Kobi & Brian: Europe 2013-2014

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

Portugal

After the craziness of leaving London, and the craziness we know awaits us at home, we knew that we would need a week of sun, sangria, and not much else. So we packed our bags again (seriously this is just getting annoying now) and left Megan's house in Richmond where we're currently staying.

First stop was the Algarve, the southern region of Portugal, famous for its beaches, chilled out vibe and sunburnt Poms. We stayed in Lagos, an easy 5-10 minute walk from the beaches. While we haven't been in decent sun for about 9 months, we definitely haven't lost any of our Australian-ness. When borrowing the hostels beach umbrella I found myself checking for redbacks (it was kept outside!) and at the polo club in London we had to walk through the woods to get there and I caught Brian stomping his feet as he walked to scare away snakes. You can take the Aussies out of Australia....

Things we loved about Lagos:

Piri Piri chicken and the Espumante Sangria (sangria made with sparkling white wine instead of red wine) Delicious!
The beaches. There was actually some pretty big swell while we were there, so some of the more secluded bays which the Algarve is famous for weren't accessible, but the main beach plus the smaller Potato Beach were really close by and were perfect. The sun was shining and lying on the beach was so relaxing. The water was freezing so only Brian went in. Then he got straight out.
Spending the afternoon at Slide and Splash Waterpark like kids. We didn't feel like kids the next day though, we felt like a couple of oldies as we had bruises and bumps from the slides!
The pancakes as Cafe Odeon. They were way too filling, but I think the owner hosts young travellers a lot because he wrapped them in tin foil for us and they lasted us another whole day they were so huge!
All the friendly dogs, and the friendly locals.

After Lagos we caught the train to Lisbon, and checked into what is probably our favourite hostel so far. Free milkshakes on Mondays, free soup on Tuesdays, movie and free popcorn night on Saturdays, and awesome pancakes in the mornings.

Lisbon is the second oldest capital city in Europe, after Athens. The Portuguese empire used to be really powerful, and they sailed the world conquering new lands. We could definitely see the Portuguese influence in some of the cities we've travelled to, like Goa in India, which has all the same architecture and still has a really similar feel to Lisbon. Lisbon is a thousand times busier than Lagos, so we joined our usual free walking tour to get our bearings.

Things we've loved about Lisbon:

Our walking tour. It was long (4 hours!) but we got a great overview of the city from our guide Miguel.
Learning all about the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, which killed over 80% of the population from the quake and subsequent tsunami. The tsunami was so powerful it even destroyed Seville in neighbouring Spain, which is 60km inland. Most of Portugal had to be completely rebuilt after the earthquake, which measured a 9.0 on the Richter Scale. To put it into perspective, the Japanese earthquake in Fukushima only measured an 8.7 in comparison.
Brian wants me to include trams. Again. He thinks every city is better with trams. Lisbon is built on three hills and the roads are very windy and cobbled, so there are also 4 funiculars to take people up and down the hills.
Tasting local treats, like the sour cherry liqueur ginjinha, the delicious custard tarts, and ordering a bica. Bica is a version of espresso in Portugal. Originally the Portuguese thought it was too strong, so they added sugar to it. Bica stands for "Beba Isso Com Açúcar" which literally translates in to Drink That With Sugar.
Our day trip to Cascais, which is a well-to-do fishing village just out of Lisbon. It was seriously hot, so we got in some more beach time before wandering around the village.
Hearing some fado, which is Portuguese folk music played on a guitar with 12 strings.
Getting to board a war ship which had docked in the main bay of Lisbon. I don't know how the sailors live on there. Brian banged his head climbing a ladder about 5 minutes into the tour.
Hearing all of Lisbon go mental for about 5 hours after they won some important soccer match.
Trying the local green wine. It's not actually green, but the grapes are picked before they are fully ripe, so the grapes are a bit green. It was really good and a tiny bit fizzy. I approve!

Portugal has been excellent, and just what we needed!

We are now a tiny bit tanned, and a whole lot more relaxed. The excitement is definitely building for our trip home - even when we were leaving London it hadn't really hit that going home was a reality and we'd soon be seeing all the people we have missed so much. But now that it's almost here, we just can't wait to be on the plane home to Perth!

So our 14 month long adventure is coming to an end. While it's sad to leave the place that has been our home for the past year, we have made the best memories! We've ticked every item off our bucket list, and done a million more things we had never even thought of. We've made friends all over the world, met up with old friends all over the world, and have made promises to visit and host those friends in the future.

Taking this time off to travel has been the best thing we ever did - both for ourselves and as a couple. I wanted to come home knowing how to read maps, and liking beer. I can use google maps and find my away around using the blinking GPS dot (Brian will dispute this) and I now like 3 types of beer. Brian wanted to try as many weird foods as possible, and can now claim he has eaten frogs legs, chicken feet, zebra, shark fin, ostrich, snails, haggis and springbok. Looks like everyone is a winner!

Thank you to all our family and friends for all your emails, phone calls, postcards, gifts in the mail, love and support. Knowing we have such awesome people in our lives makes us so excited about coming home to you all. And a big thank you to all our new friends, who made our year away everything we ever hoped it would be and more

Europe, it's been a pleasure.

Lots of love,

Kobi and Brian

xxx

Streets of Lagos - actually really similar to Greece and Croatia

Lagos

Remnants of the ancient Portuguese forts

Potato beach

Making cobblestone angels!

Cascais beach just outside of Lisbon

Cascais

We loved all the coloured buildings and houses in Portugal

More colours!

Some of the fancier buildings are tiled to protect them from the salt of the sea, and for insulation. They look gorgeous!

More tiles!

Brian's type of museum!

Downtown Lisbon - this entire area was destroyed and rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake.

One of the funiculars

Tasting ginjinha, the local sour cherry liqueur.

Custard tarts and bica. The most famous bakery in Lisbon sells over 400,000 of these tarts per day!

On the tram. See how happy he is?

Leaving London

I have a sad face just typing the title of this blog post!

Our final weeks in London have been a blur - organising the move home, packing boxes, interviewing for new flatmates to replace us, handing over our roles at work and trying to catch up with all our friends before we head home.

It's actually been really emotional for both of us - when it came to our final few days at the NMC and the Sugarman Group, we were both really touched at the sendoffs and gifts we received from our colleagues. I managed to hold it together for the most part, but have been so up and down that a cute puppy ad on TV will have me crying for no reason!

Though it was chaotic, our shipping boxes are now on a boat home, and everything (just) fits into our suitcases.

As we knew it would be, the hardest part was saying goodbye to Dan and Emma. They really looked after us from the moment we arrived in London - always inviting us to hang out with their friends, taking us to their favourite places, cooking Sunday roasts, sitting down with us for the latest Kardashians episode...the list goes on and on. We came to London for new adventures but never thought we'd make friends as special as them. We put off saying goodbye for as long as possible (seriously, I think we consumed 5 bottles of wine between 6 people procrastinating!) but inevitably, Emma and I were sobbing messes on the side of Clapham Park Road. But while we miss them already, we know they're the kind of people where time will pass but it won't change anything at all - so we're all just going to plan our next catchup and countdown to that!

We also wanted to make a few special mentions...

To Megs and Cousy - you guys have been SO good to us while we've been over here! Weekend trips away, Christmas and Aberdeen Monopoly (if I land on bloody Duthie Park ONE more time!!!!!) Kew Gardens, Twisties and Wooshie Sauce, and the countless dinner and pub trips. Hanging out with you two is just so easy and we will really miss you. Can't wait to eventually have you back in Aus so the shenanigans can continue!

To Simon and Sarah, (Dan and Emma's flatmates before us), everytime the six of us got together hilarity ensued, and I have so many funny memories! Every time we hear the Backstreet Boys we will think of you guys! Thank you for being so awesome, we will miss you so much!

In our final weeks in London we still managed to get a few quintessentially British things in, like a polo match at Ham Polo Club, which was such a good day, and one of the first days of warm weather we have had in ages! That'd be right London - as soon as we leave it starts warming up!

This whole year has been absolutely amazing - even more so as I had my fiancé (that sounds far too grown up!) to share everything with. Getting engaged was the perfect ending to a perfect year, and we are even more excited about coming home to celebrate now!

But priorities people - there is just no way we can go from a London winter to a Perth winter. That would be outrageous. So get your sangria ready for us Portugal!

Peace out London, thanks for the memories!!

Kobi and Brian

xxx

Dan and Emma - two amazing humans (or Emmazing as Emma would say!)

At Ham Polo Club

Pressing down the divets so the horses don't trip. Very important.

At the polo

Brian on the polo training horse

Right before Emma jumped in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park as a dare. And it was not warm water.

Making the most of happy hour at Dirty Martini before we leave London

With my new fiancé!

Monday, 21 April 2014

Edinburgh

As we approach the end of our gap year in London, there was one big ticket item left on our bucket list. So we grabbed four of the best lads and lassies around and headed to Edinburgh for the Easter long weekend!

Edinburgh is such a beautiful city - from the second we arrived we understood why everyone had been raving about it to us. It looks so old (in some parts medieval) and has some amazing history which we'd hear all about over the next two days.

Things we've loved about Edinburgh

Funnily enough, the weather! We got a beautiful sunny day on our first day - our guide told us there are about three a year, so we got very lucky!
Imposing the rule that if you say the word 'mine', you have to do 10 push-ups. This led to endless setups, and hilarious amounts of push-ups. My favourites - Brian on the train, Simon in the pub, Emma on our walking tour, and Dan just about every half hour. Dan actually woke up sore after the first day of playing.
The walking tour we did on the first day. We still swear by these as the best way to learn about the city. If you don't go on the tours, you don't find out all the cool stuff. Like the fact that the love heart formed in the pavement outside St Giles Cathedral is actually spat on by locals as part of an old tradition. Which would have been handy information to know for all the tourists who lie on the ground next to the heart to take a selfie next to it. Gross.
Walking through the cemetery where JK Rowling got a lot of the inspiration for Harry Potter characters - there are gravestones for Peter Pettigrew, McGonagall and we even got a photo with Tom Riddle's grave!
Trying haggis after learning about how it's all the parts of the sheep that the rich people don't want, crushed up, stuffed into a sheeps stomach and boiled. It was actually really nice - served with 'neeps and tatties' (turnips and mashed potato)
Tasting Irn Bru, Scotland's national soft drink. It outsells CocaCola every year, and is the only country in the world where that happens. It's bubblegum flavoured and pretty good!
Edinburgh castle, perched up ontop of a dead volcano.
The streets of Edinburgh, lined with old gothic buildings, pubs, buskers playing bagpipes and about a million cashmere and kilt stores
Climbing one of the tracks to Arthur's Seat, another dead volcano, for the best views of Edinburgh.
Our Easter egg hunt on Sunday - particularly when Dan found his Easter egg, and when someone asked whose it was, he answered 'mine'. Ten more push-ups for Dan!
Having a three course meal at The Witchery, a beautiful old restaurant on the site where witches were burned at the stake in medieval times. Highly recommend the beetroot sorbet!
The night tour we did, which focused on the haunted past of Edinburgh, including the underground tunnels and chambers. I was seriously scared during this, especially after the guide explained that there were 72 documented incidents of people coming out of these tunnels on the tour covered in scratch marks! I almost died when we were in a prison cell in a cemetery where hundreds of people died, and an actor jumped out at the group in a black cloak. The mausoleum of the executioner (Mackenzie) was really spooky, and there is a story of the MacKenzie poltergeist haunting that graveyard and people feeling someone grab their arm while near MacKenzies grave. I clung to Brian the entire time - if he had scratch marks, they were from me.
Saturday night when Emma went to get dressed to go out and came back wearing Dans clothes. The photos are hilarious. She actually went out in them, until Dan sent her home.

Our trip was far too short, two days in the Edinburgh sunshine wasn't enough! We will just have to add it to the ever growing list of places we'd love to come back to one day! A special thanks to our flatties Dan and Emma, and the flat mates before us, Simon and Sarah, for such a good weekend. It just reinforced how much we are going to miss you all when we leave!

Lots of love from wee old London,

Kobi & Brian

xxx