Africa!

You have no doubt realised by now that I am quite severely behind with these entries, and having now met up with my mum in South America, catching up is not all that easy to do! Leaving Egypt and Jordan behind, my adventure took me south to South Africa, where after over six months of independent travel, I finally caved in and joined an organised tour. While the tour was excellent, and many parts of it will remain highlights of my year abroad, I am only going to post one entry about the entire six weeks – more of an overview than a week-by-week recap of my travels. So here goes!

*CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE!*

From Egypt to Eggplant - A Middle Eastern Adventure!

After five months it was finally time to say farewell to Europe, and leaving Budapest behind (after lunch at Frici Papas of course!), I was set to add yet another continent to my year-long adventure as I boarded a plane bound for Cairo, Egypt. Of course, my departure from Europe also marked my departure from the (somewhat) English-speaking world, the world of western toilets, safe food and drink, incorrupt government and police, set product pricing, safe streets and public transport, and street crossings where pedestrians have even just a slight chance of crossing the road without being run down – however, I didn’t set out this year in search of a holiday, I set out in search of adventure!

Cairo Bakery! Yum!

Cairo, the capital of Egypt, is one of the most ridiculous, busy, chaotic and over-populated cities I have ever been to. With a metropolitan population of just under 20 million (imagine the population of Australia in one city), and what seemed an equal number of car and taxi horns to match, the crammed and congested streets of the city are a hive of activity – accompanied by an equally chaotic soundtrack of spruiking street vendors and traffic (did I mention car horns?), all shrouded by a thick cloud of exhaust smoke, industrial pollution and humidity. Yum.

Still Hungary? Second course is served...

With our week in Greece now behind us, Eliza made her way back to the UK to face the reality of work (a foreign notion to me now), while Ros, Paul and I continued the fun and games in Hungary.

My second visit to Hungary for the year, the week was spent in the country’s capital, Budapest, a city formed in 1873 with the unification of three smaller cities; west-bank Buda and Óbuda, and east-bank Pest. With a population of over 1.7 million people, today Budapest is the largest city in Eastern Europe, and is ranked as ‘one of the most beautiful cities in the world’ by a number of sources (okay, so I Wikipedia’d it). With the beautiful Danube River dividing the city, the spectacular Buda Castle, wide tree-lined Andrassy Avenue, Heroes' Square and the second-oldest underground rail network in the world – it certainly lived up to our expectations!

The Big Fat Greek Birthday!

After a quick stop in at the allotment to check on the progress of the veggies, Eliza and I were on our way to Manchester for one last night of miserable weather and cold, before escaping early the next morning to the heat and sunshine of Greece!

Checking into our hostel in Athens, we were soon to discover we were in for a real treat – my budget-conscious booking had landed us in quite the ‘interesting’ neighbourhood! With streets littered with rubbish and buildings covered in graffiti, broken footpaths, prostitutes on every corner, and a steady flow of ‘unusual’ people, there was certainly a lot to look at!

We spent our first couple of days in Athens exploring the local area, catching up on some much-needed SongPop, and enjoying our balcony view of the street (and the insalubrious business dealings going on) below. With memories of the UK’s weather still fresh in our mind, neither of us seemed to find it too much of a struggle to do very little, and much of our time was spent sitting around in various cafés, restaurants, gelatarias and at the beach, watching the world pass us by, and soaking up the beautiful Mediterranean sun.

Tongue and Puckle... a fair ye Scottish Adventure!!!

Leaving Durham behind, Eliza and I were somehow miraculously still speaking to each other, and were on our way to Edinburgh, Scotland. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the world’s largest arts festival, held annually in venues across the city, and this year our friend Matt (aka Barker) was in a show.

Arriving in Edinburgh, we once again met up with Aaron, and made our way out into the city in the hope of somehow managing to run into Barker – who has a reputation for being rather disorganised, and an apparent allergy to any form of telecommunication device. Of course, my hopes of some sort of miraculous northern hemisphere cure for this allergy were soon dashed, and Eliza, Aaron and myself had a great afternoon guessing where Barker might be, after calling ‘his’ phone number, only to discover the phone did not in fact belong to Barker – but to someone he had met in Scotland, and who had absolutely no idea where our dear Australian friend might be!