hola! bonjour!

Yesterday, my camera was stolen without my knowledge of the theft taking place! Thankfully it was returned to me at the end (since I wasn't aware that it was stolen, it was a nice surprise!).

So what happened exactly? I was in an outdoor churros cafe in Madrid (deep fried dough dipped in hot chocolate sauce...hmmmm) with Anna-Marie (from Finland) and we were deep in conversation about something (I can't remember what though) when 2 gypsy kids (one boy and one girl) came over to our table. The boy was holding a piece of newspaper and I think he pretended to be a handicap and kept pointing at some random stuff on the newspaper for me to read. I was confused and so we ignored them, and then he pointed at my churros so I concluded that maybe they are here for the food coz they're hungry. We shook at our at them and they left. Twenty seconds later, a man came up to my table and handed me my camera!! HUH?!?! How did he get it?!

What happened was, while the little boy distracted me with the newspaper, the girl next to him took my camera which I put on the table next to my churros. He used the newspaper to cover up the camera so I wouldn't see the girl taking it, however that Spanish man was sitting opposite us and I guess he witnessed the event and ran after the kids when they left to get my camera back!

Phhheewww, most of my photos from Barcelona are still in the memory card as I still haven't the time to burn them onto my CD. I'm so grateful as I was extremely close to losing my camera and it would totally dampen the rest of my holiday...I can't imagine traveling without my "memory keeper". It actually took me a 10 minutes to realize what really happened and then I walked to the Spanish man's table and told him that he saved my day!

So now, I am in Brussles...waffle-land now! Since my last entry, I've been in Italy (Florence, Rome, Cinque Terre, Sorrento, Milan and Venice) and Spain (Barcelona and Madrid). I'm not particularly impressed with Italy despite the great gelatos I've had! Barcelona had been wonderful so I ended up staying there for just over a week.

I still have around a week in Europe....so basically my Euro trip has come to an end now! I still haven't planned for the rest of the week so I think I should do that now.