switzerland

wow. this post is loooong overdue. im sorry to all my faithful readers out there for my blogging neglegence. since my trip to switzerland i have been on-the-go non stop until now, where I now have 2.5 full weeks in granada without traveling. so with that being said, i should be able to get up my portugal blog and my san sebastian one up as well (although i have no pics from san sebastian because my camera was stolen with my packpack on the beach). anyways, dont worry about that...switzerland was absolutely gorgeous.

April 20 - 23

lauren and i took the overnight bus from granada to madrid on the 19th, and snagged are flight from madrid to geneva. from geneva we took the scenic train along lake geneva to the small city of leysin, where my friends alex, ricky, and tim are studying abroad. their school, or chateu, is at the base of a mountain and has gorgeous views of the evian mountains and the valleys below. on friday we just relaxed and had a great bbq at one of the nice overlooks by their pad.

posting up after the bbq

on friday we began our "crazy" day if you will. ricky and tim took the train into town early in the morning and rentned a car for 5 of us, because we wanted to head to interlaken for the day: the extreme sports capital of europe. we had called and reserved a time to do a 300ft canyon swing jump so we drove to interlaken, and grabbed some lunch before preparing for the jump. here's a couple nice shots of interlaken:

we met our guides at this hostal, and our crew of 6 and some other tourists all piled into a rickity van which took us up into the rocky peaks where we would encounter the canyon which we would soon plummet into:

here's alex and i all strapped in and ready to go...

i ended up going 7th or 8th of all the people, so most of the initial butterflies had left, being as the others who took the jump were still alive. this isnt a clip of me jumping, but here is a video of the same jump i did:



alright, now that you think im completely crazy, i will continue with some more pretty pics of switzerland. after the jump we grabbed some excellent thai food to go and ate it at sunset on the lake. heres lauren and i grubbin, as well as a gorgeous sunset pic:


on sunday we still had the rental car and decided to cruise around. our first stop was the city of montreaux which rests right on lake geneva. one of the prettiest parts of the city is this chateau de chillon...


after montreaux, we took the car over to france, and specifically the city of evian. we finally returned back to leysin to enjoy a final sunset. heres the view from leysin to the evian mountains in france, which we had visited earlier. oh, and our rental car as well...

im sorry, that was so brief but i just wanted to get those pics and such up. i hope you enjoyed it. any more questions, leave in the comment box. alright love ya all, and expect a nice post on portugal here soon as well! pete.

spring break: netherlands and sweden

March 28 - April 9

now this is a daunting task…trying to fill you in on ten days of straight traveling…but here goes it, im sure ill miss some stuff, but oh wells, ten days is a long time…

im not going to lie, the wind was taken out of my sails before I even started traveling. A few days before leaving I happened to frequent one of my regular music websites only to find out that the concert Ryan and I had virtually planned the entire trip around was cancelled. Granted we had booked a hostel in the city of Utrecht for the night of the concert, it turned out not too be too big of a hassle, and I am getting my money back…it just was a big blow to the morale of the trip nonetheless.

After meeting Ryan in Barcelona on Thursday 29, we snagged our direct flight to Amsterdam and managed to find our hostel from the train station. Despite our Christian hostels attempt to disclose it on any of their websites or in their directions, it was situated literally 30 walking steps from the infamous red light district – which proved to be quite the surprise once we dropped our packs off and went to get food! After snaggin some noodles, we hit the hay, for our full day to come. On Friday, we rented bikes and pretty much bombed around everything and anything in Amsterdam, a good chunck of that spent in vain, searching for quintessential Dutch rolling hills and tulip fields. We did still manage to see some sweet stuff, despite how foggy it was…

one of the few windmills in downtown Amsterdam

Ryan and the bikes relaxin on one of the famed dutch canals

on museum row, in front of the “IAmsterdam” sign

After our long day of bike riding we wanted nothing more but to crash and sleep, but unfortunately we hadn’t booked a hostel for that night since everything was booked. We killed some time and saw a horrible movie (music and lyrics), and wandered around some more. We even scoped the train station looking for any semi-appealing places to crash, but our best bet was a burger king. At around 1 am we decided to give hostel hunting one last shot. After trying nearly 4 places who all turned us away at the door, we happened upon our hostel from the night before who miraculously had some extra beds from kids who didn’t make their cerfew. Ryan and I, abliged, haha, I mean, hopped into bed and crashed hard!

Feeling refreshed and blessed, we headed back to the train station where we left our bags for the night and decided to go do a little day trip to the nearby city of Harlem, a quiet little town, that allowed for us to take our most cliché Dutch picture…

Ryan and I in Harlem

For our last full day Amsterdam we decided to check out some of the museums. We went to a pretty cool film museum, and went and saw a movie in English…well we thought it was in English, but by “in English” the lady meant there were no words, obviously. So after our silent film about the food industry, we grabbed some delicious Dutch apple pie, and headed over to the Anne Frank Museum which was really cool. Once again, we were exhausted and grabbed dinner and hit the hay.

On Monday we said goodbye to the ‘Dam and headed to Utrecht, the home of our cancelled concert. Both Ryan and I agreed, it was very bitter sweet…we didn’t know much about Utrecht other than that is where Arcade Fire was going to play. Despite bumming, we still headed to the city center and relaxed on benches and in the below ground canals.

here’s a shot I grabbed at sunset on the main Utrecht canal

Oh, one thing, our hostels for the entire trip…in the ‘Dam, Utrecht, and Stockholm were all huge 20 person rooms with bunk beds, but somehow, even being a light sleeper, I was conked out every night even with all the hustle and bustle of the other residences. Oh, I also forgot too tell you I got my cell phone stolen in my Christian Amsterdam hostel. Luckily it didn’t end up being a hassle since the phone had no minutes and it was a cheap phone. Outside of that, I have thankfully had pleasant hostel experiences, which is unique, from some stories I’ve heard.

Our stoke level was on the rise on Tuesday, as we boarded our train to Düsseldorf, Germany, where we were to rendezvous with Peter, and snag our flight to Sweden. For the whole latter half of the trip we flew Ryan Air, which although has rock bottom prices, it flies into out-of-the-way towns. This gave me and Ryan a little trouble upon arrival in Dusseldorf, when we found out we actually had to take a train an hour out of the city to the airport. We barely made our flight, but it was smooth sailing from there. That’s what you get though when you only have to pay 15 euro for flights! We landed in Sweden and took the bus into town, and walked to our hostel, which we’d letter realize was wonderfully located in downtown Stockholm. On top of that, the hostel was incredibly nice, decked out with lots of computers, free pasta, and even a sauna – all of which we took advantage of.

On Wednesday Pete, Ryan, and I decided we just wanted to walk around and see as much of Stockholm as we could. The city is set up kind of like a star fish, where a bunch of mini peninsulas branch off from the downtown area. We first headed over to the old district, Gama Stan, which has, well old buildings, and The Royal Palace – one of the oldest buildings in all of Europe. Here’s a pic looking towards the old district…

Ryan, Pete, and I…but vice versa

From there we went to check out some of the many sweet museums in Stockholm. Our first stop was the Vassa museum, which was home to a salvaged sunken ship which was submerged for 333 years before being pulled up and restored. From there we went to this huge open air museum called Skansen, which had a mini zoo in it; and more importantly for Peter, a wolverine.

the wolverine comes out after a little provoking!

We finished the day out with a music museum where they had tons of instruments you could bang on! We hit up the sauna after and grabbed some pasta and called it a night.

On Thursday, we all bought ferry passes to head out to one of the thousands of archipelagos. Unfortunately, lots of them aren’t plausible to get to just for a day trip so we cruised to the capital of all the archipelagos, Voxholm, and explored. We were shocked at how dead the town was…hardly any shops or restaurants, and mainly just residential homes, which looked oh-so-cozy from the bitter cold we endued on the outside. We actually found a putt-putt course and decided to hit that up...

Definitely one of the hardest courses ive ever played no joke.

After some putt-putt we explored some of the coast, and happened upon a nice dock at sunset with some old boats and a nice view.

here’s the crew via self-timer

We said goodbye to Pete late that night because he had an early flight to Prague for the last leg of his trip. But Ryan and I still had two full days left in the Stockholm, so we decided Friday to make good use of our ferry passes and check out another archipelago…this time Sodra Grinda, which actually was even more desolate than Voxholm. We were actually a bit worried because by the time our ferry dropped us off, we had 6 hours on the archipelago before it would return to pick us up. But despite our hesitations, it worked out great. We just relaxed, and virtually circumnavigated the whole island, stopping to take in the scenery or play some music. Here’s a few pics…

skipping stones

exploring…

we hung out here for awhile

Ryan and I both agree that our ferry ride home was one of the best parts of the trip. We managed to get in the nose of the boat, where there were big glass windows and we popped on our ipods and just enjoyed the sunset as we weaved through the archipelagos on our way back to Stockholm…

Sunset

When we got back we felt pretty refreshed and wanted to go out still. We had heard about this ice bar, and when we found out it was close we headed on over. Living up to its name, the entire bar was made of ice, even the glasses you drank out of. You even got a full on poncho with gloves when you entered. We decided to ask the bartender for a pic…

Absolute Ice Bar Stockholm Sweden

For our last day in Stockholm Ryan and I decided to further explore an area called Soldermalm. We had a relaxing day chilling in parks, watching skaters and bikers, and just listening to music. We were planning on going to a sweet electronic show that night, so we killed some time and saw a movie – The Fountain – which I highly recommend to anyone out there. From there we cruised over to the venue and saw some sweet dj’s and electronic show. It was an excellent cap to our time there. Unfortunately, getting home wasn’t going to be quite as easy as hopping on a plane. We had to wait for our bus to the airport at 3:30am to catch our 7am flight to Frankfurt, Germany, in which we would then have a near 24 hour layover until our flight left the next morning at 6. Ryan and I dumped our bags and checked out a nearby city of Mainz…where we attended an Easter Mass in German. Ha! We then stumbled upon the giant Rhine river where there was a fair going on and we snagged some .5 meter brawts. Hey im not joking…

Ryan with his

We headed back to the airport and was lucky to have our friends Lauren and Clare flying into the airport as well to be on our same flight back to Granada. We all passed out, and Ryan and I parted ways, and I finally returned to Granada after a whirlwind of 10 days of traveling.

It wasn’t of the epic nature that I had originally hoped, mainly because of the concert cancellation, but all in all, it was an amazing trip to the homeland and to Sweden.

Kbgdfnbgfednbdfk. Finished. Yessss! Leave comments n such as usual.

Oh, and before I bounce, here’s my schedule for the next few weeks or so…

April 19-21: Meeting friends in Switzerland
April 27 – May 1: Portugal with the program
May 3-6: Beaaaaach!

Ill hit you guys back up after Switzerland! Byeee. pete

morocco: tetuan, tanger, chef chouen

March 16-18:

once again, I blink my eyes and realize how fast time is going…every time I log on here to blog, I can’t believe how much ive done since I last posted. And thus is the case here, but im gonna try to chop it up into two posts, and just tell yall about morocco right now…

first off, my time in morocco was slightly tainted because not only did I break my camera half way through the first day, I also lost my credit card. Everything is worked out now, thanks to a few loving parents and a patient credit union employee, but at the time it was a bit difficult to look past. However, Morocco proved to be one of the most eye opening and “different” places id ever been.

a bunch of kids from our program and I all signed up through this program which does weekend tours to three cities in Morocco for a fairly reasonable, all inclusive price of 180 euros. We left straight from Granada on March 16 and headed to our ferry out of the Spanish port city which im currently drawing a blank on. The ferry is only a little over an hour to Africa, and we made it there by Friday evening, exchanged our euros for some durum spending money, and headed straight to our hotel in Tetuan. All of our meals for the trip were in our hotels and they turned out to be really good (its too sketchy too eat anything else off the streets). After breakfast we headed into downtown Tetuan, and like all of our city tours, we pretty much just walked around the cities which proved to be an excellent way to get a feel for things. We began walking through the main drag of town and the markets before I had my fateful encounter of peeking into a muslim mosque and dropping my camera. I did get some great pics that were later salvaged, so here they are, all from Tetuan…

the main drag

a mosque

market

man on the market strip; not happy with my photo

moroccan men chillin

i like this one

our nutty tour guide showin us some fine African merchandise

Well, that is it for all the pics I was able to take after my clumsy camera fiasco, but luckily I was accompanied with plenty of picture-snappin friends who I stole a few photos from to show you the rest of the cities we visited.

The middle city we saw was Tanger, and was actually the most disappointing, simply because it was a bigger, industrial city. We walked all around the market and actually bought a few trinkets (get stoked mom and ben), and then went on to check out a sweet view of the ocean. Here’s the pic…

Jamie, Rob, Me, and Lauren

our final city in Morocco was Chef Chouen, the less poverished of the three, although that’s a relative term when you are in Africa. Chef Chouen is a tiny little city further south and inland from the other two cities, and is known for its gorgeous location in the foothills of the mountains and for its abundance of blue painted doors.

one of the token blue doors

…and me in an alley

well, I feel as if that should give yall a bit of a peek into what Africa was like, definitely an opportunity I am glad I took advantage of since Granada is so close.

I hope to have up my spring break adventures (Netherlands and Sweden) here shortly as well, so until then, enjoy the pics, and leave some comments like usual, Id love to hear from you. Until then, take care.

Love. pete