Rotterdam!

hey cool today I caught the train down from Leiden to Rotterdam it was awesome! loads of stuff got destroyed in the war and these crazy dutch redesigned and rebuilt some crazy stuff, one of my favourites was the cube houses!




and then I saw the mind blowing walk of fame containing the hand prints of all the most amazing celebrities


I got buffered by the wind a bit at the crazy Erasmus bridge , saw some cool war monument and a lot of flags, tonight its pizza and movie night! crazy Spanish horror films yeah!
Dean stayed at home today and watched Everton play Liverpool, they lost so he had turned it off by the time i got back ahaha

ps. the weather looks bad today but yesterday it was actually pretty warm and sunny!

Laundry In Leiden

Godzilla Attacks!?!

hey guys so I caught the train down to Leiden today and met up with dean and moved into his spare room! then we went down to the Hague and tore up Madoradamm which was basically a 1:25 replica of Holland and the amount of detail was hilarious

amstel damm

hello guys im in amsterdam at the moment! its really cold and snowed quite a bit, the day I arrived after 'sleeping' in milan airport i was so tired, i basically wandered around the streets and did some shopping, cooked up some food and fell asleep at like 7pm haha then I only woke up at about 10.45 ran down to the free tour place and learnt a ton about where amsterdam came from basically its just because they built a dam called the amstell dam next to where they founded the town so they put the words together or something haha last night me and some cool dudes from Reading wandered around china town and the red light district its so so bizzare ALSO they have these burger vending machine places called 'FEBO' and you put your money in and then open a door and grab a burger its so so bizzare haha today im going to try and check out the van gogh mueseum and try and find somewhere to upload pictures of snow covered houses and canals and funky statues, no hookers though they dont like having their photos taken



staying safe

Sam x

street art update

ok heres a bit more street art i've seen recently on the tripbehind la boqueria , barcelona
the gothic quarter barcelona
nearby segrada familia, Barcelona
unknown, Milan
down by the canals, Milan

Postcards from Italy

leanardo da vince statue, one of milans most famous residents, he suggested they should build canals to move the marble to the centre of town to build the duomo (below) and thats exactly what milan did, Da Vinca totally redesigned the way locks and stuff worked to move the marble uphill it was pretty cool.
yeah this is the Duomo it doesnt look so good on film but in real life its mind blowing, the pink and white marble absorbs the sun and it shines so bright and its jut mindblowingly big and a good example of newer gothic architecture (lots of spires and points!)
its like a tradidtion to grind you shoe on the testicles of this bull whenever you walk past and here a lady is making her baby do it, apparently you get good luck and maybe its true because today when i checked out of the hotel they didnt charge me for any of my phonecalls only 2€ for the can of coke i had out of the minibar!
the duomo again looking majestic, this is when I was deciding to pay €7 euros to take the lift or €5 for the stairs to the top
i chose the stairs, here is me looking exhausted

heres the park i spent the morning chilling in with some stolen croissants and baked delights from the hotel , I also played the Ukelele

this is a big castel and the defences were designed by Da Vinci, it didn't stop the spanish but they probably got really burnt by the burning tar holes and stuff

these guys played the theme tune to the antique roadshow

the most mind blowing pizza Al Tonno I have ever had serious, it was amazing

this coffee was from a really expensive restauraunt inside the big shopping hall next to the duomo which has like the Prada shop in and stuff, theres classic music in the centre and mindblowing coffee, other than the bulls testicles being replaced a few times and some glass that got destroyed in WW2 this place has been the same for hundreds of years and is still a hub of world fashion

Barcelona Photo Album

ok so I finally caved today and bought a SD card reader for 9 euros in Milan so now I should have no problem uploading photographs, seeing as you guys haven't seen any of barcelona yet Ill start there...

amazing church gaudi designed I went here and to the park he built and lived in with this ace couple from Minnesota who were studying spanish near madrid and they could both speak really great spanish so we bought a whole fish at the market and made a gourmet meal for about 3€ each haha
all the streets were so narrow and getting lost in them was so amazing because there were non stop shops everywhere all really unique and bizzare
some dude drawing a cityscape on the stairs up to the olympic stadium
flower
Las Ramblas is so crazy its full of hookers and pickpockets and people pretending to be statues and flower stalls and musicians and magicians and animals no kidding I could spend a good two hours strolling down at a leisurely pace watching everythings go on, in fact on my last day I sat at one of the cafes at the side and ordered a coffee just so I could people watch without getting disturbed

my room, it had an awesome balcony
fake armani sunglasses €3 haha best price ever
buena vista social club jamming out
just off la ramblas is the craziest market ever you could buy actually any food items you wanted including like cow brains and big squids
the beach where I tanned up it was really good weather and very hot! I had to pay a ridiculous price for sun cream though!

ok this internet cafe is full of people shouting im going to move haha

longg time since we spoke

hey blog I didn´t forget about you but ive been busy and there is NOWHERE in barcelona to use the internet or upload photos =( anyway its my last day today im going to go to the beach and paddle and sleep and smile and have some fun! I also bought a Ukelele (?) for ten euros yesterday! such a bargain! I´ve been everywhere in Barcelona worth going , did a tour of the gothic district and went to the olympic stadium, swam in the medditerenean, celebrated st patricks day , saw a lot of Gaudis work everywhere including the park he built and lived in it was so good!

the weather has been awesome too I have tan lines

yo

hi guys im just letting you know im still alive and im having a wild time in barcelona and saw some touristy stuff yesterday im going to the beach today! ill find somewhere i can post some pictures and stuff

talk soon
Sam

dark clouds over berlin

hi! today is my last day in berlin and the heavens have opened up :O so im chilling in possibly the cheapest internet cafe in the universe with a coca cola

been doing lots of stuff since I last typed so ill give you a rundown

on the 12th I bought like this Berliner Mueseum Pass it was like 9.50 euros for students and got you entry to most of the mueseums in Berlin for 3 days! Alot of the main muesuems are really close together on mueseum island in the centre of the city so I tried to get round a few!

I started at the national gallery and saw some fine arts nowhere near as impressive as the collections in Paris but still some stars.

then to the Pergamon mueseum which really is like a definite place to visit if you guys ever go to berlin, it houses loads of ancient monuments and stuff that have been excavated and rebuilt in this massive mueseum one of the highlights is definitely the pergamon gate you got a free audio guide thing too to guide you around the whole mueseum so I learnt a ton about ancient history! it really is unlike any other mueseum ive been to!

just round the corner was the egyptian mueseum which has one of the best collections of egyptian sculptures in the world i got a free audio guide there too and it rocked out some really cool information about Egypt that night me, Jane & Kate (from australia) and Erin (from montreal, canada) ate at this really cool restaurant underneath one of the train stations it had big high brick ceilings and awesome columns and paintings on the wall and every time a train went over the whole place would rumble it was really cool and had a great atmosphere even though they didn't like giving us tap water, i had like the biggest burger in the world !
yesterday I saw THE TOPOGRAPHY OF TERROR an exhibition about the SS and Gestapo in the excavated remains of their secret HQs basement where they used to intensively interrogate innocent dudes it was very shocking and interesting and well presented, eavesdropping on the tour guide next to me was good too!

after a coffee and cake break we went down to the Mueseum of Jewish History and learnt all about jews and jewish stuff it was in this crazy building designed by a dude called Daniel Libeskind with like these big weird empty voids and disorientating gardens it definitely was moving and informative and not the big dusty boring mueseum i was expecting

after a pretty heavy day of history we thought we would treat ourselves and indulge in some german delicacies at the massive food floors of Ka De We (the german equivalent of selfridges)

we sampled the finest saurkraut ,currywurst (region of berlin speciality basicallz a sausage covered in spicy tomato sauce and curry powder) and rostbratwurst it was super tasty!

then we went to an irish pub drank far too much berlin style beer and rocked out some oasis covers it was fun!
now im checked out of the hostel, my bags are in the luggage store and im ready for my flight to Barcelona at 5 this morning where im meeting this australian girl, Ellen who I met in paris, shes been there for a few days now so hopefully ill get a tour

australian girls love me!

speak soon

sam x