We've made it to a new area of Spain: Andalusia, home to sunny beaches, the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the awe inspiring Al-hambra. Our hostel in Granada is a blast. Its in the center of town, its really cheap, and best of all is the rooftop patio, from which we can see all of Granada spread out before us, with towering blue peaks capped with snow as a backdrop. It was especially nice when I was up there at dawn this morning, with the sky all pink and the ci...

Hola a todos! Thanks to everyone for the all of the comments and emails... keep them coming!  I love hearing from all of you back home, and I only wish I had time to respond to you individually. Well, we finally made it to Spain after spending 26 hours straight either on trains or waiting in stations.  Because of the timing, weve decided to do Madrid first and Barcelona later, perhaps after Morocco.  But Im not complaining!  Madrid is fabulous......

Travel troubles...Perhaps you've noticed that it's been a while since I've been able to post (although I did just add a new post for Italy, so go read that one if you haven't yet.). Those of you who heard our itinerary might also notice that it did not include Nice at all.These two facts are connected.To wit: we've been plagued with illness and train problems! In the last week I've been violently ill twice. Once, in Venice, from some bad c...

From Venice, it took 7 hours and 5 different trains to get here - a small rural hamlet on the coast of Northern Italy, a place we are staying for only one full day. Why would we do such a thing? Because it's freaking beautiful!! We came all this way to do one day-long hike through these five towns along the ocean. The one we are staying in, Riomaggiore, is a charming, craggy thing that climbs the steep slopes of the mountains with a seemingly endless stack o...

Ahhh, so glad to be out of Rome. Dont get me wrong, I loved all the history. In Rome, the history comes in one dense layer after another: Renaissance revivals of ancient Roman art and architecture, borrowed from and piled onto Greek and even Egyptian works, and if you go deep enough you even get to the prehistoric Etruscans. And dont forget the whole Christianity-started-here-and-spread-worldwide thing. Both totally fascinating and utterly bewildering. However, t...