Ember Travels

Hello there! Ember seems to have been a bit too lazy to keep her blog up to date so she asked me if I wanted to do a post about Portugal. She seems to have misjudged my laziness though and as such this post is a couple of weeks too late. Better late than never though, right? (Editor's note: That's a lie...you all know I'm not a lazy person :), I just haven't had reliable internet in Africa...go figure!) So anyway, who am I? I'm Ilmer - don't ask about my name, that's a whole different and painful story! Just a random person living in Lisbon, Portugal. But this blog isn't about me, it's about Ember and her travelling stories so let's quickly get back on topic! I had the pleasure of meeting Ember when she passed through Lisbon and had some great adventures with her. To be honest, I was somewhat reluctant at first when I met Ember. As one of the CouchSurfing Administrators in Lisbon, I have been meeting so many random people lately that they all kin...

I've had a very busy week! I've been to the southernmost and westernmost points of continental Europe, three countries and two continents!  Ilmer and I spent a great weekend staying with his brother and sister-in-law Wiebe and Maddy and exploring the Algarve-the southern state of Portugal. Ilmer grew up in the Algarve, so I had a local as a tour guide. We bummed around the coast in his 1989 pimped out ride. I don't remember the make of the car, but it was originally designed by the French to transport two farmers and a case of beer...what more could you ask for? We checked out Lagos and Faro (two of the coastal towns), did a little kayaking, enjoyed some great dinners with Wiebe and Maddy and I even had my first conversation in Portuguese! I have always wanted to learn Portuguese, and spent much of my two weeks in Portugal speaking Spanish with a Portuguese accent and guessing or trying to translate words and phrases I saw. A lot of the words are the s...

After the Luis and Maria saga, Ilmer and I decided we were definitely hooked on hitchhiking. If anything, I was just getting Ilmer prepared for his world hitchhiking adventure! I had been planning to head to Spain for quite awhile now, but Ilmer somehow convinced me to spend another weekend in Portugal with the promise of showing me around the Algarve, the southern-most state of the country. He was headed there to visit his brother and sister-in-law for the weekend, and it didn't take much for me to agree to the detour.  In our adventuresome style, we decided yet again to try our luck with hitchhiking. It was a three hour trip to the Algarve, so we got into hitchhiking position early Friday evening.  This time we were well prepared with Ilmer's sphisticated hitchhiking kit. Our plan of attack was for Ilmer to hold the "South" sign and I was in charge of the "It's my birthday" sign. We figured the passerbys would enjoy a little hitchhiking humor.  We sh...

A few weeks ago I began to get bored with my normal travel routine. Bus-plane-hostel-tram-tour-plane was beginning to get tedious and a little too comfortable. I was seeing quite a bit, but felt like an important cultural element of my traveling was lacking. On the first day I met Ilmer, he told me of his plans to hitchhike around the world in a year, and right then I knew we would be great friends. Tuesday was a public holiday and Ilmer didn´t have to work, so we decided to check out a natural park nearby and try our hand, or rather thumbs at hitchhiking. We took the train from Lisbon to Setúbal, and steaked out a promising spot along the road leading into the park  for our hitchhiking endeavors. We stood on the corner for 40 minutes with our two fold "Arrábida," sign watching car after car passby, I was beginning to get impatient. Ilmer said that if you juggle flaming batons or you write something like, "I don´t smell" or "it´s my birthday" on the sign, ...

Good morning/good afternoon/buen dia where ever you are in the world! It is a lovely Tuesday morning in Sevilla, Spain and this marks the two month aniversary of my journey! I want to thank all of you, who I know and don`t know for your comments, messages and endless enthusasium for my travels. Your support has been amazing and it´s always nice to hear from a familiar face! A little bit about my travels...I am excited to be in a country where I  finally  speak the language! I arrived in Spain yesterday and plan to spend a few days in Sevilla, then head to Grenada where I can hopefully find a place to settle down for a month or so to practice my Spanish and meet some locals. Keep your fingers crossed, I´m not sure how the whole, "I want to rent a room for just a month" thing will go, but things always seem to work out, so I´m not too worried. A friend recently commented on my luck saying that I may actually be the center of the universe, so I´ll just bank on that :) Either way...

...is the nickname that Portugal has adopted. The country is well known for its gorgeous beaches, warm weather and laid back culture. Unfortunately, I have not been so lucky with the weather, but on the exceptional nice days here, I have been exploring towns outside of Lisbon. I reached a point where traveling from big city to big city was tiring and they all seemed to meld together, so I decided it was time to get away from the cities and check out nature. On Monday I took the train 30 minutes southwest of Lisbon to visit my friend Eva in Cascais. The entire ride along the coast was gorgeous, imagine PHC from Big Sur to Carmel, I was mesmorized by the sight and slipped completly back into California mode. Not a bad thing at all considering I was a little homesick for the Golden State. When I reached Cascais it was love at first sight. It was strikingly similar to Ventura, a small  town situated on miles of coast with green rolling hills in the backdrop. The Sou...

My first day in Portugal was culture shock. Coming from the Netherlands where everything is orderly into semi-chaotic Lisbon was definitely something I had not prepared for. By the end of my first day in Lisbon I was ready to pack my bags and get as far away from Portugal as possible.  I'm not sure what I expected Lisbon to be like, but as I spent a whole day traipsing in the pouring rain through a city full of decrepit buildings and graffitied alleyways, I knew this was a far cry from the "California of Europe" I had conjured up. By the end of my I-hate-Portugal-day, I was desperate to figure something out. There happened to be a weekly CouchSurfing meeting that night, so I decided to stop by. I met a lot of local Portuguese along with some foreigners living in Portugal. They gave me tips of what to see, offered me a place to stay and even invited me on a road trip to a small town north of Lisbon for the weekend. The city might be different from expected, but the locals ...