This week

Beach, beach, beach.

Swimming, swimming, swimming.

Holidays, holidays, holidays.

And also some other stuff, of course :)

Getting ready for Malta

It is late, so I will not write a lot, but...!

Today we rented online our car for our trip to Malta, which starts in one week. Yippi!

Plan - two days in Gozo, three days in the main island and then a wonderful Maltese/Polish wedding in one of the most beautiful cities in the world (Mdina).

I haven't been to any wedding for years and I really like them, so looking forward to that.

Apart from that - sun, beach, hopefully swimming, showing Michael around the beautiful island, eating a lot of good, fat food and desserts, memories and meeting long-time-not-met people.

In short: holidays, here we come!

Balkan mission

I have never been in Balkans myself (although - it depends if Bulgaria and Greece are in Balkans), but I decided to post a link of Facebook group "Project: where does our Yugo end?"

Four crazy Dutch guys went to Bulgaria last week to buy a typical Balkan car there. After buying a zastava for pretty good price, they are now travelling around Balkans and exploring these amazing countries in their "new" car.

Check the pictures and follow their stories online!

10 pages about Estonia

Finally it happened!

Some of you might remember that in April for a few days I went to lovely Estonia to check out five star hotels, conference centers, restaurants and other places in Tallinn and Tartu. It was a wonderful trip!

When my Estonian friends asked me about the reason of my trip, I told that I have joined a FAM trip, organised by Estonian Convention Bureau. While other people were thinking if it's worth to host international conferences from their organisations exactly in Estonia, my role was to gather information for an article.

Today I finally got the copy of the article - wonderful destination report on 12 pages (two covers + 10 pages with text) about Estonia for Headquarters Magazine, who also payed me a nice amount of money, of course!

Read it here!

Bike trip to Muiderslot

Yesterday we decided to have a short bike trip and visit Muiderslot, a nice castle around 15km away from Amsterdam. Previous two times when I was there, it was closed (wrong timing) and I learnt that parking a car is quite expensive, so a decision was made - it has to be by bike and during daytime!

It took around 90min to go there with our city bikes and against the wind - not very nice. However, Muiderslot turned out to be a very, very nice and cute castle. I can imagine kids feeling like in paradise there as there were so many activities they could do - exploring the castle, dressing up like princesses and knights, playing several games and going on a guided tour led by other kids (last year primary school).


I do not know if it's always, but yesterday there was also a falcon and his master, showing the falcong flying around and telling more about falcons in the country.

On the way back we decided to take a small detour and cycle via Weesp, which is just 3km away. Didn't spend so much time there, but it looked a small and nice town as well (bigger than Muiden).

A tip - all shops seem to be closed on Sundays in Muiden and the service in restaurants is quite slow, so bring your own water bottle!

Nothing will stop him from travelling

"For 27 years old Hungarian Barnabás Nagy travelling is not the same as for most of us, young people. Mostly all we need to do is decide where we have not been yet, get a ticket and be on the way to our holiday place. It is not the same for Barnabás as he needs at least one month to prepare for any trip abroad, paying the utmost attention to accommodation and public transport. Being physically handicapped and walking with two sticks, Barnabás is exploring the world in his own way."

That is the beginning of an article I wrote for Libertas Magazine - my first article for them!

Full article you can read here.

Saarschleife

I have been looking at this view almost every day for several months in a row by now (as it is Michael's PC desktop picture and I am using his PC). This weekend I finally had a chance to see the view in the reality as well.

What am I speaking about? About the interesting nature and world we are living in, an amazing loop the river Saar is doing in Germany.

It turns out that it is less than an hour drive from Trier, so during Easter we went there and I had a chance not only to see this view, but also to go from the highest point up down to the river itself. Next time it would be nice to bike along Saar and enjoy the view there!

Finally - Portugal

I suck with Google Maps. I just tried to make a nice map of Portugal, noting down places where did we go and how did we go, but I didn't manage.

So I opt for the easier (and more ugly) option, called Paint.

I hope you can understand something here. I circled all the cities we have been in green and also tried to make it clear what was our itinerary. You should click on the map to see it better.

Just to make it clear once again, I will also list it down here:
- Porto
- Coimbra
- Covilhã (long way via Vise) and Torre
- Lourinhã (long way via Lisbon), Peniche and Baleal
- Lisbon
- Faro, Almodovar and some countryside villages

All trip in total took 9-10 days (I think, it was nine nights) and we were travelling a lot, as you can imagine from the amount of places visited. Everything was just great and I am now longing to return back and see more of Portugal!

Going Dutch

I know that I have been treating my readers and blog really bad, but last week I was in Estonia (press trip) and this week I have my mum and sister over here in Amsterdam, so I was completely out of time and/or tired to write anything.

On Sunday Michael, me and my sister went to Volendam, which was completely overcrowded with tourists and therefore not so enjoyable. We also decided to be typical tourists taking a typical touristical picture, which you can see here. Despite not so good service it was fun, especially me remembering taking almost the same picture with two other people around 1996 (my first trip to the Netherlands).

Upcoming trip to Portugal

Although I have a few topics in mind, I do not feel like writing at the moment, so I will simply say ask if anybody of you has ever been to Portugal, has some friends there or can suggest something to do there?

In less than two weeks we are going to Portugal for 10 days and it's one of the few European countries I have never been to - so looking forward to the trip very much. We are arriving in Porto and leaving from Faro, so planning to visit different cities and couchsurf everywhere. I wrote to all my contacts in Portugal, but not all of them are responding (and I didn't have so many anyway).

Any tips and contacts will be appreciated!