Portugal-surfing waves and couches

So we "biked" to our last stop, Porto in Portugal!

And everyday we went to "our" beach, Matosinhos.

(pronounced Matozeenyosh!! Weird....)

And we went to surf school!

Onda Pura for real surfers muthafukkas.

Waiting for waves. 

(Note the flattering super-white waterproof sunscreen. Like the pros.)

Happy surfers!!!! Iiiiiih! SURF! <3

(Those wetsuits though, seriously - putting them on is no joke. Half the anguish and calories burnt in surfing are due to wetsuits.)

Excited to get up early for surfing.

Wihoo surfing IRL, aka out of surfschool! Note the clouds. Isadora thought she could skip sunblock. She thought wrong.

But mostly we just waited for waves.

Cause as usual, out timing was off and there was like no waves. And no sun.

But we persevered, we kept coming back to Matosinhos.

We'd buy some snacks.

And be horrified at the amount of plastic bags used by portuguese supermarkets!!!

To distract ourselves we went sightseeing.

And stayed at many different places.

Words of wisdom from one hostel.

Yes, this is for real. The hostess at this hostel even timed how long we used the stove.

We didn't stay long.

But then we got in touch with some awesome couchsurfers! Hehe yeah and their kitchen was like something from Lemony Snickets a Series Of Unforunate Events. Come to think of it, that could be an undertitle to our trip...

Our host and roomie had different takes on health.

Our friend Joao tried to explain to us why there were no waves, it didn't manage to cheer us up.

So he took us to his concert instead.

And made us dance folkdance. It was absolutely terrifying as everyone else knew the steps!

Surfpals and surflove.

The waves did come back!!! Surf back on track!

But by then we had to leave. This was all our luggage for two and a half weeks by the way, if you were thinking "hmm, looks like they're wearing the same clothes ALL the time!", it's cause we were.

(Note the hamster bag from Holland)

ADIYOSHHH PORTO WE WILL MISS YOU!!!!

We'll be back.

Paris

So we ditched the bikes and took a bus to Paris!

And saw the Eiffel tower at night!

And met up with Tara's cool dad.

Always playing so hard to get.

(And um..no...no this isn't us at an Australian bar. In Paris. That would just be inappropriate. We would never do something like that.)

We made a few vain attempts to be cultured tourists.

(as in not go to Australian bars. It's not as easy as it sounds.)

Managed quite well as we walked all the way from Montparnasse to Montmartre. Not as delightful as it sounds, Montmartre is definitely hilly.

Reminded us how much we don't miss biking in "flat" Denmark..

A classic. We were very disappointed as it seemed Nicole Kidman wasn't home that particular day...

Tara was unimpressed. 

Note the extremely French people to the right.

We did find a rather nice door though.

And a rather huge cathedral. But not a single hunch-back, not even any singing gargoyles!

False advertising I say.

Paris is a romantic city. 

.....Padlocks are romantic, right?

Wooawoooa we could pose a bad romaaaaaance 

Once we grew tired of the romance (after half a day) we went underground to the Catachombes. Six million skeletons was enough to freak us out. 

As raw vegans French cuisine didn't really have that much to offer us, apart from awesome little fruit shops everywhere!

French people were like "we're starving - we have no bread!" 

And we were just like "um, well let them eat fruit!"

Gee. Oui.

The other side of the story

Ok, so lets talk about bike touring and lets talk about karma.

And lets be honest.

So it might sound like our trip has been perfect, but we might have left a few parts out.

 

Like the part about how Denmark was rainy, windy, and hilly to the point that our knees gave out.

Like that week Isadora froze so much every night she couldn't sleep for four days.

Like how we always, ALWAYS lost our way and spent hours trying to find a good campsite.

Like how we both have serious problems getting up in the morning.

Like how Isadora's bike broke twice in one day.

Like how both our credit cards stopped working on the same day and we were stuck in an unknown city with only 10 euros and no place to sleep at 11 pm.

Like how we've only had three days of sun in three weeks.

We have experienced a lot, had fun, met so many friendly and generous people and despite everything had a great time together and laughed hysterically everyday. However we had different thoughts for this summer. So we have decided to abort mission.

A.k.a.  ditch the bikes and take quicker transport to reach the sun as soon as possible.

Goodbye bikes. For now.

Fuck it

After a month of rain, wind, hills and ridiculously bad luck all we can say is...fuck this!!

We're ditching the bikes and heading south to the sun and the beach!!

Damn Amsterdam

And we arrived in Amsterdam.

But we couldn't find anywhere to sleep. 

Seriously people, make sure you have a confirmed couch to crash when visiting Amsterdam. It's a popular place!

We didn't find a couch (we found this weird female-only hostel. Apparently humans with vaginas have an overwhelming preference for beauty magazines and the colour pink...)

But we did find this supercool event to volunteer for! 'Damn food waste'

Utilizing groceries that would have been thrown away, from farms, supermarkets, farms etc and cooking food!

Using this extra produce 'Damn food waste' served 5000 free meals!

It was really cool to see all these people getting involved -there was even a stage and DJs!

But then, back to our sleeping problems.

What to do?!?!?

We're not saying we went with this guy far out to the ghetto (he said he lived down the street! Yeah sure, down the street as in if you mean outside of Amsterdam. Or out of Holland more like...!) and he turned out to be super weird so we had to think of an excuse to leave him and in the process kind of broke his heart and then had to find our way back and were back to zero again.

We're not saying we did all that, but no, we can't really deny it either.

One lovely day we found a campsite.

There was this super ambitious american summercamp there. They sang a bicycle song every morning. Americans know their stuff!

Camping kitchen! Light! Yaay!

Nice warm tea, yaay!

The central station is pretty impressive.

This is like the only photo of us together without weird backwards lens hi-tech function thingy.

Lots of canals down here.

Found home. Red light district. Woohoo badass!

(Seriously what the f*** is wrong with people, fine that prostituition is legal but what kind of pathetic being buys sex?! PROSTITUTES DO NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU. Not one tiny bit.)

Ok so this is the weirdest PR stategy ever. It's a pretty fancy supermarket called Albert Hiijn (or something like that) but the bags you get there are orange and bright with a hamster on it and say "Hamsterééééén"!!!

Why??

At least they had raisins!!! Aah raisins.. <3

We eat a lot of bananas.

We found a perfectly ripe avocado on the street that someone had dropped! #score #free

Juice out. Or peace out.

And we were thinking... What do the police even do in Amsterdam? Almost everyone's on drugs and the police don't stop you from parking your biking where its forbidden even though you do it right in front of a group of them... So what is their purpose??