update

Hello all, sorry I haven ´t had the chance to send out any postcards because its difficult to buy stamps, so please wait until I get to Italy!

Valencia

We arrived in Valencia yesterday and immediately checked out the Valencia CF´s stadium. It´s definitely not as fancy as Real or Barça´s, in fact it was a little ghetto looking. We went to the game at 7 pm, it was Valencia against Deportivos. We didn´t have good seats in the first half, even though we were high up and could see the game well, so we switched to empty seats (4th row from the pitch) after halftime. David Villa scored and ran towards our corner and he was sooo close to us, it was amazing. It was amazing seeing all these footballers that I used to see on the internet and tv all the time in real life. They all look the same hehe, unlike hollywood stars I heard they look worse in real life. We saw Albelda, Villa, Mata, Joaquin, and Vicente.. just to name a few famous ones. I´m developing a fondness towards Mata, he´s young, but what a great player. He scored 2 yesterday. The future of Spanish football is looking very bright.

The game overall was more exciting than the Real game just because deportivos was more competitive, the end result was 4-2 Valencia with the win. The two cornrs of the field stood the hardcore Valencia fans who stood the whole game chanting, singing and cheernig. The whole atmosphere was amazing.

Despite the fun game I still miss Madrid a lot. Valencia weather is a bit similar to Barcelona, hot and humid, but I should be glad that at least it´s not rainning.

Adios Madrid...for real

I´m ready to leave Madrid, the only thing missing from Madrid is not seeing Sergio Ramos, but maybe I´ll see him in Torino.

Adios Madrid... almost

This is going to be our last night in Madrid, and tomorrow morning we take the high speed AVE train to Valencia, our last stop in Spain before heading back to Italy. These past two days have been rather uneventful as we didn´t do much in the morning. There are not much to sightsee in Madrid if you´re not into Museums and stuff, which we aren´t. I feel bad not going to the Prado Museum because it´s so famous, but on the other hand I don´t want to waste 6€ on some arts I don´t really care about.

Last night we attempted our Tapa crawl following Rick Steves directions, but it was an epic fail. 4 out of 5 pubs he suggested did not even have tapas. Only the first pub had some leftover tapas, it was crude ham and tiny half cooked egg on top of a bruscetta bread, it was quite good thoug. But we couldn´t find anymore tapas so we ended up just having some sit down dinners at the famous Museo de Jamon (Ham Museum). I was not impressed with the dinner, but at least the price was not outrageous like the other restaurnts in the same proximity... tourist trap!

Real Madrid is playing today against Real Betis in Seville, and one of our hostel friends is going down there to watch. I wish I could too, but the train ticket alone is 60€ let along the ticket.

Madrid weather so far has been beautiful, despite the scare from weather.com, so we´re hoping it would be the same in Valencia as well.

I love this hostel we´re staying at, I will be a little sad to leave. I´ll be sad to leave Madrid, I love this city.

Real Madrid Game

The atmosphere at the game was incredible, it was the most fun I´ve ever had. The stadium was gigantic, and everyone was so excited and ready to cheer on for their teams. Real Madrid (RM) played against Sporting de Gijon the only team in the league that has so far lost every single game. Unfortunately that only means that RM can afford to rest some important players for upcoming games against more difficult teams. And with my luck, they rested Sergio Ramos, my ultimate favorite player. I didn´t even get a glimpse of him. But it´s okay, I still saw Fabio Cannavaro (my former favorite player), Iker Casillas (also my former favorite player), Rafael Van Der Vaart (#6 on my top 10 list), Raul (# 10 on my list) Robben, Miguel Torres (would make my top 25 list), Saviola, De la Red, Pepe, etc. SO many famous people!!! I also found out that RM is going to Turin on October 21 for their champions league group game against Juventus, so I will try to get the ticket to that game. Champions League games are all really important, and especially against Juventus, one of the best teams in the world, the manager would definitely NOT rest Sergio Ramos. I will try to post some pictures later today, but the internet connection is slow so it takes a while to get pictures up.

Today we will go to see the Royal Palace and eat Tapa for the first time.

Day 2 in Madrid

The weather is starting to look very good here in Madrid, and it´s definitely a clear day tonight for the game so I´m super excited. This morning Lulu went to buy a Raul shirt too, so we will be two fan girls at the game. Other people from our hostel are also going too, but they have the 40 euro seats, so we won´t be sitting with them.

I´m wearing my Real Madrid hat in this one.

Random street photo from the Plaza de España.

Realising Real Madrid dream

It´s 10:51 pm in Madrid right now, we couldn´t sleep anymore after a rather long nap. Today was very eventful for me as I purchased my first Real Madrid jersey from the official Real Madrid store from the Santiago Bernabeau stadium. I even managed to get a woman fit and customized it by adding ¨Sergio Ramos¨and his number 4 on the back of it. Usually the jerseys with player names and numbers on it only come in men sizes, but the store will print the names and numbers for you on the ones without for a fee. At first I was told it would be 4 euro per letter and per number, and thought.. oh no.. of all the players, I have to choose one with the longest name. If it was Raul, it´d only be 4 letters, but sergio ramos is 10!! Luckily I found out later that they have a flat rate of 15 euro for all the madrid players and the 4 euro per letter is for any other customertized names. The jersey was incredibly expensive but it is so cute and authentic and I have wanted one since forever. And since it´s so expensive I can only buy one (despite having tons of favorite players), and I´m very happy that I chose Sergio Ramos.

In addition to getting the jersey, we also got our ticket to see real madrid playing tomorrow night. I will be wearing my new sergio jersey for sure. We got a good seat (at least that´s what it seems on the map), so I hope to be able to see the players clearly. It´s a shame that Gago, Guti and Sneijder all got injured, but as long as Sergio players, all it´s well.

Hola Madrid

We just arrived at our hostel in Madrid. The weather is cold and cloudy, and with possibility of rain later on. We can´t check in for another 15 minutes, then we will head straight to the Real Madrid stadium. The nighttrain from Barcelona to Madrid was horrible, we were stuck in a room with 6 other people in 8 seats. There were barely any leg rooms, it was a mistake to take that over AVE. Madrid metro system is more difficult to understand than Barcelona, and there are no escalators up and down, so we had to dragged our heavy luggage up and down the metro. So far Spain has not been the best host to us. We miss Italy.

Day 3 in Barcelona

We visited a bunch of famous spots these past 2 days in Barcelona, and walked A LOT. I have to say Barcelona is not my favorite city, other than the fact that it will always remain the city where I visited my first football stadium. We have 2 more nights here before we head over to Madrid, so we´re pretty much counting down the days before we leave. There´s a huge festival going on these days, Fiesta de la merced, and there is a huge concert going on in the square where our hostel is. Last night was crazy, i stepped outside the balcony of our room and saw an ¨ocean¨ of people down in the square dancing and singing to the concert. I still hope to meet the Barça player at random places =)

Ole Barcelona

We´re in Spain! Barcelona!!! Yesterday was uneventuful, we didn´t do much just getting in the city and walking around la rambla the famous street. it was overcrowded with tourists. today we decided to take a chance and go to Camp Nou --- the Barceona Football Club´s stadium. We shopped at the official mega store.. omg I was so happy. I would buy the whole store if it was real madrid. We did the stadium and museum tour, and got student discount for it to. right about when we were leaving out of the corner of my eye i saw something at the end the hall, and turned out to be no. 5 Carles Puyol of Barcelona. The second most famous person i´ve ever seen after shevchenko. then when we got out of the museum we saw a huge crowd circling around a parking lot exit, so we thought we would wait and see what´s going on too. then out comes a car, at first i ddin´t recognize the face and thought was just some random chauffer. oh no no no.. it was the hot barcelona keeper victor valdez!!!! but we were too late to take the picture. after that we went to the gaudi park... what a hike, but gorgeous view.

Ciao a tutti

We are currently waiting for our overnight train from Milano to Barcelona, and after some walking and exploring we found this internet cafe by the Milan Centrale train station. On Monday when we arrived in Milan, my Milan friend and his other friends took us out to dinner at a local trattoria (trattoria toscana). It was a cute little place with great atmosphere. The place was dark but with lots of candle lights. I had risotto ai frutti di mare (sea food risotto), it was very good. After dinner we hung out around downtown Milan before heading back to Lore's friend's house to sleep. We left for Venice early in the morning and stopped by the famous Duomo on the way to have breakfast at a cafe. Typical italian breakfast of cappuccino and a croissant while standing at the bar. We returned from Venice this morning. Venice was even more beautiful this time around. Seven years ago when I was in Venice, I spent only about 3 to 4 hours visiting the most touristy places, but this time around we travelled like a local with a couple of local guides. Our hostel is located in a non-touristy area near a university and where most of the locals live. We did not have a map with us so we just followed the misleading signs on the bulidings. On search for Piazza S. Marco and the Rialto bridge we practically walked every streets. Then at night, Lulu's friend and his friend came to meet us and took us around the touristy spots again to see what they are like after dark and all the tourists. Piazza S. Marco was beautiful at night, all the pigeons were gone, all there left were the locals and few tourists enjoying drinks in the piazza while listening to live orchestra. We also stayed out like the local and had the popular local drink called sprits at a pub. The tv in the pub was showing a champions league game that was played earlier in the day. That is what i love most about Italy...the prevalence of football craze.

itinerary

This is our itinerary for the first month:

9/14: off to Europe with KLM!
9/15: arriving in Milan
9/16: Venice
9/17-9/22: Barcelona
9/23-9/28: Madrid
9/28-10/1: Valencia
10/2-10/3: Milan
10/4: Turin
10/5-10/6: Cinque Terre
10/7-10/9: Florence
10/10-10/15: Rome
10/16: Milan

24 hours count down starts....NOW

wow... all I can say right now is "Oh my god! I'm screwed!" With less than 24 hours to go before I have to be at the airport, my packing situation is as follows:

I'll let the picture speak for itself.


On a side note. I really like comments.

still unpacked...

Not much progress at all... except that I read about 1/4 of Rick Steves' Europe Through the Backdoor. It's supposed to be a pre-trip read, but I didn't know about it until um... now?

Also, during my brief visit to SF today, I found my kitty shoulder bag that would be just perfect as a daybag. I also found a water bottle, a forgotten gift from LexisNexis, that will be perfect for my trip. I hope European tap water really is drinkable as everyone/guidebook claims. Although, I'm brining some airborn-like-product from Costco that will serve as flavoring for the tap water and immune booster.

I'll end this short post with some random pre-trip pics:

The birth of my travel blog

I finally created a travel blog which I intend to update quite frequently (though I make no promises considering my past records of blogging) about my three and a half long European trip. I'm leaving on Sunday at 3pm from San Francisco International Airport. wow... SFO... the place that always sparks an excitement in my head whenver I think of it.

I am no where near packed. All of my clothes and random stuff that I thought of through out the summer are messily spread on my bedroom floor. I decided that I would be brining Rick Steves' carryon convertible 21'' bag as my main bag for the first month. I also purchased a foldable luggage cart from samsonite which can be easily folded and stored in my RS bag when I can't roll.

Packing light is extremely difficult, espcially for a majority of the time I am there it will be winter time. And since the dollar euro exchange rate isn't exactly in my favor, I need to bring most of the essential from home.

Anyway, that'll be the end of my first official post. And just a sidenote, as I have become a Rick Steves (RS) fan lately.... hence the title of my blog. hehehe.