Kamakura and our 93 tonnes friend

We wanted not only to visit Tokyo and take advantage of our Japan Rail pass, so we planed a couple of one day trips to Kamakura in the south and Nikko in the north.

Kamakura is famous because of its beautiful Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, as well as for its huge bronze statue of Amida Buddha. The city is located by the sea side, what makes it even nicer and worth to visit.

Very close to the train station there’s a path surrounded by cherry trees that ends up in the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū shrine.
Approaching Tsurugaoka Hachimangū

Kawaii dentist on the way to the shrine

The shrine is divided in several sub-shrines surrounded by beautiful gardens and the Minamoto pond.

Minamoto pond at the shrine

The Hataage Benzaiten Sub-shrine

The cherry blossoms always improving the views!

Once we’re done with the main shrine of the city, we continued through a nice side street full with restaurants and souvenir shops direction Hase-dera temple.

My dream garden

The temple was further away than expected and we got really hungry on our way. The problem was that we’re already far from the touristic part of the city and they’re no restaurants in sight…until we spotted a tiny ramen place! It was so small that we had to wait outside until somebody was done with their meal.

It was worth the wait

The temple is located about half-way up Mount Kamakura, southwest of the city, and it commands an impressive view over Yuigahama beach.

View of Yuigahama beach

The temple complex is comprises seven buildings and the common gardens.

Hase-dera grounds

One thing that really drew my attention was the hundreds of small Jizō statues placed all around the temple, they’re placed there by parents mourning offspring lost to miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. The statues remain in place for about a year, before being removed to make way for new ones.

Jizō statues in Hase-dera

A japanese family visiting the temple

The temple includes also an underground cave called benten kutsu (Benzaiten Grotto) and it contains statues and devotionals to Benzaiten, the sea goddess and the only female of the Seven Lucky Gods in Japanese mythology.

Benzaiten

Our last stop before going back to Tokyo was the Kōtoku-in temple, home of the Great Buddha, a 93 tonnes and 13 m tall bronze statue of Amida Buddha.

Sitting there since s.XIII

Cherry Blossoms and Manga – among Old and New

Japan has always been my dream destination since I was a child…and 2014 was the year when my dream finally came true!

We arrived pretty late at the Haneda Airport in Tokyo (after midnight) but one could think that such a huge metropolis like Tokyo, capital of technology and modernity would have some kind of public transportation going from the airport to the city center even after midnight…well, we were also disappointed 😀
Fortunately there’s no lack of Taxis and we grabbed one that would drive us to our apartment. An Airbnb apartment just 2 metro stations far away from Shibuya that costed half of what we’d have paid for a hostel room.

Taxis are super modern in Japan, full equipped with TV, magazines, electronic doors (the driver has to activate the door, otherwise you can’t go in/out from the vehicle), also the rates are fixed, so there’re no worries about been ripped off for being a poor, disoriented tourist in strange lands.
We had written down the address, both in Latin and Japanese characters but the Japanese addressing system is a bit different from what we’re used to, so even the taxi drivers struggle finding directions. Addresses start with the largest geographical entity (i.e. prefecture) and proceed to the most specific one (i.e. house number) this makes it super complex and chaotic due to the growth of the cities, contrary to our systems that are laid out as grids.
Conclusion, the guy found more or less the area were our apartment was supposed to be but wasn’t sure about where the building was. We told him that it wasn’t a problem, we could go and try to find it by ourselves, but Japanese people are extremely polite and helpful (we’d find out later that the driver wasn’t the exception) so he stopped the taximeter and kept looking for the building, even going outside the taxi and checking himself (it was raining a lot!) until he finally found it and took our luggage inside the dry building.
It’s a pity that you aren’t suppose to tip in japan, because he really deserved it!

The day after we’re ready to start exploring. First we decided to go to the district of Ginza, a high-class shopping area (nice for the eyes, bad for the wallet).

San’ai Building in Giza

Random super cute store

Tokyo is HUGE, so we tried to organize ourselves by visiting the different districts depending of their situation. Ginza was not “far” (Tokyo standards) from our apartment plus they had a nice tourist office where we could get some info and maps.

Entrance from the Tourist Information Center in Ginza
Kevin got addicted to this beef bowls

Our walk took us thought the Kabuki-za, the main Kabuki (traditional Japanese theater) Theater in Tokyo. I regret that we didn’t go inside (tickets were kinda expensive :s) but that way I’ve an excuse to come back 🙂

Kabuki-za

A huge skyscraper was just behind the theater, a good example of what Tokyo was for me: a contrast between old tradition and modernity.

Welcome to Kawaii Tokyo! ^^

After strolling around Ginza, we headed to Tsukiji. Our destination: the Tsukiji fish market, the biggest fish market in the world.

Tsukiji Fish Market at night

Of course it was already close (you’ve to be there at 5:00 am to see the auctions and still they only admit 60 people, the first come, the first serves) but our idea from the beginning was to go to any of the sushi restaurants in the area to try what was supposed to be the best sushi in the world.
We finally decided to enter in one restaurant called Sushizanmai basically because there was a queue to enter and our logic told us: queue->good quality.

Sushizanmai

We didn’t have to wait to long though, they put us in the bar on the second floor and one could see how the took the live fishes from he aquariums and prepared them in front of you.
It was delicious and so fresh! I also was brave enough to order a typical alcoholic beverage that I had no idea what it was. They had 3 variations from the drink so I asked the waiter to bring me the one he liked the most…it turned out to be extremely strong!

A bit tipsy, we wanted to end our day visiting the Odaiba artificial island. Kevin insisted on going on foot from Tsukiji as it wasn’t “that far” and to take some pictures on the way (also Odaiba wasn’t covered by our Japan Rail Pass, so we had to pay extra if we wanted to get there by metro). Well, it was more than 6 km! and after a whole day of walking and sightseeing it really killed me. On the way some Japanese teenager couple asked to take some pictures with us (our fame followed us from Korea :D).
The effort, at least, paid off. The views to the Rainbow bridge, the Tokyo tower and the mini Statue if Liberty were unbeatable.

Needless to say that we came back by metro XD.

The Japanese Manhattan

Next day was time to visit Akihabara, the manga district. Akihabara is considered the otaku cultural center and a shopping district for video games, anime, manga… you can find absolutely everything there! There’re also numerous maid cafés, waitresses dress in maid costumes and act as servants, and treat customers as masters. I wanted to drink something in one of them, but Kevin refused (shouldn’t it be the other way around? :D)

Colorful Akihabara

One of the numerous Crane Game shops, all the toys were so cute!

Our map showed that not far from the main and busy area there was a Buddhist temple worth visiting, so we went there. We chose to visit Japan during the cherry blossom season, it was the best decision ever. All the temples looked even more beautiful surrounded by the flowering cherry trees.

Kanda Myojin Shrine in Akihabara

The cherry trees around the Shrine

And a place that shouldn’t be missed during the cherry blossom season is the Ueno park. This park holds around 800 trees planted 400 years ago. The Japanese gather at this time to eat, drink and be with friends. It’s a national pastime and TV weather forecasts announce the movement of the Sakura front (the cherry flowering). People bring a groundsheet, some food and alcohol and celebrate with their friends, family or co-workers. There’re also some stands with different drinks and food, like the traditional Takoyaki (ball-shaped snack made of octopus)

Flowering festival at Ueno’s Park


Some stands next to one of the temples
Shinobazu Pond in the middle of the park

Statues with red bibs-the color of the good luck

We finished the day visiting the neighborhood of Shinjuku, the major commercial and administrative center, where the busiest railway in the world is situated.

Shinjuku

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building is not far from the metro station and it’s possible to go to the top of it for free to enjoy the unbelievable views.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building Views

Up there there’s also a souvenir shop and a bar-restaurant, the best place to have dinner with unbeatable views.

Not as expensive as one could think!

Just next to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building there’s a high standard hotel with a restaurant on the top, it was a must for me to go there since it was the scenery for my favorite movie ever!

do you know which movie?

Live music, fancy drinks, elegant people…we had to pay a fee for not being hosts in the hotel and even though we ordered the cheapest of the menu it was quite expensive (zero regrets!)

Views from the Hyatt Hotel

Sharing 2 days with Buddhist monks

One of the highlights of our trip was the stay at one Buddhist temple for 2 days/1 night. There’s a website called templestay that allows tourist to stay in one of the hundreds of temples around South Korea, sharing the monk’s daily routines. There’re different kinds of packages and we decided to go for a 1 night stay in a temple next to the city of Gyeongju.
We chose this temple mainly because it was more or less in our way to Daegu from Busan, and also because it was the only temple where the monks practiced Zen martial arts as a way of dynamic meditation.
It’s called Sunmudo.

We took a bus from Busan to Gyeongju, even the cheapest buses there, that run to small and unknown places, are more comfortable than the first class in any German or Spanish train.

Enough space for a pleasant nap

We had to wait a couple of hours for the bus that’d leave us “next” to the temple, so we took advantage of the time to eat something (Kevin bought a bunch of burgers in a McDonald’s nearby to take to the temple, as the food there was only vegan *sight*).

Energetic Ramen before the experience!

The bus left us around 2 km far away from the temple, I didn’t have my wonderful travel backpack by then, so it was kinda exhausting to do all the way with 2 big suitcases 😦

Poor me

Once at the temple an English girl who volunteers in the temple since 2 years gave us our new uniforms, the key of our rooms and the schedule for the next 2 days.
She was once a tourist visiting the temple like us, but during a sunmudo training something did click in her mind and left everything behind to stay in the temple for undefined time.

The entrance to the temple

In the temple men and women must sleep and eat separately, so I had to share my room with a Korean girl called Kate and Kevin with her boyfriend, also called Kevin and Korean born in the USA.

Our sober room

We had a strict schedule, everything was volunteer but we wanted to do everything, as we’re only 2 days there.

4:00am – Wake up
4:30am – Morning Chanting
5:00am – Sitting Meditation / Walking Meditation (30 minutes each)
6:00am – Breakfast
8:30am – Sunmudo Training (90 mins)
10:10am – Tea-time
11:30am – Sunmudo Demonstration
12:00 – Lunch
2:00pm – Sitting Meditation
3:00pm – Community Work
3.30pm – Sunmudo Demonstration
5:00pm – Dinner
6:10pm – Orientation on Buddhism, chanting and meditation
6:30pm – Evening Chanting
7:00pm – Sunmudo Training (90 mins)
10:00pm – Lights Out

The check-in is between 2 and 4 pm, so the first day we only saw the Sunmudo demonstration and the chanting.

Sunmudo demonstration

At 7 pm we went to the pavilion where the monks train with the other guests.
They’re all mainly Koreans, besides a couple of tourist from Europe, and I was surprised to see a bunch of teenagers that didn’t seem to enjoy too much their time far away from the technology, I guess their parents sent them hoping that they’d learn something.
During the training some girls didn’t pay attention to the monk and were laughing and chatting with each other, until the monk got angry enough to lecture one of them and to kick her out (no jokes with trained sunmudo monks, got it)

I gotta say that the training made me really tired, and it didn’t help that the good Kate snored like a big brown bear or to sleep directly over the floor, so you can imagine my mood when I had to wake up at 4 am to assist to the morning meditation.

The meditation chapel was at the highest point of the temple domains, once there we had to meditate for 30 min, that is, to sit without talking fighting for not falling asleep (3 small kids, monk apprentices didn’t succeed). Right after that we followed the monk down hill on the walking meditation.

The meditation chamber

By 6 am I was so hungry that I really enjoyed all the veggie food from the canteen. Men had to sit in one side of the room and women in the other and you could take as much food as you wanted, the only rule was that nothing could go to the trash.
That was specially hard for Kev, as he was eating only rice and added a lot of very spicy sauce (he thought it was ketchup, how could he think that there’d be ketchup at a Buddhist temple??).

The dining room

I was so destroyed that I skipped the sunmudo training (shame on me), it was a pity as that day it took place outside.

Kevin was more diligent than me.

I’m not sure if we’re lucky of not of having tea time instead of 108 bows. The 108 bows is, as the name says, 108 prostrations in order to purify ourselves (and it sounded very unpleasant, considering my muscle soreness). The tea time, on the other hand was a sermon from the monk, while drinking tea. All in Korean of course.
The Korean Kevin translated a bit for us but it wasn’t the same.

The sunmudo demonstration that day was a bit special, as some Korean tourists came to see the spectacle, a traditional Korean fan dance, called Buchaechum, took also place. After the performance they left some alms to support the temple maintenance.

Buchaechum dance

The community work varies during the year, as we’re there during November our work consisted mainly in collecting the leaves from the water drains.

We had enough time between the activities to explore all the temple domains and to take some nice pictures.

Maae Amitabul

Super exhausted but satisfied we headed to the last part of our trip.

One bus later we’re in Daegu, the third biggest city from Korea and the hometown from my friend Yongtae.
We stayed only one night there, so after taking a cold shower in the apartment (we couldn’t figure out how to connect the heating) we met Yongtae for a walk through the city and a nice dinner.

Unfortunately the dinner wasn’t here 😦

Dongseongno

I wanna thank him and his parents for the hospitality, he was a great guide and her mom was so sweet, I still have some of the Korean tea that she gave to me.

We found the train station next day thanks to our mimic skills, ready to spend our last day in Seoul.
This time the apartment was centermost and with great views.

We decided to use our last day in Seoul to visit the Seoul Tower. If you’re thinking on going to the top using the cableway instead of walking, think it twice. Our idea was to go up with it and to walk on our way down…the queue was so huge that we could have used the time in line to go up and down 3 times! Furthermore, we thought that the price of the cableway included the entrance to the top of the tower, as it was pretty expensive, but it wasn’t the case.
Whenever we thought that we’re already at the end a new room full of people showed up in front of us. The only good think we got from it was to meet a very sweet Korean baby that got hypnotized by Kevin eyes. I guess he had never seen blue eyes until then!

The Seoul Tower

At the top

Views from the tower

The perfect finale for our trip was to go back to the restaurant that we found by mistake the day that we went to Lotteworld. Kevin ordered so many dumplings that the lady was so impressed to tell the other costumers about his feat!

He ordered even more…40 in total!

From traditional villages to amusement parks

Next day we went to the Traditional Hanok Village of Namsagol.

Namsagol’s garden

We could see there some replicas of traditional hanok houses from the Joseon dinasty.

There’re also some traditional games and activities, such as Tuho, that consists on throwing some kind of arrows from a set distance into a large vase.

Not very good at it

Not only houses were displayed, also some instruments from the day a day life of that period, which made a better idea about the life at that time, like jars for storing, preserving, and fermenting food like Kimchi and chili paste, or the chimneys that they used to heat the houses.

An A-Frame korean back-carrier

We also were lucky enough to be there during a Karate exhibition. It was very impressive to see those young guys breaking 20 wooden tables on a row, or jumping over their 4 colleagues

Tiger & Dragon

The Seoul Millenium Capsule is situated only 10 min walking form the village. On November 29, 1994 600 items of modern life and culture were buried to celebrate Seoul’s 600th anniversary. They’ll open the capsule again on the city’s 1,000th anniversary (November 2394).

I can’t imagine the faces of the Korean people from the future when they see the technology from 1994…

I’m a huge fan of amusement parks, so I managed to convince Kev to go that night to Lotte World, the world’s largest indoor theme park which is open all year around (and a very suspicious copy of Disney Land)

Looks familiar…

We had a lot of fun even thought the queues were so long that we had to wait quite a lot for each attraction, and (as everywhere else) the things were made for much shorter people than us, what made Kevin to have a little accident on the GiroDrop (a drop tower) as the sit was too “tight” for him…auch

We didn’t see any other occidental tourist around and so we became pretty fast the center of attention. In one of the attractions, consisting on riding a “donut” through a water path. WE’re only 2, so we had to share our ride with a korean family. Far from being interested on the attraction itself, the father was taking pictures of us with his phone while laughing and saying “yeah, yeah, ok” aaaaall the time. It was so funny and uncomfortable at the same time! 😀

The indoor part from one of the “Air Balloons”

I was very exhausted going back to the apartment, but there was a direct connection from the Amusement Park to our place, I took advance of the situation to sleep a bit…what we didn’t expect is that the Subway closes at 00:00, and that means that at that time they kick you out in whatever subway stop you are! we, wrongly, assumed that they’d make the complete ride until the last stop.

We had no idea where we’re, but something was clear: we’re hungry. There was a small and old tavern next to the subway entrance ran by an old lady.
It became our favorite food spot in Seoul! A lot of tasty food for a ridiculously low price! It was so cheap and tasty, that Kevin left a very good tip to the woman, she was totally surprised and grateful, as nobody leaves tips in Korea.

I got Ramyeon (noodles) and Kevin tons of Mandoo (dumplings)

Did I say that nobody speaks English? The first taxi we stopped didn’t know where our apartment was even with the address written down in korean and a GPS. The second one agreed to drive us but he left us somewhere a bit far from the apartment as he didn’t know exactly where it was. We had to ask a couple of 7 Eleven employees to, and with lots of mimic and intuition, finally find the apartment.

Next day we’re supposed to go to the Seoraksan mountain, a natural park around 90 km eastern from Seoul. But we’re so exhausted that we fell asleep, checking out from the apartment too late and missing the bus to Namseorak. We took a walk around the city instead.

Saving energies for the rest of the day, the Tteokbokki (rice cake) were delicious and, like everything there, very spicy

We went to another Hanuk village, smaller than the previous one.
We’re so lucky to be there right on time to participate in a traditional tea ceremony for free. The ceremony master was a super sweet lady whom showed us how to prepare the tea in the traditional way and let us to do it ourselves.
She explained to us she was taking lessons for 7 years! and that some ceremonies could last for hours.
It’s much more precise and elaborated that one can think at the beginning.

Our amazing teacher

On our walk we passes by the Jongmyo Shrine, unfortunately it was close just that day 😦

So kept on with our walk passing by parks with pagodas, street karaokes with awful singers, souvenir shops and food stands.

korean wedding

That night we visited the famous neighborhood of Gang Man (I’m sure everybody knows the song).
It’s the business and high class district, the Manhattan of Seoul.
There’re casinos, very exclusive shops, restaurants and shopping malls. The only thing we bought though, was some glue for my poor boots…

oppa gangnam style!

The 8th Wonder of the World

We had to wake up around 4 am to take the bus to Chile. After a couple of hours at the customs, we finally arrived into the windiest town I’ve never been: Puerto Natales.

The province is called “Last Hope” as long , loong time ago a Spanish explorer who was looking for the Strait of Magellan ended up there, with no food and almost all his crew dead, being that place his last hope of finding the passage.

 "Seno Última Esperanza or Last Hope Sound"

 "It was windy even for the statues"

The city itself doesn’t have to much to offer, is very small and there’s no too much besides hostels and travel agencies. The main interest is that Torres del Paine national park is very close by.
Due to our lack of time we took a one day trip to see everything with a travel guide. It would had been very cool to camp there, and to do the famous W circuit around the park…but our schedule was pretty tight.

Our travel guide was much better than the one in Perito Moreno, only that he did the entire tour in Spanish so I had to translate almost everything to Kevin. He explained us that the Patagonia name come from the native tribes that use to live there, they’re in average 180 cm tall and we big feet cover with animals skins, therefore the name that the first explorers gave to them: patagones (something like “Bigfoot”).

We first stopped at the Milodon’s cave, a cave were they found the bones of a kinda giant sloth and other animals from the Pleistocene age.

 "The cave from the outside"

 "The cave from the inside"

 "The Milodon was pretty sad when we're leaving :_("

On our way to Torres del Paine we saw ñandús (patagonic oysters) and guanacos (relatives from the lamas).

 "The ñandús took their time to leave the road, no worries, we have time"

 "This guanaco is sexy and he knows it"

Torres del Paine was recently named the 8th Wonder of the World. The main attraction of this National Park is its famous granite mountains, but not less impressive are the forests (a lot now, unfortunately burnt), waterfalls and lakes.

 "Lago Sarmiento, on the way to the park"

 "The Nordenskjold Lake, with the Torres del Paine on the background"

 "Some clever tourist triggered a fire a couple of years ago, there's a lot of forest to recover now"

 "Paine's Waterfall"

 "Pahoe Lake"

We kept on the tour inside the park until the Lago Grey, where there’s another glacier. Unfortunately it started to rain so we could barely see the glacier and the strong wind made it hard to stay to long there.

 "Trekking under the rain"

 "Zapatito de Dama, some endemic flora"

Welcome to Patagonia

I was fascinated by Buenos Aires but arriving in the Patagonia was totally a shock!
The views are just breathtaking! something totally new, exotic and beautiful, nothing that you can see in Europe.

 "Welcome to Patagonia amigos!"

 "EL Calafate is named after these bushes around me"

We arranged a tour through the Perito Moreno glacier from our hostel in El Calafate, that would take us the entire next day.

In Patagonia the terrains are commonly divided by “Estancias”, some kind of ranches, but these are really enormous amounts of terrains (since we left El Calafate until 1 hour later, it came out that it all belonged to the same owner).
One of the estancias that we passed by was Estancia Anita. In the year 1921 workers and peasants were killed in cold blood by soldiers from Buenos Aires for going on strike. Their demands were as simple as 100 pesos salary per month, medicine instructions in Spanish, and a box of candles every month. These strikes raised in Estancia Anita.

 "Estancia Anita, witness of the massacre"

 "We saw a lot of these small and messy "sanctuaries""

Tourism in El Calafate increased dramatically in the last 5 years and so the prices.
The differences between everything (restaurants, tours, accommodation, bus tickets…) in our guide from 2012 and nowadays was x 3 at least.
Anyhow, the tour was totally worth, first we did a small walk on a shore next to the glacier, it took a bit longer than expected as it was the first time for our guide and she got kinda lost :).

 "The shore where we were lost walking"

 "We could already have the first impressions of the Perito Moreno from there"

The glacier was even more impressive from the balconies, and besides the cold and the wind we had a very sunny day that made the day even more enjoyable. We even had the chance to see some blocks of ice falling down from the glacier´s body.

 "Some of the million pictures we took"

Once back we visited a Laguna next to the Calafate called Laguna Nimez Reserve. A nice wetland to walk around and look at the different type of birds (or to fly like them, because it was really windy there).

 "We got the same hairdresser"

Back to the roots

Next day we got up very early to pick up without rushing (for once in our lives) the ferry to Uruguay. We couldn’t enjoy the views at all as we were so tired that we just fell immediately asleep during the whole trip.

 "Yo (L) mi barrio Montevideo" or "I (L) my neighborhood Montevideo"

Once we found our apartment, the cleaning lady opened the door for us…she was so sweet! she insisted to join us in order to find an ATM, to do some shopping in a supermarket nearby and even she offered some cash (that we didn’t accept) as at the beginning the ATM didn’t accept our cards. She even wanted to cook for us!

Once we finally convinced her to leave without worrying anymore about us, we started the sightseeing part: from the Ramblas walk to the Ciudad Vieja (old town).

 "El Palacio Salvo, on La Plaza de la Independencia"

 "If you feel the urgent need of getting married between 18:00 and 7:00...call this number lol"

 "Uruguayan Communist Party"

 "Rodo Park"

One of the main reasons why we went also to Uruguay was because my grandparents were emigrated there around 55 years ago and my father was born there. So our last day in Montevideo was some kind of detective work going to the neighborhood were they used to live.
I only had the street name of an area called El Prado. Once we found it I could kinda picture myself my father driving his tiny tricycle around the block or my grandmother doing the shopping…it was a strange but at the same time, nice feeling.

 "On my father`s neighborhood"

 "The Church of that area"

On our way back we saw a building called “Club Pontevedres”, a social club from my hometown (???) That had to mean something! So we rang even if it was after the working hours, the clean lady opened and, as almost everybody in Uruguay, she was extra nice. She allowed us to enter and to take pictures of the place in case my family could recognize it.

 "The unexpected Club Pontevedres"

We’re starving so we just entered in one bar for some Empanadas and Pizzas, the problem came when we tried to pay and, in our hunger, we forgot to ask if they accepted visa cards (and it came out that the answer was no). Kev left to find an ATM one more time while I started to talk with the waitress…after 45 min I started to feel worried and after almost one hour really scared. He finally arrived after checking all the banks in 2 km around but with no money. Fortunately the staff was nice enough to let us pay with Argentinian pesos without struggling any further.

We finished our date taking a walk and with some cocktails by the sea-side in Playa de Pocitos.

 "Playa de Pocitos"

Bad Luck in Buenos Aires

After a bunch of flight hours and a really (REALLY) hot night in Rio de Janeiro we finally arrived in Buenos Aires.
We decided to risk a bit and instead of taking a taxi (around 40 €) or a private bus (around 15 € each), we struggle looking for change and to took the public bus or “colectivo” (0,50 € each, yeah!). Our hosts were very impressed.
Like that it took definitely longer but we didn’t care too much as we were enjoying our first impressions from the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.. As it was Sunday, a lot of families went to the outskirts of Buenos Aires to do picnics and churrasco’s (barbecues), I found it funny that every family would just choose a tree where to do the picnic and park the car just there on the grass, so there was a car under every “potentially good picnic tree”.

We couldn’t be luckier with our Airbnb hosts, they were very nice and attentive (it came out that the owner’s grandfather was from the same town than me), the apartment was very close to the Congreso, an old refurnished building full of charm.

 "El Congreso"

Following their advice we went to the San Telmo neighborhood. On Sundays there’s a big market going on, with vegetables, fruits, antiquities, home made jewelry and a long etc. The market was also outside the main building. The streets full of people, the music everywhere and the local stands gave the city a very nice and happy environment.

 "San Telmo"

 "The Market"

In one of the squares they were performing some Tango contest, so we were lucky enough to see some couples dancing on live.

 "So much passion..."

I wanted to take a picture at a bench with some Mafalda sculptures, but while I was waiting until the woman sitting finished taking her picture I realized that there was a really organised queue behind her waiting for their turn for the picture! I think we also should adopt that in Europe…

 "Quino´s daughter"

Our second day was going great, we started walking from El Congreso to la Plaza de Mayo taking lots of pictures on our way with the camera hidden on my bag (even some random people on the street warned us about having the camera where everybody see (and steal) it).

 "The cathedral where the current Pope Francisco used to live"

 "The saint of the whores"

 "The famous Obelisc"

 "Plaza de Mayo"

After it we decided to go the neighborhood called Recoleta but while sitting the camera slipped from my bag…to the road…when a taxi was just coming…I´ll avoid to upload any picture of how the camera ended up, some viewers may find the contents disturbing 😀

It was totally a bummer but the technological stuff in Buenos Aires is overpriced AND the models are pretty old, so it took us that day to decide which camera was the “least bad” at least to finish the trip, we could buy a new one back in Germany…
When we finally decided about one, the stars decided that we didn’t have enough bad luck, so after driving for around an hour to a far away part of the city we found out that the shop didn’t existed..then we founded another one in an another shop, but the metro in that direction stopped because of some accident…
When we finally arrived, wasting already 1 day, it came out that we had to show our ID to be able to pay with the VISA card…and we forgot them at the apartment…that turned out into a couple of hours looking for an ATM which accepted our card to pay in cash (oh boy). I can’t imagine how it must be to travel there without knowing any Spanish.

With not such a good mood as the day before we finally went to the Recoleta, and it didn’t disappointed us. We went to the Plaza de Francia, where the law faculty and the famous Floralis Generica are, the area is all surrounded by parks and green areas and we could see hundreds and hundreds of people doing sports: running, biking, aerobic, even nunchaku!

 "In Recoleta"

 "The Floralis Generica, not so impressive under construction..."

 "Gente de Buenos Aires"

Muffins, diaries and boats

Last year some friends of Kev came from the US for holidays, and what is a Euro trip if you don’t visit Amsterdam???

It came out that a childhood friend of him was also studying in Holland, so we decided to meet all there.

 "Our apartment was in the very center, God bless Airbnb!"

After the greatest breakfast in a sandwich-bar close to the apartment we started the sightseeing tour meeting the US girls at Anne Frank’s museum

 "Coffee and go!"

Though we had to wait quite a while in line it was worth, the visit is a moving experience. The House has been good preserved, but unfurnished, as per Anne’s relatives desires, and is very sympathetic to the memory of the families that lived through that awful experience. While it was an uncomfortable experience I’m glad that I have a slightly better understanding about the atrocities that occurred during the war.

 "The queue outside the museum"

I really liked all the watercourses, buildings and the city in general, I found it very similar to Venice, one of my favorite cities in the world. But, on the other side, I found very annoying and overwhelming the amount of tourists and crowds all over the place. It was almost impossible to walk without being ran over by bikes, streetcars or drunk bachelor parties groups.

"A nice corner of Amsterdam" 

This overwhelming sensation was multiplied by 100 at the red light district, it was very funny though, to see some guys dressed up like women trying to get something that fell behind a bench outside the bar where they were drinking and. After a couple of minutes struggling, they finally took it triumphantly out: the biggest dildo ever (!)

Two of us bought a “special” muffin in one small coffee shop ruled by some reggae guys and ate it quite fast. It was not the first time I eat one , but still we felt quite disappointed as we didn’t feel anything special (naive).

 "Some typical Coffee Shops"

The girls saw somewhere that Heineken was offering some free boat tour as a promotional action, so we didn’t think it twice!

 "Sorry for the quality, we didn't have our new camera by then yet"

After that we split up to go to our respective apartments, Kev’s childhood friend was waiting for us there, and the plan was to meet the 5 of us later at night again to check out the night life of the city.

Already at the apartment I started to feel weird but I didn’t pay too much attention to it… at the time that we were at some Mexican fast food restaurant I was totally stoned. Still, instead of laughing like an insane person or talking without stop, my reaction was to be totally in silence trying to hide that I was high.
The funniest part came when we met the girls to do another boat trip and I was sitting in front of the one that ate the muffin with me, both in silence, until she said:
“…”
“…”
“did you feel something?”
“…yes, you?”
“OMG, yes!! me, too!!”

 "During the happy trip"

Unfortunately the girls had to leave next day early back to the US, so it was only the 3 of us exploring the rest of the city.

 "Not everything is party and muffins in Amsterdam"

How to start, or not, an adventure

After my volunteer time in Italy I came back to Spain and tried the impossible task of looking for a job. After 3 months I couldn’t stand anymore to be sitting at home doing nothing but staring at my computer screen, so I decided to do something.
I took the money that I didn’t spend in Italy (I think that it was no more than 300 €), I picked up a not so common destination, I changed all into złotych and found a family who wanted me as an Au-Pair, all in ~1 month.

I found a very cheap flight to Katowice in January and I flew there after Christmas. My family was shocked because everything was in very short notice, but I was totally happy and excited facing this new adventure.
The idea was to travel a bit by my own in the south of Poland before meeting my host family (the lived in a small village near to Wrocław). At the very south of Poland, at the Tatra mountains next to the border with Slovakia, there is a very popular winter destination and that was my first objective, Zakopane. I was 25 years old and I had never seen the snow in my life! it looked like the perfect place.

On my way from Katowice to Zakopane I already had the chance to deal with polish public transportation: it’s very cheap but extremely slow, trains are really old and we covered a distance of 180 km in around 4 hours, plus I don’t speak a word of polish and it was kinda challenging to find the correct connection, actually it came out that there are more than one train company and I bought the ticket for the wrong one, even if both were going to Zakopane, so I had to pay an extra fee in the train (it required a lot of mimic to find out all this).

 "I was so happy with the snow...months later I'd be totally sick of it!"

Poor summer girl…I wasn’t ready for those temperatures (-25°C), my skin was all red and I didn’t have proper clothes. I even went there with wellingtons! thinking that it’d be good for the snow…I was slipping all the time until once I even fell and hit my head really hard (I guess I deserved it)

 "Santa's Village"

Besides that I really enjoyed the time there, it was like being at Santa´s village, just with pierogi, oscypek (tipical smoked cheese from there) and mulled wine.

 "An Oscypek stand"

One of the last days, with cold cream for my face already bought, I did a trekking path to the Morskie Oko lake, the largest of the Tatra lakes. The lake is entered through a small pass, after 1-2 hours hiking (the snow made it more difficult) and once inside, you are entirely surrounded by the mountains. It is very much as if you are in a huge crater, and hence the name, the eye of the sea.

 "On the way up"

By that time of the year the lake was totally frozen and covered with snow

 "Some brave birds"

Once on the top, there’s a typical polish restaurant where is possible to eat something or drink some really hot wine while admiring the views outside.

 "The frozen lake" 

 "The Tatra mountains" 

After all this new experiences I was ready to take the train to Wrocław where my host family was waiting for me. But also expecting the upcoming trips I’d made during my, I thought short, time in Poland.