After sleeping the night in Cairo airport (long story), I got on a plane to London to meet Sarah again. Apart from going from Egyptian prices to London prices, it was great to be in a quiet and organised city again for a while. Being the first English speaking country since New York, it felt like I'd developed a new 'sense' as I could listen to other people's conversations and even have my own. London was as I expected. Plenty of pubs serving ordinary beer, ...

Hi all. Well Sarah and I are back in Madrid after a very cool 24 day road trip in our little Citreon. We covered about 5,600km's in 24 days including almost a complete circuit around Spain. The highlights were definetly the windsurfing at Tarifa, the coastline and European cup in Portugal, the spectacular cities like Madrid, Salamanca and Valencia, and most of all Andorra and the Pyrenees. I'm not sure I had heard of Andorra until I got here (the country is o...

We jumped on a train down to Valencia to pick up our little car which we've rented for 4 weeks. It turned out to be a brand new Citroen with CD, A/C etc. The drive down the coast was horrid to begin with as we passed the enourmous developments and tasteless towns that run along the south coast. We're camping most of the time which is not as cheap as you'd expect. The Alhambra at Granada was impressive despite the 42 degree heat (similar to Melbourne right now...

We headed over to Venice for 5 days (officially so Sarah could go to a conference). Firstly, Italy is sooooo expensive. After South America it made me feel a little ill. But Venice is magic and if you can find a corner without 1,000 cruiseboat tourists it is pretty special. It's easy to get lost (which I did and was nearly 2 hours late meeting Sarah) in the 1,000's of cool streets. After living in Melbourne I new what to expect in Italy and nothing is differ...

I finally organised my changed flight from Lima on the morning it left and got a plane to Madrid. Flying was such luxury after all the bus trips and it was great to see a movie in English at last. Sarah was waiting for me at the airport and we got a taxi into Madrid. Driving in and seeing the clean beautiful city while sitting in my clean Mercedes cab (with a sane driver) I realized South America is a long way away. We had 3 days in Madrid before heading to V...