I'm on a train in Norway right now heading towards Trondheim. At Trondheim, there is a train I plan to take up to Bodø, Norway. It goes overnight tonight and arrives tomorrow at 9AM (It's 6:35PM right now here). From there, I can take a ferry to Reine. Once I get to Reine I plan to bicycle clockwise through the Lofoten Islands back to Bodø. It should be an adventure... especially because in Norway you can camp wherever you'd like, so I'll be "Wild Camping" in the woods. Also, google maps cannot plot biking directions where I plan to go...so that must be for some reason. Also, there is snow on the ground here and Reine and Bodø are 10 hours north past the arctic circle... so the weather will need to hold up! Right now it looks like the weather is pretty nice... 50-55 Degrees... 40% chance most of the week... which really isn't too bad compared to what I've had the last 3 weeks. So I'm going to give it a shot. It's supposed to be one of the most spectacular places in the world to see. The nicest of the Norwegian Fjords. I won't have wifi too often if I am wild camping, so updates to this site might be few and far between while I'm camping. Wish me luck!
I was lucky enough to be in Sweden for "Midsummer". It's the biggest Swedish holiday. I think everyone seemed to like putting flowers in their hair the most out of everything going on that day. I saw traditional Swedish dancers, a band playing traditional songs... and watched everyone dance around a large pole covered in leaves haha. It was really unique and I'm very happy to have seen it. I heard there's a Swedish Midsummer festival that takes place in New York each year and I think I'll go when I'm back in the states!
Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing well.
I'm in Gothenburg Sweden right now and I'm about to head out to see some of the festivities of the holiday called Midsummer. It's the most Swedish holiday there is and I never heard of it until I was on my way here. I'll put up another blog post with what I see soon, but for now I wanted to show you some photos from the southern tip of Sweden to Gothenburg.
Getting on to the Ferry, I met a very nice person Louise (I think that's how you spell it). She flew to Rome from Sweden and rode her bicycle back to the mainland! That' a very long ride. We talked a lot on the boat and decided to ride from Trelleborg to Malmo together. After that she had to head home for the Midsummer holiday, but I was very happy to meet her and we had a lot of fun on the bike ride.
After we split, I took a train from Malmo to Halmstad and camped out for the night. I walked to the ocean in the morning, rode my bike to the train station, then took a train to Gothenburg where I am now. Here's some photos of my time in Sweeden:
Here's some photos from Munich!
Hi! This post is just a series of videos from my Kanjavec mountain climb. All videos are in chronological order of when they happened. Enjoy!
Mount Kanjavec in the Slovenian Alps, or Julian Alps was the mountain I climbed. This is one big mountain, probably the biggest I ever attempted to climb. It is the second highest peak in Slovenia at 2,569m or 8,428ft. This is the only photo on my website so far that I did not take myself, but I want to put it here so you can see what the mountain looks like on a nice day. This photo is the reason I wanted to try to climb the mountain. It's not the mountain in the center, that is Triglav... It's the mountain just to the right of the center.
So basically, this mountain was the steepest and most difficult I think I've ever climbed. It would take me two days just to reach the top when the next closest was Mount Lafayette in the White mountains that took 1 day to Summit and return (but back when I was 18 years old haha). You can see from the photo, just how spectacular this mountain range is. To sum up the hike, there's a real steep part...it's probably 1000m in an hour and a half. and then it levels off to travel through the valleys leading to kanjavec's summit. I made it about 3/4 of the way....almost to the second hut where you can sleep just before or after summiting. I knew I could have made it the whole way, but I turned around out of safety concerns. If I go again, I'm going to go with another climber and on a clear day. If anyone wants to plan a Kanjavec trip, let me know!!
I'm going to let the photos of this mountain speak for themselves! These are in order of time. The first photo is of the road leading to Kanjavec and the last will be of leaving the mountain and getting back towards the campsite. Enjoy!
I'm going to keep adding videos... up to about 15 of them as my internet connection allows...
I might have one big regret on my trip through Europe, but luckily it's one that can be corrected with a future trip :) I spent too little time in Austria. Austria was so far, the most spectacular country I've ever seen. It's mountains rival the best parts of the Rockies and I hope someday to take a trip back and spend a lot of time in Austria. This trip however, the weather has not been cooperating. My legs were also killing me from an awesome hike through the Julian Alps in Slovenia...so I decided to move on past Austria. Luckily, I had a beautiful view of the entire southern part of the country from the train. I was sitting on the floor in the cargo car next to my bicycle and the conductor was nice enough to offer to me to sit in first class for free. The car had panoramic views of the mountains and I had a show and a half through the valleys of southern Austria.
I met some really great people in Slovenia at a campsite on Lake Bohinj. They have this website address, so hopefully we'll get a comment from all of them sometime! But basically, I spent two nights just hanging out and talking with a group of really nice and down to earth people. There were two girls from the UK whom I think are now heading to Croatia or Bosnia? because of the weather. One girl is a nurse in the northern part of England, the other works for her local government in the south of England. Also, there were two serious survivalists. Well one hardcore survivalist and one hardcore survivalist in training. We're talking eating plants in the woods for sustenance and medicine and fabricating all primitive tools from nature. Something I have always dreamed about... but after thinking about this for the past week almost non-stop, I am certain that I could never live in the woods for more than a few months. I miss the Comforts of home too much and I enjoy spending my days with my friends and family too much to disappear for more than a short while. And if you're reading this, you win haha it's definitely comforts over risks of losing money. I would miss the comfort of home.
In any case, my time at camp Bohinj was awesome and I feel very lucky to have met such wonderful people.
Camp Bohinj was pretty much the camp you hope to find when you are traveling through a strange mountainous country. It was also sort of similar to the campground from wet hot american summer haha. In any case, if anyone is ever in Slovenia, this is the place to go. They only charged me 10 euros per night and the nights I was hiking, they said I could leave all of my things at the campsite and they would not charge me. In addition, the caretakers and camp staff were very kind, helpful, friendly, etc. You couldn't really ask for a better place. There was one female staffer in particular, I never got her name, but she loves the mountain I climbed and she told me that she was surprised and excited for me because I picked a mountain that is just as nice as the big tourist mountain (Triglav), almost as big, and has the same views, but it's a much easier/nicer hike. I hope sometime I can go back there to climb it again to the top with proper equipment and planning.
I stayed in the camp for two nights, then took my big hike. It was probably the hardest climb of my life I'd say, though it was about equivalent to my most difficult hikes in the White mountains, just a lot steeper. I'm going to post a separate blog in a few minutes to document the hike. Hope all is well with everyone reading this and I hope to talk to you all soon.
Update - My internet connection is really working poorly, so I'll post the hiking blog as soon as I can.
Ok, so I have some good news and bad news. I did a little more research and found out that I misinterpreted how long I'm allowed to stay in most of the European countries (The Schengen Area). I am only allowed 90 days. That is the bad news. The good news however is that I can stay in the UK and Ireland for an additional three months after that. Because of this newfound information, I decided to take two days off (at Lake Bohinj, shown in the title of this post)... rest a damaged toe, update the website, and plan out the rest of my trip to some extent. Here is where I have been so far and my tentative plan for the rest of my travels:
Since I entered the Schengen Area on May 2nd, I have until August 3rd to leave legally. I think it is a ridiculous rule. It means in today's day and age, people can no longer travel the world freely as has been done throughout history and that bothers me quite a bit. It should be a minimum of one year allowed. It also means that I will have to cut out a little bit of my plan. I think what makes the most sense for me is to cut out Switzerland since I have already been once, and to cut out Finland, Poland, Estonia because they are out of the way. I can always plan another trip someday to see them. The orange and green lines in the map above are where I am now planning on going next. Orange lines are within my 90 day limit. Green lines I can stay until November and I won't be there that long so basically it's an unlimited timeframe for me.
After Venice, I took the train in to Slovenia. To get there, I actually had to go through Austria as well as there is no train route through the west side of Slovenia. When I got to Austria... I realized immediately that I may have spent too much time in Italy because Austria is so much more my style. I love outdoors, nature, farms, mountains, etc. and Austria has it all. In addition to that, it has a really well marked and intricate set of bicycle trails. Western Slovenia is very similar and seeing this type of landscape... I wish I planned to spend more time here!
When talking about the Alps region of both Austria and Slovenia, it's really easy to just let the pictures speak for themselves. These photos are all from only two days that I've been here so far:
Here's some videos of Venice so you can get a good feeling for what it's actually like:
Hi everyone,
I really don't know where to begin with this blog post. It's been about a week since I've posted a proper update to my trip and so much has happened in that week.
I left Florence and headed towards Venice. Venice was one of the places in my mind that was most important to visit. We have all read about Venice and the intricate series of canals, but for anyone who has not been to Venice, I think there is a picture in your mind about what it looks like and for me it was completely wrong. As soon as I walked in Venice for 20 minutes I understood my biggest misconception which I'm sure many of you have as well. Venice is a huge maze. When you're in venice, you feel like you are in a huge field of hedges meticulously designed to get you lost. Right is left, left is right, there's three bridges in front of you and only one leads you in the right direction. If you take that bridge, you'll have three more shortly after. Yes, with GPS you can easily find your way anywhere in the city. However, I found that the best part about walking through Venice was getting lost on purpose. You have no clue what is around the next corner.
After realizing that you have no clue where you are heading, but you are enjoying it just the same... you may start to notice that there is basically an unlimited number of historical buildings, bridges, canals, boats, people who speak english, great food, and some other cool things you weren't expecting right around the next turn. It's really a cool and unique city.
Then....you start to realize that Venice is not just Venice. It also includes all of the Islands around the main island. There are many of them and you could explore easily for weeks without seeing everything.
Here's some photos:
I finally have an excellent internet connection and I'm excited to update all of you on the last week! I'll be posting many things in the next few hours.
I'm heading out of Venice now. I wish I could have updated everyone with pictures and stories as I went, but I had very little wifi connection for the last week. I was staying at campsites each day.
As I was getting to the train I'm on now, in Venice 30 minutes ago, i bumped back in to the cruise liner that I took from Miami to Spain... The Norwegian Jade. I thought it was interesting... What are the odds I would ever see that ship again!
I'll update soon. I think I'm staying In a comfortable hotel tonight. My air mattress has had a hole in it since I began the trip and I tried everything... Can't find the hole. I've been blowing it up every hour and a half and waking up on the hard ground during the 15 or so campsite nights I've had. I need a good night sleep tonight!
I also forked up money for a hair cut haha... You can see the before and after shots:
Sent from my iPhone
I haven't had a working Internet connection for a few days now but I wanted to send a short update via my cell phone since I haven't written in so long.
I'm in Venice now. I'm on the boat back to the main island from Lido where my campsite is. Lido is part of Venice, but it's not the main island.
I met some very cool people two nights ago in Venice and they told me about a 4 day festival that began yesterday. I'm going to day 2 tonight, then heading to Slovenia tomorrow to do some hiking, hopefully not in the rain.
This is the festival: http://www.more-festival.com
This is where I am right now... I'll take a photo...
That's the main Venice island and I think another island too. I'll do a big Venice update when I get a fast internet connection. Have a good weekend everyone!!!!
Sent from my iPhone
In Florence, art is around every corner. There are people in the streets selling original paintings, many galleries to visit, and it's hard to explain, but you just see it everywhere. I walked by a building with its door open, briefly looked inside and waked past. Then it hit me... I walked back and looked again, and there was a rhinoceros hanging from the ceiling (photo below). I also visited a huge garden and found at the end there were these brass and clay sculptures from a famous Italian sculptor/painter/actor. Florence has turned out to be the highlight of my trip through Italy, in addition to some of the nice things I saw in Rome.
I definitely recommend to everyone to spend a week or two between Florence, Rome, and Venice at some point, you won't regret it. Much of my trip to Florence was guided by my friend Jack who lived here for a few months. He recommended some great places to see, things to do, the Baboli Gardens and the most important of suggestions... to enjoy Florence both in the day time and at night. Walking around Florence at night is a lot like walking around Boston at night, except a lot of things are still open even on a sunday night and there are people talking and eating, meeting other people, stopping at bars, laughing, hanging out, playing music, seeing the sites, etc.
It's really a wonderful city and I feel very fortunate to have seen it. Here's some pictures I took during my time in Florence:
I had my first full day in Rome today and I really like the city a lot. It's clean, well kept, there are Police around ensuring people don't park on the sidewalks or run over pedestrians though they still don't stop for anyone in crosswalks! It's a much more modern and nice part of Italy in my opinion than I've seen so far and it reminds me a lot of a nice city in the US. This is not to mention the hundreds of museums and ancient buildings to see!
Before I got here, I knew exactly what I wanted to do first, head straight to the Colosseum. I learned so much about it on a tour I took today and it was probably the coolest thing I've seen so far on this trip.
If the gladiator did not make it through the fight...they took him out the far opening from where I'm standing in the photo to a burial ground.
There was a wooden floor in the shape of an oval one floor below where the fights took place. It would have been on top of all of those structures you see in the basement. Those are pully's and elevators to raise animals like bears and lions up to the wooden floor through random trap doors for surprise and "special effects" as our guide told us. There would have been other workers and preparation chambers for workers and gladiators etc. down there as well. Normally you could not see that part of the Colosseum from here, but the floor has since been removed by looters and for recycling.
In the center of the second photo is where the emperor would sit. It's an oval shaped arena, so he'd be sitting on the side with the closest view and the gladiators would enter from his right. There would be matches where he would decide whether the losing gladiators would live or die. There would be some matches where there would be no choice, the emperor would declare before the match that it was to the death. The Colosseum was built around 80AD and was used until around 430AD. After that, it was abandoned. Because of this, people would come in and steal items from the Colosseum or recycle them. They did not see it like we do as an important structure that needs to be preserved, thus we are left with only the skeleton of what the Colosseum used to be.
The tour guide emphasized one key aspect of viewing the Colosseum. Since looters and townspeople took everything of value from the Colosseum, you have to use your imagination and picture what it would have looked like. There would be a wooden floor with trap doors bringing animals and trees up at random locations for show. The emperor would be in his place at the left side of the below photo. All of the slanted portions and many of the other areas would be covered with stone seats and stairs. The Colosseum walls and ceilings would have been covered with decorative white stucco with intricately molded designs like the one ceiling panel left in the photo above. There would be 40,000-70,000 spectators and 1,000 workers all here at once. The elites would be on the first viewing level and the common people would be on the third level. People would be talking and cheering, playing board games in between matches, chanting for gladiators, betting 0n the outcome. They would have their favorite gladiators they would root for and bet on. When the gladiators would fight they would scream and chant for which gladiator to win and when one was subdued, they would call for life or death of the loser.
I also stopped by a fountain of Poseidon that internet sites say you should visit. Here it is in all its glory:
To me it's no colosseum, but it makes for a nice photo.
Today was a long day of train rides, but I made it all the way from Sicily to Rome! Since I have a bicycle, I cannot take the high speed direct route trains in most of Europe. I have to take the slower, regional trains that stop every 5-10 minutes. So I got in around 11:30PM. I'm in a hostel right in the center of Rome... so tomorrow I plan to spend all day walking around the city finding all of the biggest Roman attractions such as the Colosseum, Pantheon, Vatican City, Sistine Chapel, etc. I'm sure I'll have plenty of photos in a couple of days.
Check out this old elevator that is the main elevator for this hostel. It's by far the oldest one I've ever been on:
Here's some other photos from the day...
And a video from the train ride:
I'm on a train to Rome after a fun night last night. I heard a band outside of my hotel window that sounded pretty good around 10 PM so I walked over to the bar they were playing at across the street.
I asked a group of friends sitting at a table what the band's name was and I said they were good. It turned out the people I asked were good friends with the band and all of us hung out until 3:30 in the morning. We exchanged email addresses and hopefully we keep in touch.
The band's name is Mastam #5 and its rock music but in Italian of course. They're working on their first album.
So now I'm on my way to Naples to catch a train to Rome. I booked a hostel in Rome for tonight and tomorrow night for $30 per night. They are kind of expensive in Rome. There's hotels for $50 per night, but in the hostel, the $40 savings for the two nights would get me three nights camping in the future. I'm trying to extend this trip as long as possible so every Euro counts now!!
I'm on my cell on a train right now so I'll better update everyone on the trip when I'm in Rome! Have a good day, Jamey
Sent from my iPhone
I'm currently in Sferracavallo. It's a smaller town in Sicily on the ocean and I believe historically it was a fishing town like a lot of Sicilian towns. I've been here two days and I'm camping out. Today I'm going to get moving though, to see a lot more of Sicily and I can't wait! I'll talk more about that in a bit.
First I wanted to mention how the beach at Sferracavallo showed me something about Sicily that I didn't know... I'm not sure if the rest of Sicily or Italy is this way yet, but I'm giving Sicily the benefit of the doubt and assuming the problems are mostly due to this town's proximity to Palermo. The beach and it's surrounding landscapes are ridiculously nice. There's a tall steep mountain overlooking an old fishing town with a rocky coast and boardwalk. When you look closer though, none of it is very well kept. There are businesses out of business, the boardwalk is falling apart, there are stray cats and dogs everywhere, and there is so much trash on the beach it's ridiculous haha. I'm not sure why the people here do not clean up the town... because otherwise, it would be a great place to live. You can see what I'm talking about in the photos below.
Last night, I walked in to the town.... right to the beach and left to the restaurants....and I went left expecting to find maybe 4 restaurants and pick one of the less expensive options. To my surprise, I found about 1,500 people, 25 restaurants, music, people selling things on the side of the road that light up and balloons for kids, families everywhere, etc. Most all of the restaurants are seafood based and I love seafood! I asked for a salad with seafood. It was on the menu as Insalada Di Mare I believe. I asked.. "This is salad with seafood on it right? The waiter said yes. To clarify, I said... "Like it has lettuce, tomato, etc. with seafood?" He said yes... so I said I'll take it! Of course when it arrived, it was just a bowl full of cold squid, Octopus, clams, mussels, etc. haha. You rarely get what you're expecting when you order food in Europe, just because our food is so much different than theirs. I'll include a photo of the food here as well.
Today (Monday), I'm bicycling back towards Palermo, then taking a train to Agrigento. If it's nice I might stay the night, if not I'm heading towards Catalina for the night. After Catalina I'm heading to Messina which is at the top right corner of the island and I'm confident I can get a ferry there cheap to take me back to mainland Italy at which time I'll be heading for Rome. I made a little deal with myself... I'm going to try to head through Italy a little faster than expected because I want to spend more time in Germany, Sweeden, Denmark, Finland, Amsterdam, Austria and most definitely in England and Ireland because I've realized it's very difficult to talk to people when you don't know their language! haha.
I slept most of this afternoon so now it's 2AM and I'm ready for the day! One problem is that I can't check out until 6AM and they have my passport, so I'm about to head back in to the tent and read a book (wifi only works at the reception area). I'm starting a book called Swan Song which is supposed to be very good (Scary Post Apocalyptic Fiction I think), but it is like 1,000 pages. In the last 4 days I read The Time Machine by HG Wells and re-read half of Walden by Thoreau. I'll have to finish it soon, but I want to start something new!
So I finally made it to Sicily! I just need to decide now which way to go...east or west. West will be a lot more time in Sicily and a much longer bike ride. It might be difficult mountainous terrain, but might not be...I'm not sure. East would be to go along the north shore of Sicily which I believe is all cliffs and mountains. I need to research this to find out more, but I'm pretty sure I'm heading west. I read about a fishing village to the west of Palermo and I want to see it. Also, Since I've wanted to see Sicily for so long, I might as well make a week out of it...or two weeks? There is no large transportation system here, so it's going to be an adventurous time on the bicycle...not sure what I'm getting in to. But for today I know exactly what I'm doing:
Today is Sicilian pizza Day for the James.
I’m going to have lunch at place #1 and bring home dinner from Place #2:
Place #1: Mounir… Ranked number 1 of 1,264 restaurants in the capital of sicily, Palermo where I have a hotel for the night. The price is 6 Euro or $7 US Dollars... for the best restaurant out of over a thousand, I'd say that's a great deal!
Place #2: Frida...and I will most definitely be getting the Vulcanotto. This is from a review I found online:
Frida
Where: Piazza Sant’Onofrio, 37-38, 90100, Palermo
Specialties: all pizzas are amazing (trust me, I tried many of them…), but the real specialty is ‘vulcanotto’, a square pizza framed by a thick stuffed crust.
What people say: many reviewers call it “the best pizza in Palermo”, others go even further and say it’s the best in Italy… I guess you’ll have to try for yourself and let me know what you think! Read more reviews.
