My Big Europe Trip

So this was my second big Europe trip. First one I did back in 2004, took two and a half month and across Scotland, Ireland, Northern England, Italy and Northern France.

This time, I was doing it shorter and across Spain, Portugal and Southern France.

To cap it, here's a route map I spent 20 minutes creating for your visual aid.

See how nice I am?

Basically I flew in to London, then took a budget airline to Barcelona, spent a few days, took a local transport to Madrid, then to Seville to see the world third biggest Cathedral;

then find a way to reach Lisbon in Portugal, and up north to Porto for some Ports (yum);

finally leaving Portugal and into Marseille, France via another budget airline (juggle between EasyJet and Ryanair), then met up with a reader in Lyon before heading back to London to spend Christmas with relatives and also, spending my day in London on Boxing Day!!

heart shape candy is <3 !

narrowest candy store I've ever seen.

Now you can choose your candies via their names!

Well I figured out the rest in between Barcelona and Porto & Marseille and Lyon when I was there; since I had no idea how long each place I wanted to stay for, or how I could get from place to place.

One particular fashion street in Barcelona old town.

It's awesome you know. Figuring out a country by getting to know each city on foot, familiarize the landscape via buses and trains. I don't think I can ever get rid of such addiction.

saw this model on every intimissimi poster every where! From London to Barcelona to Lisbon! Gosh she's like the most gorgeous being on the street.

One thing I was most fascinated by Barcelona was the bicycle system. I've heard of it in France, seen it, never used it.

It's like this less carbon footprint / fuel-saving project where it advocates people to cycle more and drive less to get to their destination. Last I heard it's supposed to be a free service; and since I couldn't read Spanish, I'm assuming that the service here needed some registration of some sort; and you get maybe like the first half hour free or something and pay minimal fee after that.

And this is a map of all the bicycle spots in Barcelona city.

You can practically cycle everywhere. It's such a cool system.

Though I have seen teenagers vandalizing and abusing the free service by taking one of those bicycles and rode it down the underground and chucked it there.

I supposed if such system would be available in Malaysia, you would see all the bicycles being dismantled and sold for their parts.

I'm just saying.