Mark's "quit my job now I'm traveling" thread

France: Paris

After Bruge i head off to Paris. I check in late at night after just barely grabbing one of the last few beds, as I don't book anything in advance. Just show up and hope they have spots open. Nothing eventful happens that evening except for a trip to the grocery store. The next morning i am waiting outside for the free walking tour guide and a guy from my room in the hostel in Bruge recognizes me and we're like, holy shit we just stayed in the same room a day ago. I didn't talk to him then cuz I was pre occupied with the other 5 friends I made on that stop. But now that we were in Paris we said screw it let's go tour the city. All of th usual sights are hit.

We got an overdose of art in the lourve, and spent about 4 hours there, most of which was spent trying to find the exit. W climbed the Eiffel Tower, which for being as touristy as it is was one of the coolest experiences of the city. It's just so huge and intricate looking with an interesting history, it struck a positive cord!

That first evening we went to check out the Church of Notre Dame and it happened to be a Sunday so there was a mass 30 minutes from when we were there. Being catholic I could not pass the chance to experience a mass at Notre Dame (even if it was in French)

I experienced my first French meals...which were better than I'd imagined. Something about eating at a table in the street in France just slows you down. My lunch of assorted meats, cheeses and a glass of wine took over an hour. My dinner of escargot (delicious btw) took over 2 hours because we talked to the waitress almost nonstop about everything from ancient philosophy to mindern Anglo business practices. She kept getting in trouble for hanging around my Canadian friend and i but she kept coming back ha. After those few days were done it was off to Tours to rent a motorcycle!!

 

France: Tours day 1

The motorcycle rental was a bit of an after throught. I know I wanted to see the Normandy beaches, and I knew public transport was pretty lacking. Why not see it on my own terms? So after hours of searching and false leads I find an affordable bike rental place that sadly is 150km south of Paris. Committing to this endeavor I email the guy at Ride in Tours and he said he'd pick me up from the bus depot and take me to his place to do the bike paperwork and give me a bike. It all sounds good till I get off thebus in tours and realize I have no idea what this guy looks like or how to find him. Luckily he is also wandering around and I spot him easily. Turns out him and his wife had done a year kind bike tour across North and south America and had even been through Idaho, so he was familiar with my area of riding.

After completing paper work, i got my Honda NXC 700, and he gave me extra gear like gloves and a nice thick riding jacket (that he had taken all around South America) that would come in very handy later on. I had th bike for 24 hours and being the off season he said I could have another day if I needed it, i didn't think I would but how wrong I was.

The bus was over an hour late, so I got a late start, not leaving till almost 7 pm. With no real gps or constant map to check, and riding through French villages that had no common sense to the street patterns I got lost ever 1000 meters, it got so bad I just left the phone on the gas tank and rode like that with google maps on till I found my way. At about 9:00 it began to rain while I was on my way to my nights accommodation (a hoste about an hour or of the way because I thought it'd be cheaper (stupid idea, waste of time).

Not knowing how bad the rain would get I threw in the towel I pulled off the highway at 10 and found a random cheaper hotel to stay in that night. Having been on floors and hosted up until now after getting lost for the last 2 hours and riding in the rain for the last 45 min I forgot how cozy a quiet comfortable real room was. Who would have guessed that my appreciation for warm welcoming motel rooms was about to be surpassed 3 fold soon enough.

 

France: Tours day 2

Trying to get an early start I get up at 7:30 hoping for a free breakfast but after a broken French conversation I learn that it costs extra so I say eff it I'll do it cheaper and hit the road to make up lost time as I've gone 45 min out of the way.

As dawn begins to break after more than an hour of riding on the motorway a heavy fog layers the valleys of central France. At this point the sun has thawed out my exposed ankles, appendages and illuminates the terrain enough to really dawn on me what I was actually doing and how amazing it felt to be cruising he highways in France on a motorcycle. I also realized I was 40km from running the deceptive gas tank dry. Praying for a petrol station and some food I found one 30km down the road. I experienced my first European fuel up (pay after fueling) and got a solid moto breakfast consisting of a couple chocolate pastries and a pleasantly hot vending machine coffee.

The ride carries on for a while longer until Le Mans where I detour through the city, get gas, grocery store lunch, and do some go pro filming. At this point I learned I can avoid the motorway tolls by taking side streets that were more twisty and fun but had a slower speed limit. I just paid more attention to speed radar traps and felt fine.

Moto culture in Europe is so much better than the us. Lane splitting is encouraged and cars move out of the way so you can pass in their own lane, sticking your right foot out to say thanks. In the US not only would people not move but they would try to road rage you for passing them like this.

By this point I was beginnng to follow the tracks of D Day movies and the Band of Brothers series, cruising through towns like Aregntan and Caen. Speaking of Caen...i had my go pro on my helmet and hit the highway unknowingly before removing it...thinking it would be find for 10 min of highway riding I left it...bad idea because it flew off my head at some point and there was no way I was going to find it after riding at 120kmh for 10km. Freaking stupid on my part. After taking way too many stops to enjoy France I got to Caen and began the Operanton Overlord historic route and cruised the Normandy Coast!

I started at Juno/Sword beaches and headed to Utah (east to west). This was dumb as the west beaches are way more significant to US people and way more informative and developed. I could have skipped Juno and Sword and not cared, because there's not much there. But I ended up skipping one of the most important, Omaha because i wanted to get to Utah so badly, and it was a solid 30 min of riding from the next closest beach.

Any way, the beach ride commended and was just stunning. Seeing the bay the harbor was created in to bring in supplies was crazy, standing in pill boxs and gun bunkers that German troops stood in and killed allied forces from was grim and impossible to comprehend. Standing on anti aircraft gun emplacements and walking through the craters and blown up bunkers of infamous Point Du Hoc where humans were incinerated to death was such a somber moment. And finally walking the length of Utah beach and taking some sand back in a couple of glass vials felt like a good way to remember the sacrifices of the thousands that lost their lives.

By the time I left Utah beach it was dark, and I had about half the distance of France to cover. I had some lofty goals of the mileage I could cover that night, until it started to downpour after 30 min of riding. And not just downpour, tsunami downpour. This rain was blinding, couldn't ride at all, and it soaked my everything in 10 min. I had no coverage or town to stop in so I had to ride on to Caen (about 60km away) to find a hotel because I was just fucking done at that point. I just prayed I didn't hydro plane on the way back.

By the time I reached Caen I was so far behind schedule I was never gonna make it back to return the bike on time so I emailed the guy saying I'd see him in the morning. I checked a few hotels to find the cheapest rate, and they kept getting more expensive or plain booked. I stopped back at the first hotel and asked for a room in such a desperate, frozen, tired and delirious state that it took the lady a few moments to process what I was asking. Luckily she was Canadian and spoke great English. She even let me park the bike in her garage on the backside of the hotel so it wouldn't get messed with. After parking the bike I went back to the hotel and she made me some rich French hot chocolate and a pastry, saying "here, you look like you need this." After a looooong hot shower and my humbling desert that quit room and soft bed felt like I was in heaven.

 

Wow! What an awesome adventure!

 

...^^^... Your occasional "traffic nightmare" is my everyday drive ... ... the main reason I don't have a M/T is heavy traffic ...

 

France: Tours Day 3:

I head out from the hotel in Caen at about 7:45 to ride all the way back to Tours. All motorway this time, no fun back or roads and WW2 iconic town pit stops. I have to return a bike. I'm doing about 110 to 130 km most of the way. By this point I'm a god damn master of French road ways, toll booths, and can handle crowded double round abouts and jammed city streets with the best of them. I got bored on the highway after a mile and when I felt like there were no speed cameras around I maxed out the bike at 170km for a while. I got back to the shop in Tours at about 11:30. Four hours of straight riding that morning.

Over the previous 36 hours Laurent (guy running the rental shop) estimated from his experience that I did about 700km...my trip came out to 962km. I did a ton of riding in a day and a half lol. It was only that manageable because of the extra clothing I got so I stayed warm, and the fact that I was on a touring bike, and not a Ducati monster like i wanted. Riding that Honda was like sitting in a lay z boy with handle bars. Such a comfy riding position, I could actually do it all day, which I did. If it was my crotch rocket I'd need a spine alignment after the first day!

One of the most fun and enlightening experiences I've had to date. Such a fun trip! Sadly the ride was done and I was off on a train to San Sebastián, Spain to wait out the weekend for my buddy Justin (who I was partying at Oktoberfest with for 3 days) to get back from Barcelona. Too bad after 4 fun days in San Seb I found out he didn't even live there!

 

Great trip! I love the WWII history, it's amazing to think of the great amount of people and equipment that once occupied those beaches.

 

Great read buddy. Finally caught up.

 

TOTALLY FORGOT! I Never actually updated anything from the very start of my trip. So here it is, sorry for jumping around the order:

Germany: Oktoberfest and my broken ankle

I landed in Stuttgard and was picked up by my last room mate and good friend Pat (the mustache guy). We had my first german beer outside the train station and got on a train to head to his student housing in Heilbronn. Had some stoop parties and wandered around the city with the other exchange students before heading off to Munich the day after. After riding the train to munich we drop off our things at the Air BnB and head out around the city before meeting the rest of the crew. The first thing we do is get on the U Bahn and go to the rathaus. He had done this before clearly, as we are taking the escelator up from the station and im looking forward at a nice looking building when he says "turn around" and boom this giant gothic building covered in flags just explodes out of nowhere, it was so impressive.

After some more wandering around we pick up Pat's friend rebecca, who is german and did an exchange semester at BSU, our friend tori who was visiting relatives in germany, and her friend justin who also goes to bsu and is studying in Spain. We have our first beers in a well known beer garden in a park in the city. We also get a nice tour of the city from pat who had visited a few times before. After cruising around the city we all have some beers and head back to the appartment pretty buzzed. At the train station we get up to the road and I see streams of drunk oktobersest goers heading down the sidewalks and closed off streets and there is a cop van with a bunch of cops around it...and they were playing music! Like pop music from the speakers on the roof! I hysterically started cheering and laughing because these cops werent arresting anyone for being drunk, or shooting people...nobody was afraid of these cops, they were just there to make sure everyone got home ok. It was so cool! The next day we visit Dachau concentration camp, and I get my first experience of the huge scale of these nazi camps. The following day is our big Oktoberfest day!

We grab breakfast and beers (which in germany are about .29 in the store) and take the train to the oktoberfest ground along with hordes of other well dressed oktoberfest goers, all while drinking our 8am beers. Many pictures were taken infront of the sign and we had into the hofbrau tent at about 10am, and secure a table with a couple of Kiwi girls. The day carries on as you would expect, with liter glasses of beer being consumed every 20 min or so (for the girls). There is a band playing pretty frequently, where everyone starts singing and chanting in german, then every now we bust out in a white stripes song or some weird soccer chant. And when I say we i mean the entire tent of thousands of people.

Every few minutes somone stands up on the table and chugs their beer, with varying degrees of success. If you do it without stopping, everyone cheers. If you have to stop people boo and throw food at you until you finish. I decided to take my turn, and in the classic style I rest the 100% full beer glass in my elbow and balance it in my mouth and begin to chug. A liter of beer is a lot to chug non stop, but I manage to do all of it without stopping. When i finished and got off the table I proceeded to burp for about 10 minutes, and my friends told my my eyes were glassed over and I just stared off in the distance for a while as my stomach returned to a normal level of functionality.

Torwards the end of my chug some cunt at table next to us threw a piece of pretzel at me (thought i was going slow) so we then caused a big food fight around us as we then pelted him and his table with our remaining pretzels. After spending 3 hours in that tent and a whole lot of beer we head to another tent and joined a scottish stag party. We drank with them until pat and justin went out of the oktoberfest grounds to sleep on a grassy knoll. Rebecca and I continued to drink more beer.

After pat's nap ended we all headed to a nice burger restaurant to have dinner, where about halfway through dinner the beer gets to me and i dont remember what the hell we did to get back. I guess they had to carry all of my stuff that I just left on the table and scattered around the restaurant.

The following day we all bought food in the morning, more booze, and headed off on an adventue to Schloss Neuschwanstein! The Disney castle. We get off the train, and take a bus up to the base of the castle. The castle was all booked up so we couldnt go in, so we headed off to the bridge above a gorge behind the castle where the famous pictures were taken. After our selfies and group pics were taken on the bridge i convince everyone to hike up higher to a ridge to watch the sun set around the castle. We had the infinite wisdom to bring a couple of bottles of wine with, so we all sat on this ridge, above this beautiful castle and watched the sun set. After that epic sight we hike down to the base in the town, and have to scramble to catch a couple of cab back to the train station or we would miss our train.

We got on the train with about 30 seconds to spare. After sitting down and conversing about our close call these two girls with back packs said hi, and could tell we were obviously americans from our accents, which after months of travel they were excited to have some americans to talk to. We ask them where they were from and to our disbelief they say they had recently graduated from boise state! All 5 of us had gone to BSU, and its not a well known school, so to find these two girls on this random train in germany that also went to bsu was a surprise. We proceed to freak out and exclaim a few "no ways". The rest of the train car looked at us like we were fucking nuts. After the train ride we exchanged fb info and had to go our separate ways.

On the way back to the appartment that last night the fateful ankle break happened. We were heading down a flight of stairs to a walkway and i decided to run down the adjacent ramp, try to jump over the handrail and clear the remaining 7 stairs. I landed, rolled my ankle and yelled a few expletives before limping back to the apartment.

The next morning we said good bye to tori, rebecca and justin as they got on their own trains and planes, and pat and I began the trip back to Heilbronn. With my broken grape fruit sized ankle we go to the bus station, only to find out i booked the wrong bus, at 3:30 am instead of our correct time of 3:30 pm. So we head to the train station and buy a couple of train tickets...while on the train waiting to leave it breaks and we change trains. After 5 hours of travel and 4 transfers we get to heilbronn and pass out for the evening.

 

San Sebastian Spain:

Alrighty, back on track. After departing france I hop on a little connection train to go to san sebastian in the Basque country. This is cool because Boise is the second biggest basque community next to the basque home land. So I get to see where this basque culture comes from. I get off the train in the evening and walk to the hostel, and they have a bed free so im good. While walking in to check in there are some people chilling on the patio, they say whats up, I say hi, and im immedietely spotted as an american (because they are also americans). They are about to head out on the town for some pinxos and sangria. I drop my stuff inside, go back and join them and we instead head to a little house party at one of the hostel employees places. At this party I meet an american ledbien hard core femmanist girl from utah who is studying in spain and almost immedietely offers her spare bed If i need it. Im find in hostel so i say thanks ill let you know. We end up playing kick the can in the street and me and this girl go on a political tirade until about 4am. great fun.

The next day i try to cook breakfast in the kitchen but i come to find out they have a fully stocked kitchen but only microwaves...so i make nuked scrambled eggs in the microwave, which turned out ok. I go with this other girl from the hostel who is renting a surf board and learning to surf in the bay in San Sebastian. After a that I just wander around the town some and explore on my own until the evening, when i run into this cool guy named chris from 'stralia. We head out with this other gal for a bit for some evening photography before she has to catch a bus, and chris and I meet these other two super cool 'stralian girls at the hostel and invite them to come have pinxos and bar crawl with us. Side note, pinxos is like tapas, so you go into bars and the counters are just full of little snacks/appetizers and you pick out what you want and pay for each piece. So we spend the night bar hoping and eating the strangest combination of tapas and drinking glasses of sangria. My favotites were the white squiggly bits ontop of the pieces of bread, and the octopus skewers. After an evening of pinxos sampling we do what any good bunch of auzzies would do, grab a goon bag and head back to the hostel to continute the party with everyone else.

The following day chris and I put into motion his plan of swimming to this island in the middle of the bay. The day started out great and sunny, but we got lost walking to the beach (even though it was about 500 meters from the hostel) and ended up taking almost 2 hours to get there, all while chris is barefoot and were both in board shorts. By the time we get to the beach ti had dropped to 18C and bacame over cast. The water was not warm (and my ankle was still broken) but somehow chris managed to convince me to keep swimming till we made enough distance that going back was the pussy way out. So this swim lasted about 30 minutes to get to the island. When we got there we walked around barefoot, saw an old foot, scared a family having a picknick when we emerged from the woods with just board shorts on, and went back to begin out swim to shore...when we saw a boat. There was a boat ferrying the picknicking family back to the beach from the island. We find someone who understands some English and ask if they can drop us off near the beach. They agree and about 100 yards from the beach we started at we bid them farewell and bail out of the boat to swim the rest of the way to shore.

All while we were doing this the girl from the other day that was practicing surfing came along and ended up not wanting to swim, so we asked her to make sure we didnt drown. After she lost sight of us when we made landfall on the island she began asking people for binoculars to try to find us. About the time we disembarked from the boat she came back with binoculars and a couple on the beach thinking we had died. She sees us walking up the beach, and the other couple she took the binoculars from was quite confused. So they headed off their own way since we werent dead. We all headed back walking through town dripping wet, covered in sand with our shirts off, which in northern spain apparently is very taboo to do. I checked out of the hostel and that evening I was supposed to catch a night train to portugal but i couldnt figure out how to book a spot, so i loaded up my bag and headed for the train station to get a ticket, only to find the train was fully booked. So i secured a ticket for the next day but had to figure out where to sleep...oh ya, the feminist lesbian utah girl. I try to reach her but she was out of town till the evening. So I sneak back into the hostel and steal their wifi till she got back and made sure i could crash there that night. At 9pm she said it was all good so I headed across town to her little flat. Where that evening we had a pretty damn good discussion of spanish politics and the differing views of the american political race.

I had a whole day to kill after that before my 7pm train, so i loaded up my pockets with some food and spent the day getting lost hiking through the hills above san sebastian that connected it to the little harbor down 3km away. They were some awesome ocean/cliff side views and it was a great tranquil day of trekking through the woods. I caught a bus back in time to casually grab my bag from her apartment and board the train.

All of that, 4 days and 3 nights in a town that I only went to so I could meet up with justin (who we were in germany with) and he actually lived in a town 35 minutes away. So I never even saw the guy before I decided I was done in northern spain and I wanted to head to Porto Portugal on the suggestion of a friend.

 

Love it! Safe travels!

 

lost ya at tapas loved those in spain.

 

Update: Highlight videos are up in the first post on page 1

 

I'm glad I somewhat made into your 2nd vid at the 2:50 mark.

 

Damn dude this is awesome. Makes me feel lik I'm just here wasting time though.

 

Sube'd. I did travel though Europe 26 years ago. Awesome life experience...good luck and stay safe.
PS: Do you drink mate?

 

Portugal:


Living in Jackson Hole now! But ill get to that later, next european update: From San Sebastian where i tried to meet up with my buddy from oktoberfest but wasnt even in the right city after 4 days...I headed off to portugal because my friend said Porto was a cool city.

Get to Porto...not impressed. It looks cool, there is a neat history about strong port wine and delicious food, there are some cool bars, i left my boise state student ID in one...but honestly was not enthused at all. I did hear about a rip curl surf championship happening 2/3 of the way down to Lisbon in a town called Peniche, which happens to be the surf capital of Portugal.

I cancel my other night at the Hostel in Porto and find a bus down to Peniche and secure a couple of nights in the Surf Lodge. Sad to see though when I got there they had good enough waves that the event finished 4 days early and they were packing everything up to leave. Still looking to enjoy the vibe in this little town focused around surfing and fishing, I rented a board and wet suit and went out with the gang from the surf lodge to catch some waves. I suck at surfing so I didnt catch but a few, however it was a fun and relaxing way to spend a few days. And it kept forcing me to make use of that broken ankle and see what I could do with it while it healed. Which wasn't much.

My time at the surf lodge finished and it was off to Lisbon. Lisbon was way cool and ended up being one of my favorite big cities I went to. I also got lucky and ended up at probably the best hostel in Lisbon, the Good Morning Lisbon hostel with events going on every night and some damn good waffles for breakfast. Sangria night was first followed by a night exploring the college section of town...I dont remember how or when I got back.

Hung over as hell the next day another guy and myself go out to catch a walking tour to hopefully make use of the lethargic morning. While on said tour i befriended a good looking tall german gal with blonde hair, and we take off after the tour together to explore the city. That then leads into spending the evening together on Lisbon's famous pink street, and ending at a bad ass Irish Pub with a kick ass band.

We spend the next day cruisng around the city checking out the sights and getting to know eachother's very different pasts. Shes been doing social work in Africa and has an obsession with Gaunea, as well as doing an exchange in Illinois. She shows me her prized family vacation traditional lunch...which is stuffing chips in a hollowed out roll...it was weird ha.

Lisbon was a portugese blend of San Francisco and Rio. There are yellow street cars every where, a golden suspension bridge, tons of hills...and a Giant Jesus statue across the river. The last day in Lisbon we head out to a town called Sintra, which has this castle compound built by this ruler who literally just wanted a castle. So he built mini guard towers, and mini dungeons in the hill side, and mini water fountains...it was a comically crazy endeavor this guy had to build a giant castle play ground.

The last stop in Sintra was a Moorish castle built 600 or some odd years ago on the mountain side looking down in the valley. My german friend happened to have a ton of post cards and she gave me one to write. So I got to write a post card of a castle while staring at the same castle. It was a very cool and peaceful experience. After dinner that night followed by cherry flavored liquor shots in chocolate shot glasses we said our good byes as I hopped on a bus to head back into Spain. After spending 3, almost 4 days together exploring the city and partying at night we became very close and it will be interesting to see where she is now!

 

Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

When @IDtrucks makes a new post in this thread, i'm like.....



Good stuff sir!