Trip route
The trip to Europe
[Tia] For this summer I think that the trip to Europe was a little too long because my the time I came home I felt like that our car looked different and we would always think that someone switched our car. Also the trip was soo tiering because we moved to so many different places we walked so much and sat in the car a lot. In my opinion I think that the trip to Europe was okay.
One of my least favorite parts of the trip is when we went to the bush place (another writing that I did that you can also read) because there wasn’t anything interesting to see, so we basically waisted 2 hours in a day. One of my favorite part of this trip is when we went to Toledo (also another writing that you can read) because there were many mini shops i can look in an there were many places we could eat for lunch.
I hope the next trip we go in any of the breaks but mainly the summer break would be better than this year.
Trip Final summary
I feel that Europe (Spain, Portugal, and France) was a very fun, painful, boring, thrilling trip, at some times we’re looking at castles, and bushes for multiple hours at a time, but other times we’re strolling through a city, buying some things here and there, eating food. So in the end, I feel like Europe, and everywhere you visit will all come down to what you are actually visiting, you can never give a final critique without visiting every last place in each country. For example, if you hate castles, and only visit castles in one country, then you would rate that specific country terribly, just because you have only seen one face of the country, on the other hand, if you only visit fun and places you enjoy in a certain county, then you would only have positive feelings towards it, none of the negatives. Without the right balances, everything will fall out of place, and not only that, a lot of ratings could tumble like dominos, you see a blog, just like the one you’re reading right now, you see all of the really good ratings, and you only visit those, you may possibly really like them, but you might also really hate them, so you really need to experiment by yourself.
So my overall rating for europe is very mixed, I have no exact “7.2/10” or 8.9/10”, I feel that everything is so dependent and therefore, I will just rate Europe a Cool Continent/Continent.
End Of Logan’s blogs
Nomadic Life
I like long vacations; a minimum of a month has always been my standard. It started with a one-month trip to Europe 30 years ago where I found I can complete disengage from work and came home refreshing. Then more trips of same or longer durations followed with various success in disengaging from reality. For our longest trip, cross country trip in 2006, we were gone for so long that my daughter forgot she had a home; she thought our van was our home, granted she was only 3 at the time.
Throughout these trips, we learned to travel without much planning, not necessarily knowing exactly where we may be going, only look ahead a day or so in advance. For camping type of trip, sometimes we drove until close to dinner time then started to look for camping road signs. For AirBnB type of trips, we would book a day or two in advance as we did for this trip, always on the go and not knowing really where we may be in a few days. We had the convenience of technology and civilization thus it was never a worry not finding a place to stay or food to eat. There are people who always wonder how we can do that without planning ahead but in reality, it was easy as long as one keeps an open-minded to everything.
I enjoy going to places that I don’t know much about it. Yes, I may miss some super famous attractions without planning ahead but it was usually replace with surprising discovery of unexpected things. I wonder what was like for pioneers centuries ago traveling to unknown country, not knowing if there would be water, food or what danger laid ahead. We had it easy, a GPS telling us where to go, grocery stores to buy food and water, comfortable home to live with entertainment compared to pioneers with their compass and sticks, bows and arrows for food, river for water, and slept out in the open with perhaps predators as entertainment. Perhaps they were closer to our backpacking trips but traveling by car was a luxury. I have no complaints.
My family is also used to this type of travel, packed light and always on the go. New AirBnB places and Grocery stores were a source of fun and discovery for every new place we visited and getting lost could also provide some entertainment along with some mishaps, without them, how could it be an adventure! Just get in a car and drive, have a blast; you never know what you would encounter and a memory to treasure.
Marbella and Taiwan
As we were sitting down for lunch in an outdoor restaurant in Marbella, it all the sudden hit me that I felt I was in Taiwan: the humid heat, lots of busses, cars, motorcycles and pedestrians everywhere. Most of European towns are known for their narrow streets but here there was a busy wide street with lots of traffic noises with it, it almost felt that I was transported back to Taiwan; of course, the food brought us back to reality.
At the end of the lunch when they brought us the check, it seemed to be reasonable but Bryden took a look and recognized that they didn’t charge us for one lunch item. He insisted that we needed to tell the waiter and I told him that he could do it himself. I was surprised that he actually did that because he always not wanted to talk to people if he could avoid. We were proud of him for doing that.
La Alhambra, The bush place
[Tia] The bush place one of the second most torturing place we have bean so far. I really wished I didn’t go, even Logan was suffering with me. I know i know, you are probably thinking what is this bush place and how it would be torturing. I’m telling you, it was the worst thing everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. let me start at the beginning of my little story.
My family and I were going some ware (at the beginning I didn’t even know where we were going) we packed some things like water, lunch, a fan and few other things. we went in the van and got to the bush place about 15 minutes later. once we got into the big place area we paid for 5 tickets and wondered around the place since it wasn’t time to look in the old building. we saw some stores to buy souvenirs ice cream to stay cool and cool little pocket sized mirrors. we then started looking at things that are more part of the old city. we saw many trees together that made us think that it was a maze, but turns out to be a little garden with trees blocking us seeing the flowers from the outside. This was when i started to want to go back to the Airbnb because I was disappointed and I knew I was going to get even more d when we go further. After we went threw the fake maze we started to see things that is more related to the place stuff. There is when me and Logan started to complain to mommy a lot because it was really starting to become a waist of time. It really was a waist of time. All there was to see were plants mainly bushes (that’s why the title is called the bush place.) I don’t even want to talk about it, it was soooo dreadful even me writing about it makes me want to go back to the Airbnb even though I’m writing my story in one. Do you want to read more about my story that I will be complaining half the time?
Tap on one of the options
YES or NO
If you taped on NO then you don’t need to keep reading, If you taped on YES then you keep on reading. Very simple.
After we went through the garden I started to super complain. It was starting to get hot and it was soo boring there because we barely did anything. We still had to wait for like 2 hours till we could see what we came for. I was soo mad about it that I wanted to go home already even though it was only 2nd day into the trip. Anyways, there’s not much to say since we basically did nothing there but we did get ice-cream and souvenirs, but overall just walked. My legs were really tired and we still had wait in line for about 15 minutes to get into the palace. The palace was even more boring there was still nothing to see and more bushes. Also in the middle of walking me, Logan and daddy got ahead of Kadia and mommy, so we had to wait for like an extra 10 minutes.😡 I think that it took us like an hour till we were done looking threw the palace and we still had to walk back to the car that is more walking. La Alhambra, The bush place is my least favorite place that we have bean.😡
Why is US Bottled Water So Expensive?
A couple days ago I went to Trader Joe’s, and at that point I started to realize how much more expensive the US is compared to Europe. In Europe we could get a dozen of eggs for just 1-2 Euros, but here in the US it was about 4-5 dollars per dozen. Not only were the eggs expensive, everything was way more than in Europe the meat was more expensive, the fruits and veggies were more expensive, frozen goods and more were all so much more expensive.
After seeing all of these price differences, I started to wonder why the US (at least our area) was so much more expensive than Europe. My simplest answer would be that our area is super popular, hence more people, and more people means higher demand. Even though I had already seen insane price differences, I was not ready for this, the water.
Here in the US, there was a 1.5 liter bottle of water for about $1.50, but in Europe that would only be about 20 cents (if you look in the right place), and this is crazy because the US’s water is 7.5 times more expensive?!?! Like there is no way that these prices are correct because then water bills in the US would be through the roof, but hey, maybe US water is just “higher quality”.
Starting to watch Avatar
[Tia] Ever since we stayed at the third place that had Netflix me and Logan wouldn’t stop watching avatar. We would at least watch 2 or more episodes almost everyday, we were so interested in the show that we are already half way threw the second season(well at least Logan is). At one point when we were watching Logan got ahead of me, so now we are in two different episodes. Logan is on S2E19 and I’m on S2E2. he’s almost a whole entire season ahead of me!
I’m continuing this writing a few days later, there’s a few changes now that I kind watched a lot of episodes today. Let me tell my small story but i will be leaving out some details. Today everybody except me and Bryden went to the beach, so in the meantime I watched some avatar. But I got out of control and just kept watching more and more episodes till I caught up to Logan that is episode 4 in season three.
I’m continuing this writing again at home. Me and Logan already finished Avatar the last air binder a few days later. I wanted to be another season in the show but there isn’t. But we found another show that is connected to Avtar the last air bender, called The legend of Korra that is about 60 years later. Right now I’m on season 1 episode 13. I’m so happy that we started to watch Avatar because it’s such a funny and adventures tv show.
The baby playground
[Tia] The last place we went had a baby playground it was so fun. Me and Logan would go on the seesaw and up and down, up and down, up and down… since Logan was heavier than me I would go up have a little jump and land on the board again. My butt bone would hurt a little after we were done playing on the seesaw because my butt hit the board too many times. both days we played on the playground, going on the swings, playing on the seesaw and climb up the slide/sliding down. The baby playground was the only entertainment I had because there was no tv in the Airbnb so that was the only fun thing to do there. I am very happy that the baby playground there or i would be board out of my head.
Seesaws
Who would know that seesaws, a simple children playground apparatus, can bring so much joy on the trip for our kids. Every time they saw a seesaw on the trip, they would run toward it and had a great time playing on it. Something so simple yet so joyful…reminding me of a simple life may equal to a happy life.
2022 Spain Trip 