Discover Top Posts Tagged with #taous

Morocco shared & private tours

Tripsinmorocco’s Morocco shared & private tours offer you a guaranteed shared tours departure every day, customized private tour around morocco. Source www.tripsinmorocco.com.

#Trips in Morocco #Morocco #Merzouga #taous #Travel #Tour

From backpackers to babysitters - Malta - days 183-190

Taous, Emilia and I ventured to Athens airport together, but not before stopping to buy a months supply of olives from a street vendor. Taous and I bid Emilia farewell, she was heading to France for the week, while we headed to Malta. We ate those olives for breakfast. We arrived in Malta in the early afternoon and were picked up by Tim, Taous' uncle, and we were off. First stop, the Blue Grotto, probably the most gorgeous place on the Island. We had a quick lunch and boarded a little boat to take us around the grotto. This €8 trip came with what was probably the best (and by best I mean worst) commentary I'd experienced all trip. 'This is the Cat Cave. Look to the left. The water is blue.' Firstly, fine friend, most water is blue. It's a defining property of the ocean due to its reflection of the sky and whatnot. Also, why is it called the cat cave? You can't dangle a story about kitties in front of me and then not explain it! The rest of the ride went like this. 'Look right, please. The water is blue.' 'Put your hand in the water, it is blue.' He was right though. The water was very blue. After our blue adventure through the blue grotto, we went to pick up Taous' cousins from school. Sarah and Zac were our roomies for the week and I've got to say, small children are about the same as most hostel dwellers: noisy and desperate for attention. I was to be 'Sarah Number Two' for the week, as the other Sarah so kindly agreed to share her name as long as I played with her. The Davies Malta household was apparently a typical Maltese design, which funnily enough happens to be how I designed all my houses on the Sims: all the rooms coming off a central courtyard with a glorious sunroof to make it feel spacey. This one unfortunately didn't have a pool in the central courtyard, so it wasn't quite my Sims dream, but still. It was pretty amazing. I felt like a real architect. The next week was a bit of a blur of lazing around the house, having some home cooked meals, and cooking some myself (#myschnitzelbringsthewholefamilytotheyard #damnright #itsbettetthanyours), as well as the occasional tourist adventure. Malta was the place where I did the most touristy thing I've done all trip, and I rode bikes in Amsterdam and went up the Rockerfellar centre after eating Magnoglia cupcakes in New York. We went on a hop on, hop off sightseeing bus. Like I swore I never would. But here's the thing, the whole of Malta is the size of the ACT, and the public transport is not the best. You could see pretty much all of malta's main sights in a day on this bus and so, for the first time all trip, it seemed to make sense. We visited the port town of Vittoriosa, the fishing village of Marsaxlokk where we waiting an extortionately long time for some delicious octopus pasta, before finishing our day at the ruins of Hagar Qim & Mnajdra. These were probably the highlight of our time in Malta (apart from waking up to Taous every morning, of course). I'm a sucker for ruins as it is, and these ones were older than Stonehenge and in pretty good nick. You could still tell where all the different rooms were and get a real sense of what this place might have looked like back in the day. There was also a 4D movie, something I discovered Taous is incredibly fond of. Her excitement as we followed hat tiny lizard back in time through the rain and the sunshine was excellent. We also had three birthdays while I was in Malta. Taous, her aunt Mel, and her Uncle Tim all had birthdays in the one week, and so we went out for a special birthday dinner that I really should have paid for, being the only one not celebrating. We had delicious Chinese food and watched some kids play water polo, a real thing here. I don't think I've ever seen a water polo club, and in Malta I saw at least five. Bucket list stuff? Not really but still. We witnessed it. I said the ruins were the highlight of our time in Malta but really, that was a lie. How could ancient wonders be the highlight when we had the family fun filled wonder that was Splash and Fun to go and visit. Taous and I swapped our backpacking for babysitting and headed to the water park with Sarah and Zac for an adrenaline filled afternoon of water slides. And what fun we had! Little Sarah (or Sarah #1) developed a fine technique to get down the slides faster than her accompanying adult (Taous or myself. Can you believe we were the accompanying adults? Like real grown ups). I was sworn to secrecy when she revealed her technique, but I can say it was pretty much the art of distraction. We learnt very quickly that we were not in England and people did NOT respect the fine art of queuing and we would have to stand strong in order get to the front of some of those lines. Taous and I took turns on some of the bigger slides the kids weren't allowed on. This is when things got interesting. Taous went off to ride the slide the kids creatively named 'The toilet bowl', leaving me with Sarah and Zac in the pool. After finally getting Sarah's secret technique out of her, I was told I was only allowed to use it with my husband. What ensued was maybe the best conversation I've had all trip, and I met a guy that moved to Guatemala to become a professional clown. Sarah 1: you are only allowed to use this technique with your husband. Me: What...? Sarah 1: Because your husband is bigger than you so he will go down the slides faster than you! Me: Oh sweetie. I don't have a husband, and I don't think I will have one. Sarah 1: *outraged* BUT THEN HOW WILL YOU HAVE A FAMILY?!?!?! Me: I don't know.... I mean... You can have a family without having a husband... Sarah 1: How old are you? Me: I'm 22 Sarah 1: Oh my gosh you are SO OLD! You should definitely have a husband by now. Zac: wait how old are you? Me: 22 Zac: YOU ARE SOOOOO OOOOOLDDDD YOU NEED A HUSBAND. And so I have been pronounce an old spinster by a 7 and 8 year old. At least they're worried about my future family and happiness... Luckily, Taous finished up with the Toilet bowl and came to my rescue. She's older than me anyway, how come she didn't need a husband? And with that, our time in Malta came to an end. We'd swam in a harbour (Europe ain't great at beaches), taken advantage of two for one cocktails and nibbles that come for free with €1.50 beers, explored some ruins, visited a town where the filmed Game of Thrones, sang so many camp songs and learnt to make an array of friendship bracelets. 17 days with Taous was not enough and parting ways was hard. I still can't believe I'm not going to see that girl until next year, probably the longest period time we've ever been apart. A big thanks to her for putting up with me and encouraging both the tourist activities and the laziness. And thanks to Tim and Mel for a great week and putting up with stranger who was not, as Mel so kindly pointed out, a spouse of any of her nieces or nephews. I am still wearing the engagement ring you gave me for my 18th though, Taous, so maybe, just maybe, Mel was wrong. And now for the Amazing Race Challenge. Tim informed me that a few seasons ago they actually came to Malta on the amazing race and had to abseil down the blue grotto. But that doesn't encourage my creativity, so I'm coming up with a new challenge. Firstly, do a boat tour and visit the Cat Cave. Then, find out why the hell the Cat Cave is called the Cat Cave. The guides won't tell you, and you're racing so your access to wifi is impossible, not that that would help you because trust me, I googled it. So it's up to your people and researching skills to find this out before informing the ticket office for the boat tours, who will give you your next clue if you are correct. Next time, I meet Emilia again to take on Istanbul. We get mesmerised by tiles and Turkish delight. Until then, Sarah xx

#days 183-190 #Malta #recap #Taous

7 shots = a T-shirt, a Reunion - Ios, Greece - Days 175-177

I left my new family (or old family, since I'm still convinced Michela's mum, Carla, is actually just my mum in disguise) and headed to Athens, armed with cash, to face this debt crisis head on. Or go to beautiful islands and spend my life swimming and eating. Whatever. I arrived in Athens at midnight and caught a taxi that cost more than my flight (damn Europe) to my hostel for the night, where I had not one, but two beautiful faces waiting for me. Emilia, that bubble of love, was old news by this point, though as amazing as always. But it was Taous, friend for almost 10 years that I'd spent every day of Australian summer with that I was most excited about. So many hugs, jumping, and tired excitement was had in that small dorm room. We had months to catch up on and a boat to catch at 7am, so after being told to shh we put our catch up on hold and waited until our arrival in IOS to catch up on all things camp, travel and life related. What did we know about Ios when we decided to go there? Not much. It was meant to be a small, nice island, with a solid night life. This is a pretty apt description of most of the Greek Islands so we sort of just left it for us to find out when we arrived. We got our ferry and had some solid naps before getting picked up and taken to our hostel. We were staying right next to the beach and had our dorm room to ourselves i.e. We were living the dream. And now for my favourite the part of every day, food time! We found ourselves a tiny cafe that we adopted as our own over the next two days, although none of us quite know why because they really never had what we wanted to order. But they did have €2.50 gyros, our new diet for the next week. We had the beginning of our 10 day catch up over a two hour lunch right by the water. We were on an island and our island relaxation started in cheap food style. After spending the afternoon by the beach and the pool, we had some celebratory reuniting cocktails before heading into to town for dinner. I, unfortunately, was super sick and this was fairly annoying (sorry guys), so we called it a night early and headed back. But only after eating some fried cheese. The next day, after I'd been solidly sick and gotten over it, we spent the morning by the beach before heading into town to get lost among those gorgeous streets that make the Greek Islands so iconic. White houses, churches, and restaurants filled the streets and we climbed to the highest point for a view over it all (you'd expect nothing less, right?). After feeling like we were living in a postcard, we returned to our beach to investigate a bar we'd seen earlier. This bar may be the best bar I've been to on this entire trip. It was empty bar one young family, and a little pricey for Greek standards, but it had hanging beds, lounges, and a pool, all while overlooking a beach. The drinks came with nibbles, a European standard that we need to adopt in Australia. We drank mojitos while lying on a swing bed big enough for all three of us to lay out comfortably on. It's a shock I ever left, really. But a nightlife awaited us, as did some amazing muscle tees. Ios is known for its nightlife. What we did not anticipate is that that nightlife would be filled with Australians and that pretty much all the pubs would be Aussie owned. This island is home to the pub crawl. Streets upon windy streets of bars without cover charge mean you can jump easily between them all. They also do this thing where you get a t shirt if you do seven shots. We were getting t shirts. It was decided. And thus our scavenger hunt started. We had our eyes on specific shirts we'd seen people around wearing and so off we went to find the appropriate bars to get those shirts. In between all this, we ended up in a hardcore EDM club, a bar with a band covering only Australian hits, a bar themed like Peter Pan, a 90s hip hop bar that I could have never left, and a bar that had a shot where they lit the bar on fire for you to toast a marshmallow over. We each did our seven shots (that were cocktail shots rather than straight vodka/tequila/whatever so we could still walk straight by the end of it all) and got our shirts, ready to look like ever other Aussie that made it to the Greek Islands. And we danced. we totally crushed it. This leads us to the amazing race challenge for this leg of the trip: a bar crawl scavenger hunt! You'll start by having to find our amazing hanging bed bar by the beach, who will give you a cryptic clue with one of the names of the bars in town. It might start simple, for example, a jäger bottle label would lead you to jägerbar. From here, you'd have to do a shot before being given a clue to the next bar. This time it might be a bit more difficult, say, a basketball singlet, as one of the bars had these instead of the standard muscle tees everywhere else had. An obscure quote from Peter Pan would lead you to The Lost Boys Bar, or a clown emoji might take you to Circus. Once you've visited seven bars and done seven shots, you'll receive a shirt with your next destination on it: Fira, Santorini. And I'll see you there for our next post, where we do a four hour hike and swim in the spot from the sisterhood of the travelling pants. Until then, Sarah x

#iOS #recap #days 175-177 #Emilia #Taous #Greece

#tbt performing live at club #taous in south #brooklyn w/ @rollacoastageez & @yeshnyc mixtape on the way just wait on it #HiStakesBrand 🔊 (at Hi-Stakes Brand 💯)

#taous #brooklyn #tbt #histakesbrand