Author: Oli

Crossing the Iberian Peninsula (parte uno)

We arrived in Lisbon bleary eyed after a short overnight flight from New York City. Landing back in Europe marked the beginning of the next leg of our journey through Portugal, Spain, France and Italy in just two weeks. We’ll then take an overnight ferry from the port of Ancona to Corfu to spend a few days with Sara’s family.

We were so happy to be back in Europe. After nearly a year on the road, the sight of Lisbon’s cobbled streets and pastel-hued buildings looked both comfortingly familiar and effortlessly beautiful. We also immediately appreciated the functioning public transport system, with the two clean, quick, comfortable and affordable metros we took from Lisbon’s airport forming quite the contrast to the two subways, two air-trains and a bus that we took to JFK Airport in New York. The affordable and delicious food was also very welcome, so much so that I noticed Sara almost tear up when she spotted a custard tart and coffee combo being sold for €1.80 on the way to our hotel.

With only one (very tired) day in Lisbon, we decided to soak up the atmosphere of the Príncipe Real and Estela neighbourhoods surrounding our hotel.

We thoroughly enjoyed watching the everyday life happening around us in Jardim da Estrela, as parents collected their children from school, couples walked their dogs, and friends met for a drink at the park cafe. After a restorative nap on the grass in the shade, we decided to join in and embrace the local way of life.

That evening we had a hankering for something traditional and healthy, so we slid down the polished-tile pavements to a local cafe called Leitaria Pomar for dinner. The owner was effortlessly juggling taking orders and working the kitchen, and yet somehow our food arrived quickly and tasted delicious. We couldn’t have been happier.

But less than 24 hours after arriving in Lisbon, our schedule had us moving on to another new city and another new country. Bizarrely, the rail connections between Portugal and Spain are few and far between, so instead we took a couple of coaches to reach the UNESCO World Heritage-listed city of Salamanca in western Spain. We arrived in the heat of the afternoon, and even as we walked to our apartment through the old town, Salamanca’s beauty captivated us immediately.

Salamanca is a pretty magical city. It’s one of only six Spanish cities to feature two cathedrals (which are joined at the hip!), and its central old town is almost entirely pedestrianised. Walking through its atmospheric narrow alleys felt like stepping back in time, and was strangely reminiscent of our visit to the Uzbek silk-road city of Khiva.

We spent a morning exploring both cathedrals by means of climbing the “flat topped tower” which joins the two buildings. The tower’s name is a bit of a misnomer, as it doesn’t currently have a flat roof and it never has done as far as anyone can tell. Regardless, it provides great views into both cathedrals, access to the new cathedral’s interior balustrade, as well as providing great views over the cathedral roofs and across the city beyond.

  • Old Cathedral
  • “New” Cathedral
  • Walkway between roofs of New Cathedral (left) and Old Cathedral (right)

We climbed to the belfry at the very top of the tower, which houses ten huge bells which ring out across the city every hour. Sara was taking some photos of the tower interior when the first bell rang and, in total shock, threw her phone in the air – it honestly scared the living daylights out of the both of us. What followed was an absolute cacophony as the other bells joined in, and the resulting disorientation reminded me of the Siena church scene in Quantum of Solace, but with fewer guns.

The Spanish famously eat lunch late in the day, with most restaurants only opening around 1.30pm or 2pm. We were absolutely ravenous following our morning of exploring the hidden staircases and passages above the cathedrals, so we sat down for the Menú del día at Restaurante Mandala. I ordered Patatas Meneas for my first course, which is a local dish made from mashed potatoes seasoned with paprika, garlic and cumin, and topped with heavily-fried pork lardons and a pickled chilli. It might not have been the healthy, veg-filled cuisine we’d envisaged after departing the United States, but it was absolutely delicious, with the mashed potato alone carrying an intensely rich chorizo-esque flavour. I was already filling up when my second course arrived – Carrilleras al Pedro Ximenez – braised pork cheek in a gravy made from a dark and sweet Spanish sherry. Despite ending the meal with coffee, we were both ready for an afternoon siesta while we digested our feast.

The old town of Salamanca is centred around the 18th century Plaza Mayor. The vast square is bound by ornate and impressively consistent building frontages, which are illuminated spectacularly at night.

We topped off our stay in Salamanca with an ice cream and a late evening stroll around the square, which was full of friends and families (including children!) socialising even at 11pm.

I’m so glad we made the detour north to Salamanca on our route across Spain – it seemed like the perfect combination of historic charm, great food, and just popular enough to give it a buzz without ever feeling crowded.

Beyond Salamanca, our next stop will be the regional capital of Zaragoza in eastern Spain.

USA round up 🇺🇸 🦅

We’ve just spent 48 days travelling more than 20,000 km across 15 states and 5 different timezones in the USA. Summarising our journey across this huge country in a single post isn’t going to be easy, but here goes…

We started off by flying from Auckland to the Hawaiian island of O’ahu, where we swam with sea turtles and climbed Diamond Head. We then took a second flight to Portland, Oregon, where we dived headfirst into the street food and craft beer scene.

We then began our coast-to-coast adventure by hiking Mount Walker on the Olympic Peninsula and touring Seattle’s Museum of Flight with two renowned aviation experts (Helen and Mick 😉). Our first overnight Amtrak took us to Glacier National Park where we Drove to the Sun, and our second sleeper train brought us to Minneapolis where we explored Mill Ruins Park. We completed our journey on the Empire Builder railroad by celebrating Summerfest in Milwaukee and road tripping around Lake Michigan. This took us through the Indiana Dunes National Park just in time to catch the 4th of July fireworks in Chicago. Next, we popped our heads into the rust-belt cities of Cleveland and Pittsburgh along with an unexpectedly homely stop in Amish Country. Our two final stops included a search for the perfect Philadelphia cheesesteak and as many bites at the Big Apple as we could stomach in 4 days. Looking back on the route reminds me just how big the USA is and what an epic adventure this was!

Carbon 🚆

Our travel to and across the USA produced nearly 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide – our highest total of any country to date. Having said this, we did travel much further in the USA than any other country.

Our flights across the Pacific Ocean were responsible for the bulk of our carbon emissions. I find I often underestimate quite how large this body of water is especially given its underrepresentation on the Mercator map projection – the Pacific Ocean actually covers over 30% of the globe’s surface! Obviously we would have preferred to avoid flying such a large distance, but there’s simply no lower carbon alternative to economy class flights for this route.

Despite making almost all of our long-distance connections via train and bus, we also covered a fair distance in the USA by car. The USA is a famously car-centric country, and visiting national parks without one is nigh on impossible. In most cases we were travelling with four people per vehicle, which at least means that the carbon emissions were shared between four people rather than two.

We’ve taken responsibility for the carbon emitted by our USA adventure by offsetting 4 tonnes of CO2 through Gold Standard’s Climate+ portfolio. In this instance, our offsets helped fund the construction of a hydro-electric power station in Turkey, which will provide carbon-neutral power along with land irrigation benefits to the people of the Bugra village in the Ankara province of Turkey.

Cost 💰

We also spent more money per day in the USA than any other country. Our high transport costs were partly due to our flights across the Pacific, although they would have been even higher had Helen & Mick not generously covered the costs of the hire cars we shared while they were travelling with us.

We also noticed that we spent about as much on accommodation per day in the USA as we did in total each day in some other countries (such as Georgia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand). While this isn’t a total surprise, it really does illustrate the difference in how far your money goes in different parts of the world. While everything seems to have become more expensive since the pandemic, this was more apparent to us in the USA than other countries we visited.

Cats 🐈

Cats were pretty thin on the ground (not literally!) in the USA. We suspect that, much like in New Zealand, most cats are kept inside, although presumably more for the cats’ safety (because of predators like coyotes) than for the benefit of the local bird population. This meant that Sara spent a lot of time peering into windows – an art that she’s perfected over the past few months!

🏅Most pampered stray felines

The “stray” cats in Port Angeles were both beautiful animals and responsible for a sizeable chunk of the USA’s cat count. I could hardly believe it when the old chap who was feeding them told us that each of the cats were registered at the local vet!

This is basically how Sara looks when I turn on the light to make coffee in the morning

🏅Snappiest dresser

We met Chip while he was visiting the far northwestern point of the United States, and he had dressed up for the occasion. I don’t think he was at all prepared for how much attention he might get!

🏅Least intimidating biker gang

The USA is definitely a country of dog-lovers, and this duo really made us chuckle. They were both clearly enjoying the attention, as they revved their engine outside one of Milwaukee’s busiest bars.

🏅Chubbiest squirrel

Okay, this is obviously not a squirrel, but I did think that the groundhogs looked a little like squirrels whose tales had been deflated and bodies had been inflated. We first spotted them in Michigan, but then continued to see them all over the place on our route through Ohio and Pennsylvania. Sara absolutely loved them, and could often be found at the window of our apartments chanting “HOGS, HOGS, HOGS!“

Culture 👨‍👩‍👧

Normally, we’re overflowing with ideas of what to discuss in this section of our round up, but we’d both visited the United States many times before this trip and this made it incredibly difficult to look at it with fresh eyes!

Eagerness to display affiliation 🪧

We probably spent more time in suburban areas on this trip than we would do normally, since we mostly rented apartments for the four of us rather than staying in hotels. One thing that did really stick out was the proportion of houses that had some kind of sign outside, like “Proud Army Mom,” or as below, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump.” I don’t think we tend to have the same willingness to publicise our affiliations in the UK so we found this pretty interesting.

Walking as transport 🚶

The lifestyle in the United States was quite at odds with how we wanted to travel, and this sometimes caused us one or two problems. We’re happiest on our own two legs, which meant we spent a lot of our time Brysoning around the country, like when we discovered that Cleveland Station had neither any public transport links nor pedestrian access (but that didn’t stop us!). At best, this meant we got strange and sometimes fearful looks when walking with our backpacks (“Oh, we’re hiking to work today, are we?” one man laughed, while we were literally outside a station that was served by long-distance trains) and at worst, we had multiple cars shout and throw things at us when heading to dinner on foot in a small Wisconsin town. I won’t pretend to understand the cultural context fully, but I think this is because, outside of cities like New York, the only people who walk as transport are those who have no other choice, and they are often already marginalised. We started to realise that in every residential area, people were only pounding the pavements if they were specifically exercising or out walking their dogs. In general, we found this pretty annoying, but it sometimes gave us a good laugh, like when we overheard two (young, fit-looking) women exclaiming, “Can you believe we just did that?” after having completed the relatively tame Diamond Head hike in Hawaii. This became our catchphrase for the rest of the trip.

Breweries and craft beer 🍻

We were generally blown away by the quality and variety of beer at most bars, restaurants and brewery tap rooms. It seemed normal for restaurants to offer five or so craft beers in addition to the better-known American lager brands, while every brewery seemed to produce an overwhelming array of stouts, porters, IPAs, lagers and wheat beers. On top of this, breweries generally had excellent restaurants whose food was taken at least as seriously as the beers themselves. Our favourite was Copper Plate Brewery in Green Bay, who had converted a portion of their car park into an alfresco dining area / beer garden. Their peanut butter nitro-porter even managed to lure Mick’s heart away from English ales!

With one leg of our trip coming to an end, another is just beginning, as we take one of the shortest trans-Atlantic flights possible from New York to Lisbon.

Rocky runs and Philly cheesesteaks

With less than 48 hours in Philadelphia and an ambitious itinerary featuring Rocky filming locations, bells, Philly cheesesteaks and street art, we had no choice but to hit the ground running…

🛤 The Pennsylvanian Railroad

Our route from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia started with a sunrise walk across the David McCullough Bridge on our way to Pittsburgh Union Station. I had to do extensive Google street-viewing the night before to check that the whole route had pavements (not a guarantee here!), but in the end, this wasn’t the problem – finding the station entrance was! I’d routed us towards the grand station entrance, but only after rattling each of the locked front doors did we realise that this was no longer part of the station. It turns out that the original station building was converted into residential and commercial space in 1988, and the current station is now housed in an ugly annex which I mistook for a car park! Anyway, we used all our contingency time doing laps of the building but made it onto the train just in time 😅

Our final Amtrak journey took 7.5 hours to cover the 476 km to Philadelphia. As always, it was a pleasure watching the landscape slowly change outside the windows – from the forested hills, gorges and steel bridges of southwestern Pennsylvania to the open landscape and neat farms of eastern Pennsylvania.

We arrived at Philadelphia’s grand and catchily named William H. Gray III 30th Street Station. After Cleveland and Pittsburgh’s rather under-utilised stations, it was encouraging to be back in a bustling transport hub once again.

🏃 Gonna fly now (running like Rocky Balboa)

The Rocky franchise is famously set in Philadelphia, and as a big fan, I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to recreate his epic training run through the city. I set out just after sunrise with my headphones on and my phone loaded with the Rocky soundtrack. My first stop was the Italian Market along 9th Street, which has barely changed since the original Rocky movie was filmed in the 1970s. With a few hours until the market opened for business, I had the road to myself for the moment.

My route continued through leafy residential streets towards the increasingly commercial city downtown and along the grand Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the iconic Philadelphia Library stairs. By this point the temperature was already hitting 30 degrees, even though it was still only 07:20 in the morning. Time for a shower and some coffee!

🔔 Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell

Philadelphia is often referred to as the “birthplace of America”, since it’s where the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution were debated and adopted back in 1776. We visited this very site, which is now known as Independence Hall, but at the time was the Pennsylvania State House.

We also had the chance to check out the Liberty Bell, a 940 kg symbol of independence. We enjoyed learning (from our friend George) that this symbol of American patriotism was actually cast in London, although to our amusement we didn’t see this mentioned anywhere in the exhibit surrounding the bell. Then again, given it cracked shortly after arriving in Philadelphia, maybe it’s not something to shout about…

🥖 Searching for the perfect Philly cheesesteak

Philly cheesesteaks (or just cheesesteaks, as they’re known in Philadelphia) are an absolute city staple. They consist of thinly sliced rib-eye steak packed into a bread roll along with (optional) sautéed onions and (crucial) melted cheese. Traditionally Cheez Whiz is used, which is an orange-yellow spreadable cheese, but trust us – it’s way better than it sounds! The cheesesteaks were pretty filling too, and we found that one each more than satisfied us for dinner. We sampled as many as our time in the city and appetites would allow, and our favourites came from Sonny’s Famous Steaks. They managed to pack a ton of flavour into the roll as well as keeping the steak moist enough not to need any further sauce, but not to the extent that it turned into a dripping mess. Now, I don’t think the end result is supposed to look pretty, but we really did our best in photo below!

🧑‍🎨 Walking the Mural Mile

The street art programme in Philadelphia began in 1984 as an attempt to beautify the city and reduce the amount of graffiti. Since then, the programme has been hugely successful, with Philadelphia becoming undoubtedly the street art capital of the US, and with the medium bridging many divides within the city’s communities. The programme is still active today, and we saw evidence of several new murals in progress. The art works cover themes such as Philadelphia’s history, civil rights, diversity and inclusion. We thoroughly enjoyed walking the Mural Mile, and tried to take as many photos as possible along the way.

For some reason, we both had the preconception that Philadelphia was a bit rough, so it wasn’t really on our radar until we happened across our guidebook’s description of it as a city with “rich history and small town charm”. And sure enough, we loved Philadelphia almost immediately. The narrow streets and mixture of high-rise and residential neighbourhoods gave the city an almost European feel. Downtown Philadelphia was walkable too, with most neighbourhoods interspersed with leafy parks to escape the summer heat. Sitting in some of these parks, I could have easily mistaken the scene for a London park, had it not been for the Italian-American accents surrounding us.

From Philadelphia, we hopped on a bus to our final stop in the US; New York City.