer hosting us called Giulio, he was great, and his apartment was so modern and clean! Much better than any hostel. He took us to a street where they have countless bars with buffets of awesome food. We paid 8 euros, got a drink and unlimited food! Best dinner ever!!

Tuesday we headed to Venice and were to camp for the next 3 nights, Wednesday we spent about 12 hours actually on the island of Venice mostly spending our time getting lost (very easy to do there). It was actually really fun. And that brings us to today, rainy rainy Thursday.
Tomorrow Jordan and I split, he heads to Rome and I'm off to Florence. It has been really great to travel with a friend and especially Jordan, we've had many many laughs :)

By the way last thing, because we are worried of money we pretty much eat very basic food. Tonights dinner was smelly bread, cheap salami, cheap plastic cheese and cocktail sauce. So foul.

Anyway running out of time!!! Love you all, goodnight!!

Curtis

traveltraveltraveltravel

Here I am again, using a fast food chain's free wi-fi without buying their food. Mwahahaaaaa....

So! I am currently waiting for my train from Marseille to Nice and since I have 30 minutes to spare I thought why not write another blog cause they are fun.

Okay so last time I blogged was Wednesday, I was in Paris then and the rain was sucking all the excitement out of .... well being in Paris!! So yeh Wednesday I saw the Notre Dame but that's it. Thursday was going to have to be a big day!
I started with the Eiffel Tower (what else!) and it is pretty schweet to see it first hand. Right underneath it there was a bike tour going on so I joined in with other tourists and did a bike tour around Paris. It was alright. It was such a nice day by the way, so warm. Anyway after this bike tour I walked to the Arc de Triomphe which is massive! Went to the top and the view of Paris was great! Then I went to the Sacre Couer, another great view overlooking the city.

I went back to the Eiffel Tower later to relax a bit and on the way, just walking by the Seine a young woman probably 25ish asked me if I spoke English. So we chatted for a bit and it turned out her and her friend (American and English) were part of a mission group in Paris for a week or so and they were part of the evangelising team. We talked and it was really cool meeting these guys in the middle of Paris. Before I left they prayed for me which was so cool! Such amazing things happening right under your nose.

I relaxed on the fields in front of the Eiffel Tower that evening and took a few photo's and even had a go at a little sketch! Later I met with my couch surfing host guy and he was cool (the one the previous night was ... dull). Him, his girlfriend and I talked for a while, he had a Flight of the Conchords poster on his wall!! Quite sad I only had one night there but it was cool to make a contact in Paris.

Friday morning it was time to leave for Blois, first I had to see the Lourve. It was cool. Mona Lisa was cool. Small, but cool. So many people. I left. Train to Blois.

(This is getting a little long)

BLOIS - I stayed for one night, with a hippy, one of the first things he asked me was if I would like a joint. I politely refused. He was really cool though, with a few friends we went to a bar and saw a blues band.

BORDEAUX - Ahhh.... I had two nights here but I got sick :( Like... weird hallucination sick haha. I stayed with 3 people in there very big house just outside Bordeaux. They were slightly hippy, they had a massive vege garden, skateboard ramp, and a book on beginner's composting. In the day I saw the city on bike and it is a very lovely city.

MARSEILLE - I stayed two nights here with a 30 something year old dude, he was cool. We went out to an island on his boat and had a swim, drove to the top of this cliff which had an amazing view of the city. Overall it was pretty great.


So in summary, travelling has been really good, quite challenging at times but worth it. Most of my time I've been seeing amazing things, eating different and very tasteful things but all of it reminds me that I'm not home. It just makes me realise just how much I like Australia and being 'comfortable' with the environment around you. So Europe is great, like... REALLY great. But it's not home for me. (And this just makes me even more excited for when I go to my real home if you know what I mean)

Lots of love to all, I'm staying stafe, enjoying travelling but also looking forward to September when I return to my temporary home, but even more so in December when I return home.

Just one photo today peeps cause my train leaves NOW! (hopefully I'll be able to put up more on facebook in the next few days)

Good afternoon!

Just dropping in to share my first experiences in France (it will be short as I am using wireless from Subway without food, I'm sure they will kick me out soon).

So I caught my ferry to France and all was good! Great weather and no complications. I managed to find my train to get to my first stop in Europe, Lille.

I arrived in Lille and straight away called my host for the night (couchsurfing). I called him and he met with me and took me to his apartment. He was very nice and very French! Except that he played the didgeridoo?? That afternoon we took his didgeridoo and a guitar down to the park and had a little jam which was great! Here I met some of his friends who we met up with later that night. As the World Cup final was on, we went to a small bar/restaurant to do some wine and cheese tasting (so excited!). Coco (my host), his friend and I had 3 different wines each and a plate of different cheese and sausages. The weirdes thing happened... I liked the wine! Anyway that was a great night because another 7 of his friends arrived and they could all speak English quite well.

The next day I walked around a bit and Coco gave me a free tour of Lille on his taxi bike! II couldn't believe it, and iit was free as well! That night we went to a local pub and I met more of his friends who are going to Australia later in the year so I was able to give them some advice.

After two nights in Lille it was time to go so I caught my train to Paris and arrived in the afternoon with no accommodation planned. CouchSurfing failed me! i ended up paying 40 euro's for a bed but that's Paris I guess. It was cool though as I met a few Californians who I hung out with that night. Noww it is Wednesday, my 4th day travelling and I have two more nights in Paris and people are hosting so no more lame hostels.

So I better go, oh I haven't even seen the Eiffel Tower yet! It's pretty bad weather here but tomorrow it is supposed to be nice so it will be tourist time! Well until next time... au revoir

Here are just a few pictures...

check out these parrots going at it!