Ah, home again. no matter that I've only been here one other  time, there is something about going to a parents house that breeds that homey  feeling - mainly that of lethargy and reverting to having decisions made for  you. We are traveling lions that turned into little lambs, needing shepherding  most of the time. 

For example, in  all of the cities we visited so far we had never taken a tourist hop-on hop-off bus (special thanks to Rick Steves), but ok, we'll try it (I don't recommend it in B.A.s). Then we have a day touring the city on our own and realized halfway  through the day we'd forgotten my mom's recommendations, and wandered around somewhat helplessly. This is followed with my mom asking, "did you do ____?" uh, no, we couldn't remember the name of the place you told us to go. "Oh, jeez. Well I'll just have to take tomorrow off then to show you around or you won't see anything." (Can't be mad about that)

 We went to the ballet, getting all dolled up in my mom's clothes, and almost wearing high heels, although it was lucky we didn't because even mom's fancy flats gave us blisters. We also had an amazing dinner with my mom's friends, who are a riot and if we hadn't been such grandma's they probably could have stayed there all night gabbing away.

Besides having a comfortable place to stay, a personal tour guide, gaining 5 pounds each due to overconsumption of empanadas and steak, we also had ample internet on which to plan our trip to Patagonia and Brazil. We had planned to go to Iguazu falls on our way into Brazil, but because Patagonia is so far away from the rest of the world, we were having a rough time figuring out how to get back up there and have enough time to visit the planned route of Brazil. Ok, we'll figure it out later, now we're going kayaking in Tigre (how cool would it be to say you were from "Tiger"?).  

While kayaking, admiring the little houses that lined the numerous canals, and trying to keep up with the boat containing my mom and the guide, who could paddle faster than Erin and I by himself, we chatted with a guy who tagged along with us. Oh you plan on going to Patagonia? Did you hear that some hiker started a forest fire and they're evacuating the whole Chilean side of the park? Nuh-uh. Yeah, you might want to rethink that.

So we got a workout keeping up with mom, all while worrying whether a) our friends were ok (they were) b) if our Patagonia leg was going to happen and c) what was going to happen with the flight that we'd bought down there.  We begrudgingly decide to cut out Patagonia and try to change our flight Iguazu. It was a bit heartbreaking. So we call Aerolinas Argentinas and had a very pleasant experience changing our flights, and in the process we were going to get reimbursed $39! sweet.

That settled we prepared for new years eve. One of the things I loved that my mom cooked for me growing up was shrimp pie. Sounds weird, like many of the more latinate things that I grew up with, it probably is, but it's delicious. So we went to the supermarket and had to buy everything for it, including the pie tin, because my mom doesn't really cook anymore (i love getting that reinforcement that it runs in the family). We couldn't find all the ingredients, but we went ahead with it  anyway. We came home, made it, put it in the oven, went to go hang out in the living room and 30 minutes later, bam, we'd burnt the crust. oops. Despite these setbacks, the pie tasted pretty good and I was told that a few days later (per usual), it tasted great.

Dinner over, we hung out together and watched an awesome impromptu firework display right in front of the apartment building. This was the second firework display we'd gotten to see and we enjoyed it much more than my 17 year old mini-schnauzer. Nike (named after the goddess of victory, not the shoe), survived a stroke earlier in the year and held on in order to see me (she obviously knew I was coming). I was worried she would have a heart attack with all the fireworks, but she just huddled in the back of the apartment and we able to comfort her when it was over.

After a few, brief hours of sleep, we headed to the airport to embark on our next adventure. Mom asked if she should come inside and help us, but no no, we can handle it, love you, mwah. 
 
Man, I wish she'd come in. We should've known that our experience had been all too easy, because when we went to collect our tickets, not only were we not going to get a reimbursement, they were CHARGING us to get on on our flight. Our inability to argue in spanish (even if we had studied it, I don't think they teach you "This is Bullsh…" in spanish class), and the closing flight time meant we ponied up the cash. So, unless you speak fluent spanish and enjoy litigating, try to avoid Aerolinas Argentinas. In their defense, we did have a lovely flight experience on Astral (their partner airline). 

Next time - Iquazu! Curitiba! Florianopolis! BRAZIL!

The ferry crossing was rough, which at first provided some entertainment, but Erin got a little seasick. To add to that, our ferry was delayed, so instead of meeting my friends Naima and Heidi in Wellington at 9, we didn't make it until close to 11, which put a bit of a damper on the festivities. But we met up again the next day at the Te Papa, the national museum.

After a sushi lunch with the girls we decided to make the most of the crap weather and drive as far both as we could. Unfortunately we made it too far, and had to spend the night in a hostel because there were no national parks en route…oh and the forecast called for hail. So instead we spent a night on overused children's mattresses while drunk boys played rugby in the hallway. YES. love hostels (can you see why we avoid them so?).

We made it to Rotorua then next day and were amazed by how much steam was coming out of the ground. We hiked a bit, went to Hell's Gate geothermal park and a Hangi (traditional Maori underground bbq) and cultural show at a reconstructed pre-european Maori village. Although a little wary of the cheesiness of this type of packaged culture, it was better than going to a hotel show, and Erin wanted to try hangi. And I learned how to do the haka.

We  sadly weren't able to do what I had hoped to do in NZ which was carve our own Jade necklaces (a friend of mine had done that a few years back). We had to head out to Waitomo Caves for our blackwater rafting tour. This was really cool. We got dressed up in thick wetsuits that were totally stretched out, ancient wetsuit booties, rubber boots and caving helmets, picked out tire inner tubes that snuggled our butts, and climbed into a cave with freezing water. several times we got to stand with our backs on a ledge of a little waterfall and jump back into the river. i was sometimes terrified and repeating to myself that this is safe, and always freezing (shivering by the end), which our guides told us to smile about because "that's what we paid for!". And over tomato soup and a bagel, we did smile about the freezing. Because it was awesome. Oh, and we saw glow-in-the-dark worms. which are actually cannibalistic gnat larvae. sweet.

After spending the night in the Coromandel peninsula (but not actually seeing anything), our five days with Betsy (our car. She was a grandma) were over and we had to get to Auckland to return her. So began our last adventure. the secret one that Erin had planned for my 30th. I was excited to finally know what it all was, although a bit sad that I'd no longer get to see her try to pretend like we weren't doing anything. She had rented us a car and gotten us a B&B about an hour north of the city. Our well-meaning but ADHD host ruined the surprised that we were going horseback-riding the next day. 

We woke up bright and early for a special breakfast cooked by the B&B owners, and had an eventful  two-hour ride with the horses' owner. None of the horses were especially well-behaved and the horse that Erin was riding had a power trip over the one I was riding and so I was always relegated to the back of the line. I am not all that practiced in riding horses (i.e. I've only ridden once). so it was pretty "exciting" when my horse just took off in the middle of a forest, with me hanging on for dear life, getting smacked in the face by branches while I tried to get my feet back in the stirrups. And then when he decided to jump over a puddle and i ended up on his neck. it was fantastic. Really, I think i got the hang of it by the end. I'm sure it'll be gone the next time i ride though.

After a little rest, we went into the Auckand for a craft beer and a fairly decent cocktail made by an entertaining bartender, and headed over a bridge (a requisite for a proper date) to a cute restaurant in the north of the city for a great dinner. Only downside to the whole day was getting stuck for an hour on our way home due to a head-on car accident.

The next day, wooo were we sore. Talk about being 30. we packed up our bags, went downtown one more time for some last minute shopping (I bought myself a USA rugby cap, ha), and then headed to the airport for our flight.

I'm still trying to figure out the moral of our time in NZ. Two weeks was way too short and we missed seeing so much (I felt this here more than I did in any other country so far), but I'm glad that we got that we got to come and see as much as we did. I hope we come back. Hopefully during rugby season.

- SB

I have never been welcomed so many times in my life. Although it reached comical proportions during our short stay in Jordan (even when it was yelled from a passing car full of teenage boys at night), it never felt sarcastic or ill-meant. There were times when someone would answer to my reply of where I was from with "I love America!" to which I would answer with an equally enthusiastic "I love Jordan!"

And here is the hidden gem of our trip so far.

At least a quarter of Jordan is comprised of Palestinians displaced by the Zionist movement of the mid 20th century, so you can imagine our concern about crossing the border into Jordan. We did research and settled on going down by bus to Eilat from Tel Aviv, taking a taxi to the border, walking over, taking a taxi to Aqaba, and then taking a bus the following morning to Wadi Musa, the town outside of Petra. In any country that sounds like a hassle, but in not knowing the language, not even being able to read signs and erratic bus schedules due to Sukkot gave us phantom sweats from our time in Morocco. But everything went amazingly smoothly.

But Petra. Let me talk about Petra. What a dream. I honestly thought it was only a Hollywood creation for Indiana Jones until I went to University. Only too late did I find out my school was actually doing a dig on site of a temple. I would have quickly made the leap to archaeology from Classics had i known sooner (what a bold move that would have been). So between my love of movies and old things, this was easily the highlight of the trip for me - and it did not disappoint.

We warmed up by going to Little Petra on our first day in town. It was a suburb of the ancient city and is a 10 minute drive up the valley from the main site. We got there in the mid-afternoon and had the place virtually to ourselves. It was so fun to run around, looking in every cave, and precariously  climbing half destroyed staircases carved into the rock.

The following day we spent nine hours running around Petra, climbing even higher staircases and tiered cave dwellings, working on fending off camel / donkey / postcard / necklace hawkers every ten steps (throughout the trip people were eager to be at our service or to sell us something but politely moved on after a courteous 'no'. How refreshing!).

I think we each took about 100 pictures of the day, which tell the story much better than I can put it into words. The following day we spent only a couple hours at the site and even managed to get lost, inspiring thoughts of crawling through the desert, seeing mirages of water. Luckily we're master navigators and found our way out in about 45 minutes. Pros.

We rounded out the trip in Amman where we stayed with a friend of a couchsurfing host we had in Dresden, which was nice because 1) we don't speak a lick of Arabic and more importantly 2) Amman is HUGE and we hadn't really prepared ourselves.

We saw a couple sites and hung out on Rainbow st. (of course that does not mean what you think it should). Erin bought a real book (a weighty luxury) on history from an islamic perspective, and we met up with another friend of a friend who works for a American-style boarding school that was started by the Jordanian King (who went to Deerfield, who knew?).

The trip was not without it's awkward experiences, of course. Arab men don't have much contact with women, and between that and their preconceptions of American women it leads to some awkward chit-chat. The manager of our hotel in Aqaba took us out to dinner and although he was pleasant he was just a tiny bit creepy.

One of our taxi drivers pulled over on our way to little Petra for what we though was a nice photo op of the Petra basin for us, but then he asked to take a picture of us, and then had us take a picture of him with each of us. He also didn't speak any english so when he picked us up he had brought his english teacher friend. But neither of these experiences made us feel threatened as we had been in Morocco - it felt more like an adolescent fascination with us.

There was more to see in Jordan than we expected (Wadi Rum, Jerash, Madeba) so I was a little sad to go, but you can't be too sad to go to Bali. As of this writing we survived exiting the country and traveling for 27 hours to reach Indonesia. What a different world! We'll catch up again after our little vacation here. Til then, you're welcome!

-SB

i'm having trouble believing that we're leaving Europe tomorrow. It's been over 10 weeks since we left New York and landed in Madrid, and we've gotten into the travel rhythm. I've gotten used to the verdant fields filled with cows and sheep from trains. When I see pictures from the first half of our tour it feels like ages ago.

The second half of our Germany tour fit quite nicely into the historic narrative of German history. We first frolicked through the fairy tale of Germany's pre-20th century past, but were thrust into the realities of recent history when we got to Berlin. Berlin is an overwhelming experience for history buffs. We could have spent another three or four days just going to more museums, without even knowing that it's also an awesome city. We were lucky again with our couchsurfing hosts, who took us to sweet neighborhoods that felt almost like home, or more like what we could picture a great place to live (and strengthened our resolve to learn German).

Finding a metropolis like that, we were reluctant to leave and resume the "quaint towns of yesteryear importance," so Dresden and our return to Munich were plagued by the Copenhagen wall. Unfamiliar? Let me explain.

When we arrived in Dresden, we had left Zagreb a little over two weeks prior and I hit a wall. It seems that we have to change things up about every two weeks, or we get glassy-eyed, start dragging our feet, and cannot handle seeing one more beautiful thing.  When we'd gotten to Hamburg in August, we'd been bussing, training, and hosteling through Europe and Northern Africa for over three weeks. We made a pitiful attempt to see the city in one rainy day, and took a handful of pictures. By the time we'd hit Copenhagen, we tried to fill our time with the usual sightseeing, but the joy was not there, and everything seemed a little more difficult. But when we hopped on a flight and rented a car - voila, our energy and excitement was renewed. By the end of our two weeks in the UK, we were happy to return our beloved car and hop on another flight and get on a train. The next two legs were broken up into a week by train, and two by car before we headed off to Munich to start Germany.

So the past week I have been kind of a pain.  Not only was I tired, but I blew through a couple hundred euro to replace the backpack-that-swallows-necessary-items-while-rushing-for-transport, and the hiking boots that I lost in Croatia, and mail back 2.6 kgs of stuff back to California.  But unlike Copenhagen, Erin wasn't distracted by the Hunger Games trilogy (see astrix below), and our couchsurfing host in Munich insisted on us seeing at least some of Munich (same one who got us into Oktoberfest. Talk about dedication), so we made a good push through our waning days here. We took a tour up to Dachau, which was a sobering experience. And in Hallstatt we even walked for a few kilometers in the pouring, freezing rain to go on a cheesy tour of the salt mines (we patted ourselves on the back for being such good tourists). But Erin finally succumbed to exhaustion as well, and we largely spent the last two days making the most of the internet at our cozy hotel.

So while it seems unbelievable that we're leaving Europe, I'm ready. As fall comes, it's time to get to warmer climates, and tan these white legs in Israel and Bali. Here we go!

-SB

*if you're looking for your next Harry Potter / Twilight / Young-Adult series obsessed over by adults, then read the Hunger Games Trilogy. It's the love triangle of Twilight set in a 1984 dystopian society with Mad Max's Thunderdome (without Tina Turner).

Drindels, Leiderhosen, fairytale castles and sleepy, romantic villages along picturesque rivers. As we travel to Berlin, its nice to reflect that Germany has a wonderful culture and storied history beyond that of the early 20th century.

Our trip began with a 7am train out of Zagreb, that took us through Slovenia and Austria before reaching Munich. It felt like cheating to get a Slovenian stamp on my passport, since we didn't even stop to get a cup of coffee. The train got full as we entered Austria, and our little compartment shared the amazement of the Austrian Alps, which in late September either still or already had snow in some mountainous parts. It may be my love affair with the Sound of Music, but I think that countryside is the most beautiful I've ever seen.

Fussen
It may have been a tad optimistic to expect cheap car rentals in Munich during an Oktoberfest weekend to travel down to Fussen, so that we could drive along the "romantic road." But even by train we enjoyed it so much that I could have stayed longer, had we not had such a hard time finding a place to sleep (the last night we had to camp outside the hostel). We went to the Neuschwanstein castle, carted down a mountain luge, and biked around a countryside lake.

Munich / Oktoberfest
But this was just our first stop, and there was so much more to do. Next up we traveled back to Munich for Oktoberfest. Although we arrived in time to go on Friday night, I had arranged to referee the Munich Oktoberfest 7's tournament on Saturday, so we walked outside of the festival, down to the Marienplatz and had as quiet an evening as the city would allow. The next morning I got up way too early for my liking and made it down to the tournament at 8am, not knowing if I should be there on time (I figure the Germans for being punctual people) or rugby time (it was an Oktoberfest tournament after all). Naturally things got started late, but the rugby was good, the teams respectful and english speaking enough, and at the end of the day I was awarded to ref the plate final. Erin had come to watch in the afternoon, and was itching to get out of there the second the final whistle blew, and we traveled back to our couchsurfing hosts house, showered and were at the festival by 7pm.

It's hard to imagine what Oktoberfest is if you've never been there. We were blown away by the party. We were a little nervous about showing up on a saturday night with no reservations, and by the large crowds we would encounter (neither of us do well in crowded places). Luckily we had an in with our host, who had been there since 3pm. Our mission to get into the hall was almost like a spy story. We snuck into the porch of a beer hall and when we were almost done with our first stein (a mostly full liter sized stein, mind you), we received a text on which door we should try to get in. We hung outside by a man who was fully passed out, and a group of italians who were trying to smooze the greek security guard with "we're friends, italy finances greece, so you should let us in." We rendezvoused with our contact who was nonchalantly waving a bar menu, and then we followed her, hand in hand as she showed multiple sets of guards her reservation armband. It could not have gone smoother.

While the party outside was something out of a high schoolers dream carnival, inside the beer tents is out of a grown up fairy tale. Literally hundreds of tables of traditionally-dressed people standing on benches, waving their beers and singing along to the 20-piece band in the center of the tent. We sat with our hosts friends, sang along to the songs that were in english, chatting with each other and occasionally ran interference for the girls who were politely but wearily chatting with flirty drunk old men. Toward the end of the night, Erin ordered the most delicious half chicken I'd ever had the pleasure of three tiny bites.

The next day was a slow start. Our host, who had been there twice as long as us, was not going anywhere, and we nixed the idea to stay one more night before heading out on our next adventure. Oktoberfest is fun, but no way we could do it two nights in a row and be able to appreciate anything else for a few days.

The Rhine and Mosel Valleys
We scramble to pack our bags in time to get the 1:40 train out of Munich, which we miss because my backpack swallows important things and only regurgitates them in the most calm and labored way (I have already started looking for a mid-trip replacement). We arrive in the sleepy village of Bacharach (pronounced BAH-HA-HA, no joke) in the evening. It was amusing to us that we had followed our age-appropriate Munich trip with a week surrounded by pensioners. Later we discovered that this was a hotspot in the 60's so apparently the only ones who remember this are white-hairs.

The region is known for two things. Castles and Wine. We spent our first day going to St. Goar, a great "bring a flashlight and walk through the underground tunnels" kind of castle ruin. Somehow, my fear of ghosts did not inhibit me. The next day we took a boat down the Rhine, while narrating the scenery with Rick Steve's blitz commentary (An Aside: Basically our entire German trip has been guided by "our good friend" Rick. If you've never seen his TV show on PBS or read any of his travel books, we both highly recommend his trip itinerary). We arrived in Cochem, the middle of the Mosel wine valley that night and spent the following days a bit frustrated by the poorly run TI, but still visiting a great Castle (Berg Eltz) and tasting fantastic wines (which was a welcomed reprieve from all the beer we'd been drinking).

And now we're on the train to Berlin. It will be nice to be back in a city, surrounded by noise, and traffic, people and mess. You miss the strangest things after a lovely week in the country. Tomorrow I referee again, this time a division 2 men's rugby game in Potsdam. Fingers crossed it goes well!
-SB

Phew, it's been a good long while since I've written about our trip. Kind of easy to be lax about it since Erin is so diligent and entertaining. I should probably skip over to Prague up to now, but feel like I can't skip our two weeks in the UK, so indulge me...please.

On our way to Hamburg I remember telling Erin that we needed to slow down a bit. We had been traveling for 14 days and had changed locations 12 times. Every minute of internet we could get we spent planning our next transportation or lodging, or in the spare few moments quickly jotting down our experiences so as not to lose them in the jumble. We survived the next few days of Hamburg and Copenhagen trying hard to soak up the places we visited but with noticeable exhaustion, which may have tempered how we saw them.

Plane trips are one of the least enjoyable ways to travel. Nagging baggage restrictions, being carted around like sheep through security lines, dwindling services once aboard the planes, and the long distances from the cities where you actually want to be. But we made it to London, found our rental car agency and started our journey with Winnie, our (fiat) panda. The following weeks England and Scotland were a refreshing change of pace, if not necessarily slower.

It was serendipitously my brother Tony's birthday the day after we arrived so we changed our plans and stayed an extra day in London to celebrate with him and were even lucky enough to see my nephew Gabriel - which is a weird way to categorize him because he's closer in age to me than my brother. On his suggestion, we spent our first night on the road in Ullswater, Cumbria (in the lake district of England), a lovely transition to the hilly northern lands.

My Highlights of Scotland:
- Standing on Hadrian's wall (still in England)

- Watching the Scottish rugby team's last warmup game before the Rugby World Cup against Italy (I'm looking forward to watching the games while in Germany).

- The highland games in Crieff - I had gone as a child to the highland games in New Jersey, and it was so fun to see that while the games here were more comprehensive and homespun, the ones at home were not half bad.

-Tug-of-War was rad
- running and biking events were all-ages, and starting lines were staggered in some handicapped fashion i couldn't quite figure out.
- the heavyweight competition was all-day entertainment, especially the caber (log) toss.
- bagpipe and drum competition was always audible and fun
- also couldn't quite make out the rules of the dancing competition

- The Castles: We saw enormous royal castles (Edinburgh and Stirling), regional fortresses (Eilean Donan and Urquhart), and small, every-day castles (Corgarf and Hightower).

- Amazing landscapes.  The kind that pictures just can't capture. We drove through deep glens with high rocky mounts and rivers slicing through them; the sun set beyond the western shores of Skye; and cold, ominous clouds settling over Ben Nevis while we hiked down in a sunny valley.

- Distillery tours - Erin and I wish we could have gone to one place and just tried a bunch of different local whiskies, but it was nice to get a tour of a couple of them and learn how it's done.

- The Bruce Festival in Dunfermline. The festival itself was much smaller than the highland games, but there were also a few lectures I got to see such as one on the Norman "invasion" of Scotland (they might have fought to get to England, but by the time they reached Scotland it was basically invasion by invitation). The Son of the head of the Bruce clan spent his time dispelling the "Braveheart myth." If you've seen the movie, Robert the Bruce was portrayed as an opportunistic power-hungry wannabe. sheesh. That was not on any of the plaques at Stirling or Edinburgh castle. Anyway, in case anyone was worried, he made some really good arguments to dispel that stance. So I still feel proud to be a Bruce.

We covered a lot of ground in the country, driving on most of the major thoroughfares and or trying to bypass them for the scenic routes. Liking the highlands so much, we didn't spend much time in the cities (Aberdeen, Inverness and Glasgow), but that was fine by us, although the one time we actually wanted pub food in Glasgow, we couldn't find it at all, and had to settle for Italian food (not the first, and inevitably not our last, i'm sure).

One disappointment was that although in a rugby hotbed, we visited too early in the season for me to finally strap on my boots and referee any rugby, so that will have to wait until we visit Germany. So until then, I'll let my kit (rugby gear) take up space and weight in my bag, but thankfully not stink anything up.

- SB

I love Spain.

To the point that we were going to forgo it because we couldn't dedicate the time to really explore it. But as we left Marrakech and traveled to Tangier to take the Ferry to Spain, we remembered how delicious our first glass of sangria had been a week earlier and decided we had a little bit of time to explore Malaga and San Sebastian on our way to Amsterdam. We did make a few unfortunate blunders that hopefully you can learn from if you're reading this for educational purposes.

We discovered that we got off at the wrong station for our original destination of Algiceres. So we had to take the ferry to Tarifa, then a free bus to Algiceres, finally another bus to Malaga, a seaside city Erin had visited when her friends had lived there. I had never heard of it, but it's apparently a popular town and was nominated as the cultural center of Europe a few years back.

We were saved by the rugby community from staying at an expensive glorified hostel we had been somewhat forced into through airbnb.com (I do not recommend this website. primarily for the $7 a night reservation fee they charge). Mentxu, our hostess, had been teammates on the Malaga women's rugby team with one of Erin's friends and was infinitely gracious and helpful, even though she spoke no english and our spanish seemed to fail us miserably. Although we had only a little over a day to explore the city, it seems worth it to come back through next time.

Sadly, our plan to go to Toledo with our extra night between Malaga and San Sebastian was cut out of our mini-tour because of the price of train tickets. Toledo is a cute medieval town about a 30 minute train ride outside of Madrid, the 'home' of Don Quixote and delicious tapas. Instead we stayed at a hostel in the Chueca neighborhood of Madrid (the gay district), and ate some tasteless tapas in the neighborhood.

The next morning we woke up early (Erin was not happy about this), and went to the station to get our bus up to San Sebastian. Along the way the scenery got greener and hillier as we climbed into the low mountains. It wasn't until we hit the bus stop to our camp that I saw how beautiful San Sebastian is. Enjoying the city had to wait a bit as we spent a very tense 30 minutes in line waiting to see if we'd get a campsite. We luckily got one of the last ones because we didn't have a car. We got settled into the spot which was as wide as our tent, and hitched a ride back down to town from a hilarious retired Aussie couple who were traveling around Europe for 3 months.

San Sebastian is proudly "not in Spain, nor in France, but in Basque country," and is a lovely place to relax for a few days. We went during the high high season, and even then it wasn't overwhelmingly crowded, nor as expensive as we were led to believe. The city is built around a trio of bays, each one dominated by a beach, making it a bit like Monaco or Paris with the beaches of Rio. There is cute old city, where we spent almost all of our time. The pintxos at any of the places in the old city are fairly good, but if you're looking for more modern fare, skip the Fuego Negro, and go to Cuchara de San Telmo. The pintxos are around 3 to 4 Euro each, but well worth the price. it was the best food we had in Spain (though we were trying to keep to a budget).

Not having learned our lesson about last minute planning, we only got down to figuring out our exit strategy the night before we were to leave San Sebastian. Holy hell it's expensive to get out of Spain. I looked at everything - Planes, trains, buses, and ride shares. In the end decided to splurge on an overnight train Paris and then on to Amsterdam in order to catch the Amsterdam Pride festival which is coincidentally happening this weekend. yay. and ugh. I hope we won't have to splurge like that many more times.

-SB

PS - another funny incident was on our first day in Europe we decided to get some tapas and were persuaded by a very suave Cuban to dine at his restaurant.

During our meal, a local TV news crew decided to do a story on this gentleman, got a couple of other tourists to pretend to be persuaded to eat there (again), and then asked me, as a tourist, what I thought of his work. I did such a good job, he gave us a sherry tasting digestif as a thank you. I would have settled for a discounted or free meal, but can't complain.

 I'm not the healthiest eater. I don't like to cook, and so I either eat out (my favorite place being Heirloom Cafe, claro) or make myself a quesadilla or something frozen.

I didn't think I ate a lot of vegetables, but clearly that was by Californian standards. But these past few weeks can I only ate meat and potatoes, which started off as awesome and ended with me desperately ordering a veggie burger and a salad at a brew pub while (in a complete reverse of opinion) complaining that corn is not a vegetable. This paired with the constant 90-100+ degree weather that I've encountered in Florida, then Missouri, then New York, which prevented us from doing too much outside all translated into a 6 pound weight gain.

Am I worried? Not really. Yesterday was our first solo travel day - and I could feel the glorious burn. Somehow my bag gained weight as well and swelled from 34 to 37.5 pounds, which I can hopefully pare down by ditching something in these last few hours before I leave. But after walking with all our belongings over a mile to get to our Hamptons Chitney Bus, I know in a few weeks I'll burn it all off and have some killer quads.

- 4 T-shirts, 1 polo, 1 thermal, 1 tank top
- 1 flannel, 1 sweater, 1 hoodie, 1 mid-layer, 1 windbreaker
- 1 jeans, 1 khaki's, 1 travel pants, 1 board / shorts, 1 skirt
- 10 balance bars, toiletry bag, water purifying tabs
- 2 bandannas, 1 scarf, 1 knit cap, sunglasses
- flip flops, sneakers, hiking shoes
- 6 pr socks, 7 pr undies, 3 bras, 1 sports-bra, 1 bikini
- 1/2 tent, sleeping bag, bag liner, sleeping pad, travel towel

- Day pack, camelbak, eye shades, headlamp, mini flashlight, playing cards, travel docs / passports, journal, laptop case (macbook air impending), power cords
- Rugby jersey, rugby shorts, rugby socks, whistle, cards, cleats, 10 PCRFU ref pins, digital watch, electric tape

Can you be in denial of something you’re looking forward to? In the rush to wrap everything up for the trip, I can’t even imagine the trip itself anymore.

A coworker compared our planning to his wedding, and while at the time it sounded odd it started making sense this weekend when I was privileged to be a part of a good friend’s wedding  (one of a billion – and the one which Erin catered). You spend months planning this one day, hoping for it to be perfect, that you sometimes lose sight of what you’re actually doing.  But once the big day arrives and you get to hop on a plane, you can sink in and enjoy the fact that you’re embarking on the journey (let me be clear that I’m speaking only of the wedding, not of marriage). There are a lot of holes and incongruities in this comparison, but I think the basic premise holds true.

I’m going to be brutally honest here. I have not planned a whole lot for this trip. I’m sitting shotgun right now. I built this website, helped chart the course and purchase plane tickets, mentioned a couple things that I’ve wanted to do (ref rugby and see Stirling Castle), made some headway into people to stay with along the way, and responded with “that’s cool, let’s do it!” to stuff Erin has suggested. But strangely I have mostly focused on somehow keeping normality in these waning days.

I was supposed to have had my last day of work last week, but I ended up extending it to today.  The neatness of ending on the last day of June was undermined by the extra month of health insurance and two days paid vacation I would get for finishing up transition documents. And I have found people to care for my things so that I don’t have to permanently let them go (Apt, moto, car, kettlebell, guitar). I leave in 5 days and I haven’t even tried packing yet (I’ll let you know how that goes).

I wonder how this will effect our dynamic when we start our trip, I snap out of my trip denial and start throwing suggestions and alternate plans.  But that’s why we’re keeping it loose, right? Right.

In other news - I’ve pretty much decided that I’m taking my favorite, ratty pair of sneakers as my every day shoes. We’ve concluded that while they will die on the voyage, we will give them a proper burial somewhere on the trek, and they will have known a glorious life.  And I will hopefully find an equally rad pair of shoes.

-SB