Ok onto the fun stuff! The travels of the year!
My mom came to visit for 5 weeks from the end of March until May. It was really nice to have her here to keep us company, do some gardening work, and we went on a little trip as well during her time here. In Portugal we went to Coimbra together for the day, Soito to enjoy the Senora da Granja festival, and Obidos. My mom also visited Lisbon on her own.
In between her visits in Portugal we headed to Toulouse where we visited our great friends who are French but raised their girls, similar in age to myself in the Phoenix! One of their daughters lives in NY and Melissa was currently staying with her parents but kind of floating around working in sustainable fashion design. She was working on a project while we were there creating a dress from plastic bottles! I loved seeing some of her photos of her work! Anyways, They moved back to France after Melissa graduated High School in AZ early. It was so much fun to catch up and talk about all sorts of funny stories from when I was younger. Michelle was also a great tour guide and took us to some beautiful places near Toulouse. Their house is absolutely stunning in such a cute part of the city. We loved walking old man Mr. Joey around the block and seeing the parks completely full of people, dogs, and bicycles! It was apparently the first nice weather they had in a long time, after a March/April with much more rain than usual... (like Portugal this year as well.) When we were flying in I was super in awe of these completely yellow squares on the ground.. There were mustard seeds blooming and a dye called pastel which is actually used to make sort of a blue colored paint, and some other things. Seeing it as we drove through the countryside was even more beautiful than from up in the sky. We indulged in the most amazing French croissants, and other delicious French food which Michelle cooked for us. We visited the market across the street from her house daily and picked up fresh ingredients. We also went for a picnic one day and enjoyed playing la patonk, and walking around a beautiful lake.
Then my mom and I took the flix bus from Toulouse to San Sebastian, Spain in Bosque Country. It was raining the first day and we took the Ho Ho bus, my mom's favorite way to visit new places around several different times and got off. We also met up with a friend who was doing a study abroad there. Then did lots of walking and exploring. We were told by him that we had to visit a Cider House. The one he recommended to us was a long haul to get to and mom and I were tired so we just went to one close by, and while I don't think the experience was quite the same we still got to try our hand at pouring our cider and eating the same delicious dishes served. I wasn't a huge fan of the cider just because it was too dry for my taste! The cod fish omelet was delicious, as was the meat. It was cooked very rare, which was hard for my mom at first but the flavor was incredible. I will have to dig through the photos to find the other courses! Pouring the cider was kind of a daunting task! The taps are on the wall and you open it and let some cider flow to the ground where they have buckets and drains set up, then tip your glass into the flow and just put a little bit in. I think this had something to do with the aeration, maybe temperature? I am a terrible blogger, I should look it up and give a proper description. Sorry folks, you will have to google more info about the Cider Houses yourselves! Anyways, I was surprised to find that they also eat a lot of dried codfish, in Basque Country... which I previously thought was only a thing in Portugal. We had a great time and I struggled my way through Spain trying to speak in Spanish but usually Portuguese was the only thing to come out.
The
next day was sunny and so beautiful! We hiked up to the Jesus statue...
and just enjoyed a day in the sunshine at the beach.. I was looking like
the whitest ghost ever at that point after a very long wet, and cold
winter in Portugal. Everyone needs some Vitamin D! The last stop on our
trip was to Bilbao. The
bus ride from San Seb was beautiful going
through the mountains and then the sea randomly cutting in and out!
Bilbao was also a little rainy and gray but it was still a very neat
little city. My mom and I were the only ones on our free walking tour.
It is an interesting little city.
I loved the Pintxos, or the Basque Country version of tapas. We also had a funny experience trying to order Poke Bowls in Spain...
The next trip was in late June, Joel and I had committed
many many months prior. We were headed to play at every Ultimate Frisbee Players
Bucketlist Tournament: Windmill Windup! We would be joining a mixed
group of players where most live, or have lived in Melbourne at some
point, and then a few randoms! I went to Amsterdam a few days early. I
cruised around all of the canals, red light district, and everywhere in
between. Strolling along, eating stroopwafels, and relaxing in Vondel
Park. The free walking tour was very insightful and interesting. I love
the Dutch people's/government way of dealing with things or rather not
dealing with them and kind of just ignoring them. Not outlawing things,
but just turning their head to them, or using profits from bad things to
improve other important parts of life. The hostel I stayed at was very
cool, it had a huge teepee and stools made of books, and swings
throughout! One afternoon I had a public transit pass and decided to
just hop on a random tram and see what I could see like I did when I
first arrived in Melbourne. I met an interesting Surinamese immigrant
who had lots of interesting stories to tell me and like everyone in the
world, wants to discuss Donald Trump with an American. I loved how Bike
friendly the city was, I loved people pushing their kids in bikes, dogs,
deliveries, anything you can think of really in a bike. The bike
paths/lanes are amazing! You could never catch me renting a bike there
though, it would be terrifying those commuting cyclists are crazy
though! :O My tour guide was telling us that bikes are stolen all the
time that is why most people just have your simple daily cruiser bike
that they get from a black market used bike dealer (everyone has one)
because it happens so often.They also have the cutest tiniest cars! I tried to eat "Dutch food" but from my searches I didn't find much. I did read that you should try Surinamese food. That was an interesting mix, it reminded me a lot of Indonesian Dishes. Tons of flavor and tons of food with rice/noodles.
On a side note, I was surprised that the cost of food (in a grocery store) in Amsterdam was more or less the same as here in Portugal. I had assumed it would be a lot more.
It was so much fun meet up with old friends from our times in Melbourne and play excellent competitive Ultimate again. The scene in Portugal is just nothing in comparison to Australia, or other countries I am sure! We camped at the fields and the nights were extremely chilly! Day time temps were perfect for playing and the tournament is very well organized. It was my first time to experience using a swiss draw system. Which uses your exact result from each game to determine your next match up.. so each game you should be playing a team closer and closer in level to yourself! It was so much fun to play teams from so many countries. (USA, Egypt, Israel, UAE, Mexicans, Canada, Ireland, England, and I am sure I am missing some others!) They have a huge circus tent set up and where they serve your usual tournament fare for brekky (bread, peanut butter, jelly, bananas, fruit, museli, hard boiled eggs, ham, cheese). They also allowed you to use brekky food for lunch. We did this every day. For dinners there were several different food trucks for catering. Everyone had to provide their own plates and cutlery which meant lots of frisbee plates, but I loved this! No waste. :) Because we were camping on the fields, they had a solar panel thing and station where you would drop off your phone to be charged and take a number! I was always with power, and super impressed how many phones they had going at one time! They had a fire pit going each night and tons of picnic benches to hang out with friends! They had your usual ultimate dance party and for the first time, I saw my first ever Land Shark... You will have to visit Urban Dictionary to find out what that is! I was soo surprised that as this Land Shark was entering the party people were not even turning their heads, it was as if it is an every day thing!! Maybe it's a European thing? :P This was a 3 day tournament with 4 games Friday and Saturday and one game on Sunday, soo plenty of game time and exhaustion by the end. Overall, I was unimpressed by the party scene (sorry American tournaments hold the prize for that), however I loved the no waste, food, camping, swiss draw, and variety of fun teams we played and competitiveness. Some people have mentioned that it was a calmer year due to the fact that two weeks later was World Ultimate Club Champs so many teams were using it as kind of a warm up for that. It was also World Cup time, and our Swedish friend Pontus was there. They had a game versus Germany. They had a huge projector set up inside of the circus tent and it was great fun watching the crowd get excited during the game.
Ooo and we should go back 2 weeks before the trip. I was getting the electricity set up in my property in AZ for the construction workers to start. I had gotten my passport out to give to the Electric Company for ID verification the night before. I left it on the dining room table. Next morning, I go to the bathroom and come back and little miss Mel has my passport in her mouth... and you guessed it! Completely tore out the photo page and ripped off two pieces, one unable to be found... even in her poo! Now... I had a big dilemma.. I have a European Residency Card and my experience and many others experience so far when traveling in the EU is that your Residency card is sufficient... however they can ask for your passport. So do I take a day off work, go to Lisbon to get a 275$ one year emergency passport, or do I risk traveling with my ripped one, a photo copy of it before the accident, marriage license, birth certificate, etc etc? Of course, we have to live on the edge here people! I decided to risk it... after asking in many facebook groups about traveling on certain airlines and not checking any luggage, the worst thing to happen would be denied right?! haha So when I was at the airport at the boarding gate, I handed over my residency card, then the man asked me to also see my passport... I get if out of my bag and hand it over (taped together) and apologize and don't say anything but prepare to get all the copies, to hand over. He says back to me, normally you can't travel with this, but today it's okay, I have never been happier to walk onto a plane!! Going home, I was traveling with Joel, and my passport or ID only checked in security where I handed over my Residency card without a problem! Phewww that was a close one! I went to the US Embassy in August to order a new passport. Wow, the embassy is quite a place.. They say you are technically inside the US... They even have American outlets.. The security is so intense. You cannot bring any electronics with you, they are stored near the security office on the street. You have painted lines guiding you through the huge embassy yard for where to go. You are met by another security guard when you enter the next building. It was an interesting little room where I had to wait and be called up multiple times. I had to write an "official statement" about what happened to my passport. When it finally arrived, I see on the last page of visas/stamps it says that it was a replacement for a damaged passport! Okay people, I am going to be super careful from now on! I will never let that happen again!
We visited sister Cristina and Ricardo in Portimao in August for 4 days. We went to a free concert from Pita Da Zouk, who in my opinion was much better than last year! The concert is on the beach and a great time. I always love seeing that people of every age are at the concert, last year there was a sleeping child near us, anything goes! :) Besides that we just relaxed, went to the beach, and went stand up paddle boarding again!
We have also been doing a lot of hikes in preparation for our next big trip! Mel is becoming quite the little hiker! We have a long weekend this upcoming weekend and will camp in Geres National Park and do some long hikes there as well! I am really excited to finally see Geres as I have heard wonderful things about it.
The rest of summer we were here at home enjoying the perfect weather! I always say why leave in summer when there are amazing places to visit in Winter Time! So that is our plan! Well a mighty big plan and a travel dream is happening soon! Joel and I will travel to Tanzania in the end of October. We will climb (hopefully!) Mount Kilimanjaro, go on safari, and then visit the infamous Zanzibar to relax in the picture perfect Indian Ocean water to finish off the trip!
We have so much to prepare for this trip in terms of clothing for the climb, immunizations, and medications! It is a whirlwind and by far the most expensive holiday of my life, sooo this better be worth it! I can't wait to update you on our big trip afterwards!
Love again!
Nicole, Joel, and Mel
My mom came to visit for 5 weeks from the end of March until May. It was really nice to have her here to keep us company, do some gardening work, and we went on a little trip as well during her time here. In Portugal we went to Coimbra together for the day, Soito to enjoy the Senora da Granja festival, and Obidos. My mom also visited Lisbon on her own.
In between her visits in Portugal we headed to Toulouse where we visited our great friends who are French but raised their girls, similar in age to myself in the Phoenix! One of their daughters lives in NY and Melissa was currently staying with her parents but kind of floating around working in sustainable fashion design. She was working on a project while we were there creating a dress from plastic bottles! I loved seeing some of her photos of her work! Anyways, They moved back to France after Melissa graduated High School in AZ early. It was so much fun to catch up and talk about all sorts of funny stories from when I was younger. Michelle was also a great tour guide and took us to some beautiful places near Toulouse. Their house is absolutely stunning in such a cute part of the city. We loved walking old man Mr. Joey around the block and seeing the parks completely full of people, dogs, and bicycles! It was apparently the first nice weather they had in a long time, after a March/April with much more rain than usual... (like Portugal this year as well.) When we were flying in I was super in awe of these completely yellow squares on the ground.. There were mustard seeds blooming and a dye called pastel which is actually used to make sort of a blue colored paint, and some other things. Seeing it as we drove through the countryside was even more beautiful than from up in the sky. We indulged in the most amazing French croissants, and other delicious French food which Michelle cooked for us. We visited the market across the street from her house daily and picked up fresh ingredients. We also went for a picnic one day and enjoyed playing la patonk, and walking around a beautiful lake.
Then my mom and I took the flix bus from Toulouse to San Sebastian, Spain in Bosque Country. It was raining the first day and we took the Ho Ho bus, my mom's favorite way to visit new places around several different times and got off. We also met up with a friend who was doing a study abroad there. Then did lots of walking and exploring. We were told by him that we had to visit a Cider House. The one he recommended to us was a long haul to get to and mom and I were tired so we just went to one close by, and while I don't think the experience was quite the same we still got to try our hand at pouring our cider and eating the same delicious dishes served. I wasn't a huge fan of the cider just because it was too dry for my taste! The cod fish omelet was delicious, as was the meat. It was cooked very rare, which was hard for my mom at first but the flavor was incredible. I will have to dig through the photos to find the other courses! Pouring the cider was kind of a daunting task! The taps are on the wall and you open it and let some cider flow to the ground where they have buckets and drains set up, then tip your glass into the flow and just put a little bit in. I think this had something to do with the aeration, maybe temperature? I am a terrible blogger, I should look it up and give a proper description. Sorry folks, you will have to google more info about the Cider Houses yourselves! Anyways, I was surprised to find that they also eat a lot of dried codfish, in Basque Country... which I previously thought was only a thing in Portugal. We had a great time and I struggled my way through Spain trying to speak in Spanish but usually Portuguese was the only thing to come out.
The
next day was sunny and so beautiful! We hiked up to the Jesus statue...
and just enjoyed a day in the sunshine at the beach.. I was looking like
the whitest ghost ever at that point after a very long wet, and cold
winter in Portugal. Everyone needs some Vitamin D! The last stop on our
trip was to Bilbao. The
bus ride from San Seb was beautiful going
through the mountains and then the sea randomly cutting in and out!
Bilbao was also a little rainy and gray but it was still a very neat
little city. My mom and I were the only ones on our free walking tour.
It is an interesting little city.I loved the Pintxos, or the Basque Country version of tapas. We also had a funny experience trying to order Poke Bowls in Spain...
We had our second set of Non Portuguese visitors! Craig and Sally who we met in Melbourne came to visit our little house! The weather was nice, we enjoyed taking them to play ultimate on the beach, and of course see the sights of Aveiro before they made their way down south through Portugal on a road trip! Mel was absolutely bonkers for them, so I hope next time they visit she knows how to keep her cool by then! :P
The next trip was in late June, Joel and I had committed
many many months prior. We were headed to play at every Ultimate Frisbee Players
Bucketlist Tournament: Windmill Windup! We would be joining a mixed
group of players where most live, or have lived in Melbourne at some
point, and then a few randoms! I went to Amsterdam a few days early. I
cruised around all of the canals, red light district, and everywhere in
between. Strolling along, eating stroopwafels, and relaxing in Vondel
Park. The free walking tour was very insightful and interesting. I love
the Dutch people's/government way of dealing with things or rather not
dealing with them and kind of just ignoring them. Not outlawing things,
but just turning their head to them, or using profits from bad things to
improve other important parts of life. The hostel I stayed at was very
cool, it had a huge teepee and stools made of books, and swings
throughout! One afternoon I had a public transit pass and decided to
just hop on a random tram and see what I could see like I did when I
first arrived in Melbourne. I met an interesting Surinamese immigrant
who had lots of interesting stories to tell me and like everyone in the
world, wants to discuss Donald Trump with an American. I loved how Bike
friendly the city was, I loved people pushing their kids in bikes, dogs,
deliveries, anything you can think of really in a bike. The bike
paths/lanes are amazing! You could never catch me renting a bike there
though, it would be terrifying those commuting cyclists are crazy
though! :O My tour guide was telling us that bikes are stolen all the
time that is why most people just have your simple daily cruiser bike
that they get from a black market used bike dealer (everyone has one)
because it happens so often.They also have the cutest tiniest cars! I tried to eat "Dutch food" but from my searches I didn't find much. I did read that you should try Surinamese food. That was an interesting mix, it reminded me a lot of Indonesian Dishes. Tons of flavor and tons of food with rice/noodles.
On a side note, I was surprised that the cost of food (in a grocery store) in Amsterdam was more or less the same as here in Portugal. I had assumed it would be a lot more.
It was so much fun meet up with old friends from our times in Melbourne and play excellent competitive Ultimate again. The scene in Portugal is just nothing in comparison to Australia, or other countries I am sure! We camped at the fields and the nights were extremely chilly! Day time temps were perfect for playing and the tournament is very well organized. It was my first time to experience using a swiss draw system. Which uses your exact result from each game to determine your next match up.. so each game you should be playing a team closer and closer in level to yourself! It was so much fun to play teams from so many countries. (USA, Egypt, Israel, UAE, Mexicans, Canada, Ireland, England, and I am sure I am missing some others!) They have a huge circus tent set up and where they serve your usual tournament fare for brekky (bread, peanut butter, jelly, bananas, fruit, museli, hard boiled eggs, ham, cheese). They also allowed you to use brekky food for lunch. We did this every day. For dinners there were several different food trucks for catering. Everyone had to provide their own plates and cutlery which meant lots of frisbee plates, but I loved this! No waste. :) Because we were camping on the fields, they had a solar panel thing and station where you would drop off your phone to be charged and take a number! I was always with power, and super impressed how many phones they had going at one time! They had a fire pit going each night and tons of picnic benches to hang out with friends! They had your usual ultimate dance party and for the first time, I saw my first ever Land Shark... You will have to visit Urban Dictionary to find out what that is! I was soo surprised that as this Land Shark was entering the party people were not even turning their heads, it was as if it is an every day thing!! Maybe it's a European thing? :P This was a 3 day tournament with 4 games Friday and Saturday and one game on Sunday, soo plenty of game time and exhaustion by the end. Overall, I was unimpressed by the party scene (sorry American tournaments hold the prize for that), however I loved the no waste, food, camping, swiss draw, and variety of fun teams we played and competitiveness. Some people have mentioned that it was a calmer year due to the fact that two weeks later was World Ultimate Club Champs so many teams were using it as kind of a warm up for that. It was also World Cup time, and our Swedish friend Pontus was there. They had a game versus Germany. They had a huge projector set up inside of the circus tent and it was great fun watching the crowd get excited during the game.
Ooo and we should go back 2 weeks before the trip. I was getting the electricity set up in my property in AZ for the construction workers to start. I had gotten my passport out to give to the Electric Company for ID verification the night before. I left it on the dining room table. Next morning, I go to the bathroom and come back and little miss Mel has my passport in her mouth... and you guessed it! Completely tore out the photo page and ripped off two pieces, one unable to be found... even in her poo! Now... I had a big dilemma.. I have a European Residency Card and my experience and many others experience so far when traveling in the EU is that your Residency card is sufficient... however they can ask for your passport. So do I take a day off work, go to Lisbon to get a 275$ one year emergency passport, or do I risk traveling with my ripped one, a photo copy of it before the accident, marriage license, birth certificate, etc etc? Of course, we have to live on the edge here people! I decided to risk it... after asking in many facebook groups about traveling on certain airlines and not checking any luggage, the worst thing to happen would be denied right?! haha So when I was at the airport at the boarding gate, I handed over my residency card, then the man asked me to also see my passport... I get if out of my bag and hand it over (taped together) and apologize and don't say anything but prepare to get all the copies, to hand over. He says back to me, normally you can't travel with this, but today it's okay, I have never been happier to walk onto a plane!! Going home, I was traveling with Joel, and my passport or ID only checked in security where I handed over my Residency card without a problem! Phewww that was a close one! I went to the US Embassy in August to order a new passport. Wow, the embassy is quite a place.. They say you are technically inside the US... They even have American outlets.. The security is so intense. You cannot bring any electronics with you, they are stored near the security office on the street. You have painted lines guiding you through the huge embassy yard for where to go. You are met by another security guard when you enter the next building. It was an interesting little room where I had to wait and be called up multiple times. I had to write an "official statement" about what happened to my passport. When it finally arrived, I see on the last page of visas/stamps it says that it was a replacement for a damaged passport! Okay people, I am going to be super careful from now on! I will never let that happen again!
We visited sister Cristina and Ricardo in Portimao in August for 4 days. We went to a free concert from Pita Da Zouk, who in my opinion was much better than last year! The concert is on the beach and a great time. I always love seeing that people of every age are at the concert, last year there was a sleeping child near us, anything goes! :) Besides that we just relaxed, went to the beach, and went stand up paddle boarding again!
We have also been doing a lot of hikes in preparation for our next big trip! Mel is becoming quite the little hiker! We have a long weekend this upcoming weekend and will camp in Geres National Park and do some long hikes there as well! I am really excited to finally see Geres as I have heard wonderful things about it.
The rest of summer we were here at home enjoying the perfect weather! I always say why leave in summer when there are amazing places to visit in Winter Time! So that is our plan! Well a mighty big plan and a travel dream is happening soon! Joel and I will travel to Tanzania in the end of October. We will climb (hopefully!) Mount Kilimanjaro, go on safari, and then visit the infamous Zanzibar to relax in the picture perfect Indian Ocean water to finish off the trip!
We have so much to prepare for this trip in terms of clothing for the climb, immunizations, and medications! It is a whirlwind and by far the most expensive holiday of my life, sooo this better be worth it! I can't wait to update you on our big trip afterwards!
Love again!
Nicole, Joel, and Mel
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