Sad News

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know that our blog is on a temporary hiatus due to our laptop being fried. We will update as soon as possible.

Kris and Julie

Carcassonne

There was a camping aires right outside the city walls of the wonderfully persevered town of Carcassonne. However, since we are still out of butane, we had dinner at a McDonalds and got caught up on emails and the like before heading to it. It started to get dark out so we made our way to find the camping aires, this should have been easy but our GPS wasn’t guiding us to the right spot so it took us at least 20 minutes to find. It was 10 euros to park, but the site offered WC, a dump station, water and even electricity. After dumping our waste water tank, I decided that it would be a good idea to use the electricity provided. Since I didn’t want to occupy the dump station in case another campervan showed up, I took the spot directly next to it, which was for busses. To use the electricity you had to press a button for 15 minutes of use. We did this for around 3 hours, it did get frustrating, but we were able to run our electric heater, so we weren’t complaining too much. It was late and our van is pretty loud when it’s running, so when we decided to move out of the bus parking spot and over to a camper one this made Julie nervous. Seeing as the parking lot was on a slope, all I had to do was release the E-brake and roll. Julie found this really funny and she felt like she was in a spy movie, rolling silently in the night. We haven’t had many complaints about the van of late, but since it really ruins our moods for a few days we try our best not to “annoy” others. Trust me, we do feel stupid sometimes for even caring, but it’s just us.

The next morning we visited Carcassonne. If the town didn’t allow any cars, trucks or any form of motorized transportation inside the walls, it would have been just magical. There are tourist shops and museums that seem to be in every town (medieval, torture etc) and you can normally look past them, but dodging cars kind of sticks out in your memories. When we were getting information at the tourist office located in the base of one of the large towers next to the main drawbridge/entrance, a tour group came in, the lady at the counter though, was complaining to us because the guide isn’t allowed to take people into the tourist office on his tours. What was funny, is that the tourists were taking pictures of the tourist booth, can’t imagine why you would want to remember that. We made our way to the castle and met a real angry woman behind the counter. I’m not too sure what Julie said to her, but I could tell that it wasn’t going well. Julie wasn’t sure what she had done either so we trumped it up to her having a bad day. The castle was nice to explore, although it was really just walking along the walls. It did provide some pretty nice views of the old medieval town and the new town below. There wasn’t much else to see after that, so we walked around the perimeter and back to the van.

Our next stop was Valderies, where there was a free aires. The drive was only 151km, but it took us well over 3 hours and a tank of gas. The drive was mostly done on winding roads through mountains and hills. We managed to get some information from a hardware store as to where we could get our butane tank exchanged for a full one (they didn’t have any full ones in stock). The ladies took about 10 minutes explaining to Julie the directions, along with a detailed drawn map. We found the campervan store with out any problems and now we finally have fuel to cook our food. We decided to press our luck and asked the gentleman if he knew of a place we could get our propane tanks filled, he gave Julie verbal directions and a name, that’s it. We could not find the place and asked someone in the area if they had heard of it, and it turns out they hadn’t. This was funny, because I had commented earlier on how long the ladies took giving Julie such detailed directions and that a guy wouldn’t go to all that trouble. Julie now only wants to get directions from women.

When we arrived in Valderies it was windy, cold and raining. We located the parking area, which seemed to be in the center of town. The next morning we went to the bakery in the square and picked up a healthy breakfast of croissants and a pastry filled with nutella chocolate. The lady told Julie that she hadn’t spoken English in 30 years and I have to say she did a pretty good job in telling me how much I owed.

Spain and Portugal Statistics

Portugal Statistics

Km traveled by car: 1,521
Km traveled by foot: 39
€ spent on fuel, oil, propane: 264.29
€ spent on camping: 18.00
€ spent on groceries: 4.58
€ spent on takeout/Restaurant: 52.15
€ spent on misc. items: 58.40 (50 for butane and adapter)
€ spent on tourist sites: 46.50
# of showers had: 1
# of days spent in Portugal: 7
Total Spent in € : 443.92
Average Daily Costs in € : 63.42

Resting Time Statistics

Km traveled by car: 0
Km traveled by foot: ?
€ spent on fuel, oil, propane: 0
€ spent on camping: 370.11
€ spent on groceries: 431.05
€ spent on takeout/Restaurant: 27.64
€ spent on misc. items : 118.67
€ spent on tourist sites: 0
# of showers had: 36
# of days spent in Spain: 36
Total Spent in € : 947.47
Average Daily Costs in € : 26.32

Spain Statistics

Km traveled by car: 4,150
Km traveled by foot: 96
€ spent on fuel, oil, propane: 701.41
€ spent on camping: 128.78
€ spent on groceries: 196.87
€ spent on takeout/Restaurant: 34.20
€ spent on misc. items : 52.40
€ spent on tourist sites: 72.90
# of showers had: 5
# of days spent in Spain: 18
Total Spent in € : 1,186.56
Average Daily Costs in € : 65.92

Figueres

While searching for a parking spot 3 drunken guys waved us over to try and help us out. Well at least one of the guys was trying to help, the other guy was trying to speak to us in Dutch (he didn’t believe we were Canadian and couldn’t understand him) and eventually asked us in English if he could sleep in our van for the night, the third guy was pretending he didn’t know the other two. Despite their good intentions, this made Julie uncomfortable, so we moved on to find other parking. We stumbled across two other campers parked in a Lidl grocery store parking lot so we decided to join them. The next morning we made our way to the Salvador Dali museum, which happened to be closed as it was a Monday (a slight oversight), since this was the only thing to see in this town, we headed off for Carcassonne, France. On our way back to the van, we passed a small shop that was selling bandanas. The old lady that owned the shop was extremely pleasant and made Julie’s day. As Julie was browsing the different colours available, the lady was teaching Julie the colours in Spanish all the while smiling. It really was a great experience as the lady didn’t speak any English, and we didn’t speak any Spanish yet we were able to communicate with each other (something the lady pointed out with gestures). This was a great way to end our time in Spain, since most of the time spent here Julie and I encountered reluctance from people to provide us with any sort of help and/or information. One Spanish word we got very used to hearing in Spain was “magnana” (tomorrow).

Barcelona

Finding the parking spot for the campervan proved to be pretty difficult. After an hour circling and finally trying a broader search area we managed to stumble on it. Our intention was to spend the night here, but this didn’t happen as Julie did the math and found out it would cost us around 30 euros for the night, but that was after we had entered and toured the city a bit. The spot was right by the beach and a metro station; it was secure as it had 24 hour surveillance and a fence surrounding it. It also had all the campervan facilities including electricity, bathrooms and even hot showers (think trucker style). We decided to walk in and not take the transit system as our sight was only 4 km away from our destination. We were going to visit the La Saggrada Familia Church (we only saw the exterior), which when completed will be the largest church in the world. Gaudi designed it, but died before telling anyone how it was to be finished. Julie told me on the walk there that she had wanted to see this church because she had seen it as a pit stop on Amazing Race and thought it looked nice. We decided to walk into town to save money and also to see more of Barcelona since we determined the church was really the one thing we wanted to see. Barcelona is really like any large city, large buildings, busy streets, odd smells and odd “art” sculptures. The church though, was really impressive. Too bad we didn’t get the chance to see it in the day light. I figured out how to take better pictures at night and we walked half way around. It’s always interesting to visit big city sights as many of the people are tourists and it’s the one time Julie and I will hear the English language being used. The cost to go inside the church was not at all worth it so we skipped it and went to the McDonalds next door hoping to use the free WiFi, but this being Spain, it was just a WiFi hotspot. On our way back to the van we had another chance to view the church, this time with it being lit up, and it was even more impressive the second time round. I thought it was funny that some of the spires had an ominous green glow coming from them. We had our showers and started to look into our next stop when Julie decided to figure out just how much this spot was going to cost us for the night as it was only around 8pm. Upon the discovery that it was the most expensive place we have stayed at to date, we promptly left and made our way to the town of Figueres, our last town and stop in Spain.

Tarragona

Well, Julie was upset upon seeing the “larger than life” roman ruins in the day light. Apparently the lighting effect at night creates a more dramatic appeal. That being said, it didn’t stop us from touring the ruins anyway. We went to a museum that also provided us with access to the Circus Praetorium. The views from the top were amazing. The church stood out amongst all the town and the coliseum could be seen on the water front. We made our way to the church to take some pictures. When we arrived we were greeted by a tiny, but busy market (think garage sale by the masses). This made the task of taking pictures difficult, so we didn’t stick around too long.

Peniscola

We woke up late after a miserable night of high winds and rain. It appears that we are not as “travel hard” as we were before our month of rest, as the long drives the previous two days have taken their toll on us. It also takes longer to get ready and we tire easily on short excursions. The drive to Peniscola was short, only about 15 km where we parked at the base of the 13th century castle. We walked up the narrow streets to the castles main entrance. The area within the castle walls is filled with tourist shops and restaurants. Ever since Marbella, Julie has been on the look out for bandana, still no luck. The castle was nice enough and had an interesting exhibit on the knight’s templar, though we understood very little of it because of the whole language issue. The view from the top tower was nice. You could see both beaches on either side of the castle, the hills and mountains, the coast itself and the ocean. It was a bit too windy though, the wind even managed to blow off my sunglasses. So I took the photos and met up with Julie (she had gone back down before me) as she wanted nothing to do with the wind and being on top of a tower (Spain doesn’t exactly have strict public safety rules).
It was off to Tarragona and hopefully Barcelona as well, but along the way Julie spotted a Carefour department store and suggested to stop and have a look. I managed to buy a warm jacket for 10 euros and Julie bought a new pair of badly needed jeans for 15 euros. We also managed to do some grocery shopping as well in the store so it was no surprise that we didn’t get to see anymore sights for the day. We found a parking spot just outside Tarragona’s town centre that night. It was early and we had run out of butane while reheating our left over stew so we headed into town to have a quick look around and to find the McDonalds for dinner. What we saw of the walled town was pretty promising, so we decided to stick around and see what we could the following day. Just a reminder, we are on a tight schedule as we intended to be in Venice for Carnival, but we have so many other sights to see before then, so falling behind a day wasn’t an easy decision

Alfas Del Pi

We woke up at the ungodly hour of 6am this fine January the 10th day (My mom asked me to start including some dates to better track our adventures). Julie bought me a coffee from the gas station before we headed out at 7am and it was pretty awful. We had a big drive ahead of us and we both wanted to arrive at the Alfas Del Pi camping spot around noon. The sun wasn’t up for the first two hours of our drive (which didn’t help with the waking up process) so we didn’t see much of the passing scenery. Our second gas up of the day provided us with something unique, or at least to us. Julie was looking to get me some coffee and was unable to locate any at the gas station, until she saw these small plastic cups (about the size of a can of pop). She bought one cappuccino and one hot chocolate. What made this unique to us, was how you prepared them. They start off room temperature, you press the bottom in and crush what feels like stones and then shake it vigorously for 30 seconds, (if you can hold the cup that long, it gets piping hot) then voila, its ready to drink. They weren’t bad, but like everything in Europe, we didn’t get a whole lot for our money. We were told by John and Linda to avoid Benidorm as it’s filled with skyscrapers but they suggested a town near it called Alfas Del Pi where they stayed for their Christmas Holidays. The site is brand new and offers all the amenities you need, even daily bread service, for a reasonable cost of 10 euros per day. What really sold it for us though, was the free WiFi that was also available at the campsite. Julie and I were both extremely tired when we arrived that it took me four tries to switch the electrical plug for our van before I got it right and Julie nodded off twice in the van, the first time was by mistake. It was a leisurely start the next day as we made our way to Peniscola, we stayed in a parking lot for campervans, one that was on the way to Benicarlo.

Almeria

This day was a bust. I was looking forward to seeing this part of Spain, especially the Hollywood sets left behind after the filming of such movies like a Fist Full of Dollars. But when Julie and I arrived the place was closed, this surprised us, because it said that it was open year round. The scenery however was straight out of those movies. Arid, mountainous and was pretty cool to see. After lunch, we made our way to the coast to find parking. We ended up right on the beach with about 6 other campers. We spent the night figuring out our plan for the next few days.

Granada

We were late in meeting up with our Australian friends, John and Linda by an hour and a half (sorry again guys) so we left a note on their camper and headed into the Alhambra hoping to meet up with them inside. The Alhambra is huge and probably takes 4 hours to see everything. Julie and I managed to see most of it in around 1 hour. We tend to walk faster than most people, a habit we started in Germany. We do take everything in, but we just don’t stop at everything like most tourists, we just stop at what interests us. So we bypassed most of the dead gardens along the walking path towards the Palace. We had to visit the Palace in the allotted time on our ticket. We passed many tourist shops and a huge building that reminded us of a Gingerbread house because of the texture on the large stone blocks used in its construction. The entrance to the royal palace was stunning. Two large wooden doors opened to an open ceiling with vines almost everywhere. Julie wants one now, too bad I had to break the news that we live in Canada, not southern Spain. After that it was into many rooms, some large and enclosed, others were open but all had impressive stucco ceilings and lovely marble floors. Fountains can be found throughout the whole area, as well as in the Palace, one stood out for me. It was in a large open roofed area, fountains were at either end of the pool that was in the centre and white marble was used throughout. The amount of detail that went into each room was stunning. After the palace we made our way to the mostly ruined fortress. There wasn’t too much to see here, but the tower provided great views of the city below. Our feet were sore at this point, something that hasn’t happened too often on this trip (we figure it was because this was our first day back from resting) so we made our way back towards the main gate. There was another section to check out, the General Life. This was mostly made up of fountains and gardens, since it was the middle of January, we opted to skip this and head back to the van. The Aussies later told us there was a nice palace in the general life as well, oh well. It was a great sight to see, but we left feeling short changed. It was extremely expensive to visit (20 euros) and was impressive, but only to a point. It was funny to find out that John and Linda felt the same way about the Alhambra. When we made it back to the van, we had a quick bite to eat (grilled cheese) and then made the decision to move the van over to the same parking lot the Aussie’s were in. Luckily for us, John and Linda were back at their camper and they told us that a German couple were heading to a great place to stay, further up the hill, for the night. So we all got going and after a drive on some very narrow paved, and some not, roads we arrived at our resting spot for the next two days. That night we sat in our van and shared information on where to stay, free internet, where to avoid etc. Since we were heading to Italy and John and Linda where heading to Portugal, the exact opposite routes. It’s a shame that we couldn’t have traveled longer together, but that’s what happens. The following morning/afternoon John, Julie and I went for an incredibly long walk into town for groceries. Turns out it was 8 km round trip, but walking up a hill the entire time with a load of food sure sucks. We were all pretty tired when we made it back to our vans. Linda had just fallen asleep, as she wasn’t feeling well. So John gave us some beer while Julie made stew for dinner. We spent the night in their van talking until late in the night. The next morning we said our goodbyes and made our way to Almeria, as John and Linda went off to find some thermal spas.

A Month of Rest

We were nearly out of food by the second day and with the campsite grocery store costing a bit more we took the bus to the centre of Marbella to find the tourist office, take in the sights and locate cheaper groceries stores. It turned out to be three groceries stores, one of which had an international section that contained Maple Syrup. We would have liked some but 11 euros for 350 ml was a bit excessive. We were also hoping to find information on busses to Gibraltar. Despite our best intentions, we never made it to Gibraltar. In fact we didn’t make it out much at all. This happened for a few reasons. First, we had internet and we were able to catch up on blogs, movies, tv shows and most importantly with friends and family (this brought us to the mall one day to pick up a webcam and microphone). Second, once we got all our laundry done, the van cleaned up and the blog posts typed up and posted it started to rain on us. And not just a little bit. Almost every time we went to get out of our van we had a huge puddle of water to greet us (about 2 inches deep, surrounding the van). This type of weather doesn’t encourage you to go exploring. When it finally did clear up, it was after Christmas and New Years was on the way. Despite much of an argument, we decided to spend New Years the same way we spent Christmas, in the van. However, the nearby hotels had fireworks and they went off for an hour and a half, Julie and I shared a bottle of Champagne provided by the campsite and enjoyed watching the fireworks and all the stray cats running through the campsite as a result. Funds are very tight and we couldn’t warrant the expense of a night out, which totally sucks. But this is what happens when you go traveling for a year without any income coming in. Third, because we had the internet we stayed up late pretty much every night talking to people which resulted in us sleeping in till noon. Much too late to head out, the busses stop running at 9pm. But I guess the main reason for us not heading out too much was quite simple, we were both traveled out.

Even though we didn’t leave the campsite too often, we did manage to do some things, like:

Met Nicholas and Dorthy, Nick was born in NZ but grew up in England. Brought over Glenfidich and we proceeded to get drunk, more so for Nick, we had to help walk him home. Unfortunately Julie told me Nick was being a pervert and that night was the last night we hung out with them, a shame really because most people don’t care to speak to us. We think it’s because of the van, every time we pull in somewhere people move, if they don’t move they have at times asked us to move. Most of the people that do this type of traveling are usually in flash campers and retired, oh well their loss.

The remainder of the time spent in Marbella was used to wash the van, inside and out, walk along the beach (Julie collected some shells), and just hang out reading or watching movies and TV shows. The campsite gave us a bottle of champagne for Christmas which we drank on New Years eve. Having more money for this trip would definitely change how we used this time, but that’s how it goes. We left the campsite on January 7th staying an extra day because we weren’t ready to check out in time.