Pintxos in San Sebastian

After our week with Jessica, we continued our trip down the Basque coast and ended up in San Sebastian, Spain.  San Sebastian, also known as Donostia, is a really cute coastal town which also happens to be one of the top culinary places in the world.  They are known for their Pintxos - small snacks, similar to tapas, that are traditional in Northern Spain. 


We stayed in the old part of San Sebastian where there are no cars and multiple Pintxos bars on every block.  We quickly learned that the thing to do around here is "pinxtos-bar hopping".  That is, you peek into the bar to see if anything catches the eye, grab an item or two (~2 euro per item) plus a glass of wine (1 euro), and enjoy... once you're done, hop off to the next pintxos-bar that catches your eye and keep repeating until you are so full that you need someone to roll you home.


And that pretty much summarizes how we spent all 5 of our days here - working by day and pintxos-bar hopping by night :)

Occasionally, we ate so much that we had to walk it off, so we checked out the rest of the city and surrounding beach areas :)

Ridge walking the border between France and Spain

Before splitting off with Jess so that she could go hang out with her dad, we decided to all meet up with him and his girlfriend Lena to do a "small" (so they said) hike through the Pyrenees Mountains.  On paper, the hike didn't sound too bad... a 15 km ridge walk between the small town of Bidarray and Saint-Étienne-Baigorry.  Dom’s hip had been acting up since Berlin, so we just planned to do what we could and double back before it hurt too much. 


Turns out we missed the memo about the hike being more like 15km "as a bird flies, and very hilly", so we were a little ill-prepared water-wise.. oops!  What we thought would be a 3-4 hour hike actually ended up being 8 hours.  We realized it was too late to turn back when we arrived at the sign we thought was indicating the end of the ridge, and it turned out to be the half way point sign... might as well continue then! :)


In the end it was a really great outing.  The scenery was amazing, Jen and Jess had a great time stalking the miniature horses, and it was time well spent in excellent company.  We were all feeling pretty happy when we arrived home :)



Here is where we were :)  

The red dot is Bidarray, and we went all the way along the border to Saint-Étienne-de-Baigorry.

Biarritz with Jessica

Our UK work visas expired mid-April, so we had to leave London.  Our client, knowing that we like to travel, asked if it would be any trouble for us to try to stay somewhere near the same timezone.  It just so happened that our old roommate, Jessica, was planning to visit her dad in France at the end of April, so the timing couldn't have been better!  We met up with her in Bordeaux, had breakfast the next morning, and hopped on the train for our next destination, Biarritz.


As usual, we spent our days working while Jess did some pre-exploring of Biarritz.  In the evenings we walked along the coastline absorbing the beautiful coastal scenery, ate ice cream, and tried out a few restaurants.  Most importantly, we hunted down the local bakery to get our fill of proper French bread, cheese, and wine.


On the weekend, we rented a car to visit a couple other coastal towns in the area including Bayonne,


and St-Jean-de-Luz

Berlin

Since the weather in Europe was finally starting to warm up, we decided to escape the busy streets of London to check out Berlin.  

After an exhausting week of work, we decided to spend the first day just relaxing and randomly wandering the city on our own.  Of course one of the first things we had to try was the bratwurst from the (tourist-trap) biergarten in Alexanderplatz!  After hours of wandering, the warm weather drew us in for a rest in the park in front of the Reichstag building where we both drifted off for a sunny late-afternoon nap on the lawn.


To get a better sense of the history, we decided to do a tour with Fat Tire Bike Tours.  We were really glad we did because it ended up being a highlight of our trip!  Although we revisited several sites that we had already seen, our guide, Andrew, was super energetic and passionate about the city, so he provided some really amazing insights into the history and politics, as well as giving us recommendations for other areas to check out.  The tour also stopped off for lunch at a really cute restaurant with great food, in the heart of Berlin's city park.  Jen tried the schnitzel.. conclusion: Yumm!!!!  


We were surprised to learn that Berlin is a relatively new city (in European terms), and that the region was all swamp-land prior to the second world war, so most of the tourist sites were built in the last century (WW2 and Communist Era). As we rode through the streets, the very light traffic and spacious sidewalks were very noticeable... it just felt so quiet compared to other major cities.

A couple of random tour facts that we found interesting:
- You can be fined if you are caught doing a nazi salut in town.
- The Allies never bombed the Reichstag government building because it served as a good reference point for bombing other key parts of the city.
- The statement in JFK’s famous speech, 'Ich bin ein berliner,' translates literally to "I am a jelly doughnut".
- As you walk through the city you notice a lot of old-looking statues/gargoyles sitting on very new-looking buildings.  This is because during the war, many of the statues and monuments were taken off of the buildings and were buried or thrown into the canal in hopes that they would survive the war.  After the bombed buildings were re-built, the original statues were placed back onto the new buildings.


We also heard that Berlin has a great graffiti scene, so we did a bit of online research and went searching for them.


Lastly, of course, we made the obligatory visit to the infamous part of the Berlin wall :)

Hungarian Easter

Since we were working in London, we decided to fly to Hungary for Easter break, to visit our friends Peter, Krisztina, Bogi, and their new son Balázs.  Unfortunately for us (and our friends), we both came down with a really bad flu just as we were leaving London so we ended up spending almost the full 4 days in bed!  :( :(.

Lucky for us, they took really great care of us.  We still manage to do a few small outings while we were there, including going across the border to Slovakia for dinner!


On our last day, we regained enough strength to visit a typical northern Hungarian village.  During Easter, there is a fun old tradition here, where guys go around town throwing water at the girls, so the girls all got splashed :)

Alternative London

London has an awesome graffiti culture. To learn more about it, we did a 4 hour graffiti tour&workshop with Alternative London.  
http://www.alternativeldn.com/original_street_art_tours/london_street_art_tour.php

We spent the first hour of the tour walking through the streets as our guide, Kia, opened our eyes and minds to the world of London street art.  His excitement and passion were contagious, so we both gained a new appreciation for the various styles and works that he pointed out to us.  


The most fascinating piece that we NEVER would have noticed without taking this tour was done by a street artist who paints the gum that's stuck to the sidewalks!!


We returned to their office, a big green bus in a yard, and started to make our own graffiti stencils.  They taught us some basic techniques using the spray cans and then set us loose to test our our graffiti skills on the practice boards!


The tour was so interesting that on our way home, we decided to detour through Bricklane - another area known for its street art. 


Our London graffiti experience wouldn't be complete without checking out the Millennium Bridge.  You could basically walk the entire bridge without ever noticing anything (and most people do!).  If you look down and pay close attention, you'll start to see the hundreds of pieces of gum that have been painted!






The Tail of London Winter

So after 2 nice warm winter months in Vietnam we were called back to London, earlier than expected, and just in time to experience the tail end of London's winter.  Let’s just say that London in February is really cold and... not that exciting.. but we made the best of it!

We had Chris bring our "work luggage" to Vietnam since it sounded like we might have return to London early.  The day before we left for Vietnam, we had thrown the luggage together in a rather frantic "just-in-case" state of mind, so it was somewhat ill-prepared - just enough work items to wear something different each day.. which is great if you're only here for a week, but it really started to get noticeable after 10! 

Within a week of arriving, London got snow.. not a lot of snow, but enough to cause a bit of excitement since it's a somewhat rare occurrence here.  We tried to stay warm by checking out few museums and markets that we hadn't been to previously.


Besides weather-shock, we also experienced some sticker shock going from $0.75 Banh-Mi Vietnamese subs in Mui Ne, to $6 vegetarian subs in London.


We splurged on a couple of movie nights to keep from going too stir crazy in our little apartment.  We saw "Kingsman: The Secret Service" (admission ~$25/person), and "Suite Francaise" at the Electric Theather (admission ~$36/person)!. 

We also opted to attend a geeky weekend at the Swift Summit (a 2-day conference on Apple’s new programming language, Swift).


We also paid about $50/person to have ourselves locked inside a room for an hour, with 2 of our friends.  Hint Hunt is a real-life "escape room" where you have 1 hour to search the room for clues, and solve puzzles that will lead to being able to escape out of the room.  We were a bit nervous and unsure of what to expect but we all really enjoyed it and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a fun and unique experience!  We won't say anything more about it since we don't want to ruin the experience for anyone :)


Last, but not least, we met and worked with lots of great people!!

Holiday-making in HCMC

Since Peter, Chris, and ourselves were all leaving Vietnam on the same day, we decided to share a van from Mui Ne back to Ho Chi Minh City the day before our flights.  

When we met up with Peter, he seemed stressed.. his wife, Krisztina, had gone into labour earlier that morning.  The first half of the journey felt long through construction and typical Vietnamese traffic, and just as we were leaving town, our driver rear-ended the car infront of us (small fender-bender).  ~3 hours later, Peter got a call with news that their new son, Balázs, had arrived and both the baby and Krisztina were doing well!! :).  We felt bad that he had missed the birth of his son by just 1 day, but we also felt fortunate to be there to celebrate the news with him :)

We wanted to bring Chris on Neville's amazing foodie tour, but Hoi An was a little too far out of the way, so we opted to try out XO Foodie Tours in HCMC.  We wanted to bring Peter too so that he could experience a touristy night of "holiday-making" in Vietnam before heading home.  

4 girls in traditional Vietnamese dresses picked us up and motorbiked us around the various districts of HCMC, while stopping periodically to taste different local foods along the way.  Since it's a Hungarian tradition to celebrate a baby's arrival with drinks, Peter served up shots for everyone in our group to help him celebrate.  


For Peter and ourselves, most of food was stuff we had eaten in Vietnam before, but we did enjoy riding through the city.  The girls were good company - they were super friendly and made sure you had fun by feeding you, asking questions, and talking to you about their lives in Vietnam.

The one menu item that none of us had tried before, and still haven't except for Chris (of course!), was the chicken embryo egg… iiiich!!!

Chris joins us in Mui Ne

After some (2 years of) light convincing, Chris decided to join us in Mui Ne to get a taste of what we love so much about Vietnam and our Kitesurfing family.

He did really great!  After only 10 hours of lessons with Surfpoint, he passed the learning phase, so he and Dom could alternate equipment - Dom would bring the board up-wind and Chris would ride back down.  However, that didn't last long...


Within a couple of days, Chris was able to go out on his own and earned the nickname “The Machine” because he was so dedicated to improving, that he would outlast everyone else on the water.


When not kitesurfing, we took him to all of our favourite spots for eating.  Chris reinforced his title of "The Machine" by out-eating everyone several times over!


3 weeks passed super fast and it was time for us to return to London.  Chris was headed back home, with a little wooden wine-keg addition for the house.  We were amazed that he was actually able to fit it into his only (carry-on!) luggage… :)


We had a really fun and memorable time sharing our Mui Ne experience with him.. hopefully he had enough fun to join us again next year!  ;)

Making Graffiti with Color Nomads

Ok, "making" is a bit of an overstatement..  :)

This year in Mui Ne, we met Peter's graffiti crew friends named the “Color Nomads”.  Dom was super excited and asked if he could help a little bit, and they agreed to let him help fill in the base colours on one of the walls.  It was just a small contribution, but Dom was really happy to get a real-life intro into the world of graffiti and meet some great people in the process.  Thanks Dhal, Pest and Bane! :)


Here is the end result:


And here's a cool video that Fabian did of their trip: