Long ago I hadn’t done such a big trip like this one. It was done during a time it was not very wise for me to make such a trip, due all the financial situations I was living, but all the plans were sudden and I wanted to make a sacrifice as long as living such memories. I had to be working constantly during my trip to be able to afford it, and I think it went pretty good on that part (also with the help of some friends, which I’m completely grateful with them!). It was just going to be a shorter trip only to Sweden for NordicFuzzCon, and one week more with some friends around some other parts of Europe, but as closer this plan trip was getting, longer it was turning

-San Francisco and Amsterdam: Journey to Norway
-Norway: Oslo, Tromsø, Polar Circle and the Northern Lights
-NordicFuzzCon:
-Viking Riots
-Meeting People and the Grimner Band
-Doodles for Charity
-Year of the Dragon Meet & Greet
-Fursuit Parade
-Coloring Book for Charity and the Trash Bin
-The Final Battle
-Germany and Italy
-Madrid and Paris
-Dallas, USA: Journey to TFF
-Texas Furry Fiesta

San Francisco and Amsterdam: Journey to Norway

This first part of the trip was the most rushing one. This part was only with my family (parents and sister).
It was my sister who had suggested, long ago, that we should go to Norway to see the northern lights. That idea was kept saved, nothing else was told about it, so I started planning my trip to NordicFuzzCon, and my friends were suggesting to go to Italy after it, I checked my budget and it was kind of tight but not impossible to do it. But it was at the end of December, during Christmas, that my sister wanted to agree with me about dates, flights, where to stay and what to do. So I had to merge my plans with NordicFuzzCon with this family trip to Norway, which fit very well, since I made it finish just in time when NFC started (I told her I wanted to go to this event in Sweden, so I could easily travel from Oslo to Copenhagen).

The reason why to Norway and not to Canada or Alaska to see the Northern Lights, it was due a “vision” on a dream that my sister had in Norway, so she was following her vision because something should have been waiting for her in Norway, or something like that. Crazy things that me and my family sometimes have, I can’t blame her, because sometimes I also follow some of my hunches without questioning them, and those have leaded me to good paths in my life, for more scary some of those hunches are.

My family and I don’t live in the same city, and it was more convenient for us (price wise) to travel separately and meet everyone at the Oslo airport, so my adventure started alone. I had my flights from Guadalajara to San Francisco, with Aeromexico; and another different reservation from San Francisco to Oslo with KLM, and a layover in Amsterdam. Since trying to get direct flights from anywhere in Mexico to Oslo was terribly expensive, and I always check different options from San Francisco, New York City, Miami or Chicago, those airports usually have good deals to travel to European cities and it’s not that expensive to purchase separate flights from Mexico to those American airports.

When I was at the San Francisco airport, it was during the Chinese Lunar Year, so I got to see the celebration in the middle of the airport: people making music with drums and cymbals, and a long red and yellow dragon dancing. That brightened the moment of many passengers, but others (especially those who are wearing formal suits and black suitcases) were not very impressed.

My flight arrived earlier than usual to Amsterdam, customs took nothing, and I had only my backpack with me, since they have offered me to check even my carry-on. So suddenly I got some free time in Amsterdam (around 4 hours) before boarding my next flight to Oslo, so I decided to go out the airport and find my way to see Amsterdam, I had been many times at its airport but never got the chance to actually see the city, and I had seen on many blogger videos that many travelers enjoyed stopping in Amsterdam for how easy and fast was to get to the city from the airport. Before departing to my own adventure, I checked google maps and even one of those YouTube videos of how to get to the center of Amsterdam, and everything looked like it was super easy, just taking the train and I was going to be directly to the Central Station.

Oh! It was not that easy! I purchased my round trip train ticket, I went to the train station, and suddenly we were said that train was not taking us to the Central Station due maintenance, so I decided to follow a bunch of tourists who they knew where to go (I could listen they were also going to the Central Station), but the surprise is that we needed to take the metro, and the ticket I had was not enough for using the metro, but I saw many people were getting in the metro through a gate without showing a ticket, so I just follow them, then I realized it was kind of a riot of people who were not wanting to pay for entering and they couldn’t be stopped. Anyway, that’s how I arrived to Amsterdam, I could be walking those streets, I can say it is a very nice looking center of a city, very pretty, but very smelly (it smelled like skunk, if you know what I mean).

On my way back to the airport, I realized I was going to have the same problem at using again the metro, I didn’t have a ticket, but when I was about to purchase a ticket, a dude disguised as Elmo (yes, the one from Sesame Street) gave me signs to get in without paying, and he allowed me to enter to the gates. Such bizarre!

Norway: Oslo, Tromsø, Polar Circle and the Northern Lights

When I arrived at Oslo’s airport, I had to wait some hours for my family, enough to make a proper plan of how exactly we were all going to arrive to the hotel from the airport, and what we were going to do in Oslo. Since that was the only destination we hadn’t planned properly in the entire trip. And from there it was just a nice family trip exploring Oslo as tourists, but it was very touching how my mom started crying of joy when she saw snowing for first time, I had no idea she had never seen snow before.

We only were one full day in Oslo, the next day we had a flight to Tromsø. Place where we actually had a lots of plans to do.
Tromsø is a town located almost at the very top of Norway, I think it is the northernmost city in the world, there are more populations even further north but not as cities.
Probably this was the most beautiful stop in my entire trip. We got to be in a tour through many fjords all over the place, with frozen lakes, snowed mountains, beautiful landscapes, but at night the sky brought us that thing that we were looking for, despite it was cloudy and we didn’t have a lot of faith to see them that night, suddenly a big aurora borealis illuminated above us, we had to lay down over the snow to see it better, and then more started brighting all around us. They were not as colorful and bright as in photos and movies, but it was still very beautiful.

The next evening, we had a tour in a Sami reserve. The Sami are indigenous people that are now part of the modern society but they preserve their traditions. It was very interesting how they showed us how they live, what they eat (we could also delight a traditional dish), what are their beliefs and such. They made us feed their reindeers in the darkness, they are such docile critters. But the final part of that date was a sleigh ride pulled by reindeers. When I saw how was that situation I felt kind of awkward, because they are placed like if it was a carnival ride, and the track was just a big circle, so for me it was like seeing those donkeys or ponies that are tied up on a carousel in little carnivals. I apologized with the reindeer that was about to give me a ride, for working for my own entertainment. But despite feeling bad for that and such, it resulted to be a very great experience, the ride was very smooth and I could feel, in some way, that the reindeer was not uncomfortable at all, we were riding in completely darkness in the middle of the night, I could just see all the starry sky, when suddenly a very bright, colorful and dancing aurora borealis showed up in the sky, I don’t know how awkward I could have looked but I started crying, it was so beautiful, totally worthy the experience. After the ride, I thanked the reindeer, my sister mocked to me, pretending to speak in response of the reindeer “yeah, tourist, getting surprised for one of those lights in the sky, I get to see them every night!”

Our last stop in Norway was Longyearbyen, the biggest town in the Svalbard islands. This was the idea of my sister to go even further north than Tromsø, at first I thought it was such a crazy idea, I had seen videos before about this place, where we can’t go outside the few blocks of the town without a proper guide who needs to carry a gun to protect against polar bears, that are more polar bears than human population, and that it is forbidden to die in this place, since they can’t bury any body in the ground because, due to the low temperatures of the place, they will not decompose. But there we were, one of the closest human settlements to the north pole.

We arrived by plane, from Tromsø to a direct flight to Longyearbyen. I was surprised that, despite the Svalbard islands belong to Norway, we had to cross customs like if we were exiting the EU, so we got an exit stamp, and we didn’t get any other stamp arriving to Longyearbyen, so it was like if we were not in any country. Also, it was a regular passengers flight, which was completely full. Arriving there, we had to exit the plane with regular stairs and walking to the terminal. It was such a temperature change (we were warm and cozy inside the plane, and suddenly, outside was -15ºC ) and needing to go downstairs, that something very weird acted inside my knee, like if something had cracked, and it started hurting a lot (I’m still checking that with the doctor, he hasn’t told me with certain what exactly I have, I need to do some X-ray tests, since it was proved it is not arthritis, and it was weird that it only happened in one knee and not in both), that pain was a struggle during the rest of the trip on this journal, I had to take some diclofenac pills during those days that I was going to walk a lot. Fortunately, that pain didn’t ruin my trip, it was just annoying but I kept enjoying it anyways.

When we arrived, there was still one more day of the polar night, when dawn doesn't come and the entire day is night.

Our first day we made a hike up to the mountain to see the entrance of the Global Seed Vault, ah yes, if you didn’t know, there is a safety backup of the whole world’s seeds that we know. So if some big catastrophe would happen in the world, at least there are in storage all the seed samples of crop diversity. We are not able to enter to the seed vault, of course, but at least we were able to see such monument that is the entrance of that place. And for that hike, I could see how true was what I had seen previously on internet, we had to go with a guide who had a riffle and a sound gun, but also accompanied by a trained dog (whose name was Ghandi, such a good boy). The instructions if we got to see a polar bear were:
We see a polar bear in the distance, we need to walk to the opposite direction. If the polar bear is walking to our direction, then is when the sound gun is shot to scare the bear away, the gun has 4 bullets, and if it keeps approaching even to the 4th bullet, the last resource is the riffle. Our guide told us that she has seen more than 20 times a polar bear, but every time it works the sound gun, and she told us there was a time she was so nervous that the bear was not getting scared with the sound gun, and she thought she was going to need the riffle, but then the polar bear run away with the 4th bullet. That nobody wants to use that last resource, especially for how endangered the polar bears are.

Also during that hike, we could see the first sunrise of the year (but the sun only lasted one hour, then it went back to darkness)

After such hike, we got to use the amenity of the place we were staying, they had a sauna and a hot tub.
And that night we tried our luck again if we could see again the northern lights, but it was snowing so badly that our hopes went to zero, but we got to see some fresh footprints of an arctic fox, sadly we didn’t see the fox around.

On the next day, we spent our time in the two museums that exist in that town, the Svalbard Museum and the North Pole Museum, then we went to a very cozy coffee shop “Café Huskies” where they actually had some huskies that anyone could pet.

Our return flight from Longyearbyen to Oslo was chaotic, I don’t want to take too long on telling what happened, but it was very weird that, despite we had a direct flight, we had to stop to Tromsø just to stamp again our passport, for entering the EU again, and then to pick up our luggage to drop it off again to the airline, but the time between that and our next flight was incredibly short, so when we were in line for dropping off our luggage, we saw on screens that our flight was listed as “Boarding”, and then we got some problems at dropping automatically our luggage and we had to queue with the agent and it was such a long queue, then it was a long queue to go through security, and when we were in that, our flight was listed as “Closing Boarding”. We got in by miracle, just before they closed the door of our plane. And yep, the problem of entering at the very last second is that we got to be in the plane, but our luggage didn’t. Fortunately it went on the next flight from Tromsø and we just had to wait at the airport 1 more hour.

But again another chaos happened at the next day, but this time with the reservation of my parents for their flight back to Mexico from Oslo, which, conveniently for me, they had a layover in Copenhagen, the same flight that I needed to arrive for NordicFuzzCon. They couldn’t solve them the problem in the check in desk, and they just gave them the tickets from Oslo to Copenhagen, telling them that they needed to request their tickets to Mexico at the Copenhagen airport, thing that I had to help them, and again it was very problematic for some reason, they insisted their passport and their reservation was alright but their system was not allowing them to print them their tickets. We took more than one hour in front of the desk trying to solve that problem. 
Funnily, while solving that problem, I got to see many furries already arriving to the airport, some of them recognized me and said hi, and they all were looking very confused when I told them “I’m with my parents!”, I’m sure they thought I was bringing my parents to NordicFuzzCon.

It was more chaos because I had agreed with my friend Steel and his friends to pick me up at the Copenhagen airport so we could go from there to Malmö, but I was still solving my parents’ issue with their tickets (and I had to help them, since my parents don’t speak English very well, and my sister is not confident with her English either), and just in time when they finally solved their problem, I had to run to meet my friends to the meeting point we had settled, and even worse, I had no idea how to get to that meeting point, seeing it in map was easier than how it was in person. It was such a stressing moment, but in the end everything worked very well.

NordicFuzzCon: Viking Riots

My most favorite furry convention in the entire world, still is.

We had arrived super early to NordicFuzzCon, we were there on Monday (even when officially the convention starts on Wednesday, but there are already events listed on Tuesday). I got to room with Steel, who had worked previously very hard on our outfits that our pandas were going to have. Since the theme of the convention was “Ragnarök”, he made such super cool viking outfits: cardboard weapons (an axe and a sword), cardboard shields, custom cardboard horned helmets, Celtic outfits with cape and a belt with a proper sheath for our weapons. It was amazing! He even cut a lot of cardboard to be able to make a viking boat, we ended up building together that boat. Despite I did almost nothing with such a silly but awesome project of us being vikings in fursuit, I’m totally proud how it went. I admire so much the creativity and initiative of Steel to make these kind of fun projects true, and I was so glad to be part of this one, to team up with him on this viking riot. Probably my most favorite fursuit times that I’ve lived so far has been during this NordicFuzzCon thanks to this red panda dude.

The first moment we used our outfits and we got to be in the ship, we knew that was going to be a success, we were catching everyone’s attention, we were playing with so many fursuits, attacking them as vikings, they took our ship and we had to take it back, we were going up and down the stairs with our ship, we closed some paths of the convention to start our riot against Jazzy mouse who were also using viking toy weapons, also we got to fight against the security guys (they followed our game), we were fighting each other constantly. Every outing in fursuit was so tiring but incredibly satisfactory, always ending telling each other all the stupid and funny things we got to see and do.

NFC: Meeting People and the Grimner Concert

I had so many plans and many people I wanted to meet and hang out during this event. So I was convinced to not work during NordicFuzzCon and just enjoy it, as a vacation convention, which is fair because it is my most favorite convention, I really didn’t want to work during it (Probably next year I will do it, at least for one day). 
I’m always afraid to mention all the people I got to meet and hang out during a convention because I may forget someone, but in my plans were to hang out with Satti, Nik Raccoon, Meisarrg, Siphen, shortythedragon, CescoCat, Doggett, Skippy, Trax (despite he’s a busy cat during his convention), Jazzy, and of course henrieke, karpour and all the guys from the art jams. Of course with my friends Steel, KOIDELCOYOTE and Kazan, who I spent most of the time with. Also a big surprise to see JD Puppy and Dantee there. And as always, getting the goal to see and hug Mausie. Everything was achieved.

We got to see live the metal band Grimner, it was so cool to see a metal concert with furries and to see a mosh pit with fursuiters. I know nothing about metal, it was not a music genre that I tended to listen, but holy crap how good they played live!
After the concert, I got to knew that the band was interviewed and they were asked who would be their fursonas, and they contacted me so I could draw very quickly their fursonas, I told them that requesting that to ME was going to make them look “cute”, they told me exactly that is what they were thinking. I did their fursonas design, but not sure when or how they were going to show those drawings.

NFC: Doodles for Charity

Another highlight of the event, and again, thanks to Steel, were those big crayons that he made that were around the convention (and oh boy he spent so much time on such a project for researching how to do them and then all the time and material he spent on them).

Once again, I applied to be part of the doodles for charity at NordicFuzzCon, where a bunch of artists (most of them without a fursuit) were drawing to people in exchange of a minimal amount fully donated to the charity of the event, that this year was the UAnimals, an organization that rescue and aim animals who are in the hot zones of the Ukrainian war.
But this time, my participation was slightly different than previous years, even if last year was already too creative (it is when I got to use Steel’s fursuit instead, with a cardboard mask of my panda character, and the sign of “Definitely Paco Panda”), and this year Steel got the idea to use the big crayons and also make collab arts for these pictures, which was an awesome idea! We were working over the floor, not on any table, I was doing the first sketch and it was Steel who was coloring them. It was not only super cute looking to see two pandas drawing a piece at the same time on the floor, it was also very convenient that the red panda was left handed and the panda bear right handed, so we had perfect harmony in space to be able to work at the same time, and also we could work way faster so we could accept more drawings than if I had been by myself.

We repeated once again that activity on the very last day of the convention, but that time we got a little bit hidden from the view of everyone, and also it was at the same time than Kéké Flipnote was also doing sketches, so… everyone was wanting a drawing by him, and not everyone was noticing that we were also part of the doodles for charity, we had to get some help from the guy who was on charge of the activity, so we could get some people interested in us to draw them. But it was same fun! But I'm already getting ahead, since after that something very funny happened that I will tell about later.

NFC: Year of the Dragon Meet & Greet

My friend Shorty, the dragon, was wanting so badly from so many years ago to make Paco wear his fursuit, that means, a fursuit over another fursuit. His first fursuit is so big that almost any other fursuiter can wear it. This dragon meet and greet was going to be the perfect excuse. The idea was showing up as Paco, pretending to be a dragon, but inside the dragon fursuit was going to be the panda.

That idea sounded funny already, but it was enhanced by Steel at making cardboard masks and cardboard dragon wings, so he could also pretend to be a dragon as well at attending the meet and greet. We showed up, and it was not a great event as it promised it was going to be, we knew that it was supposed to be like a Lunar Year celebration with a Chinese dragon dancing over the place and all the dragons having a big party and so. But it was just a regular social meet and greet that ended up in a group photo.

At least us, the pandas, pretending to be dragons among the real dragons, were indeed a success, it was something many people liked and were taking us photos and giggling for how silly it was. We got to take pictures with many other derg fellows.

NFC: Fursuit Parade

Probably one of the most memorable moments at the convention. We were arriving kind of late for the fursuit group photo, they were about to take it, Steel and I were just going back to the elevators and we still wanted to pick the viking ship, so we could walk over the parade with it.
When we arrived with the ship where the group photo was about to happen, one of the staff members told us to go to the very front of the picture, since we had the ship. We had no idea where the front was, but we tried our best to figure it out, until a crowd control volunteer told us that since we were late, we should go to the very back of the photo, and it was super duper staff guy who rescued us from that “No, I want these guys to the very front” and he showed us the path of where exactly was the very front, and suddenly we were next to Mausie and Iris. We got to fight against Trax, Mausie, Iris and Jazzy on our boat while we were waiting for the photo to be taken.

After it, the fursuit parade was starting, we were just following the crowd of fursuiters, since that moment we realized how heavy it was going to be to be walking very awkwardly with our boat during the parade, and by then we had no idea how long that parade was going to be.

We walked through the streets of Malmö, even to the central main plaza. Every time we got to see some kids who were caught by the attention of the ship, Steel gave them his sword so they could fight us, most of them really fight us and we were pretending to fight them back and be defeated by them, we made so many of them very happy.

The real riot was when we were walking outside the Max Burger (famous Swedish burgers chain), and we decided to detour the parade to get into the Max Burger, creating a chaotic environment of confused people and many laughs, I’m pretty sure that not every day they see two viking pandas entering with their entire galleon to a burger place. We got to the very front of the cashiers, pretending we were assaulting them and claiming for burgers. It was so much fun.

We decided to repeat exactly the same thing when we walked outside a KFC, that, in my perspective, the reaction of the people were not as explosively fun as it was at the Max Burger, but it was at that riot that we got to reach some videos and photos from people who got to witness the viking pandas entering to that KFC.

We had walked already too much, I don’t know how tired other fursuiters were for walking that distance, but us, in the boat, we had to be walking in a very awkwardly way; if I started walking normally, Steel was going to step on me, so we had to be walking with small skips all the time. Despite having each one some handle bars to carry the boat, we had some suspenders that we could put over our shoulders so we didn’t have to be grabbing the boat all the time, but just 3 blocks before ending the parade, one of the suspenders broke, and we couldn’t carry the boat with our shoulders, so we had to grab it directly with the bars, which made things more difficult, adding that we were already too tired to keep walking.
Those last two blocks was kind of a torture, we were just wanting to arrive back to the hotel. And for some reason, those two last blocks, when we were already completely destroyed and doing not so much anymore, is when we got to be recorded the most. Many people sent us videos of us in our viking ship, and it was precisely during those moments we were looking defeated and just wanting to end the parade.

No regrets, it was too much fun!

NFC: Coloring Book for Charity and the Trash Bin

I suggested to Steel that we could have another event where we could bring the big crayons and do things for charity in fursuit. There was listed in the schedule an event called “Coloring Book for Charity”, that it was about purchasing a coloring book they were selling at the charity booth, and a ticket for a coloring event. It sounded like an excellent idea! But I guess my ideas are not always the best. It was truly not the best event, we were 3 fursuiters and 3 people in a very quiet room coloring pages of the book, we got to make in more fursuiters despite they were not listed in the event, but they ended up coloring our books with us.
Something that deserves a honorable mention, I made Steel, the RAD panda guy, who is always running from a place to another, who never stays quiet for a minute, to finally be quiet and in a singe place, entertained, for around 10 minutes while he was coloring his page.

We departed earlier from that event, taking the crayons and many paper sheets with us, and we were in the middle of the convention center, on the most annoying place where people and other fursuiters could step on us while trying to walk from the lobby to the convention area, and we started drawing people on the floor. Of course we got a lot of attention while doing it (including from some security people, who were insisting we should move some few meters away).

One of the persons we wanting to draw was a journalist with a press badge, of course he had no fursona, so he was asked what would be his fursona. He started thinking about it, he said he wanted something with a big tail, something skinny, very active and big, and for some reason, his conclusion was…. A HAMSTER!!
O..kay, sure! A hamster! So we drew his hamster, again as a collab art, me the sketch and Steel the color.
Days later we got to see that we got to be in the picture of the Sweden's largest morning paper, where it could be read:

“Paco and Steel have brought large crayons on Saturday night and sit in the centre of the floor. Those who wish can have their "fursona" drawn by them, i.e. their furry personality. Photo: Thomas Karlsson”

After our coloring session, we got to rest a little bit in the fursuit lounge, where we found some raccoon and red panda fellas: Meisarrg, Koda and Ralphie. After talking for so long with them, we talked about the trash bin prop that there was around the convention area, and we thought it was a good idea to get back in characters and play with it.

Such a big riot! We got to have Steel inside the bin, who was stealing so many things from people and then we escaped together, me driving the bin. Then it was the opposite, I got to be inside the bin, and it was such a roller coaster for the way Steel was driving it. Then he grabbed a bunch of flyers from a table and threw them inside the trash bin when I was inside. We were already so tired but we kept doing many stupid things around, and there was a group of people who we had already in our attention for so long, and they offered us a drink, we both accepted and we were there drinking with them, I was truly thirsty so I appreciated the offer, but then I realized that what he had offered us had alcohol, so they got this tipsy panda (I was exaggerating even more the movements of being tipsy, but indeed it hit me a little bit).

Such a very fun evening!

NFC: The Final Battle

I’m sure I’m missing to tell so many adventures and many other fun things I got to live during NordicFuzzCon, it would be hard to list all of them and this journal would turn eternal.

That last evening, during Sunday, after the closing ceremonies, after seeing many people already departing, and trying Semla with coffee with Steel, Kazan and Koidel, we got back to do the last doodles for charity, the one I had already told about when Kéké was stealing the show (He’s awesome! I’m very glad he really enjoys to draw for hours, especially for charity, he deserves all the attention!).

After that session, we knew it was our very last outing as vikings, so we put our shield, helmet and took our weapons for very last time, and we started our very last fight of the convention, throwing very hard hits, destroying the weapons with the shields, Steel even got to break the string of my shield so I couldn’t grab it anymore, he totally won that battle, I was completely undefended, and at that moment he gave me a very tight hug, and we started breaking all our cardboard weapons and helmets, marking officially that NordicFuzzCon finished. I’m so glad that moment was captured on video.

The next day we had to sink our ship as well, but we kept the sides of it, the two dragons, as a souvenir, for the good memories.

I loved this NordicFuzzCon so much! Since I was at my first NFC in 2019, it turned in my most favorite furry convention ever, and I’m surprised how each new edition turns in my new favorite! Definitely will be there again next year!

Germany and Italy

That Monday after NordicFuzzCon I remember it like one of those strange days that were part of a dream, a nostalgic dream taken out from a Sigur Rós song. Being passenger of a long road trip with one of my best friends, a never ending conversation, a gray sky with fog and rain, then taking a ferry shared with other furry friends, and keep a very long conversation while outside we see how we cross the ocean, and then arriving to our destiny and needing to say some good byes, among tears and promises of seeing us again.

I stayed in Berlin with some friends, with the plan of relaxing for a bit, and that included a spa/sauna session, a lot of food (very classic German: Schnitzels, Riesenhaxe, Currywurst and beer), also coffee.

We just spent two days in Berlin, and then, we took a flight to Naples, Italy.
We were a group of friends, from Mexico and USA, who have been already traveling previously around Europe, while I was in Norway some of them were in Spain and/or Andorra, one of them didn’t even go to NordicFuzzCon, but he met us later. And we were already spoiled of how nice the cities and towns we had visited were. So just arriving to Naples it was a big contrast of what we had already visited.

As soon as we arrived, there were a lot of scammers offering us a cheap taxi to our hotel, but that’s something very common to happen in Mexico as well, we know how to deal with those kind of scammers, at just ignoring them or telling them “no” over and over again. We took a bus that left us only two blocks away our B&B, but then we realized how sketchy the streets were, and we had to roll all our luggage through those streets while many people were looking at us (and you may know how furries are experts to not travel light, we were carrying with our big fursuit baggage). When we finally found the address of our B&B, the gate was completely closed, and for more we ringed, nobody was opening us. I had to search on the online reservation to get their phone number and call them (while many people were staring at us, seeing those poor tourists abandoned in the middle of the street), they were very mad at us for arriving late (I had put on the reservation that our flight was arriving at 22:30, so it was even a miracle for me that we were there just 30 minutes after our depart, I even thought we were arriving so early).
When the person arrived to receive us and give us our room, he decided to charge us €20 extra for late check in, €12 more for the city tax, and €12 more for I don’t know what else, and then he told us than total was €45. My friend Koidel pointed, very sincerely “No, that would be €44!”, but this person look at him with a very serious look, grabbed a paper and a pencil, and he did the math “12 + 12 + 20 = 45” and look at him, defiantly. We prefer to say nothing, we were not going to fight for €1, we just wanted to get in and sleep.
But oh wow, what a way to be received in Italy!

At the next day we met Cesco in the train station and we went to Pompeii, before entering to the archeological area, we stopped very quickly for a snack, we bought some focaccia that were advertised as pizza, we bought different flavors, one of chicken and one of marinara. We found that marinara was juicy but it needed some meat, and the chicken was delicious but it needed some sauce; so we thought it was a great idea to make a sandwich with the two of them, to make it perfect, and indeed was delicious that way. Cesco just told us “Please, don’t do that with traditional pizza!”

After many hours of exploring Pompeii, we trusted in a random place of gelato, and oh boy what a great gelato! At returning to Naples, we just went to a very famous pizzeria “L’Antica Pizzeria de Michele”, we knew it was going to be good when we saw a bunch of people waiting for their turn to get in. Sadly, Cesco couldn’t stay with us since he had his train ticket back home very soon, and he definitely was not going to make it even if we had entered the place immediately, because we took 40 minutes to get in on a table, and a little bit more than one hour to actually have pizzas in front of us. It has been one of the most affordable pizzas we’ve ever had (€5.50 for a pizza) and probably the most delicious ever. They even wanted to order another order of pizzas, despite we were so full!! 
And practically, that’s everything we did in Naples at all! So despite they were very affordable, that was the only reason to go to Naples, so we thought that in the end it was the most expensive pizza ever.

At the next day, we took the high speed train that took us from Naples to Rome in less than one hour, and also it was there where I bought probably the most delicious coffee, for only €1.50. It was not my first time in Italy, and I know they have really good and super affordable coffee, so I was buying coffee every time I could (I’m a big coffee fan, if you didn’t know), but that particular one in the train was supreme.

Our main reasons to go to Rome were the most basic ones: to be such tourists and to try their food. This time I had researched very well were exactly were the real good places to eat and to get desserts in Rome, and I didn’t fail in a single one, each one of them were supreme, if you ever want to go to Rome, I can make you a list of those places we went, that are totally recommendable, maybe this journal also can be used as travel guide:
-Trattoria Sapori Di Casa
-La Tavernella
-Ristorante La Nuova Piazetta
-Gelateria Giolitti 

We also did all the classic touristy things: walking around all the center, searching for the main attractive points, visiting the Colosseum, Foro Romano, Pantheon, Vatican City, Terme di Caracalla… but my personal highlight was a tour we booked with mountain bikes to cross the Via Appia and the old aqueducts. Totally recommended to take such a tour like that one, especially if you enjoy biking. Also it happened to be a very clear day with a blue bright sky and white sponged clouds, even when every day was cloudy and raining. We stopped in a local market where they feed us with pasta, salad and homemade wine. We were part of a small tour that were only two groups: us and some Americans. We bought in the market some more local wine and a pastries that we had no idea what they were but looked delicious, they were like small pies filled with berry jam, very tasty. Since we had no idea how to call those pastries, my friend called them “Tortellini”, knowing that it was definitely not what that is, but then we started offering more of those pastries to the rest of the tour, telling them “Do you want some Tortellini?”, funnily, they thought we were serious, and they were already saying “mmh! these Tortellinis are very good!” “Oh, did you try the Tortellinis?”. I don’t know at what point they were going to notice those things were definitely not Tortellinis.

Madrid and Paris

This was the point when most of the group was separated again, Kazan went back home from Rome, the rest of us went to Madrid, but Koidel departed from there back home at the next day. At least we could hang out that evening with Balasch, a friend I hadn’t seen since my last time in Madrid, in 2018.

The next day, instead of doing touristy things, we just went to a bar to eat some tapas, snacks and beer. We hanged out with an internet friend I didn’t know in person, DaviToucan, and then we went to a stadium to see a professional basketball match between the Real Madrid vs Istanbul. I was joking I was cheering for Istanbul, since I tend to cheer to the underdog teams, and they were saying the Real Madrid was one of the best basketball teams in the world, and it was going to be a very easy match for them against the Istanbul team. But the Istanbul team destroyed the Real Madrid by too much, they were already winning by more than 15 points in the last minute of the game.
That night we got to walk around the center of Madrid, it was a very nice walk, we got to see the clock of the Puerta del Sol marking twelve o’clock.

At the next day I took a flight to Paris, this time I was completely by my own again, it was my plan to visit my friend Meisarrg. I had never been to Paris, last year I had the super bad experience at the Paris airport (you could read my journal from NFC last year), but never had actually gone and see Paris. And all my childhood was inundated of things about Paris, so it was a very exciting point for me: the France 1998 World Cup (my first world cup my memory remembers), the Hunchback of Notre Dame, my favorite rock band when I was a kid singing in French (La Ley), my elementary school crush moving to Paris, and me researching everything about Paris back then, then my two favorite movies happening in Paris: Ratatouille and Amélie. So I was really excited about this trip and to see Paris for the first time. It was a very nice welcome that on my way from the airport to my friend’s place I could see the Saint-Denis stadium, remembering that’s where it was the World Cup final of France vs Brazil.

Paris gave me the welcome on a very pretty way, my first moment seeing the Eiffel Tower was at night, during an o’clock hour, so it was illuminated and sparkling all over. What a great welcome!

My intention on my first visit to Paris was to get many clichés from it, and indeed we bought a baguette, a croissant, we had our degustation of cheeses with wine, everything was so delicious. We went in front of the Eiffel Tower to take some pictures in fursuit, and we visited so many emblematic points in Paris, like the Arc de Triomphe (wow, it was way bigger in person than I thought), outside the Louvre Museum, and Notre Dame, which is still under maintenance so I couldn’t see it closer. We got to try L'Entrecôte, which was delicious, but we didn’t try Escargots (I was always mocking my friend with them, but I had tried them before, it was not my thing).
We even got to see, once again, the Eiffel Tower sparkling at night from a very pretty view over a bridge. A great way to say goodbye to Paris. Definitely I want to go back, and hopefully for a longer time. I really want to explore more than French big city and to check some museums, I’m such a nerd of art.

Dallas, USA: Journey to TFF

Another spontaneous part to add to this long trip, was to attend Texas Furry Fiesta. I was not contemplating to do it this year, but three weeks before its happening, a friend offered me a spot on his room, I checked for flights from Guadalajara, and direct flights were pretty affordable, so… why not? Also I could take it as a working convention, especially for helping me on my recent expenses of the past trip, which was huge, and I couldn’t be working as much as I thought I was going to do it.

I got to room with my friends Targus and Raucous :D
This time I didn’t want to take with me my own fursuit, especially because I left it drying after arriving back home for only one day and washing it. So no panda bear at Texas Furry Fiesta.

I hadn’t even rested that well when suddenly I was boarding a plane to Dallas, flight where I was working on a piece for the art show, a sketch of a Jackalope that I will share in my social networks later. And this big Texan city didn’t receive us in a better way. On the train to downtown we encountered some homeless inside the wagon who were fighting and screaming to themselves, a person who yelled and sweared at us just because, and in our way from the station to the hotel, while rolling our baggage and making a lot of noise, we got the attention of many of the army of homeless that were nearby the station. It was scary but at the same time very depressing. Not a good way that USA gives us a welcome back.

We went to the near 7 Eleven that was just one block away the hotel just to buy some groceries to have every morning (I was back to the reality where hotels don’t offer you complementary breakfast anymore), and we got locked up the store while a person was fighting the cashier, screaming, hitting each other, throwing everything that was in the desk, including a basket full of bananas, it was funny that the comment of my friend was “Aw, I wanted one of those bananas!”

Texas Furry Fiesta

The convention started with the wrong feet to me, I was in a sad mood, after having such a great trip to Europe, and a fantastic NordicFuzzCon, this convention was not starting great, and since my main plan for TFF was working at it at the Artists Alley to recover many of the expenses from the trip, it was not good that I couldn’t get in the Artists Alley lottery on the first day, so I had to spend all Friday at the convention, I had no idea what to do since I hadn’t announced to anyone that I was going to be there, so I didn’t know who to hang out with, and I hadn’t brought my own fursuit to get in it and started making silly things around.

But it was until the raccoons rescued me. I got to be handler of Raucous Raccoon and Tealeaf, who started making a whole raccoon chaos: stealing together some shinies, even a tripod of a photographer (who took it in a very funny way), they were moving the trash bins from the dealers den, and even they threw accidentally the trash out of one of them, and they just run away ignoring the situation they just had made. They were trying to make an army of raccoons who could be following them in their mischievous, but it was only one raccoon, Emmett, who followed them in that crusade. Pure mapache chaos! At that evening, since I had brought the crayons made by Steel, I thought it was a great idea that he could go out the convention center and draw people as a raccoon on the floor, exactly the same way it happened at NordicFuzzCon with me, but that others could experience it, and it was such a big success! Those crayons got a lot of attention, and suddenly many fursuiters were sitting on the floor, all of them drawing together, making an improvised art jam of fluffy critters.

I could get an Artists Alley table for the rest of days, during Saturday and Sunday. And I could be witness of a very special moment. Dan Skirtandzy was the one who requested me the first drawing of the day, he wanted me to draw him proposing to his skunk boyfriend. When he went to pick it up his finished drawing, he went with his boyfriend, and when BBQ the skunk saw the drawing, it was when he showed the ring. It was a moment of joy tears, smiles, hugs, and everyone started clapping, and congratulating them. For me it was so special that they decided to do it in front of my table with a drawing just baked, it didn’t have more than 10 minutes that I had finished such picture in watercolors.

That evening I went with Targus to finish some commissions I couldn’t finish during the Artists Alley time, but it ended up being an art jam session with artists and friends I haven’t seen in a long time: Scruff, Kaos, Waffle, Eoin, Tachi, kipper, and way more (sorry for not mentioning everyone), so instead advancing my own work, I started making some art trades with them. Tsk tsk, bad Paco! So I couldn’t take more commissions at the next day and instead I had to finish the ones I hadn’t finished a day before during the Artists Alley. And even that way I couldn’t finish all of them and I took two for homework, one of them was done during my flight back.

Luckily, I sold all the pieces from the Art Show, but the one who has put the final bid for the piece I worked on my flight to Texas, the Jackalope sketch, was not picked up not paid so they requested me to go and pick it up again :(

That last evening of the convention, at midnight, we decided to order some food, since we realized we didn’t have a proper dinner, and when we ordered some food. But at the time of picking it up is when we got to live such bizarre experiences, every time I told about this, I feel like if I was telling someone a very strange dream I had, but no, it really happened!

We were going down the elevators, and it started smelling like burned marshmallow, Targus and I noticed how strange it was that smell for an elevator, and we thought it was due someone who had vaped inside it previously. When we were about to get to the lobby, the delivery dude called me, asking me where I was and where we were going to meet, I told him that we should meet just in front of the main entrance, but he told me that was impossible, they were not allowing him to get to that part, and it was just the moment the doors of the elevator opened, and we could see nothing but smoke all over the place, something was burning, and I wondered why there was no the fire alarms sounding, I just thought in that, and suddenly the fire alarms started sounding, I was describing the delivery man the situation that was happening and how confused I was at that moment, and that for the fire alarms I couldn’t hear him very well, we had to exit the building from a side emergency exit, and surprisingly, that’s where the delivery man was waiting for me, it was like if he knew where exactly I was going to exit, so he gave me my food. We started walking to the main entrance of the hotel to know what exactly was happening, and we got to see Bomb Voyage, the dude from The Incredibles, running and laughing out of the situation, while in the background there were many fire fighters, and many fursuiters outside the building, I got to see Koda the red panda with his boyfriend, also confused with the situation, and suddenly all the furries started singing the West Virginia song for no reason, while many fire fighters were entering the building. We were told that we couldn’t be there, and they sent us to the building that it was crossing the street, where some people were making exercise at 12:30 am, I sit down with other friends to finally start eating my dinner, and I realized that my food was not what I ordered, actually it was a big upgrade. I was not really hungry, so I had ordered the smallest burger possible with small friends and the smallest soda they could have, but instead they had given me a huge American size burger with two meats, a lot of bacon, a lot of cheese, big curly fries, three orders of churros and a huge jumbo soda that could be for a whole family. Definitely not my order, but I had picked my order an hour before, so I could share my dinner with all the guys who had sit with me. I just feel bad for the one who received my order, because instead of super huge dinner they had ordered, they received the smallest dinner I could have ordered. Then I found a friend with a mask of Scar, from the Lion King, telling me she found the mask and she repaired it, and that she was going to sleep on the lobby that night. I found Bomb Voyage once again in the elevators going up to my room. Such a bizarre night! I can’t say that every day I got to see that situation.

The next day, we went to the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden with Targus, Cody, Jaby and Koidel, just to fill some time before our flight back home, I remember wanting so badly to board that plane and in some sort of way it was a portal directly to my room, at that point I was already feeling so home sick.

That was such an amazing month and a half in my life, full of experiences! The trip started on February 9 and finished on March 18, 2024. The day I could finally be back home I had as a plan to sleep for hours, to sleep with no alarm clock and curtains completely closed, I was not going to care until what time I was going to wake up, I slept very early and woke up at 14:30, I definitely needed that!

If you want to see some of my pictures of the trip, you can find them here:
--- https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/4hfyx00dyj3hs0qy500o3/h?rlkey=2nge6xpmzi29oyxer51b9p2u0&dl=0 ----
I'm sharing a lot of them!

I’m not sure if any of you read absolutely all this, I doubt it, but if you did, but it is so nice to me to go back to these journals years later, for me it is like time capsules, and to seal many of the experiences forever.
I’m planning to attend Furry Weekend Atlanta, convinced by many friends to do it, who they really want to see me there. So hopefully I’ll see you there!

gives hugs and bamboo

Paco