The End and the Start

NUMBERS:

Planes: 16

Trains: 9

Buses: 13

Countries: 11

Cities: 34

Postcards: 35

Days: 101

Famous festivals:
2 out of 3
(La Tomatina and Oktoberfest. Running of the Bulls, maybe next time)

Years of planning:
6 (not constant, obviously)

Scars: 1.
It adds character though, makes me look really dangerous and mysterious, like James Bond, or Robbie Williams.

Number of times pickpocketed:
0 (surprising)

Number of hospital visits:
0 (more suprising)

Strange characters met:
Many. Coco Gold takes the cake.

Lovely new normal friends:
Lots and lots! Looking forward to seeing some again, and although I may not see some ever again, I will look at their Facebook status' and smile.

Cities I Missed:
A lot. Too many.

Memories: (all alone in the moonlight). Heaps and heaps. Some of them are classics, like looking out at Paris from
the top of the Eiffel Tower, some are hilarious, like Joni's burp, some sad, like the many many beggars we saw, some freaky like Sophie's sleep talking! She has no idea she's doing it, but more nights than not she would talk, ranging from "oh cool you should go there" to "NO NO NO GET OUT GET OUT" which is not something you want to wake up hearing in a slightly dingy hostel. Kanye West & Jay-Z blew my
mind! Harry Potter World! So many. However, all of the memories are very special and I'll never forget them. So soppy!

Favourite place/s:
Paris. San Sebastian. Lisbon. Barcelona. London.

Least favourite places:
Don't be silly!

(Siena)

Score out of 10 for choice of travelling buddies:
10. Claire, Soph and Joni were the perfect people to travel with, and the memories from our adventures will always be in my heart! Claire, I missed you for the rest of the trip, and think you would have loved lots of the places I went after you left. If you wanna go travelling with me again, I'll check my diary and see what I can do. Also you'll be proud to know I think we went to every possible H&M in every city we went to.
JB and Corn, you made my birthday amazing, you pretended to laugh at my jokes, and even though I think a third of my lungs are clogged up with methane from your bodies, I had an amazing time, and am really jealous I'm not going to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague and Vienna with you.
Also, a huge thank you to Mary, who we stayed with for free (!) in London, who took a week off work to show us the sights, which proved she should be a tour guide, and who was just genuinely lovely and spoilt Claire and I!

Food score out of 10:
10 + 10 + 10 + 100000000.
I split the food memories into two, with dairy and without dairy. With dairy was inevitably better, it included French Camembert cheese eaten underneath the Eiffel tower, about 15kg of gelato, good proper fresh cows milk chocolate, and, my favourite, macarons. Favourite foods places include: Laudree in Paris, Jamie's Kitchen in London, and Helmut Newcake, the gluten-free bakery in Paris. Without dairy was a lot healthier, at one stage I had turned into a rice cracker. Seriously. A bit got stuck in my leggings on the back of my thigh? Sophie laughed. I hurried to the bathroom. I did get increasingly jealous of Sophie and Joni's obsession with Frozen Yoghurt. I should include beverages in here as well, we developed an unfortunate habit of waking up in the morning having drunk the whole bottle of vodka we'd planned on splitting over 2 nights. Sigh.
This trip has made me realise I want to do something with food! Alas, my dream of travelling food writer is out as I'm restricted to lettuce and soy milk, but I do have something else in mind!
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ENGLAND
London. Manchester. Birmingham.

POLAND
Krakow.

ITALY
Rome, Venice, Florence, Siena, Orvieto, Pisa.

GERMANY
Munich.

SPAIN
Valencia. Madrid. Barcelona. San Sebastian. Ibiza.

CROATIA
Split. Hvar. Mljet. Dubrovnik. Korcula. Makarska. Brac.

SWITZERLAND
Lauterbrunnen. Lucerne.

PORTUGAL
Lisbon. Lagos.

FRANCE
Paris. Bordeaux. Nice. Avignon.

MONACO
Monte Carlo.


I can't believe it's over, I left Perth about 3 1/2 months ago and it seems like 2 weeks! But it's not actually over, I'm in my uni dorm room right now, but will save all that for another post. Also, even though the travelling is over I think I'll still keep doing the blog. I like it, and it's good practice, and my audience just bloody loves it. Or so I tell myself. I promise not to start writing about boring stuff like how the bus driver pointed out that my shoelace was undone. <-- that didn't happen.
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