I am back home

I am back home after traveling around France, Spain and Italy with Aleksander for the last three weeks. It has been one hell of a blast, and I am definitively going back on a trip like this! It has been a big success from beginning to end, and I’ve seen so many great places, and met so many great people.

This map on Google Maps shows the places we ended up visiting. There were several other places we wanted to visit, especially in Italy, but it turned out that even 22 days of traveling was not nearly enough to cover everything. But that just gives a good reason to go on a similar trip another time!

It has been 30+ degrees and sun every day except for a few rain drops the first day in Paris. Some places, like Venice, was almost unbearable, but you kind of get used to walking around with waterfalls down your entire body after a couple of days

Sightseeing-wise Rome was my absolute favourite with the Colosseum  and the Vatican city. A truly amazing city. Party-wise Barcelona is of course on top. We had four great days there, and Kabul Hostel is definitively the place to stay if you’re heading to Barcelona to party and enjoy the beaches.

When it comes to food, I think the two days we enjoyed in the tiny village Sus, in the French basque country, tops the list. Of course every place we went to had great food, and I wish I had eaten more at every place, but I have a special thing for French cuisine Again, a big thank you to Arnaud and Isabelle and Arnaud’s parents for enduring our stay and travelling around with us Hope to see you in Norway sometime soon!

The spirits of backpackers is something I did not really think much about before we left, but it is something I quickly discovered makes the whole difference between this kind of travel and the more regular kind of vacation. Every single fellow backpacker we’ve met on this trip has been friendly and it has not been a single day where we have not met new people and gotten new friends all over the world. We’ve been sleeping in hostels almost every night, in rooms with anything from 3 to 20 beds and there is no way you will manage to be lonely. There’s always someone to talk to, share experiences with and enjoy a cold drink with Exactly this makes it a little difficult to adjust to being back in Norway and the quiet every day life, so Aleksander and I ended up going out last night just because we needed to be around people (We even found gipsy beer in our local pub!)

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, there’s a little over 600 of them

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaran/sets/72157621176920120/

Best vacation I’ve had so far in my life!