Gallivanting Through Europe with 2Summers

Earlier this week I returned from a crazy trip to Europe: 26 days of travel from Joburg to Munich, to Madrid, all over northern Spain, to Lisbon, and back to Joburg. I’ve traveled a lot in my life. But with the exception of trips back to the United States – where I do a lot of chilling at home – I have rarely traveled for this long and at such an intense pace.

The trip was not only physically intense – I slept in eight different places, walked 10 to 15 kilometers most days, climbed mountains, drove a car through the narrowest of medieval streets (also not for the faint of heart), and rode busses for up to 10 hours at a time – but emotionally intense too. Every place I went was brand-new to me and the journey was filled with reunions with very dear friends and family who I hadn’t seen for years. It’s actually a little ridiculous how much I squeezed into 26 days, but, as Thorsten says: That’s how 2Summers rolls. (Thorsten regularly tells me he dreams of the day when we’ll take a vacation to only one place and just stay there.)

I’ve rarely left my blog dormant for this long, which makes me anxious, but I’ve also been stressing for days about writing this post. I don’t know where to begin. I hadn’t traveled to any new countries in nearly six years and doing so always makes my head explode. I’ve got enough content for at least a dozen European blog posts, but at the same time I feel like I did a bad job documenting most of the places I went. I was often more focused on the people I was with than the places I was in; there were entire days when I never took my camera out of my bag, taking only crappy iPhone photos. Also I’m exhausted and behind on everything and I might have bed bugs – a story for another blog post.

But here is a brief summary, including lots of mediocre selfies, for those curious about what I’ve been up to. Over the next few weeks I’m planning to intersperse more detailed posts about the specific places I went with fresh Joburg content.

Stop 1: Munich, Germany

Thorsten and I first arrived in Munich, where we spent three days visiting Thorsten’s old friends Susanne (Susi) and Benedikt (Beni) and their kids in the Munich suburb of Pullach. I had been to Germany once before, to Berlin, but it was great visiting a new German city – especially with Thorsten, who is half German.

Susi and Beni have a beautiful home and they totally spoiled us while we were there – I felt like I was in an upscale B&B. They also showed us some really interesting alternative sights around Munich. We had one great weather day there, which Thorsten and I spent walking and walking, looking at beautiful buildings and graffiti, and eating delicious German food. It was heaven.

Stop 2: Madrid

Before this trip grew to include an entire month of gallivanting, its original purpose was to travel somewhere with Thorsten’s two teenagers, Timo and Lina – who live in Austria – during their school holidays. We decided to take the kids to Madrid because, by complete chance, my two closest American friends, Claire and Michelle, were both planning to be in Spain at around the same time.

Madrid is an incredible city, but despite spending six days there I really didn’t do a lot of touristy things; this visit was about spending quality time with family and friends.

Stops 3 and 4: Basque Country

I said goodbye to Thorsten and the kids in Madrid and Michelle and I caught a bus north to Basque Country. Basque Country, like Asturias and Galicia (see below) is an autonomous region of Spain; it’s politically part of Spain but has its own language and unique traditions.

Michelle and I have done a lot of traveling together but it had been many years, so we made up for lost time during this phase of the trip. We touristed up a storm in San Sebastian and Bilbao, two beautiful cities along Spain’s northern coast – stuffing ourselves full of pintxos (northern Spanish tapas) and vino blanco, walking for miles, and visiting many museums, including the famous Guggenheim. I’ll definitely write a longer post later about San Sebastian and Bilbao.

Stops 5 and 6: Asturias

From Bilbao we headed by car to the Picos de Europa, a stunning and little-known (outside of Spain, at least) mountain range that’s partially in the autonomous region of Asturias. Staying in a tiny Asturian farm village and hiking in the Picos de Europa was another major highlight, totally unlike anything I’ve ever done before, and I’ll write about it in detail in a future post.

From the Picos de Europa we went to the city of Oviedo, also in Asturias. But we were only there for one day and I was so tired and hardly took any photos at all. I would love to go back to Oviedo and spend a week, as it has incredible food, architecture, art, and culture. Next time.

Stop 7: Santiago de Compostela

Michelle and I went separate ways after Oviedo. And due to bad travel planning and a dearth of public transport options between northern Spain and Lisbon, I didn’t even spend a full 24 hours in my next town, Santiago de Compostela. But Santiago, which is in yet another autonomous region of Spain called Galicia, deserves a quick mention as the iconic end point of the Camino de Santiago. The town was filled with pilgrims – who, despite the religious-sounding name, are not necessarily religious or even Christian – finishing their pilgrimages at the massive Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. It was fun to see.

Stop 8: Lisbon

I didn’t want to leave the Iberian Peninsula without a quick visit to Portugal, where I’d never been before. So I booked my return flight out of Lisbon and spent the last few days of my gallivant there. My friends Fiver and Stuart were also in Lisbon and overlapped with me for a day of my visit.

I loved Lisbon – the people, the food, the narrow little streets, even the steep hills – and really hope to go back for a longer visit. I could see it cracking the list of my top five favorite cities in the world.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this epic trip in future posts. In the meantime, I’ve saved all the Instagram stories I posted on the trip in the “Highlights” section of my Instagram profile (the row of circles just below my bio and just above my regular feed). You’ll find lots more photos and videos there.