Friday 10th August

So it's finally hit me that within a few days time I will be alone and have only myself left for the rest of my holiday, that for half of my time in Europe I'll have been with friends and the other half I won't be. But I'll start and end my trip with family and that's all you need. By the end of this trip I’ll have done a contiki with 49 people for three weeks, been with Renata and Justin for a total of just over 5 weeks, traveled with Alicia for over 4 weeks, traveled solo for just under 4 weeks, be with family for a little over 2 weeks in total and then camp with Nicole for 3 nights. I’ve seen friends along the way who are also traveling around Europe and some who live in Europe. These are the things that make me realize how much fun I’m actually having on my trip and no matter what I’ll always remember everything. If my mind fails me I have my blog and if my blog fails me I have my photos and videos.

All I did today was book my accommodation for Porto, Lisbon, Madrid, some for research for Barcelona and then booked my flight into Porto from Brussels and my flight out from Barcelona to Zurich. I decided to just remove the days I was planning on spending in Nice and just fly to family because I can’t be bothered with traveling for an extra few days just to see some water. I was in Nice for a day, which was enough for me for now. Later in life I can do that and I can do it right.

There wasn’t a lot of exciting things to do today because I just wanted to get all my bookings done, but I felt rather tired and unwell because of my nose and cough. It might be that I do have something and I haven’t gone to the doctor for it yet, but I really can’t be bothered. So I got the keys off Justin and went back to the apartment and had a nap. I got up and felt heaps better, but still a little tired, so I went back to see Renata and Justin in Galeria. I asked at the train station a question to the lady at the info desk, who I thought spoke English, apparently she didn’t, so lucky for me I had Renata to translate everything. So it turns out I can get savings tickets but only online and I can also buy a EUrail ticket. But I’d rather stay away from it because if that ticket gets lost or stolen then it costs several hundreds of dollars and I’d rather not lose something important like that. It’s not like a lost passport which will just cost $100 to replace; these are about $500 at the least. Afterwards we went for a walk around to some sights and up on a hilltop which overlooked the entire city, which was pretty amazing. Seeing the city yesterday during the day was awesome, seeing it at night all lit up was amazing.