We met through gapyear.com

Names: Joanne Vasey and Joanne Boldison

Age: both 19

Interests: Travel, alcohol, animals (we're both veggie), paragliding, dancing. Joanne B loves her R&B music.

Where did we meet? ...in cyberspace! I left a message on the gapyear.com messageboards looking for a travel mate to go round Europe with. Jo replied and we started emailing each other with our possible plans to see if we both wanted to do the same things. She had already tried going by herself the year before but didn't enjoy it. I think she had been to Austria and the Czech Republic then came back after a couple of weeks. Anyway after a month we had definitely decided to go together and started booking flights and rail passes - we called each other a few times for a chat and decided to meet up in Barcelona to start our trip. We didn't know whether we would stay together for the whole trip, but as it worked out from the moment we met to the moment we left each other at the airport six weeks later we were nearly always together.

First meeting? May 21st 2002 at about half past two in the afternoon. I had arrived in Barcelona the night before and was pretty much terrified of leaving the hostel (the infamous Kabul hostel) but was bored rigid so had just walked out the door and right into a tired and 'backpacked' Jo, I had recognised her from some photos we had sent each other. From that point on we were together for 24/7 for the next 45 days. On the first day we just clicked and were in tears of laughter. Luckily enough we were both vegetarian so we struggled together to find suitable things to eat.

The trip? Barcelona for four days and then onto Seville for three days, after that we went onto Cadiz and only stayed for two hours (We thought we would be traded for camels and so fled back to civilization). We came back via the beautiful Tavira (It's in Portugal (Algarve), but nobody is to go there as it is our paradise!) We spent one day in Lisbon before we took the very, very, very long train journey across Portugal, Spain and into France where we stayed in Nice (which was nice!). We stayed in Nice for four days and took trips out to Monaco and Monte Carlo. We both decided that we would retire to Nice, we loved it and got taken out to a posh salsa club by a footballer and a photographer - or so they said... Then we headed to Rome... which was a disaster, I had my mobile stolen, there were bugs in our beds and we had no hot water for a day in the hostel. Then, bad turned to worse and we thought we would escape to Venice only to find it to be 'officially' our worst place in Europe - I will never go again. Hostels are expensive, the whole place smells and we found the people there to be rude. Next stop was Munich (Germany) which was much better, then into Switzerland (Interlaken) where we did some paragliding in what is the extreme sports capital of Switzerland. I can thoroughly recommend paragliding and have since taken it up as a hobby. After Switzerland we came back to Amsterdam via Paris and then at Amsterdam airport were separated for the first time for the 45 days we had been together - it was like losing my Siamese twin.

To summarise... All in all we got on really well but I think we were lucky to have so much in common. I would definitely recommend it to other people especially if you are thinking of simply not going travelling because you don't know anyone to go with. We spent most of the time together and did our own things on a couple of days when things got too much - I am certain we will go somewhere again after uni, perhaps north Africa or the middle east - so watch this space!



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