Europe

Get a New Life

Does this sound familiar?

Sitting in your office staring at the PC screen, the telephone constantly ringing and it’s raining outside again or………………………… your standing under a hot shower, trying to clear your head of the work you left in the office……….thinking “do I really need all this, do I have to do this for the next 25/30 years?

Wondering

“Why am I putting myself through all of this; to pay the mortgage, the bills, to keep up my standard of living?"

In life everyone has the opportunity to control their own destiny, but why do so many people not do it?

Northern Europe for New Years

Kendra and I landed in Brussels, Belgium on December 28, 2001 for a ten-day holiday in Northern Europe. We were traveling with our good friend Paul Luster and planned to visit Amsterdam and Maastricht in the Netherlands; Aachen, Germany, Brussels and Liège in Belgium and then go back to Paris for our third time.

We arrived in Brussels around 9:30 am and waited 3 hours for Paul to arrive on a later flight. Paul had made arrangements with some of his Brazilians friends living in Belgium to meet us at the airport and show us around the city. While we waited, I could not help but notice the similarities between the airport in Brussels and any airport in the U.S. I am not sure what I expected, but Belgium in a wealthy country and their infrastructure seems to be well intact.

Valencia – The New Spanish Jewel

Western Europe is such an ultimate travel destination that anything worth seeing has already been triple-packed. It is practically impossible to find a place that has major attractions yet has retained its innocence. And, out of all countries, Spain – the place where annual tourist head count overtakes that of its residents – is a very unlikely candidate for such location. Considering this, Valencia comes as as an awesome surprise.

Valencia leaves you perplexed. When you see the vastness of its treasury, you can’t help but looking for a catch. Valencia is such a multi-dimensional city, truly sporting everything you could ever ask for from a destination (and at a top scope and level, not just a promotional token), that you simply feel lucky to have found it on your way. Many of the much more popular European locations don’t have a half of what Valencia has, yet here it is all business as usual, consuming you into its culture, forcing you to leave yours behind and truly banning all tourist conventions. This is a real journey and definitely one of Europe’s best kept secrets.