Ember Travels

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...

Here is an interesting bit of trivia for you: the xxx symbol that you see in, well, “exotic” shops is actually derived from Amsterdam. “XXX” has been the logo for Amsterdam ever since the city was established, and it is still everywhere! At first I was a little worried and thought the city must be way too proud of its red light district, until I got my facts straight. The police uniforms are printed with xxx, its on all the local busses and the Amsterdam flag is black and red striped with the xxx logo. Amusing. The Netherlands was never on my list of places to go, until every traveller I met kept telling me how it was their favorite city (and usually for more reasons than just smoking pot). I also made a Dutch friend in Croatia who told me all about his city and how everyone rode bikes everywhere. Despite my reluctance to spend time in Western Europe, I figured that if  Amsterdam was as great as it sounded and I could ride a bike everywhere, I might be sold on the idea. Ruud picked...