Sintra itself is a can't miss type of a city, and the Quinta de Regaleira is icing on the cake. Coming up the road and around the corner, I was stop…

EXCELLENT hostel! cinema themed with each room representing a different film. the hostel's fairly new and looks and smells so! freshly furnished f…

i found fancy porto today!!  i had considered going back to coimbra to visit the magical forest on the 10,000 places to see before you die list,…

one of the things i have to admit to enjoying about hostels, and i'm sure some of the ladies out there will understand this, is how the hot boys like…

Carra, a girl I met here that’s from Kentucky, told me that she heard from multiple people that although Spain is a laidback country, the people of…

Oh my how I forgot about snoring in hostels!  I’ve been completely lucky up to this point and haven’t encountered any that was so bad a litt…

So in the Madrid airport there are these smoking areas - they’re like big booths for people to go sit in and light up.  Funny thing though - t…

I was in Portugal all of an hour and loved it already!  Flying in I was so confused and didn’t know what to think because below us t…

Ah Toledo!  What a great little town!  It’s all walled in and it’s like being in some sort of time warp back into medieval times. …

As it turns out no more snow in Madrid!  I missed it again! :0( Just the remnants of salt everywhere and a temperature drop of what felt like 15…

Now as I sit on a train back to Madrid it turns out I just may get my snow after all as I’ve left the sunshine behind and there is fog in the air…

So thus far snow has been chasing me this entire trip and unfortunately never quite caught up to me!  As soon as I left Madrid it started to sno…

totally blew my budget today and i totally dont care!!!  so the whole reason valencia ended up on my itinerary was because of this awesome z…

after a long night/early morning at the pub crawl, i slept in late!  it´s nights like these that really makes your age show through! …

after finally getting to my hostel in valencia and taking a much needed nap, i headed out for a walking tour of valencia.  it was very informati…

today was a very lazy day of relaxing, doing laundry, catching up on email, and wandering through the city some more.  i spent a couple hours sh…

really great and nice staff, but not nearly clean enough for me. the sink in the bathroom didn´t train, the rooms weren´t cleaned in between one pe…

i made a stop in capilla real today - this is where ferdinand and isabel are buried.  you can actually go down under ground a bit to the crypt a…

coming in by bus into the outskirts of granada was a little jarring - it reminded me much more of home than i expected -- big warehouse type building…

i got to go to mass today at the cathedral in sevilla - which is staggering.  actually the mass was in a smaller chapel at one of the …

after a long night/early morning of what can only be described as ´girl talk´with my brazilian roomates, i promised to meet up with them in porto a…

museums, museums, and more museums - my brain hurts.  however it´s really amazing to be able to see these original works of art in person after…

really nice and helpful staff, good breakfast, and in an excellent location - about a block from puerta del sol, one of the biggest squares in madrid…

8am and i kid you not people were still outside drinking, dancing in their own little circles, and singing ´ole, ole, ole, ole´ to their hearts´ c…

okay i´m a nerd, i´ll readily admit it - i totally went to the titanic exhibition.  i couldn´t help myself!  there´s 200+ artifacts the…

that was the quickest 11 hours of my life!  seriously!  lufthansa is awesome by the way - free alcohol, decent food, nice staff - not to me…

my introduction to madrid - being mooned on the subway by a random spainard!  i, along with a dozen or so other escalator riders recieved a fron…

waiting in LAX airport, and let´s be honest, LAX has become known for celebrity watching as much as the ivy, or villa, or any other los angeles…

leaving for the airport in about an hour!! yay!  happy early new year!

rail pass - check!

bought my eurail pass today!  with just a little over a month left it's time to start the countdown... 35 days! i think this is the final…

i've developed an unhealthy obsession with doing this: El Caminito del Rey: ¡Cuidado, muchachos! May 16th, 2008 in Adventure Travel, Theme travel…

The Twelve Grapes (Sp. Las doce uvas de la suerte, "The twelve grapes of luck") is a Spanish tradition since 1909. In December of that year, some ali…

bought my plane tickets today!  even more exciting than booking the hostel cause let's face it - the hostel i can cancel and lose 15 bucks.…

booked the first hostel for this trip today - yay!  every traveller knows how exciting that can be.  it's like booking your plane…

so far i've narrowed it down to: spain: madrid, sevilla, valencia, ibiza, barcelona, san sebastian, bilbao, and salamanca then on to portugal - th…

bought my gorilla pod today (see here).  can't wait to try it out and use it on my next trip!

...i'm pulling this off in 21 days. in the last 2 hours i've only been able to eliminate one city!

as per usual, whenever i start planning a trip i go waaaay overboard on my list of places to visit. as it stands right now i've got 19 stops in 24 da…