The Hostels

We used our dear Internet to help us find some hostels, of course! I love the Booking website (www.booking.com) but it's better to search for hotels rather than hostels. So this time we used Hostel World (www.hostelworld.com).

Of course we wanted to stay in cheap hostels during our trip, specially because it would be only for one night, but with the minimal conditions to sleep! By this I mean, clean! That's about the only thing I really want in a cheap hostel!

Unfortunately that was not the case in Valencia... The hostel (Center Valencia), was in a very good location, practically in the city centre, but it didn't smell that good and you could see the toilets were not the cleanest thing in the world. I'm sorry, but I'm a bit picky about that! In conclusion, I don't intend to ever go back there, even though the guy at the reception was very friendly (and Italian by the way!) and I will not recommend you to go there.

                            

Despite all this, the positive sides of it was that they have big lockers for you to put your bags at the rooms and free wifi everywhere at the hostel.

We were also lucky to have nobody else sharing the room, which consisted of 3 bunks in quite a small room. 

Also, they did have a place were you could cook (or at least a microwave to heat your food) and a common room to chill out. However we did not had the chance to use much of it, since we only stayed one night.

The second night was in Avignon.

By the time we got there we were already quite tired from driving (I will tell you all about it in another post), but the first sight we had once we got there was absolutely breathtaking! It was certainly one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life! 

We arrived at sunset and immediately saw a beautiful walled city, much similar to a castle, just standing on the other side of the river, reflecting the "orangeness" of a summer sunset.

                  

The hostel (Auberge Bagatelle) was on the opposite side of the river and we found out once we got there that it was on a camping park, very quiet and also very beautiful. 

The rooms and toilets were much better than the first one and were tidy and clean. We stayed in a shared room with a Japanese girl, also consisting of 3 bunks but much bigger than the one in Valencia.

                                

Unfortunately the wifi was not as easy to find as in Valencia. You had to go to one of the two restaurants in the camping park and have a drink or eat something before you could have access to the internet password.

Anyway, it was a nice experience and a hostel I would definitely recommend you to visit!

Boguinhas, the Car

The idea of bringing the car was brought up for several reasons:

- the huge amount of things we would like to bring to our one year experience in a foreign country, that we wouldn't have to buy once we got there;

- the fact that our faculty in Padova would be about 10km from the actual city, which would mean we would have to travel quite a lot everyday to get there and pay for public transports;

- the commodity of being able to travel around Italy with our own car;

- and of course, because of the adventure it would be to travel across 4 different countries by car!

     

My car is actually quite big, comfortable and in a very good condition, which for me was a requirement to take such a long trip. 

In any case, it's important to make sure everything is ok with the car and that it will be able to make a lot of kms! 

So I did take it to the mechanics, who made some small adjustments such as changing the oil, checking the tyre pressure and replacing the windshield cleaners (which I have no idea of how to say in English!).

All of this did not cost me much, but it will depend on the condition of your car and your own country of course.

After the general check up, I was ready to fill up the gas tank and drive away from Portugal!

The Plan

As soon as we decided to travel by car from Portugal to Italy, we knew there was a lot of planning involved, especially because we had a specific date to arrive.

I had some exams to do in September and didn't have a lot of time during summer to plan it, so I started planing it quite earlier, around April.

We didn't want to take a long time to get to our destination, so after asking our friend Google a couple of times we found some nice websites to help us planing the route. My favourite is the very famous ViaMichelin (www.viamichelin.com), which tells you the best routes you can take to get to a certain place anywhere in the world and an estimative of how much it will cost you.

                                   

We decided that 3 days would be enough to get to Padova, which would be our final destination for Erasmus. This way we only had to stop twice and sleep somewhere along the way. 

As we had a specific day to arrive in Padova, we checked for hostels and booked one in Valencia, Spain and the other one in Avignon, France.

It may not be the most direct way to getting there, but we had a friend in Valencia so we thought it would be a good idea to visit him.

Having everything booked and planed, it was time to start thinking about what should we bring to Padova and how would we fit it in the car! ;)

The beginning

Hello everyone!
Let me start by explaining the origin of this blog...
First of all let me say I will write it in English because I think it is important people from everywhere can read it and hopefully see some of their doubts answered here.
It all started when me and a friend of mine decided to go on Erasmus. For those who do not know what it is, it's an exchange program that exists in Europe, where university students can go to most European countries to study for a period of 3, 6 or 9 months, according to their university and course.
As Portuguese students from Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária (FMV), Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (UTL), we could only go in our 4th year of studies, for a period of 9 months, to either Spain, Italy or Hungary.

After a lot of thinking and researching on several websites, as well as asking a lot of different opinions from some friends and family, we decided to go to Italy! I had never been there and thought it could be a good opportunity to finally get to know this amazing country. Also, I thought the language wouldn't be that different from Portuguese, since we are all Latin countries from South Europe.
Anyway, the next step was to decide how to get there. I've always wanted to do some kind of road trip across Europe and figured this could be the perfect time to do it. However I didn't want to go by myself in such a long drive and so Inês (the friend who came with me in Erasmus) decided to come with me.
So as you can imagine, this will be a place where we will write our adventures driving across Europe an living in a totally different lovely country called Italy!! :)