The following makes me realize that I’m back home (and frustrates me to no end):

1) Calling “customer care”:
“Press one for English…Numero dos para Espanol….” “Press two for techincal support…………..” etc., etc., … I hate these automated phone menus, will someone just pickup the God damn phone!! (And no, pressing zero does not alway work until you bypass a couple of menus).

2) The American media
Fear, fear, fear - America be afraid, be very afraid. That’s all I read, watch and hear from the media. i.e. “The West Nile virus has killed a man in New York….what you can do to protect yourself from this deadly disease.” Lets take into consideration that the U.S. has over 300 million people and perhaps a handful (or two) of people have died from the West Nile.
Also, who gives a shit about Paris Hilton and her boring life.
I’m not watching the news or reading the newspaper anymore.

3) Driving in California.
On a two lane highway, a large portion of the world recognizes that you drive on the right lane and use the left lane for passing (vice versa if you’re driving in the UK). Doesn’t happen in Cali - wanna lose your mind? Try driving behind the guy, in the passing lane, who likes to drive parallel along a slow moving truck!

4) “Yeah I’ll call you back….” “Let’s get together soon……” Not… Flacky Angelenos. Christ just say I can’t make it, I don’t need to know the reason why you’re a flake.

5) The village idiot is still running the country.

By the way, due to large amounts of Spam I’ve disabled the comments. Please use the contact form if you need to reach us.

Ciao

Family and Friends we’re back home in L.A. !!! Give us a ring, we look foward to hearing from you!!!

Sorry we’ve been really lazy on the blog front. We were recently in France visiting Tania, who is currently living in Brittany. We basically spent an entire week eating the buttery food (so good), drinking lots of red wine (so good), surfing and body boarding in the ocean (so cold!).
Afterwards off to London, where we met up with our Trans-Siberian train mates, Steve and Claire, and spent an entire week staying at Karen’s house, which has officially been dubbed the “Charlton Hilton.”
Now we are currently in Reykjavik, Iceland enjoying the cool weather (most of Europe has been so hot!!) and the company of our friend and host Gunnar. We also met up with our Lake Baikal roommate, Chrisitian, who also lives in Reykjavik.
Our plans to go camping in Iceland have been temporarily delayed due to car problems, but we’re still enjoying the amazing scenery in and around Reykjavik. Hopefully we’re off to the Highlands tomorrow.

In a few days we’re back in the U.S.! We’ll spend a couple of days in NYC, then fly back to L.A. - I can’t wait!! See you all shortly!!

We had a great time in Holland with our hosts and friends, Joep and Carola. They were so nice as to take a week off their busy life transition to show us their lovely country.

We were greeted at the airport with a huge Dutch flag! Then it was off to their home in Breda, which they have just sold because they are moving to Zurich, Switzerland. Then were introduced to one of many Dutch delicacies, hagelslag, chocolate sprinkles on brown bread and butter. Mostly popular with children, but like many childhood loves, it comes along with us into adulthood. We were told our potential itinerary for the week and we were ecstatic. Off to the beach for our first day to enjoy the freak weather of a bright sunny day. And our first bite of bitterballen, miniature croquettes.

Then it was two wonderful days in Freisland. Enjoying farm camping, boating the many canals and lakes, and, of course, eating our way around. We had herring, apple pie, croquettes, mussels, cheeses, and lots of beer. The people in the north are super friendly. This is definitely a country anyone can do a biking tour of, it’s so flat everywhere.

We then had a day each in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. With a fabulous evening of the best Indonesian food we’ve ever had in Breda. Both of the big cities are full of interesting old parts and new. Rotterdam definitely had a more industrial feel to it though. We had our first fresh stroopwafels here. Yum! We took a fun Yellow Bike tour of Amsterdam. Here we also tried poffertjes, mini pancakes covered with butter and powder sugar.

The World Cup final day was also our last day with Carola, she had to leave us for work in Zurich. So we had a chill day trying to windsurf and then seeing her off. It was also Sunday, so all shops were closed and Joep had to drive down to the nearby Belgium border for breakfast baked goods. We caught the game at local bar and biked back rather drunk. I think Eddy and I were the only ones cheering on Italy, but after what happened at the game, it was hard to muster any enthusiasm for either team. The next day we spent the morning looking for cheeses with Joep. It turns out the Netherlands isn’t quite ready to start their Mondays on time, most shops and restaurants aren’t in full operation until about half day or later. So finding a cheese shop was a bit challenging. Then we bid Joep farewell as well at the Breda train station.

We took the train to Den Bosch to meet up with another Dutch travelling couple we met in Laos, Albert and Lisabeth. After a nice lunch and short stroll around town we headed to the airport for our flight out to London, which we had to go through to get to Douarnenez, France. Thanks to Steve and Claire we had a place to crash for this brief stay in London. Our flight wasn’t until the next day.

We are currently enjoying the beach bum life style with Tania. Pretty much heading to the beach everyday to try surfing or boogie boarding. Tania heads out for kiteboarding if there’s wind. My beer’s getting warm, so I will write more later.

Photos of the land of cheese and flowers are up. Check out Holland, when you get a chance.

New photos from Spain.

Last weekend, the four of us (Me, Yvonne, Manuel and Carolina) decided to spend a lazy day at the beach. Manuel wanted to take us to his favorite beach, which is just outside of Vigo. So we hopped into his car and took a one hour drive to this favorite beach of his. We arrive at favorite beach only to find ourselves searching for parking and Manuel having to avoid with his car, the many cars and pedestrians along the narrow beach route. Manuel decides this is no longer his favorite beach and suggests driving to another beach. We agree and it´s off to another beach.
We arrive at beach number two and were relieved to find parking. After parking the car and a brief ice cream break, it´s time to walk towards the beach then plop our towels and bodies onto the sand. Access to the beach, from where we parked and had ice cream was maybe a 200 yard walk over this small hill. We reached the summit of this small hill and straight ahead from a distance we can see a nice long stretch of sand, blue water, bare assess and pubic hairs. Yep, Manuel unknowingly took us to a nude beach. Well Manuel actually knew there was a nudist section at this particular beach, he just assummed we would end up where the non-nudists hang out. After the initial shock of hanging genitals, cottage cheese and sunburnt assess we all looked at each other and burst out laughing.
After scanning the ¨horizon¨ and seeing yards upon yards of naked flesh, I´m thinking there´s no way in hell there´s a ¨normal¨ section out here and there´s no way I´m taking my clothes off. I prefer not to be the talk of the Spanish nudist community ¨Mira did you see the Asian guy with the little chorizo? Look there he is jogging along the coast!.¨ Uumm no thanks. The others were also in agreement about not hanging out (figuratively speaking) with the nudists (believe me not the most attractive looking group of people). Also, the thought of having to practice my Spanish with a naked Spaniard just seems kinda weird. ¨Hola que tal?¨
Still at our small summit - Mt. What the Fuck, we can see another section of beach quite a distance away and can actually see color, this must be the ¨normal¨ section of beach. We decide to head towards the sea of colors. But in order to get to our destination, we´ll have to walk through a small section of the nudist beach, then climb over some large boulders to reach the next section of beach. So as we´re walking along the nudist beach a few thoughts come to my mind, such as…. ¨Why is this guy dribbling a soccer ball…..in the nude?.. ¨That must hurt running full speed for that frisbee, I know my nuts couldn´t take a pounding like that¨… .. We approach the large boulders, all we need to do is climb over these rocks and we´ll reach our sea of colors. We climb atop of the boulders, scan the surrounding area….more naked bodies…the sea of colors we had seen from a distance were only beach towels laid out on the sand. Again we look at each and burst out laughing. This time no one´s dribbling a soccer ball, just a couple playing paddle ball….. .in the nude.
Manuel is absolutely sure there´s a ¨normal¨ stretch of beach nearby and convinces us to walk through the sea of color beach towards another set of boulders. So as we´re walking along another stretch of nude beach more thoughts come to my mind, in particular sunscreen application…Anyway, we reach the boulders, climb up to the top and see another sea of color - this time the folks are wearing bathing suits, well both men and women wearing bottoms, many women topless (at least they´re attractive, Manuel and I weren´t complaining). We found a nice spot, settled ourselves on the sand, went for an occassional dip in the water; sipped cold beer and let the time pass away.
So there you have it our day at the beach in Spain. Where one can: roam around naked and if you don´t like it you can go to different spot; drink a beer ; let their dogs run around freely; and stay on the beach as long as you nice - very nice considering if we did anything I just mentioned back in California it would involve the police and an expensive citation… (How I hate the police bullhorn back home ¨It´s 10 O´clock the beach is now closed!! Get off the Beach!!¨). So nice, here in Spain, that no one tells us what to do or not to do, everyone minding their own business and enjoying themselves. Aahhh… Only in Europe.

Check out our 4 days in Italy, one day in Porto and so far in Spain.

- The abundance of pork. 5 weeks traveling through Jordan, Egypt and Turkey and eating nothing but lamb. It´s nice to be eating chorizo, proscuitto, parma ham, serrano ham, bacon….etc…Plus no more lamb smell eminating from our pores.
- The abundance of fresh, green, leafy vegetables (although we can´t get fresh basil in Vigo, oh well can´t have everything it´s so nice to be eating salad every day).
- The abundance of red wine. Not that I´m a alcie, but after 5 weeks of traveling through Jordan, Egypt and Turkey…yada, yada…
- The abundance of cheese. Mmmmm Tellagio and Barrata Cheese in Italy. Queso Manchego in Spain. Mmmmm.
- Potable tap water. Not having to rinse my mouth with bottled water after brushing my teeth.
- Practicing my terrible Spanish. I can speak passable Spanish when it comes to food i.e. supermarket, butcher, cheese shop etc…. Don´t ask me anything else - man the Spaniards speak sssooooo fast.
- Having the use of a washing machine! So nice not to hand wash our clothes.
- Watching hours upon hours of the World Cup (Go Big Red!). The Spaniard went apes over last night´s victory over Tunisia (poor Mohammed). Manuel went pretty apes himself everytime Spain scored. Good luck, back home to, Mauro (Brazil), Mohammed (Tunisia) and Wayne (Trinidad-Tobago). I´m sure Wayne will be calling in sick watching today´s TNT match.
- Driving or flying to another EU country without any border control checkpoints (although it would be nice to get another stamp in my passport).
- Being one step closer to home.

Turkey photos are up. Take a look when you like…