I flew into Taipei right before Christmas and met up with my friend Mags who I met during the year I spent in India in 2019. She was on a little SE Asia tour of her own and it was great to spend a few days with her. We spent a few days touring the major sites in Taipei. We went to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, the Longshan Temple, and spent an afternoon soaking in the hot springs at Beitou. The hot springs are unique in that they are located right in the city. There was also some really great street art in Taipei, which has become a passion of mine to seek out in each city I visit. One major highlight of Taipei was climbing Elephant Mountain for the sunset one night. Elephant Mountain overlooks the city and provides an incredible view of the Taipei 101, which was the tallest building in the world when it was built and held that designation from 2004 until the completion of the Burj Khalifa in 2010. It’s a really cool skyscraper that was designed to look like a bamboo tree. The views over the city as the sun set and shifted to nightfall with all the city lights below were incredible. The pictures (which you can find below) look like a zoom background.

Another major highlight of Taiwan was the night market scene. Taiwan is well known for their night markets and it surely didn’t disappoint on that front. There is actually a Michelin star guide they put out on the best food stalls at the Taipei night markets and I did my best to hit as many of those stands as possible. I ate at them nearly every night in Taiwan. I love night markets because you can try small bites of so many different types of food at a really cheap price, including all the weird stuff of course. After all, eating the weirdest foods at every destination is a core mission of this whole journey. I ate smoked duck head/neck, chicken feet, the infamous stinky tofu, taiwanese oyster omelettes, flying fish roe sausages, fish cakes, lots of dim sum dumplings, black pepper pork buns, crab, squid, octopus, ramen dishes, the list goes on and on. I’ve got to admit, I don’t understand the hype around stinky tofu. If you’ve ever been around it, you know what it is, because it smells awful. Like the strongest bleu cheese stench you could imagine. I love Bleu cheese and most fermented foods in general, so I assumed I would like it, but it literally tastes like nothing. Like if I am going to go through the suffering of eating something that smells like sweaty gym socks that have been balled up in a locker for months, it better have a nice flavor to it. Otherwise I’d just eat white bread or something just as boring. I actually tried it from 3 different food stalls, assuming I’d just gotten a bad batch or something but every time I came away unsatisfied with shitty smelling breath. Oh and I can’t forget to call out the Taiwanese hotdogs, which were amazing. Their name literally translated to “small sausage inside large sausage” and they consisted of a smaller pork sausage which was wrapped inside of a larger sticky rice sausage and then topped with pickled vegetables, wasabi, basil, sweet chili sauce , garlic and powdered peanuts. Very different from any hotdog I’ve ever had, but they were so tasty. I’d put the Taiwanese dog up against a Chicago dog any day.

We also stumbled upon this random bar one night that was owned by one of the most fascinating guys I’ve met on the whole trip. He was actually a Taiwanese American who basically ran away from home at 16 and got in with the wrong crowd and ended up being a main lieutenant of a major cartel boss and told us the most insane stories about running guns, drugs and money all over the world. I can’t actually verify anything he told me, but he claimed to have been to 175 countries, mostly illegally by way of helicopter or by small fishing boats packed with contraband. It would take one hell of an imagination to come up with some of these stories to impress some random American traveller dude in your bar. We really hit it off with him and he let us stay after he locked up and we ended up sitting there chatting and drinking with him with him until the sun came up. Very memorable and random night. Anyway, he had since cleaned up his act, gotten out of the cartel and opened this bar in Taipei. I’m not going to mention the name on here because I don’t know who the hell reads this thing, but if you’re in Taipei and looking for a very interesting night out, hit me up and I’ll tell you.

A few days into my trip to Taiwan, I met a new friend, Sharu who was also coincidentally from India and had recently moved to Taiwan for work. We hit it off right away and she was planning to go down the east coast to Hualien for the weekend, and invited me to tag along. Hualien is home to the Taroko gorge, which contains what is considered to be the grand canyon of Taiwan. We spent our first day there biking around the coastline of the city and then booked a tour of the national park for the next day. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t have big expectations for “the Grand Canyon of Taiwan”. I had never heard of the Taroko gorge and just assumed, given how small of an island Taiwan is that it probably wasn’t that impressive. I liked the idea of getting out of the city and into nature for a couple days though. Well, I massively underestimated this park, it was sooo damn cool. The gorge was massive and honestly I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it before, apparently Taiwan needs some better marketing. The tour lasted all day and the bus dropped us off at multiple points where we could hike along the gorge. I’ll let the pictures below speak for themselves, but it was absolutely gorgeous. 

The day after Christmas, I flew to Seoul for what I thought was going to be a weeklong trip. What I failed to consider was the difference in the weather in Seoul. I’ll write a separate blog about that, but let’s suffice it to say that there is nothing “south” about South Korea in January. It’s cold as hell and I didn’t pack clothes for those type of conditions. So, I ended up cutting my Seoul trip short and headed back to Taipei for 4 more days to celebrate New Years with my friend Sharu. We spent New Years eve at the Taipei 101, where they put on one hell of a firework show. The firework launchers were literally attached to the skyscraper and it was one of the more unique fireworks displays I’ve ever seen. After New years, I spent 3 more days in Taipei which were filled with exploring more neighborhoods and eating at more great night markets.

Overall, I really loved Taiwan. It was one of those countries that wasn’t even on my radar going into the trip. Those tend to be some of my favorite places, the ones you have zero expectations for going in and you depart wondering why you don’t hear more people talk about them. The only reason I went was to meet up with my friend, but it was really awesome. Great public transportation, very clean, 711/family mart convenience stores on every block, everything was reasonably priced, with both a world class city and amazing nature just a couple hour train ride apart. One more fun tidbit about the cleanliness before I wrap this up. One thing I couldn’t figure out in Taiwan was that everything was so clean, yet you couldn’t find a public trash can anywhere. I talked to a local about this and he explained to me that they used to have trash cans but the government did a study and determined that filth tends to collect around trash cans, so they got rid of them. My response was- hmmm that makes sense, but that would never fly in America, everyone would just throw their trash on the ground . I found that this was very common in Korea and Japan as well as my journey progressed. At the end of the day, not the biggest deal, but if you visit any of these places, bring some big pockets and prepare to carry your trash around with you all day. One other interesting thing I found all over Taipei were these claw machine arcades that were filled with claw machines that contained all sorts of random things. Some of them contained stuffed animals, like you see in the US, but there were also lots of them filled with regular household goods such as laundry detergent, toilet paper, diapers, dish soap, etc which was pretty hilarious. Apparently if you’re good at claw machines, you can save yourself a pretty penny off your grocery bill in Taipei. That pretty much wraps up my doubleheader in Taiwan. Stay tuned for my next blog on South Korea!

The post Taiwan first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Taiwan appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

I started this leg in Amman, the capital and spent a couple days exploring the city. I stayed right across the street from the Roman Theater, a big 2nd century Roman amphitheater. Additionally, there are some impressive ruins at the Amman citadel, located on a hilltop overlooking the city. Some of the ruins within the Citadel date back to the Bronze Age (~1800 BC) and the most impressive is the Temple of Hercules, located right in the center. All that remains of it is 5 stone pillars and the foundation, but that really gives you an idea of the size of it during it’s heyday. There is also a large stone fragment of the hand of Hercules, all that remains are 3 bent fingers but it is estimated that there was once a statue of Hercules here that was nearly 15 feet tall. There is also the ruins of an ancient castle on the grounds as well as an archeological museum, along with some amazing views of the city down below. It was a great way to spend an afternoon.

Something I noticed right off the bat was that the Jordanian people are really amazing. They were so welcoming and hospitable. Unlike their neighbors, Jordan was not blessed with an abundance of oil. They are home to one of the seven wonders of the world however, so tourism is a major industry there and the people really do all they can to make you feel welcome. I really enjoyed just wandering around Amman and checking out some small local cafes, communicating with the shop owners in a mix of hand signals, broken English and Google translate and eating some incredible Middle Eastern food.

After a couple days in Amman, it was time to head to the crown jewel, Petra. I decided to rent a car and drive there myself because the organized tours were expensive and I am really over organized tours at this point. This was my first time driving on this trip and if we’re being honest the most I’d driven in like 4 years. When I moved to India in 2018, I sold my car and when I came back I had planned to buy a new one but then the pandemic happened and then I knew I was going on this trip so I never ended up buying one. But driving a car is like riding a bike, right? If you can drive in America, you can surely drive in Jordan 4 years later. Driving in Jordan was actually very easy, they drive on the same side of the road as we do in America and there aren’t really any rules, you can pass other cars wherever/whenever you want. The roads were wide open outside of Aman as well, there was zero traffic. You just had to be on the lookout for speed bumps that would sneak up to you on the highway as you were entering a town, some of them were pretty big and I hit a couple of them at full speed, which really wakes you up. I later learned that there is a speed limit that is pretty strictly enforced remotely, when the rental car company reached out about 2 speeding tickets I needed to pay. Whoops. They also have this interesting system where the police will stand on the side of the road and wave their arms at you if you need to pull over and talk to them . This happened to me twice and i was pretty nervous I’d done something wrong but both times the cop just asked me what country I’m from and got very excited i was American and welcomed me to Jordan . 

The drive to Petra took about 4 hours and when I got to town I was eager to start checking out the ruins. I stayed right in Wadi Musa and had just a short walk to the entrance. I spent about 3 hours walking into the park on the first day as I ran out of daylight. The walk leading into the ruins takes you through this beautiful narrow twisting canyon, called Al Siq and you walk out to see the famous treasury at the entrance to the main ruins. This was pretty breathtaking. I’d seen so many pictures of the Petra treasury, but it was nothing compared to seeing it in person. The amount of detail is unbelievable and the fact that it is still standing there some 2000 years later is insane. I spent the rest of the first day walking around the front of the park, climbing up to some of the cave dwellings and tombs that are up along a cliff face and got the pleasure of meeting some local beduin people who still live in the cliff dwellings. I met this woman who offered me a cup of tea and brought me into her cave which was an interesting experience. She told me there was an empty cave next door that i could move into if i wanted but i politely refused .

The history of Petra is pretty interesting, in that it is honestly still pretty unknown. It was the capital city of the Nabataean people, who were quite wealthy due their prominence in the incense trade. Not a lot is known about the Nabataean people beyond that. The city was then seized by the Roman Empire around 100 AD (the Romans were everywhere) and they were responsible for building the large amphitheater at Petra and there were a lot of cliff dwellings that can be attributed to the Romans as well (I learned how to distinguish a Roman cliff dwelling from a Nabataean one, I can file that away with all the other random useless shit I’ve learned on this journey ). From there, it was taken over by an Islamic King in the 7th century and then served as Christian outpost during the crusades in the 12th century. After the crusades, it was basically forgotten and it was only rediscovered by the Western world in 1812 by a Swiss archaeologist. According to my guide, Petra still holds many secrets buried under the sand. Advanced satellite imagery has shown additional monuments that are still buried under the sand and require excavation. He was also adamant that there is a lot of gold that is buried under the sand and has not been discovered yet. Apparently the Jordanian government also has a similar hunch, because there are cameras set up to monitor for any treasure hunters and he said that if you go off the designated trails there will be military helicopters circling you within minutes.

That night, I watched the world cup semi-final at a local bar, which was a hell of a match between Morocco and France. This was the furthest an Arab nation had ever advanced in the World Cup and the locals were going crazy for Morocco, so i jumped on the band wagon. Morocco put up a hell of a fight but was not able to knock off the strong French side. I also met my tour guide for the next day at this bar. I don’t think he was actually a properly sanctioned tour guide (you get those at the entrance to Petra), but he was exactly the type of tour guide I was looking for. His name was Mohammed and he took me all over the park the next day. We climbed up this alternative trail to get an amazing view of the treasury from up on top of this cliff and then climbed back down, caught a local jeep to the back side of the park and then climbed up to the monastery and walked all the way back through the park to the entrance. You always see the pictures of the treasury and the monastery at Petra, but I was blown away by the overall size of the ancient city, it is massive. I spent 3 days hiking around it and there were still parts i didn’t get to fully explore. 

After our 12+ hour day of hiking around the city, Mohammed invited me to his home, where his mom cooked us an incredible dinner. We then went to a local hookah place and smoked shish-a and played cards with the locals. The game was some sort of variation of rummy that is very popular in the Middle East. I then went and checked out Petra by night, where they line the trail into Petra with candles and do a light show and some local music performances in front of the treasury building. I wouldn’t do that part again, it was very touristy and i wasn’t super into it. We closed out the night drinking beers and smoking hookah in Mohammed’s car on top of the highest peak in the area, overlooking Wadi Musa with an incredible view of the stars. As previously mentioned, he was my kind if guide. I don’t think the Petra sanctioned guides will take you to their house, teach you card games and drink beers and smoke hookah with you in their car to close out the day . 

A couple additional interesting observations about Petra. The locals are aggressive in terms of wanting to get you to buy souvenirs or take a “free horse ride” (which requires a massive tip at the end), etc but what I liked was that they would back off when you gave them a firm no. A lot of the bedouin locals also wear a lot of eye makeup, which makes them look like desert pirates of the Caribbean, which i found to be pretty hilarious. The other thing that was really impressive to see at Petra was the irrigation systems that were built along the cliff walls to bring in fresh water for the 30k residents of the city. This irrigation channel very slowly dropped only 12 feet over the course of a mile, to allow gravity to assist and bringing fresh water into the city, with underground cisterns that were used to store water during the dry season. Impressive engineering and craftsmanship from 2000+ years ago.

After 3 days at Petra, i made my way to the Wadi Rum desert for my last adventure in Jordan. The Wadi Rum desert is famous because it looks other worldly and doesn’t feel like planet Earth. It is a massive desert with giant red rock formations. It is actually where they filmed the Martian and some Star Wars scenes because it literally feels like you’re on Mars.

In Wadi Rum i stayed in this really cool camp and slept in a martian dome that had a glass roof which allowed for an incredible view of the stars at night. The first day i got in around sun down and they cooked this huge traditional bedouin meal in which they cooked all the meat underground. After dinner they offered a star gazing tour that i signed up for. I assumed they were just going to drive us out to the middle of the desert to see a ton of stars, but they actually took us to a neighboring camp that had 4 really legit telescopes installed. These weren’t your standard recreational “I want a telescope for Christmas” type telescopes. These were atomic grade telescopes set up on these bases that rotated against the spinning of earth to allow you to lock into planets and distant stars. It was really freaking cool. These are actually the most powerful telescopes in the Middle East and there was a resident phd astronomer there who taught us a lot about the stars and we got to look closely at the moon, Mars and Jupiter.

The next day i got up early for a 6 hour jeep tour around Wadi Rum. We saw some amazing rock formations and got to do a bunch of hiking around the rock faces. From there i headed back to Amman to catch my flight the next day. Next stop, Phuket, Thailand!

The post Jordan first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Jordan appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

We flew to Doha early on the day of the USA-England game. Flying directly from Abu Dhabi to Doha was outrageously expensive, so we elected to fly to Muscat and then on to Doha from there. We booked the tickets through Kiwi, which will just cobble flights from multiple different airlines together in order to find you the best rate. Typically, it works out fine, but this can cause some issues, especially if you have to check a bag. The problem for us was that my bag was definitely over the weight limit and we only had an hour to connect in Muscat. So basically if they made me check my bag, that would require me to go pick it up and recheck it with our next airline, which would have resulted in me missing my flight. The 2nd airline we were flying on also didn’t even operate in Abu Dhabi, so we did not have boarding passes for that flight and had to get them in Muscat. First things first, we had to get through the Abu Dhabi airport without them weighing my bag. We successfully dodged all the scales in the airport and found a ticket counter in Muscat that could issue our boarding passes. I’ve been in several stressful flight situations on this trip but that one was the worst. We had to make our connection or we were pretty much screwed on getting to the US-England game. And after all the hoops we’d jumped through to get those tickets, that was not an option.

We got into Doha and got checked in on the ship and headed out to find an elusive beer in Qatar. If you watched any of the media coverage you’d think that was an impossible task, but honestly it wasn’t that bad. They did not sell beers at the games, but it wasn’t hard to find them around the city before the game. The game was held at the largest stadium in Doha, which was a really cool stadium built to look like a giant tent. Our seats were amazing, we were in the lower bowl at mid field about 15 rows up. And the atmosphere was electric. Walking into the stadium there was lots of chanting and yelling back and forth between the US and England fans. My favorite USA chant was- “IT’S CALLED SOCCER.” The US was also coming off a disappointing draw to Wales and so the English fans were very confident, you could say too confident . The US outplayed them that game but unfortunately we were not able to get the ball into the goal and ended up drawing them. To be frank, a draw was a win for us in that game as most people expected us to lose. England has a great team and was certainly the favorite to advance out of the group.

We spent the next few days checking out Doha, which is a beautiful city. We spent a night at the fan zone watching the Mexico vs Argentina game, where the fans were going wild and Messi scored a goal to win the game. We also checked out the National Museum of Qatar, which was very interesting. I knew basically nothing about the history of Qatar prior to this trip. Fun fact, they used to make all their money off of harvesting and trading pearls until they discovered oil in 1940, which made them an extremely wealthy country. We also wandered around the Souq Waqif, which is the old market area. They also had a falcon souq, where we inquired about buying a falcon. Falcons are a big deal in Qatar and were traditionally used for hunting rabbits and small game. Munaf was leaving in like a week and I would be solo again, so I thought it would be pretty dope to have a support falcon to keep me company. It wasn’t in the cards though, apparently falcons cost like $25k on the cheap end (the expensive ones cost more than I paid for my house). That was not something I budgeted for going into this trip . We also wandered around the Doha Corniche area, which is a street that runs along the water with an incredible view of the Doha skyline. They had also set up lots of viewing areas and fan zones along the street here which made for some good people watching. We met a ton of people from all over the world as well and had a great time watching the game with other countries fans each night.

Our last day in Doha, we attended the US-Iran game, which was amazing. You couldn’t script it any better. Huge political rivalry where the winner advances to the next round. Iran’s government actually refers to our country as the Great Satan, so that’s fun. The Iranian fans were really great though, there was lots of screaming back and forth between the groups as we entered the stadium and the atmosphere was electric inside the stadium. To be frank, the Iran fans were way louder than the US fans. But, they kind of cheated, they all had vuvuzelas and were blowing them full blast. I may be the loudest man in the world, but I’m no match for 20,000 vuvuzelas. As the match went on, the vuvuzelas got confiscated (they have been banned since the South Africa world cup) and it became more of a fair fight. Then we scored a goal and the momentum shifted significantly. Unfortunately, in the process of scoring our goal we lost our best player (Christian Pulisic) for the game. Didn’t matter, we hung on to win the game and advance to the next round to take on the Netherlands! After the game we headed straight to the airport to catch a 4 am flight to Dubai. The next day was a pretty grueling travel day, but it was worth it.

Overall, our Qatar experience was really amazing. Doha is a world class city and put on one hell of a show. The amount of infrastructure they built for this 6 week event was mind blowing. Besides the beautiful stadiums, they also built a really nice metro system that probably won’t get much use moving forward, given that the city only has a population of 2 million people. Overall though, they knew that going in and were really looking for this to serve as major PR for their country and the Middle East as a whole. That really kind of backfired in a lot of aspects as the Western media was extremely negative about the whole thing, which really pissed me off.

Let’s talk a little more about that. First off, should they have played a World Cup in Qatar? Well no, probably not. Playing a World Cup in a desert that has no history of soccer and required them to move the tournament to the winter for the first time ever wasn’t a very smart move. But, that is FIFA’s fault. FIFA is the most corrupt organization on Earth, who is well known for taking bribes and making terrible decision to line their executives pockets as opposed to doing things in the best interest of the game. There was also a lot of talk about the workers who died building the stadiums and gay rights. Again, I agree that that Qatar has some major problems here, but I struggle with the way it was portrayed by the media. Lest we forget, the last World Cup was held in Russia and the previous Olympics were in China, where was all the talk about human rights and gay rights during those events? To me, it really showed the anti-Muslim bias of the media, which is not ok. Oh and you want to talk about the immigrant workers who died building the stadiums? Again, definitely not ok, but the media chose to focus on the very small percentage of people who died as opposed to the vast majority of the migrant workers who came to Qatar and made absolutely life changing money, with wages that were far above what they could make in their home country and were extremely grateful for the opportunity. You want to talk about migrant worker deaths? Look up how many migrant workers died building the Panama Canal (I’ll save you the time, it was over 30,000). Let’s not forget that much of the western world was built through slavery and ruthless colonization. Granted it was a couple hundred years ago, but every country matures at a different rate and I found the whole thing to be extremely hypocritical and I think it really came down to religion, and anti-Islam sentiment, which is bullshit. Ok, rant over, but I wanted to get that out in the universe. Qatar is an amazing country and we had so much fun during our time there.

After we spent a few days in Dubai (see my last blog) I flew back to Qatar for the US vs Netherlands game. I decided that I was going to stay in the Middle East until the US lost and keep commuting back for games until they lost or won the whole damn thing, because well, you only live once . Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be, the US looked good in the first half but those damn Dutch really turned it on in the 2nd half and won handily. With that being said, watch out for team USA in 2026. We had one of the youngest teams in the tournament and really held our own. Plus we’ll be playing at home.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! ITTTSSSS CALLLLLLEDDDDD SOCCCCCEERRRRRRRR!!!

The post Doha- World Cup 2022 first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Doha- World Cup 2022 appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

Anyway, we started this trip in Abu Dhabi. We spent our first day there checking out the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which was a really cool museum housing all sorts of artwork ranging from thousands of years old to modern. One of the coolest parts was the actual building housing the museum. The architecture was a work of art in itself. It’s built out over the water with canals flowing underneath it that you can kayak through and an amazing courtyard. 

Next we went to the The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Wow, this place was absolutely mind blowing. It was enormous and we learned a lot of interesting facts about the mosque and all the symbolism behind many of it’s characteristics on the tour we took. The floor of the courtyard in the middle of the mosque is the largest marble mosaic on Earth. The carpet inside the prayer room (which accomodates over 40,000 worshippers) is also the largest carpet on the planet. Additionally, the main room housed 3 massive chandeliers, the largest of which is one of the largest on Earth and weighs in at a cool 12 tons! The also built the mosque with raw materials from all over the world as a symbol of world unity. Something else that was interesting is that the UAE’s former President, Sheikh Zayed, is entombed on the grounds and there is someone stationed there 24/7/365 reciting verses from the Quran. They go through the whole thing roughly every 36 hours and then start over at the beginning.

Another fun little adventure we went on was kayaking through the mangrove forest surrounding the city. It was a bit surreal being out in nature on a boat with the towering skyline in the distance. Munaf also got his paddle caught on one of the mangrove trees and capsized his kayak, which was hilarious. I had just been giving him a hard time about not wanting to bring his phone in the boat. Turns out he was right to leave it on shore . That night we celebrated Thanksgiving in Abu Dhabi, which was a fun new experience. We found out that some of the local hotels were hosting Thanksgiving dinners and so we stuffed our faces at an amazing Thanksgiving buffet. In addition to traditional Thanksgiving foods, they also had Indian and Middle Eastern fare. I’ve decided that biryani should always be part of Thanksgiving dinner going forward, it goes perfectly with the other classic dishes. The following day we departed for Doha and the World Cup. I’m going to hold off talking more about that for the next blog, as I’ve got a lot of stories to share.

After the World Cup we headed back to UAE for Munaf to catch his flight back home and for me to decide where the hell I was going next lol. Our next stop was Dubai, another gorgeous city with some incredible architecture. We had a very long travel day to get there, heading directly to the airport after the US-Iran game, catching a 4 am flight to Kuwait City, had a long layover and finally made it to Dubai around 4 pm the following day. Needless to say, we didn’t do much that day. The next day however, we played golf at The Address Montgomerie golf club, which was amazing. The course was in excellent shape and there were multiple holes with amazing backdrops of the Dubai skyline. We also played with 2 English guys, Andy and Glenn, who were former rugby players on the English national team and they were a whole lot of fun. After our round, they invited us to join them for a beer, which turned into many beers and us eating dinner and hanging out late into the evening with them. They were actually in town for the Dubai Rugby 7s tournament the following day and invited me to come along (Munaf had to catch his flight home). I had no other plans and had never been to a rugby tournament, so of course I was in. The atmosphere at the tournament was awesome, it was basically just a big party with people from all over the world. Rugby 7s is also a great game, it is a very short game and very fast paced. It’s called rugby 7s because there are only 7 players and each half only lasts 7 minutes. Andy and Glenn also taught me a lot about the rules of rugby and strategy, which I didn’t really know anything about. All in all it was a great day and awesome new experience. And the following day it was time to pack up the old suitcase and move along to the next destination, Jordan!

The post Abu Dhabi & Dubai first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Abu Dhabi & Dubai appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

There were gaps in the rain that allowed me to get out and explore Antalya, which is a beautiful little city situated on the southern coast. I saw Hadron’s gate, wandered through old town, and checked out the Karaalioglu park overlooking the Mediterranean sea. I also spent some time at the Old Harbor and checked out some more ancient mosques. I also learned some interesting things about the overlaps between Islam and Christianity. For example, did you know that Mary is the most mentioned woman in the Quran and there is a whole chapter dedicated to her? She’s actually mentioned more in the Quran than she is in the Bible. Additionally, Jesus is one of the most important prophets in Islam. He’s not regarded as the second coming of God, but he is held in very high regard. I’m not the most religious guy, but I was raised Catholic and found it pretty fascinating how interwoven the early histories of these religions are, it played very nicely into my next stop, Israel.

I also booked a tour to check our Termessos, which is known as Turkeys Machu Picchu, but the tour got rained out as well, because it required hiking up a pretty steep mountain that apparently isn’t very safe when it’s wet. Womp womp. Looking back on it, after I realized the weather was going to be bad I should have went up to Cappadocia for a few days to check out the enormous ancient cave dwellings. I mean, it obviously doesn’t rain in caves so that would have been an ideal rainy day activity lol. But, that just gives me a reason to go back to Turkey someday.

After 5 days of crap weather, I got out of Antalya and found a very reasonable flight to Tel Aviv. This served as a nice little 2 day layover on to my ultimate destination of Abu Dhabi, where I was meeting my friend Munaf for our trip to the World Cup. 

Tel Aviv was absolutely incredible. First off, it was great to get back into warm weather. Turkey in November was pretty chilly and pushed the limits of my wardrobe, which was intended for a yearlong trip spent in the summer. The beaches were gorgeous and there is a long beach along the main drag that strangely reminded me of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro. There were a bunch of people even playing this crazy Brazilian version of volleyball where you can’t use your hands, only your feet/head/chest to hit the ball. I have never seen that game played outside of Brazil, so I was pretty shocked to see multiple games happening on the beach in Tel Aviv. They were actually pretty good at it too! I personally find playing volleyball with my hands to be more than enough of a challenge.

Israeli people are also some of the most beautiful people you’ve ever seen in your life. Everyone serves a mandatory enlistment in the army (including the women), so most people are extremely fit. They are also just badasses in general. My cab driver from the airport was a former boxer in the Israeli army and was a very entertaining character. He was telling me about how all Israel has is beachfront property and they have had to fight for every single grain of sand they have, as they are surrounded by countries who hate them and don’t even recognize their country. The cabbie was telling me about how advanced their security systems are because of all the conflict and how crime is extremely rare because it’s nearly impossible not to get caught. He said there are millions of cameras everywhere watching everything you do and on average it takes Israeli police about 7 minutes to apprehend a suspect. Also, I found it interesting that when you get to Israel they don’t stamp your passport, they put a sticker on the cover that you can easily remove when you leave so that you don’t get barred from entering other countries in the Middle East who don’t recognize Israel as a country.

My first night in Tel Aviv was the opening game of the World Cup and I found a great little sports bar to watch it. I met some expats from the states at the bar and coincidentally sat down next to this guy from Atlanta who was in Israel for a couple weeks on business. They were really cool and gave me some great recommendations to things to do in my short time in Tel Aviv. I also found a last minute apartment that was in an excellent location, right in the heart of Tel Aviv. I have stayed in some pretty small rooms on this trip, but I think this one takes the cake. The bed was snugged up against 3 of the walls and within one step from the bed you could be in the bathroom or the “kitchen.” The entire bathroom was about the size of a cruise ship shower, with a toilet in it. Taking showers was not fun in Tel Aviv .

I spent the next whole day checking out Old Jaffa, which was pretty biblical, literally LOL. The old Jaffa port is the oldest continuously running port on earth and there are lots of buildings still standing from the time of Jesus. The first thing you see walking into Old Jaffa is St Peter’s Monastary, which was built on the ruins of a 13th century crusader castle. Right near the Monastary is the HaPisgah Gardens, which is a nice little green space to walk around with some cool sculptures and an ancient Egyptian gate from the times of the Pharaoh Ramses II (from like 1300 BC). I also checked out the Great Mosque and the site of the house of Simon the Tanner. The significance of this house is that this is where St Peter supposedly stayed when he visited Jaffa and while sleeping here he was visited by Jesus in a dream who told him to convert the Roman Pagans to a new religion, which inspired him to split away from Judaism and form the Christian religion. The history here was absolutely fascinating along, especially given the confluence of Judaism, Islam and Christianity that all have roots based in this small country. You can see why all three religions have staked claims to this area and why there has been so much conflict here historically.

I also spent some time wandering the streets of Jaffa, checking out some markets and street food. The food in Israel is pretty incredible. Their hummus is on another level from any hummus I’ve ever had in my life. They also have a street food sandwich called a sabich, which is a pita stuffed with fried eggplant, hard boiled eggs, tahini, and a bunch of vegetables. I’m typically not the guy who goes for a veggie sandwich, but damn was this one good.

I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time in Israel, but it was time to go as I needed to get to the World Cup. My plan was to go back after the World Cup to check out Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Unfortunately that didn’t happen as I ended up spending more money than planned between the World Cup, Dubai, and Jordan. Israel was very cool, but also very expensive. I’ll be coming back though someday when I have an income again . Now it was time to head to Abu Dhabi to meet up with my buddy Munaf for a few days before making our way to Doha.

The post Antalya & Tel Aviv first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Antalya & Tel Aviv appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

The trip started out great. I had a nice apartment in the Taksim neighborhood, which is like the Time Square of Istanbul, with streets packed with tourists and great bars and restaurants everywhere. On my first day there, my Airbnb host introduced me to his friend who runs a language learning club for foreigners in Istanbul. They were meeting that night and he invited me to come along. I jumped at this opportunity as I was initially under the impression that I could learn some Turkish and meet some people from around the world. Well apparently the Turkish language group meets on Wednesdays, and this was a Thursday, where they were learning English LOL. It was still a good experience and gave me an opportunity to meet some cool people, but I felt like one of those 18 year old kids who lied about his age to play in the Little League World Series, as English is obviously my first (and only) language . The language club was hosting a house party that weekend and they invited me to attend, which was great. There were probably like 30 people there from all over the globe. I met people from Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Cuba, UAE, France, Iran, Iraq, and of course Turkey. Everyone was extremely friendly and we had a great time. Both the language club meeting and the house party were also located on the Asian side of Istanbul, which gave me an opportunity to explore that side a bit and experience some Istanbul public transportation, which was a bit of an adventure.

The following day, a bomb exploded on the densely packed tourist street I described above, just a few blocks away from the apartment I was staying at. To be clear, I wasn’t on the street when it happened. Fortunately, I was moving pretty slowly that day after having maybe a bit too much fun at that party the night before and I was in my apartment when it went off. I didn’t even realize what had happened until my sister texted me in a panic to make sure I was ok. After that, I went out to see what was going on and it was a very different scene than the previous days. There were police and military everywhere, streets were closed down and you could tell that people’s mentalities had changed, people were very scared and sad as you would expect and the streets had cleared out, which was very unusual for a Sunday. At this point I still didn’t realize how close I had been to that bomb, the road was blocked off and there was military everywhere but I assumed that they had blocked off the entire street.

By this point I was starving and walked by a restaurant I had tried to go to the day before but couldn’t get in because it was packed and had a wait. This time around, I was the only person in the whole restaurant. I was chatting with my waiter who told me that normally they would be completely full, if it hadn’t been for the horrible event that had just occurred. Looking back on it, this shook me a lot more than I realized at the time. Not only did the attack occur very close to my apartment, but it happened at a place that I had walked by every single day thus far in my trip. Pretty scary stuff, but at the same time you have to remind yourself that bad shit happens everywhere in the world and there’s always a chance of something like that happening, no matter where you are. So live it up and enjoy every second!

For the remainder of my time in Istanbul, things definitely felt different. People were (understandably) scared and sad about what had happened and there was a much more visible police and military presence in the area, who would close down the main street every evening. They moved very fast in catching the people responsible for the attack, which I think was a relief for everyone. The Turkish government also came out and very explicitly rejected the condolences given to them by the US government for the attack, signifying that they felt we were in some small way responsible for this horrible tragedy, which was awkward… The background here is that the group responsible for the attack was an extremist Kurdish group who was somehow affiliated with the Kurdish military group that the US armed and funded in the fight against ISIS in Syria. I’m obviously very biased, but that seems like pretty much a no win situation to me, as ISIS was certainly not a group of upstanding citizens either, as has been very well documented. 

Anyway, I spent my next few days in Istanbul checking out some tourist sites. Namely the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, and Basilica cistern. The Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque are 2 massive mosques located right next to each other in a beautiful square. Turkish mosques seemed to be much more open to letting non-Muslims visit the mosques than they were across Europe, which was cool because I’d never been inside a mosque before. The only requirement were that you dressed properly (no exposing your shoulders and knees and you have to take off your shoes before entering). The blue mosque was unfortunately under heavy renovations, so I was only able to see one small part of it, but they were all most beautiful from the the outside.

I also did a lot of good eating in Turkey. It’s the birthplace of the doner kebab so obviously I got my fill of those and they didn’t disappoint. There was also a lot of really good seafood in Turkey. For some reason I really didn’t expect this going there, but it makes complete sense as they are surrounded by some major bodies of water. Another dish I enjoyed was manti, which is basically these tiny raviolis filled with lamb meat or ground beef and served with a butter sauce and garlic-yogurt sauce that was excellent.

Turkish was one of the bigger linguistic challenges I had run into this far on the trip as well. The language is derived from Arabic, but utilizes the Latin alphabet. This is very helpful when trying to pronounce words off a menu, because you can at least try your best to pronounce them, but alot of the words are crazy long and combinations of letters you don’t typically see together. So that was fun. I learned from my friend Jusef, who ran the language club, that the Turkish empire moved their language to the Latin alphabet not that long ago (less than 100 years). During Ottoman empire times, they utilized the Arabic script but after WWI and the fall of the empire they started utilizing the western alphabet to better align Turkey with the rest of Europe.

Istanbul is an absolutely beautiful city. It extends over multiple bodies of water and I enjoyed walking across the bridge over the Bosphorus and seeing all the beautiful minarets from all the mosques towering across the skyline. I feel like I only scratched the surface of all the things to see there over the course of the week I spent there, so I’ll have to go back again someday. Next time, I’d like to stay over on the Asian side. Taksim was cool, but it was a little too touristy for me and I’d like to get a more local experience. After a week in Turkey, it was starting to get cold, so I started making my way south en route to the Middle East. Next stop, Antalya, for some golf and sunshine (or so I thought…).

The post Istanbul first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Istanbul appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

The next day, Graham picked me up in St Louis and we drove to Lake of the Ozarks for his bachelor party. We had 12 of his buddies and a great house right on the lake for the weekend and pretty much spent the whole time drinking beers, playing golf and watching football. Unfortunately my dad was unable to attend due to an upcoming knee surgery, so I also did my best Freddy impression and took on the role of head chef. This was actually pretty fun, as I hadn’t really done any cooking in months. Overall we had a great weekend.

After that I commenced on my own little adventure across America. I hadn’t really planned on doing extensive traveling during my time back in the states, but I guess at this point I can’t stop. I ended up visiting every city in America I’ve lived in since I was 5 over the 3 weeks I was back in the states. I spent a few days back home in Mount Pleasant, Iowa with my parents, then drove up to Madison, Wisconsin to visit my buddy Spencer and his family. Next I flew down to Atlanta for a week to see the whole crew of friends and old coworkers. From there, I had to make a quick pit stop in New Orleans to get a new passport, as I only had about 2 pages left in my old one which was not going to cut it. Met up with some old friends down there as well and went to a fun Halloween show with them at House of Blues. From there, I flew back to Iowa to hang with my parents for a couple more days before we headed down to Springfield, Illinois for the big wedding. 

The wedding was a ton of fun, I got a chance to see pretty much all my extended family as well as a ton of good family friends that I hadn’t seen in a long time. Also got to run it back with my new friends from the bachelor party and met many more of Graham and Krissy’s friends as well as her family. We had an amazing time. Graham and his wife Krissy put on one hell of a party, with the best live band I’ve ever seen at a wedding. My only beef was that they wouldn’t let me get on stage and sing with them, but what can you do haha. At the wedding I was talking with one of Graham’s groomsmen about my upcoming trip to the Middle East and I told him we were trying to go to the World Cup but failed to sign up on time for any of the lotteries so we couldn’t get tickets. He responded with, “Oh, my buddy is in charge of tickets for US Soccer, he can get you tickets.” He put me in touch with him and sure enough, his friend pulled through and hooked us up with incredible world cup seats (lower bowl, midfield) at face value! Luck was in my favor yet again. Imagine if we’d properly planned ahead and got stuck with the standard tickets up in the nosebleeds.

I closed out my time back in the states back in Iowa for a couple more days and hung out with my good friend Sam. He took me on a true Iowa adventure of going coyote hunting, which was a very memorable experience. Whenever I tell people I’m from Iowa they always assume that I grew up farming and hunting, but I actually have roughly zero experience with either of those things. I went squirrel hunting with my friends one time in high school but that was about the extent of my hunting experience. So, after catching up with him and his wife for a bit over a couple Busch lattes, we went out in the middle of one of his cornfields with AR-15s on tripods equipped with night vision scopes and he started calling in the coyotes. More than enough fire power to make all my new European friends cringe . Sure enough, we saw them start running in towards us. Keep in mind, I still had no idea what I was doing, but I was ready to unload on them like it was Call of Duty. The whole time Sam was whispering to me, “not yet, not yet, not yet.” Then, “shoot”. I started unloading and missed everything every time, but he shot one on the run from over 100 yards away, which was one hell of a shot. After that we tried to do it again, but the coyotes had apparently heard all the commotion from our last rampage and there were no more coyotes that were going to come near us for the rest of the night.

Overall, it was nice to take a couple weeks off from living in hotels and I really enjoyed seeing all my family and friends and doing some traveling around the states as well. After 3 weeks back home, it was time to head back out on the road however. Next stop, Istanbul!

The post Adventure Americana first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Adventure Americana appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

Things I will miss about Europe:

• The friends- meeting up with friends around Europe was very easy, as it was a very popular vacation destination this past summer, so it was very easy to meet up with friends and tag along on their trips. As I continue on to harder destinations to reach, I anticipate there will be much more solo travel in my future. You also form kind of a unique bond with friends that you travel with. Traveling is not always smooth sailing, you’re going to run into issues as one point or another (especially if you’re just flying by the seat of your pants like I typically do) and a lot of times some of the best memories come from those random experiences where things didn’t quite go to plan or you got lost or ending up completely deviating from the original plan.
• The food- As I documented, I ate very well on this leg of the trip and tried to sample all the local specialties I could get my hands on. Some countries definitely put more of a focus on the culinary aspects than others, but it was interesting to see some of the similarities and differences between the food in many of these neighboring countries
• The parks- Europe does parks right. So many huge green spaces across many of the cities I visited. I enjoyed spending at least a day in each city wandering around some of the parks, doing some reading and people watching
• The architecture- So many beautiful churches and castles, buildings built hundreds of years ago that you’d just happen to run into while wandering the streets.
• The history- Western history in Europe extends back so much further than it does in America. It was fascinating learning about how each country came to be, and all the kings and wars that have shaped them into who they are today. This unfortunately means nearly every country has some really tragic tales to tell, but it was interesting to learn more about that as well
• #trainlife- travelling by train was the dream. So easy, flexible and comfortable.

Things I won’t:

• Air drying clothes and sink laundry- Europe doesn’t believe in clothes dryers. Which can be a bit tricky when you only have 5 shirts, 3 pairs of shorts and 2 pairs of pants and have to account for the time it will take to air dry your clothes. Realistically, there is probably still a lot more of this in my future, but looking forward to cheap same day wash and fold laundry in Asia.
• Blowing through my budget at a rapid rate- I knew going into it that I would probably spend about 50% of my budget for the entire year in my 3 months in Europe. And I was right, but it was worth it. Lodging and food is more expensive there than many of the other places I’ll be spending my time.
• Paying to pee- Europeans get all up in arms talking about how free healthcare is a basic human right (which I completely agree with, before people start coming after me ). However, they don’t talk much about the most basic of basic human rights, the right to pee for free. Nothing infuriated me more than being charged money to pee at a train station, park, etc. Unless it was a true emergency situation, I would just flat out refuse to do it
• Remembering the correct thank you of the day- I didn’t know many words in many of the countries we visited, but I tried to at least nail down thank you everywhere we went. Europe was a blitz and we were moving from country to country so quickly sometimes
• The constant shuffling country to country- So much unpacking and repacking my bag as we spent 2 days here, 3 days here, 2 more days in the next place. I planned for Europe to be a blitz because there’s so much to see and I had a train pass. It was great, I feel like we spent the right amount of time in most places, but it got pretty exhausting towards the end. Going forward, I’m planning not to be on the move quite so much and spend closer to a week in each city I visit (this is also kind of necessary, as most of the rest of the world doesn’t have a train network comparable to Europe).

Travel Stats:

• Countries visited: 18
• Cities visited: 33
• Distance travelled by train: 8064 km
• Trains taken: 55
• Time spent on trains: 3 days, 6 hours, 40 min

Countries visited (in order):

• Bosnia & Herzegovina
• Croatia
• Slovenia
• Hungary
• Slovakia
• Czech Republic
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Scotland
• Ireland
• England
• Belgium
• France
• Germany
• Switzerland
• Spain
• Portugal
• Denmark

Top places I missed/want to spend more time in:

• Amalfi coast, Italy
• Sicily, Italy
• Scottish Highlands
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Krakow, Poland
• Oslo, Norway
• Greece
• Montenegro
• Albania
• Serbia

Top 5 Favorite Cities:

• Prague
• Madrid
• Edinburgh
• London
• Berlin

Best Views:

• Lake Bled, Slovenia
• Dubrovnik, Croatia
• Sacre Coeur, Paris
• Switzerland- Harder Kulm and Grindelwald
• Fisherman’s Bastion, Budapest

Best hikes:

• Plitvice Lakes, Croatia
• Lake Bled, Slovenia
• 1984 Bobsled track Sarajevo Bosnia & Herzegovina
• Grindelwald, Switzerland
• Calanques National Park, Marseille
• Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh

Best food:

• Italy
• Spain
• France
• Portugal
• Croatia

Best wine:

• Italy
• Spain
• France
• Slovenia

Best beer:

• Belgium
• Czech Republic
• UK
• Germany

Best events:

• Palio di Siena, Sienna Italy
• The fringe comedy fest, Edinburgh Scotland
• College football opener, Dublin Ireland
• Hungarian Grand Prix, Budapest Hungary
• NFL Europe, Saints vs Vikings, London England

Best meals:

• Prado, Lisbon
• Sug, Split
• Arcade Bar: Haggis and Whiskey House, Edinburgh
• Deshooms, London
• Tofu Vegan, London
• Sad Man’s Tongue, Prague
• La Locandina Di Bacco, Carbognano
• Ribot Restaurant, Milan
• Xentes, Madrid
• Picotte, Paris

The post Eurotrip Wrap Up first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Eurotrip Wrap Up appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

Lisbon is a beautiful little city, with very colorful buildings and sidewalks that are like giant black and white mosaics. We spent a couple days just wandering around the city, checking out the sights. We wandered around the Alfama district, which was very close to our Airbnb, went to Praça de Comercio, Radio Square, the Belem Tower, and some other areas I can’t fully recall anymore. We were back in warm weather in Portugal and quickly learned that Lisbon is built on a group of 7 hills, so there was lots of climbing and descending and ultimately, sweating and breaks for a beer and a snack.

The food in Lisbon was excellent. We went to this restaurant called the Prado on our first night there. Pretty sure they have a Michelin star, and for good reason, it was probably the best meal I’d had on my trip thus far. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been eating quite well throughout haha. It was also pretty reasonably priced, so we ended up ordering basically everything on the menu, which was amazing. My favorite dish looked like a pasta, but when you took a bit you realized the noodles were made out of squid . We also had a bunch more delicious seafood, octopus rice is a specialty there that I indulged in more than once. Lisbon is also famous for these little cream tarts that you can find at every bakery around the city, pasteis de nata.

After Lisbon, I was back to being solo again to wrap up the last couple days of my Eurotrip. My next stop was a few days in Porto, Portugal. A beautiful coastal city located a couple hours north of Lisbon.

I spent my time in Porto doing much of the same as Lisbon, wandering around the city and eating my face off. One of the things Porto is famous for is the francesinha sandwich. This sandwich contains ham, two types of sausage, steak and bologna, and cheese between 2 thick pieces of bread with a fried egg on top and beer gravy poured over the top of it along with french fries intended for dipping in the excess gravy. It was like breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and a poutine dinner all wrapped into one. Staying true to the analogy, I ate one on my first day there and it was my only meal for the day. And damn, was it worth it.

The next couple days in Porto were pretty low key and we’re spent checking out some sights around the city and also doing some reflecting on my amazing 3 month Eurotrip that was coming to a close in just a few short days. I spent some time hanging out at the Cais da Ribeira, which is the area along the riverfront full of little shops and restaurants with a beautiful view of the Douro river and Luis I bridge. I climbed up to the cathedral, checked out some nice plazas and parks around the city and drank some port, as one does in Porto. Have to say, I still didn’t have any luck finding one that I liked. It’s just too damn sweet, not my thing I guess.

You want to know something I have found very interesting on this trip? Every single time I leave a city, I get really sad, even though there is another amazing city coming up next. I think everyone is familiar with the end of vacation blues, when you’ve reached the last day of your vacation and it’s time to go back to reality after an amazing trip. I always thought that sadness was due to the fact that it was time to indeed go back to reality and work (womp womp). But now I’m not so sure, as I still experience it roughly every week on this trip, and I’m sure as hell not going back to reality (yet…haha). I’ve realized that it has more to do with the amazing connection you make with a place, and the friendships and memories you from there. Now don’t get me wrong, the sadness quickly wanes as I start to familiarize myself with my next destination and start this process all over again. But it’s definitely there, every single time, even if just for a few hours. What an emotional roller coaster . Well it definitely hit a bit harder as I was closing out the Europe chapter of this adventure despite my excitement to get back to the states for a few weeks for my little brother’s wedding and to see lots of family and friends. Champagne problems, I know, I know .

After a few days in Porto, I had to make my way up to Copenhagen to catch a flight back to the US for my little brother’s bachelor party and wedding. If you think it’s weird I went from Portugal to Copenhagen to catch a flight to America, I’d have to agree with you. You see, I booked that flight a few months before, thinking Copenhagen/Scandanavia would be a cool place to check out but not really thinking about the weather in October or my other trips with friends. My parents had offered to pay for my flight home as my birthday present and they aren’t really onboard with my whole last minute travel methodology. So, I had to plan ahead and failed miserably, as it’s not really one of my strengths.

En route to Copenhagen my connecting flight in Amsterdam got cancelled and I got rebooked on a flight the next morning. Which gave me another 12 hours in Amsterdam which I wasn’t really upset about. Found a nice little hotel near the train station and spent the afternoon/evening wandering around the city before an early morning departure to Copenhagen. Unfortunately this left me with really only 1 day to explore Copenhagen. I wish I would have had more time, because I really enjoyed the one day I was able to spend there and packed in as much as possible. I got to my hotel around 8 am dropped off my luggage and didn’t get back to properly check in until about 10 pm that night.

In Copenhagen, I went to Nyhavn, which is the waterfront area surrounding a canal with colorful houses that you always see in pictures of Copenhagen. Fun fact, it’s also where Hans Christian Andersen lived for many years, in a couple of different houses along the cabal. I also went to Rosenborg castle and the beautiful gardens surrounding it, the botanical garden, the Church of our Savior, which is famous for a spiral stairway that wraps around the exterior of the steeple. I also sampled a bunch of Danish cuisine, which was great. I found this great gourmet food hall called Torvehallerne with lots of different individual food stalls. One thing Denmark is famous for is the Smørrebrød (pronounced “smurr-brull”, or something like that). Which is an open-faced sandwich on rye bread with all sorts of different fillings on top. I had one topped with octopus and another with a fish cake on top.

I also checked out Christiania while I was there, which is an anarchist village that was established back in the 70s inside of an old military fort. Very interesting place, as you walk in you are greeted by a sign saying “you are now leaving the EU.” There was really cool street art all over the place and there is a street with all these makeshift booths selling weed and hash to passersby out in the open. There are 3 rules in there- no photography, no hard drugs, and no running, as apparently it is frequently raided by the police and running incites panic. It’s pretty centrally located in the city, so I found it very interesting that this little community is at least tolerated by local authorities. If you’ve seen the HBO show, The Wire, it was like a real life version of Hamsterdam.

After a long day of walking the streets and braving some much colder weather than I was accustomed to, I headed back to my hotel for an early morning departure back to America for a few weeks of traveling, Americana style.

The post Lisbon, Porto, and Copenhagen first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Lisbon, Porto, and Copenhagen appeared first on JP Globetrotter.

Next stop on the journey was Madrid, where Mark and I studied abroad for a semester in college back in 2008. Neither of us had been back since and wow was it great to spend a week back in that beautiful city. Looking back on it, I feel like I kind of took my original time there for granted as it was my first time being abroad, and as a 21 year old college student we were primarily focused on partying and travelling to other places around Europe during that time. Additionally it’s worth calling out that we were all poor as hell, surviving on the cheapest bocadillos we could find and one euro bottles of wine. So, it was also nice to be able to experience Madrid with some money. The food in Madrid is outstanding and we spent a lot of time just wandering around neighborhoods grabbing a beer and sampling tapas from place to place. Tapas is a whole culture in Madrid and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Manchego cheese, jamon iberico, chorizo, patatas bravos, croquettes, grilled octopus, calamari, mussels, clams, olives, fried sardines, tortilla, grilled peppers, mushrooms, you name it, we ate it.

Our friend Stracco also rejoined us in Madrid for the week. Stracco deserves a special call out because this was his 4th time meeting up with me in my first 4 months of travelling and like the 8th city we explored together spread across 4 countries. What a guy. Additionally, that weekend we also had some more friends come join us in Madrid. Our friend Emily, who also studied abroad with us in Madrid came down from London to meet up and our buddy Rosey also joined us from Atlanta. Rosey is one of my best friends from Atlanta and had a baby about 6 months prior, which obviously creates some challenges travelling internationally. With that being said he was determined to come meet up with Mark and I for a leg of this trip. So he literally flew from Atlanta to Madrid for 48 hours . If you think that’s crazy, I’d be inclined to agree with you, but you don’t know Rosey. That’s kind of his style.

We stayed in a great neighborhood that was pretty centrally located in Madrid and could walk pretty much everywhere. Spent a couple days wandering around Retiro park, which is definitely one of my favorite parks in the world. It’s massive, with lots of different gardens and statues and fountains and you can just wander around in there for hours. The 2 main art museums (Prado and Reina Sofia) are also located basically on the grounds of the park and we spent one afternoon at the Reina Sofia, which is the modern art museum. I’m not sure that I ever actually went to that one when we lived there. It was a great museum, with some really cool work from Picasso and Salvador Dali and many others. Also a few of the stranger exhibits I’ve ever seen, but hey that’s art.

Beyond that, we spent some time checking out some of the old areas we frequented back in our college days, ate and drank our way through various neighborhoods, saw some more flamenco, ate some more paella, and played a nightly game of Phase 10 (great card game btw).

After Madrid, we caught flights for a quick trip back to London, to see the Saints play the Vikings at Tottenham stadium. Our whole Madrid crew went, with the exception of Rosey, who had to get back to Atlanta before he turned into a pumpkin. Another one of our Tulane friends, Amna, also met us in London for the game. I hadn’t seen her in at least 10 years and it was great catching up.

What are the odds that my 2 favorite American football teams would both play in Europe during my 3 months there? Couldn’t miss cheering on the Saints, who knows maybe they would give away free Guinness again . Notice how I called it American football? That is because the way British people pronounce the word soccer, sounds like “football”. The British accent is a funny thing innit?

I probably mentioned this in my last football post from the Nebraska game, but one of the best parts of going to an American football game in the UK is that everyone just wears whatever NFL gear they own, regardless of who is playing in the game. You see the most random jerseys from the most random teams, it’s like stepping into a time warp of obscure NFL players from the last 25 years.

Tottenham stadium is a beautiful world class place to watch a football game, regardless of the shape of the ball in play. It was just built a couple years ago and when planning it they accounted for yearly NFL matchups being played in London, as well as potentially an NFL team being based there someday. We had some amazing seats and had a great time at the game. Tragically, the Saints lost on a missed field goal that double doinked off the goalpost as time expired, which ultimately cost them a chance at the playoffs. But we still had plenty of fun. Other highlights included me inadvertently wearing the same shirt to the game as the stadium beer venders (which everyone in the stadium was sure to point out to me), Stracco nearly getting beat up by this large lady vikings fan in front of us, and hearing the revised British national anthem for the first time- God Bless the King (too soon…).

After the game, we spent another day in London and wandered down the Thames to Big Ben, British Parliament, Hyde Park, and the Buckingham Palace. We also had some amazing meals. People talk a lot of shit on British food. And for good reason. But the best British food is definitely Indian food, London has some unbelievable Indian food. We got a great Indian lunch at Deshooms and basically tried everything on their menu. Then that night we had a really great meal this vegan restaurant, Tofu Vegan. I wasn’t real sure what to expect at this place, but Mark is a vegetarian and he had put up with eating at all the carnivore restaurants the whole trip, so it was only fair. The meal was incredible and if you hadn’t told me that the food was vegan, I think you could of tricked me into thinking I was eating meat. It was pretty mind blowing.

After our quick London detour, it was time to head back to the Iberian peninsula to wrap up this Eurotrip. Next stop, Portugal!

The post Madrid and London Pt. 2 first appeared on JP Globetrotter.

The post Madrid and London Pt. 2 appeared first on JP Globetrotter.