Bull-fights in Sevilla

Photo: Bull-fights, Sevilla, Spain - 09/05/10

For the people who speak Dutch, I like to ask you to have a look at
Reishonger.nl where I wrote an article about my curious visit to a
bull-fighting game where I experienced a very mean game of killing
bulls in a harsh way which I will never support any more in any way.

Where is Fred?

Photo: In the dunes in Morocco, playing the tamtam big time!

Yes, where am I?? When was the last post?? You people must have stopped checking the blog already....no update, no update, no update.
I had a tooo great time in the desert of Morocco playing the tamtams, as you see on the photo :)

No, actually I HAVE BRILLIANT NEWS!!! Today I received my visa for Iran! Mister Ahmadinejad allows me to visit his country for up to 30 days. I better not ask for a tourism tour to one of the nuclear factories....I might end up in jail labelled as a spy!
So today I arrived back in Rome, for the third time(as you can read on the 'follow my footsteps page' which I just updated with all the places I have been). This morning my alarm rang at 5.00am, to catch the train from Rimini to Rome. I will explain later why I left so early!
So anyway, I was supposed to go first to the Embassy of Iran to pick up my passport with new visa. Yes to pick up my passport. They had to have my passport, I couldnt bring it with me. So the problem was, I could not request a visa for Azerbeijan at the same time. So I had to wait for a week for my Visa for Iran to be finished, which I picked up this morning, exactly one week later.

North Morocco; a day-trip to Spain

Almost two weeks the Moroccons have me on a visit. You start getting
used with being in Morocco. No longer the tiniest little things remind
me of being in Morocco, and the chaotic chaos starts to become normal.
Nothing will shock me anymore, and I am prepared to see the most
unexpected. The perfect example I had yesterday. Everything together.
On a simple terras in Chefchaouen belonging to a bar, I was waiting
for my night bus to arrive but I was 2 hours too early at the bus
station, so I ended at this terrase with a mint tea only as sweet as
you can get your tea in Morocco.

Magic in the dunes of Morroco

What I was looking forward to the most of coming to Morocco was a, for me unique visit to the sandy dunes in the desert of Morocco. Arriving in Marrakech I planned to travel up north via Meknes, Fez, Chefchaouen, Melilla(Spanish teritory) with destination Nador.
With the western Sahara - which actually does not belong to any country but very stubborn being claimed by Morocco - being too far to the south I had to search for different options.

The 3 Flamencos of Spain; Part 2

Having started with he biggest and most touristic Flamenco, it was time to move on to the second: Córdoba.
Happy as I can be, I bought myself a train ticket in the train station of Sevilla Santa Justa. This would be my first train trip in Spain and afyer spending the last few hours walking around in the city of Sevilla, I found myself returning to the train station. Exit Over-tourism!

The 3 Flamencos of Spain; Part 1

After leaving my dear friends in Lisboa, Paulo and Alvaro dropped me off at the train station from where I took the train to Faro, located at the south coast of Portugal. To me famous for beauty of the English golf players ;)
Once arrived at the platform of Faro station - a glance at the clock told me it already started pointing out the hours in the late afternoon - I hoped to still be able to catch a bus to Sevilla.

Photo´s online!

A little late, but finally I have managed to put some photo´s online!
Please continue to my flickr account for photo´s: milesofculture

So far you can see the photo´s from:
Gran Canaria
Tenerife
Lisboa

Gran Canaria André and I discovered:

André and I discovered something beautiful on youtube, check it out!

From Oporto to Lisboa by train

Once arrived inn Portugal at Oporto airport, I quickly grabbed my bag from the carrousel soonest it appeared, and I strabbed it to my back. Just as I looked around me to see where the exit was, I saw that I was the last one to leave the bagage area. I realised in a
complete different way what the impact is of handlugage-only travelers...with some people carrying whole suitcases aboard.

El teide; the (illegal) Spanish top

With it's 3718 meters above sea level, el Teide and Tenerife can call themselves the proud owners of the highest point of Spain.
Me being on Tenerife had to visit this previously active volcano. Since it used to spew lava around the years of 1600 and 1700, the area is covered with dry solid pieces of lava.
Near the top you can see several mountain peaks close to eachother which used to be separated volcano's such as el Teide and el Pico. This all after the whole top used to be one big crater of an incredible 16 kilometers of diameter. Still today you can see on the south side the strong borders of the old crater like a long dike all around this mountain top.

Gran Canaria: the rocky island

Last Monday I made my way to the Hague and Utrecht for a last visit to my friends before leaving for the big trip. I left the Hague with a happy belly full of sushi! Dennis and Rianne took me to a Sushi restaurant: all you can eat in 4 rounds and a real surprise desert! For this surprise desert we could choose from three different flavors of ice so it turned out not to be a surprise at all and we greatly had to laugh about it. Also the waiter had to laugh about the joke. Later, with an other waiter serving our ´surprise desert´ we again had to laugh seeing the small cones with one coupe of ice-cream. We asked the waiter - not being aware of our jokes - with a sarcastic surprised tone of voice ´hey, we asked for the surprise ice-cream! So the guy serving us made a face ´ah of course! how stupid that I forgot´, and he pulled away our three cones of colorful ice-cream, turned his right arm with the ice behind his back, took the colorful coupes with his left arm from behind again and wide smiling he said ´Tadaaaa!!!´. With many after-laughs we enjoyed our Surpricecream.

Crossing the Mediterranean sea

Yet, I have never made my way to Africa, but soon you can find my footprints also in the deserts of Morocco. Morocco is a complete different destination than all the other trips I have made so far.
Two years ago, my curiosity for Morocco started growing. This country started climbing higher in my list of places where I want to go. Last year in November, it made a huge jump forward on this list when I received an email from Paulo, a friend from Manchester who travelled with his girlfriend to Morocco. What I really like about his trips is that afterwards he always writes his friends a very long email with all his travel stories, including tons of photo's! His experience and the beautiful photo's made my curiosity for Morocco grow even bigger.

Today I have booked two more flights. Flight #1 from Madrid to Marrakech. Flight #2 from Nador to Barcelona. Nador is a city in the north east of Morocco, while

Tenerife & Porto

A ferry of the company Naviera Armas will asure my connection between the harbor of Las Palmas and Tenerife. Tenerife is the proud owner of the vulcano El Teide. With it's height of 3718 meters, is El Teide the highest mountain of Spain which I will definitely pay a visit for a good days hiking.

After a visit to the Piramides of Güímar, and a few more days of sightseeing, I will find myself heading for the airport. Today I made myself to lucky owner of a cheap Ryanair flight to Porto, the largest city in the north of Portugal. Porto is very famous for the Port wine which is widely made in this district.
This will be my second visit to Porto, before I catch the train to Lisboa for tiles-spotting on the beautifully decorated walls of Lisboa!

Photo: Szeke, Flickr

First flight booked

Gran Canaria!! The Spanish islands are my first destination.

I have decided to go to Gran Canaria first, to visit Marta & Andre, friends I met in Manchester. I am glad they are happy with my decision as you see on the photo. This morning I booked the flight to Las Palmas for a fairly good price. Flights to Gran Canaria, with it's warm temperature all year round, tend to be sold quickly so I grabbed the chance straight away.

This is the first step in my trip so I have a date to start my trip around the world: the 27th of April.
I am still puzzling around with the directions in Europe because not all the connections fit in well. From Gibraltar and Morocco, from where I was planning to fly to Gran Canaria, there are no direct or cheap flights so a small change in the route made my first destination confirmed and booked this morning.

From Gran Canaria I am not sure yet where to go next. André might join me to for a short trip in north west Africa, before I head off to Spain, France and Italy. And after Italy? Who knows....Will I go to the hot and

Visiting each country in Europe

To visit each country in Europe, that is my target I have since 2006.

Thanks to the many low-fare airlines, I have managed to visit 60% of Europe already. Mainly via city trips or backpacking during summer holidays.
Only 40% to go! I hope to have visited pretty much all countries after my trip.

Click on the map for a detailed view