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Golden Gate Bridge - San Francisco - Video of the Week

Last August, I went to one of my best friend's (Pat McCusker) wedding in Sacramento, CA.  I had flown straight from Barcelona, Spain to Sacramento, CA.  After Pat's wedding, I borrowered his wife's car, and headed to San Francisco for a couple of days.  While I was hanging out in San Francisco, I drove from downtown across the Golden Gate Bridge to an unbelievable spot that over looks all of downtown San Francisco, the Bay, and Alcatraz!  It was an easy spot to find.  All I had to do is cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and then take the first exit after I crossed the bridge.  Then I headed straight up a side of a mountain to a couple of different spots that gave me a lot of different views of the city.  Enjoy the video! 

FCBarcelona - Stadium Tour

 

Last summer while I was living in Barcelona, Spain I had the chance to take a day tour of one of the biggest futbol (soccer) stadiums in the world.  Barcelona is home to FC Barcelona.  This stadium holds over 100,000 people.  I unfortunately wasn't able to go to a live game while I was living there, but I can only imagine how crazy it can get with 100,000 people inside the stadium.

The tour consists of a couple of different areas of the stadium.  You first have to buy your ticket at a separate building that is located outside the stadium in the main parking lot.  Last summer the ticket cost around 18 Euros (that could have changed by now).  Once you pay for the ticket you enter a room that has stadium seating.  A 5 minute virtual reality movie is played that simulates what it is like to be inside the stadium, and on the field during a live game. 

Shoppers Paradise - Hoi An, Vietnam

While traveling abroad I had heard a lot of stories of being able to get suits tailor made in Asia for dirt cheap.  Nobody ever mentioned a city by the name of Hoi An when they were talking about suits, but I can tell you from first hand experience that this is the place in SE Asia to get your suit made.  They have shoe stores, coat stores, suit stores, and basically anything else you can image that can be sown together types of stores.  I have never seen a little town like this where even budget travelers were spending money on getting clothes made for themselves.

      

After I had checked into my guest house, I decided to walk around the streets of Hoi An.  It is not a very big city so I was able to walk around the side streets, and get to the market from my guest house (which was on the edge of town) in about 15 minutes.  Like every other Asian town, every shop owner up and down every street was trying to get me to come into their store to buy something from them.  I had to kindly turn down a lot of stores until I found one that I decided looked like my spot.  How did I decide you might be wondering...like every other decision I had made along my trip concerning where to eat/grab a drink:  if there are a lot of people in one store/restaurant then I should eat there since it seems like it is a popular place. 

So I went into a store called Phuong Huy (Happy Dragon).  The store is located right by the market in Hoi An so it is very easy to find.  I walked by the store, and there was about 6 customers trying on their finished suits.  I had found my tailor!  They had 3 women working in the store.  I walked up the stairs into the store, and it had fabric of every color and texture lining the walls.  They had a couple of manikins with suits on right by some mirrors and a dressing room in the back. 

Montserrat, Spain - Video of the week

Two summers ago I met two girls while vacationing in Barcelona, Spain.  One of them, Leidy, is from Holland and the other one, Mina, is from Igualada, Spain.  When I returned to Barcelona last summer these two girls were still living around the Barcelona area.  One weekend they offered to take me to Mina's home town, Igualada.  This town is about 25 minutes outside Barcelona by car.  It is located in the Catalunya region of Spain.  While I was in Igualada for the weekend nobody spoke English.  In fact, nobody in this small town even talked Spainish.  Everybody in this town talked Catalan.  It is a mix of Spanish and French.  I could not understand anything anybody was saying the whole weekend, but I still had a great great time meeting all of Mina's friends and family.

One thing that we did while we were in Igualada was take a day trip to Monserrat.  I had never even  heard of Montserrat. So I was excited to to hear that Mina was going to take me to one of the most famous  sites in Catalunya.  It is located about 20 minutes away from Igualada (you can also take a day trip from Barcelona to Monserrat).  We woke up at about 8 am on Saturday morning, and the first thing that we did was make lunch to eat on top of Montserrat.  Mina, Leidy, and me then met up with 3 other of Mina's friends.   

How to get to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar

The Rock of Gibraltar is one of the coolest sites in Southern Spain.  I was staying in Tarifa, Spain when I decided that I wanted to take a day trip to "The Rock."  There is only one bus stop in Tarifa.  There is a bus that comes by each hour that took me to the main bus station in Algeciras.  Once I got to the main terminal in Algeciras, I switched buses to get to Gibraltar.  The bus that leaves Algiers took me directly to the bus stop that is right "next" to the Rock. 

In order to get to the Rock I had to go through English customs.  The Rock is actually English property.  (So make sure that you have your passport when you are visiting the Rock.)  It is kind of crazy when I had been experiencing Spanish culture while traveling through Andalusia, and then I crossed a line it was basically like being in England.  Everything from street signs, menus for food, employees of businesses all spoke English.  I was told by other travelers that you had to have the British Pound as currency for everything in Gibraltar, but most businesses do accept the Euro.  I didn't convert any money since I was only staying for the day.

From the boarder of Spain to the bottom of the mountain it took me about a 20 minutes walk.  Once arrived at the base of the mountain I had to make a decision.  How am I going to get to the top of The Rock?  It definitely looked like it would be a good hike to the top of the mountain.  I had not met anybody that had walked to the top before I got there.  I was estimating that it would take about 45 - 60 minutes to make it up, and the same amount of time to get back down.

Choeung Ek Genocidal Center - The Killing Fields

During the end of the 1970's there was a cruel communist party that took over Cambodia called the Khmer Rouge Regime.  From 1975-1975 they murdered and tortured over 3 million people.  I have to be honest, during my time in high school and even college I had never even heard about this happening.  I started to hear about "The Killing Fields" while I was traveling through South America from other travelers who had just arrived from SE Asia.  I didn't fully understand what happened during this time period until I arrived in Phnom Phen, and actually read and experienced The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng (former Khmer Rouge S-21 Prison...blog to come).

At this point of my world trip I was traveling with my friend Howard from Brighton, England.  When we arrived in Phnom Phen, the first thing we did was hire a tuk tuk to drive us around the city the next day.  We rented a driver for $10 US Dollars for the whole day.  We couldn't believe it was that cheap.  Hiring a tuk tuk driver is the best way to see the city, because the drivers where everything is and how to get there!

 

One of the first places that we visited was the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center.  This memorial center is a site where they found around 130 mass graves of bodies.  The Khmer Rouge Regime would take prisoners from the S-21 Prison (where they tortured them) to "The Killing Field" where they would execute their prisoners.  It is a place where you experience first hand how terrible things were during the Khmer Regime.    

There were already other tuk tuk's there with visitors that had already entered the grounds.  The admission price was $3 Us Dollars.  Once you pay the first thing you notice is this huge Memorial Charnel that you can see in the first picture above.  It was huge.  The closer and closer that I got I noticed that there was something unique about this memorial.  I finally realized that the whole Memorial is filled with SKULLS that they found while they were digging up these massive graves.  I had never seen anything like this in my life.  After walking up to the memorial and just taking a look around the grounds I then realized what actually took place at "The Killing Fields."

Climb Wayna Picchu - Video of the Week

I took this video of the week from the top of Wayna Picchu in Peru.  I explored Machu Picchu ("old peak") and Wayna Picchu ("young peak") with Liem from Ireland, and Daniel from Sweden, who I'd met in Cuzco, Peru two days earlier.  After getting a tour of Machu Picchu from a local guide (which takes about 1-2 hours) we were able to hang out and explore other parts of the World Heritage Site.  One thing that only 400 people a day are allowed to do is climb Wayna Picchu.  It is a hard climb up to the top of the mountain with skinny passages, and hard rocks to grab, but if you make it to the top it is well worth it.

The hike up the mountain took a little bit over an hour.  We had to take a couple of breaks since we were climbing almost straight up in some parts.  The altitude plays another factor in climbing Wayna Picchu is located about 2600 meters (almost 9000 feet) above sea level.  You run out of breath a lot quicker!  Once we made it to the top there was a lot of people that were just sitting on the rocks eating lunch and looking out over the mountains.  This video doesn't do the view any justice.  The Andes Mountains are so big and green that it felt surreal.  We hung out on top of the mountain for about 30 minutes before we came back down.  You should definitely climb Wayna Picchu if you ever get the chance to visit Machu Picchu, because it gives you a different view of one of the best sites to see in the world.  Peace

Sites to see in Lisbon, Portugal

 

Here is a map of Lisbon, Portugal and the sites that you can see while you are visiting the city (courtesy of cityline sightline).  There is so much history in Lisbon, but to be honest with you I was pretty satisfied with sight seeing after one day.  At night, don't miss going to the Docas which is labeled number 6 on the map.  It has a lot of restaurants and bars that are all get pretty crowded during the summer.  I just added a "Video of the Week" about number 5 on the map which is the Terreiro do Paco.

Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep- Chiang Mai, Thailand

While I was traveling with Howard in Chiang Mai, Thailand for Songkran, we decided to head to the main temple in Chiang Mai that is called Wat Phrathat.  This is one of the most famous temples in Thailand.  It is located on top of a mountain that over looks the whole city.  There is no way that you can walk to this temple.  So instead of hiring a tuk tuk or a taxi to take us to the Temple we decided there was no better way to go than scooters (the locals way to travel!)

We lined up the scooters through Julie's Guest House.  They make it too easy to do things in Chiang Mai.  So a rental company delivered 2 scooters for us to use for the whole day.  (I think it was only about $6 to rent for the whole day).   We took off without any problems.  It was a lot of fun on these things.  There are so many scooters on the street that we just blended in with all the locals.  The only bad thing is the pollution that comes from the trucks that pass you or wait next to you at lights.  I ended up having to put a shirt over my face so that I wasn't sucking down straight pollution out of the tail pipe next to me.

The Killing Fields - Phnom Phen, Cambodia - Video of the Week

I had no idea what the Killing Fields were before I went on my world trip.  I want to say that I never learned about what happened in Cambodia from 1975-1979 in school, but to be honest with you I can't remember.  This place was kind of creepy to me.  When I started traveling through South America I heard people talking about the Killing Fields in Cambodia and I was told that I had to go there.  Once I arrived in Phnom Phen I actually found out the history of what happened in this country during that time period.  During this 4 year period, somewhere around 200,000 people were executed and 1.2 million people were killed from disease or starvation (info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields).  Check out the video.  It was shot at Choeung Ek.  Where there were mass graves found here from people that were executed for nothing! I am going to blog more about the killing fields in the upcoming month.  Peace