Day 45!

I'm halfway through my allowed 3 months in the Schengen countries. The plan is to stop the clock soon by ducking off to the UK and to then use up the rest in Scandinavia.

Time flies when you've got 6 months off work you're having fun! Quick summary of places so far: Sarlat ~ Toulouse ~ Figueres ~ Barcelona ~ Valencia ~ Madrid ~ Salamanca ~ Granada ~ Malaga (Alhaurin de la Torre) ~ Sevilla ~ Geneva ~ Zurich ~ Munich ~ Prague.

I have come from this:

... to this:

Regular blogging was never going to happen. I will have to improvise.

On a fairly long train ride recently, I managed to summarise some highlights and will post these separately in the interest of brevity and blogging etiquette (if there is such a thing). These will include a summary of my European food highlights, a blog dedicated to flamenco, some insights about getting around aka transport, some musings on planning vs spontaneity (including a philosophical rambling about fate) and my unfinished thoughts on intuition as well as being a tourist. By that stage there will most likely be many more unfinished thoughts brewing..

For now, I'll leave you with an interesting bit of culture from Toulouse. It's called "Quart d'heure Toulousain", which translates as the Toulousian 15 minutes. Whether you're meeting friends for dinner or a real-estate agent for an inspection, it is commonly accepted to be anywhere between 0-15 minutes late!