Bec's Holiday

So long..farewell...Auf wiedersen... good bye

Well this will be my last post for the trip as i go home tomorrow (YAY!).

Munich has been a lovely relaxing city and i'm glad we chose to have this as a way to chill out a little. Munich is much more relaxed than Berlin and we thought Berlin was relaxed. Yesterday we went out for a day tour to the Castle that the Barvarian King (Kornig Ludwig) dedicated to Richard Wagner. The king was mad and in love with the composer, and he bankrupted the kingdom building these 4 magnificent castles. This was a full day tour so as you can imagine we were pretty buggered afterwards. Just had enough energy to go to a beer hall for some schnitzel (also a schnapps too). Today we got up and hired some bikes and rode around Munich. My butt is so sore! So out of practice from riding. We went to a place called the english garden, which really wasn't an english garden but as the leaves were changing colour it was very lovely. There was also a man made river there which had waves and surfers were riding in it. I looked really dangerous. Also the tour guide yesterday for the castle said that the third reich tour wasn't on today, but as she ran that tour as well, she told us some of the places that they go. Like Hitler's offices and where the Nazi party had their first meeting. So we rode up along there also. In the afternoon we went to the Deutches  Museum which was basically a technical museum that had heaps of cool stuff in it, like old musical instruments, printing presses, replicas of bridges, a huge water display, and a huge space display. Very comprehensive....man the Germans know how to make a museum :) Tonight we went to another beer hall (the same as the first night) because the food was soo good and the beer was too. I asked if i could buy one of the glasses of this particular beer and she gave me one. She was so lovely, she got a tip.

Tomorow the real fun of travelling begins. I have soooo much travelling a head of me to come home. This is the crazy plan, and you might understand how frazzled i will be when i get home that i might not talk to you for a while.

- train at 8:00 to Munich Airport (40 minutes), this train split half way so we need to make sure we are on the right carriage.

- Wait for 2 hours while we check in

- Fly to London Stansted (2 hours)

- Travel to Liverpool Street on Train for 45 minutes

- Have lunch and meet Alexs friend who i have heard a lot about for lunch

- 4:00 get the train to Heathrow (1 hour)

- 2 hours to checkin and wait.

- 12 hours to Tokyo Narita

- 6 hours to wait in Tokyo

- 9 hour flight to Sydney

- 2 hour wait in Sydney

- 1 hour flight to Canberra

- 30 minute car trip with Thomas to Florey. 

- COLLAPSE! (and hug ferrets, maybe Thomas too).

- 3 days off work, YAY! (work on Thursday)

Anyway I had been good hearing from you all and I look forward to catching up when I get back.....

Bye....

Italy comments

I'm afraid i was a bit harsh on Italy. I did really enjoy my time there and seeing the ruins of both Rome and Pompei made the trip totally worth it. It also made me appreciate Australia just that little bit more. I always did understand that Italy was going to be dirty, i guess i was just hoping that Naples would be different since i had romanticised it a little. The big dissapointment for naples was that there was no beach, and i had allocated a day for lounging around on the beach there :( Oh well, I can do that in Aus. There were a few other things that i noticed about italy:

- They dress really well, full of fashion, suits, make up, the full works...... We both thought how odd it was that their cities were a bit of a dump.

- For a place that is known for its tourists(everyone goes to Rome when they come to Europe), they just didn't put the effort into making it a tourist destination. Salzburg, granted it felt like a bit of a museum, knew that ppl came there for one reason and catered to that. Italy, i felt should have done more for tourists.

- They seem to be living in the past. As i said to Angela personally, It seemed like there were no new monuments around both of those areas for at least 500 hundred years. There was one from ww2, but that was so heavily grafitied that we couldn't tell what it was for. Even the new buildings (maybe the 1970's) were falling appart with their plaster coming off the exterior.

It reminds me of something Ray said before I left. He told me something about 2 of his friends who went to Japan and both had very different experiecnes, and each left the place thinking that it was great or really bad. I know i was only there for a few days at a time for each place and i'm making generalisations of a whole country by going to a few of its cities.

All up this whole experience has been great and i would recommend it for anyone, though i still think 2 months was a bit long as i'm a bit frazzled. Also the overnight train didn't help anything. After blogging yesterday we got on an overnight train to Munich. That was a bit of an experience and i'm glad we don't have to do it again! The cabin was a 4 bunk beds, and when we got there we we told we each had the top bunks. They had seatbelts on them, and we were to realise why soon after. When the train took off it was like one of those old sydney rattlers. Shaking and turning harshly (not at all like the trains in switzerland which were like flying business class!). Anyway, we made it to Rome and we were told we were getting some more ppl who were sleeping on the bottom bunks. When we got there at about 10:30, those other people wanted a cabin to themselves (which we thought was great as we didn't want another gunther on our hands!). The train was rattling so much that i didn't get to sleep till around 4:30am! I am a very light sleeper and realised quickly that this wasn't for me. I was waking up everytime the train stoipped, which seemed to be frequently, and then started again..... anyway we made it to Muinich this morning but couldn't check in to our hotel untill 12!! so we both just wandered around like zombies until we could check then went to sleep all sfternoon! Tonight we went to a beer hall and i had a schnitzel, which was GREAT after having eaten pizza for 5 days! I also had a beer that was nicer than Erdinger so i will have to hunt it down in australia. Basically it was a white beer and they put lemon in it....mmm...

Anyway we are both zonked and thought we would kill a few hours on the internet than head home for an early night. Tomorrow we are going to a castle near munich that inspired the Disney logo. Very full of fairy tales apparently. Then the following day we are going on a third reich tour so that should also be interesting.

I have also looked at the Japan airlines website and seen that they have different movies to when i came over so that should be good too, some of them are movies i have wanted to watch. Friday I begin my huge about of travel home, with 4 flights all in a row.....man i'm i going to be in a bad state when Thomas sees me on Sunday!

Italy a first world country????

As you might suggest from the title, I find it hard to believe that Italy is a first world country and can still be so scabby.......i dare say worse than Copenhagen..... We have had a short stay in Rome (2 nights, but 1 full day) and in that first day we used the hop on hop off bus and got around to all the sites and the ruins. Colleseum, Pantheon, Circus, The foum and Parliament building were all high lights.... it was amazing to see how old these places were but still standing (even though the colleseum has had all of its marble removed like the Parthenon in Greece)..... Then the following day we went to Naples and looked around the city. We were both quite suprised to see how filthy it was. Grafiti EVERYWHERE, dog crap everywhere, stray dogs sleeping in stations and in shops (that was the worst, these are dogs like labradors that you know are too dumb to look after themselves and they look so sad!). The buildings are also falling appart, i have a great picture of what i mean. We got there on Sat afternoon and the laundrettes were closed too, and so were the internet until monday. Even then the internet is pretty afterage. This internet "cafe" has one computer and is in a telephone office......the only one in Naples i am told. Even Prague was better than that!

The other major problem is food......After having eaten pizza for 6 meals in a row, I am very sick of pizza, alex has just been eating junk food too....last night we walked for an hour an a half look for a resturant that wasnt pizza, pasta or a bakery (selling sweets only).....we found a kebab van and a cafe that we settled on. I asked for a hamburger and chips, they put the chips on my burger, which completely wrecked it!.

Having said that I think we are having a good time in Italy, our room in Naples has 2 piles of rubbish out the front of it, that are my height and twice its height wide, but its a really good room. Its got a loft bathroom and lcd tv and a dvd player. Our host is a really nice guy who has a huge dvd collection. He told us that he wouldnt recommend going out at night so we have just watched dvds and MTV. We also have breafast in our room too. Alex tried to get a mocca coffee, but that has obviously confused the guy, as both mornings he has had his coffee in the bowl that should be his cereal bowl.....a little dissheartening since we havenàt been able to find any other food for him for the other meals. (at least i eat pizza!).

Today we went out to Pompei and Mt Vesuvious. That was very cool going through the ruins there, I have heaps of good pictures. It was better than Romes ruins, and we got the audio guide so we were listening to how they lived etc. In the Afternoon (after yet another Pizza!) we took a bus up to Mt Vesuvious.......mmm very high up... I was freaking out on the bus as there were some killer hairpins and the guy wasa jilting the breaks. I really though i was going to die on the way down. When we got to the top, we were allowed to keep walking and go up to the crater. Because me knee has had a chance to recover I decided to walk up. I couldnàt go this far and not go all the way. Iàm glad i did becuase it was magnificent.....Just amazing to see, and the weirdest feeling too. It was all foggy and we didnàt have a view of the bay of Naples, but it was just magnificent.

Tonight we have an overnight train to Munich, and it will be good to go back to civilisation. Alex and I are both looking forward to a steak, no matter what the cost. I should be able to blog more regularly in Munich.

I hope you are all well and i will see you all soon. Only 4 more days left till the 30 hour flight home.......

Genevé

Well we are now in the French part of Switzerland and it feels like we are in France. Its a lot dirtier than Zurich was, but i guess it won`t be much cleaner in Rome :). The people are nicer here than in France too so thats a positive.

We haven`t been here for very long but in that time we`ve done everything the tourist books say to do.....buy a watch, buy a swiss army knife, and visit the international organisations. I bought my swiss watch (just a Swatch and not a Rolex!) for 85dollars and its very cool...purple and silver, it clashes with my gold wedding ring and probably all my clothes but it looks cool :) Alex was looking for a watch too, but the watch he liked was 3000dollars and he just couldnt justify spending that much money on a watch. Instead he bought a Swiss Army knife.

Last night we had a relaxing night with a good night sleep. It was very much needed. Also my knee is playing up a lot. It was giving me grief in Prague but would be fixed with the knee brace on. Now the knee brade doesnàt really help and i am walking only very short distances without bending my leg. Its a shame because it means that I wont be able to walk up Mount Vesuvius as I had planned in Naples. But there might be other things i can do in Pompeii that won`t be so stressful on my knee.

This morning we got up and went out the Palais de Nations, which is where the United Nations building is. We were lucky because there was a guided tour in English running soon. We had to go through metal detectors and show our passport, and i had to get a UN badge made up (a very cool souvineer!). We also went across the road to the International Red Cross museum, as it started in Geneva.

Tonight we fly to Rome and will spend tomorrow seeing the sites, mainly just the Ancient Rome stuff, not the Vatican. Will have to get up early to go into the colleseum as i hear there are HUGE lines early. I was also told to take a photo of the Vatican line too as its pretty impressive :)

Anyway, thats all from me. Talk soon.

Everyone is rich in Zurich

Hello from Zurich, where the air is clean and the prices of everything is higher (also the altitude). The trip out of Prague was slow....very slow.... every step took longer on that flight, ie the check in, the boarding, and the time taken to fly, also bagage was slow! it took 2 hours more than i thought it would to get to Zurich. We met an australian who went to Prague for the weekend with his Swiss mates. He came to Europe from Sydney for the world cup and didn`t want to come home. He was a bit of a meat head but he was entertaining to talk to. He told us that he and his mates went to a bar called `Big sister`, and then told us that the bottom floor was a brothel where it was really cheap to get into, but you had to sign a form saying that it was ok if what you did in there was broadcast on the internet! I found that funny, and he said he didnät go in there..! thought it was an interesting concept though. It was funny going from a rich western country to former eastern blcok, then back to rich country (zurich). Such an interesting contrast.

We had to fly to Basel and then get a train to Zurich. When i got to Basel and tried to withdraw money the machine ate my card, but i was able to get it back so that was ok. Our train trip to Zurich was amazing, it was like flying business class. Heaps of room and tvs on the back of the seats!

We are staying in a hostel here which is all we could afford here, that is about 150 for the two of us each night, so you get an idea! The hostel is pretty cool, not like any hostel i`ve been to. So roomy, and internet (though expensive), and at least we have breakfast....

his morning we had arranged to go on a bus tour to Appenzell which is near the highest point in Swizerland. It was very cool and i think i have gotten over my fear of heights as i took a cable car up to the point which went 1 and a half kilometers over high mountains! We also went to a chocolate factory which was also very cool...I also learnt about how important cows were to Switzerland!

Tomorrow we go to Geneva which is the french part of switzerland (Zurich is the German part) and there is also an Itallian part too. I saw a cool watch for sale here in Zurich and decided to sleep on it before buying it. But i think iäll buy it tomorrow in Geneva. Also in Geneva is the head quarters of the UN, so i am gonig to try and get out there and see the various buldings if possible....On Thursday we fly to Rome, so Angela should be happy i am finally getting to Italy :)

Okies....iäm getting tired...i will post again soon. Have fun.

Praha

I'm in Prague in case you haven't guessed....Tomorrow we leave here for Switzerland, but i thought i would make a post otherwise i might forget all of the things we have done here..

We arrived here on Friday in the afternoon after a really long train ride....the train here (4 of them) were so slow but we had plenty of food and newspapers to keep us entertained, plus i had a bit of a nap on one of the trains. The train carriages were just like in the movies, with a little box of a room and the ticket collector opens the door, plus there were some snacks for sale too...i did manage to strike up a conversation with some other travellers so that passed the time a bit too.

When we got in to the central station Alex's girlfriend Karolina met us. She's really nice, and i can see why alex is going to the effort of long distance relationship. She's from Poland and they only see each other when they are on holiday. I thought it wold be a little weird being the 3rd wheel, but i think they have tried to make an effort to include me as much as possible.

On Sat morning we got up early and went to Prague castle, it was VERY packed full of people so it took a long time. I think i have gotten a few good pictures. In the afternoon we went on a tour of  Prague's architcture. It was very cool as we were the only ppl on the tour so it was our own personal guide telling us about the history and architecture of Prague.

We had plans of going to Cheche Kromlov which is a UNESCO hertiage listest village near prague, but we found out it was going to take 2 and a half hours by train, and decided after our train travel the other day we could give it a miss. So today we walked around up to the observatory which is a replica of the eiffel tower and then over to the jewish quater which has a cool cemetary there (its estimated that 10000 people are buried there), but we didn't reaise today is a jewish holiday so it was closed. After that we went over to the main centre of town again to a communism museum. Up until recently the Czeck repulic was a communist country so this is a bit part of their history. After that we went home and I left Alex and karolina to go to a Marionette Theatre production which was also very cool,and i was glad i caught it esp since we missed it in Salzburg.

Now i'm about to go home and take a bath and go to bed early. We go to Geneva tomorrow by flying to Basel-Mullhouse then getting an hour train to Geneva, so that should be farily tiring.... I'm also about to look up thinkgs to do there. I remember there was a cheese and chocolate factory somewhere in Switzerland so hopefully that turns out ok...will let you know how it goes.

Only Switzerland, Italy and Munich to go until I go home and see Thomas and the ferrets....I miss them but i know they are all keeping each other company.

I hope you are all doing well....Bec

The hills truely are alive...

I love the Irish...

Hi there everyone one. For what Ireland lacks in the weather department it makes up for with the people. Although they have thick accents, the Irish are on a whole the best people I've met so far. Their humor is excellent, they are friendly, willing to help with directions and very chatty. Alex and I could be talking and they would hear our accent and always want to talk to us about Australia and our travels. And, contrary to what i initially thought, they aren't always drunk.

We have been quite busy the last few days, and although it has poured down rain and gave us gale force winds it hasn't really stopped us too much. Just getting more cabs :) Yesterday morning we went out to Kilmainham Gaol, which was operating for about 200 years and what made it special as far as European Gaols go, is that it housed some famous political prisoners, all who faught in the rebellions for Irish independance from the UK. Its been good learning about the history of Ireland, and this was a good way to do it. After that we went to the Guinness Factory, which was excellent. It had a huge museum and we got a pint and had it up in the tower overlooking Dublin. There was also a huge shop where I got a few shirts and a new hat for Thomas, since he lost his guinness hat in Japan and was very distraught. I spent way too much money there :)

Last night Alex and I went to a comedy gig at one of the pubs where there was a brittish group's hens night. It was pretty funny and they got picked on a bit. I love the accent and the Irish humour. The thing that made me laugh hard was one part of the routine that talked about how the Irish had to change their 5cent peice becuase it looked too much like the German Deutchmark (before it all went to Euro). It was just funny becuase the irish caused so many problems for German vending/ticket machines that they had to change their currency....arrr those Irish...... another thing that made us both laugh was in the cab on the way home we were talking to the cabbie about the weather and and he said that they have just come out of a heat wave, and he was talking like it was the deathliest heatwave ever, until we asked him what the temps were, we lost it when he said 20something....

This morning we went to the Dublin castle, which was built over 800 years ago and the Brittish used it when they took power, and its now the Irish Parliament house. We went on a guided tour of the kings room when he stayed there and a few of the other highly decorated rooms. It wasn't as good as Versalles in France, but it was still very nice.

The highlight of Dublin came for me afterwards, however when we went to the Jamison factory. I now love Irish wiskey, who would have thought. Out of the group of about 30 people, 4 were selected to do a tasting of some of the Irish Wiskeys, I was one of them. It was great to try 3 of the Irish ones compared to Scottish and American. It was cool to hear about what makes them different too. Needless to say, I got my 9euro worth :) I also got a certificate...and i was once again in that happy place :)

After that we went on this Viking splash tour, which we both thought would be better than it was. Bascially it was a bus that converted into a boat and they took us around the city and then on to the Liffey. The guy didn't talk much about the Vikings, but he made heaps of jokes and we got to yell at the passer's by wearing silly viking hats.......entertaining, but a little overpriced..

A few have asked me if the Guinness tastes better here. I didn't really notice the Guinness tasing better, but certainly the Kilkenny is much creamier and nicer here...and now i might just stick to Jameson and soda water...

Tonight is just going to be a relaxing night. We took our washing to a laundrette and they are doing it for us which is very cool. So we'll just use the internet till we have to collect it.

Tomorrow we fly out of Ireland for Salzburg, Austria, but in the morning we intend to get on a DART (Dublin Area 'Rapid' Transit) train and see a castle at Malahide which is in the country a bit so that should be lovely and i should get some nice picts there. When I saw that the train system was called the DART system, I immediately thought of the goggo mobile ad where they guy said, 'no no not the DART' and it all made sense...I love the Irish...:)

Anyway I hope you are all well and will email from Austria, back to a country where the language becomes a problem again.....

Bec

Greetings from sunny Ireland....

Nothing much has happened since my last blog entry but since we're in an internet cafe i thought i'd post.

Our last night in Cardiff was a little crazy. We had booked to go to a comedy show in at Cardiff bay (and paid the money) then just as we were leaving to go there we realised we lost the keys to our hire car.....you would think that this kind of thing would happen fairly regularly but the hire car place really had no good way to react. After about 2 hours of mucking around with them, the tow truck was due to arrive (and we were set to drive to the airport with them to pick up a new hire car), we found the keys.... so asyou can imagine we were very relived as it would have been 150pounds replacement fee plus if they had to break the window to unlock our original car we would have had to pay for that....anyway we were in the drinking mood after that and hit a few bars. While we were at one i struck up a conversation with a few people. I bacially took a risk and walked up to them and said 'you look bored and we need some new people to talk to, do you mind if we join you'. Luckily they didn't punch our head in :) And they were pretty cool and we went out for a while with them. Being Australian really helpsin the UK....everyone wants to talk to us when they hear us talking. In most cases they come up to us and ask what part of Australia are you from. I guess its easy to pick.

The following day was hard.... we drove up to Liverpool, about 4 hours to go almost the full length of a country isn't too bad. By the time we got there and sorted out our room etc, we went to this museum called the Beatles story, and it was closing, so we missed out going in there, but the shop was still open so i bought a whole pile of stuff for my mum and then left. We had a basic dinner and crashed for the night with a newspaper...

This morning I got up and put on all the clothes i had and went walking through Liverpool to take some pictures. Mainly of monopoly street signs, but i went looking for the Cavern which is a place the Beatles played before they were famous, eventually i found it. Basically there was a statue of John Lennon and this wall of fame, which on every brick is a band name who's played there. That was pretty cool. I would have liked to stay in Liverpool for a bit longer, even though i got the sense that it was a bit run down. There was once again heaps of contrution sites (but ppl actually doing stuff to these ones) and a few signs saying that the Europe culture fiar or something was being hosted in Liverpool in 08, so that's the reasoning for the work.

Anyway we flew over to Ireland and are just about to go walking into the city for some dinner and  Bram Stoker thing on tonight, as he was irish and we have free entry with our Dublin Card. It should be good even though the weather is very crappy...... but its the UK did we expect any different. I just have the 'cloudy' setting on my camera turned on all the time for a week :) and look forward to Canberra sunny spring when i get back.

Okies off to try out some of the local delicacy ie Guinness.....

Cardiff...Cardiff....

Hello from Cardiff, Wales... where the national animal is the Dragon and the home beer is called 'Brains', Thomas you really should be here... :)

The weather has turned faily bad now, and expect it will be like this in ireland too....which is dissapointing so we went to hunt down an internet cafe.

We have been fairly lucky with the weather. Yesterday when we picked up the car it was all sunny for our drive to Bath. Bath was very cool....it reminded meof picton or Kangaroo valley, kind of an art town that was super clean and very cute. It was in a valley so taking pictures of it was very easy. At Bath there are the Roman Baths (funny enough), where 2000 years ago the Romans came and noticed there were natural springs there and built a whole pile of coverings over it. It looks like its boiling water, but the tour explained that its just the gasses coming out of the earth that gives it that effect. Though the water is warm. After about 400 years, the Romans left and the town kept going. It was also the place where Jane Austen wrote a few of her books, and she mentions bath in all of her books. They have a museum there for her too, though she didn't like Bath very much, she thought it was over privelliged and wished for the country side....to me though it is the country side... :)

We stayed the night in Bath and drove about an hour to Cardiff and got here just in time to see Cardiff castle in good weather yeasterday. The tour we went on concentrated on decorating the rooms, and they really didn't focus too much on the building of the castle, wiki might tell me later on i guess....

Last night we went to a pub called the Goat Major and on the menu they had Welsh Faggots, and we asked a local what they were, he knew we were australian and laughed a bit knowing what we were thinking....the actual food sounded very gross... Yesterday we were walking around looking for something to do last night but could't find anything so we went to the movies and saw Children of Men, which turned out to be really good. It was the first movie i have seen because of an add on the bus :) It was set in the future when the youngest person is 18 and they are unable to breed any more.....got Clive Owen in it....I recommend it.. :)

I got a really good night sleep last night and was all rearing to go exploring Cardiff, but when we woke up the weather was windy rainy and cold all day....we really wanted to go to these gardens they have near the uni here (but maybe tomorrow). In the tourist brouchers they suggested Cardiff Bay as something nice to do, so we got in the car and Alex managed to drive out there. It was lucky we went there because we found a Dr Who museum. I didn't realise but the new doctor who shows are filmed in Cardiff and made to look like they are in London. The museum had a whole pile of stuff they used for the filming including some Daleks.

In our travels though we did see that Adam Hills (from spicks and specks) is over here doing some comedy gigs, but in Newport, tonight which is an hour away and we were considering going, but we found there was something that might be ok too here in Cardiff. 4 comedians. Hopefully it will be good...I can report later. Tomorrow we drive up for 4 hours to Liverpool. Then over to Dublin in a few days. I should be able to find an internet cafe there, so I'll update this then. I hope you are all well.

Our travel's continue...

Medieval wonderland

Goodbye Thomas, hello sleep...

Half way...

Good bye Paris....

Well today we fly out of Paris for London, where i stay for 8 days (and Thomas for 3)..... London will be nice and easy with no language problems and friends to help us around....YAY!

I have totally loved Paris...its been the best city by far, so lively and never a dull moment.....we haven't had time to do a lot of resting!

Since writing my last post on Thurday night we went and had dinner. As we sat down, a girl who I was talking to in the tourist line was leaving the same resturant (how big is Paris again??), any way we got talking and we invited her to come to the Arc de Triumph to take some pictures. Her name is Alicia and she was from South Africa. She initially came to Brussels for HR training and decided to see a bit of Paris and London. It was really good to have someone other than Thomas to talk to, and he said the same to her about me! It was good learning about the changes in South Africa from someone who's been there (since the ending of Appartheid). We walked around for hours and had a really good beer from this beercocktail place... (Ewisener or something, will look out for it in Aus). The white beers here are really good and they put lemon in it, very refreshing... At the end of the night we exchanged numbers and would go out with Alicia for the next 2 nights...

We were unable to get tickets to the Moulin Rouge, but could get tickets to some other caberet called the "Crazy Horse" for Sat night. This also required a dress code, but I managed to buy a nice skirt and thomas bought a shirt on Friday which turned out to be not too expensive..After doing that small amount of shopping we went up to Opera, which was a lovely area, though it was raining. I got a picture of another lovely building, the Opera house funny enough and then we went to see a 50 minute movie called the "Story of Paris". That was pretty cool, though it did gloss over the bad things like the revolution and the wars and focused on the Architecture and painters....

Later in the day we thought we would go and see the Pathenon, which i thought was a Roman theatre, but turned out to be another Cathedral. The Pathenon belongs in the south Area of Paris in the Latin Quarter. When Paris was frst formed it only existed on the Island in the Seine River, as the Romans came it expanded south into the Latin Quarter (that's why i thought the Pathenon was a Theatre)....anyway there is heaps of cool buildings around there.

Thomas was starting to get sick so we took it easy and went back to our accomodation for a rest. When i got a text message from Alicia who wanted to know if we were going anywhere cool tonight. Since Thomas was sick, he didn't want to do anything so i thought this was a good opportunity to go for a walk up to the Moulin Rouge area to see all the lights with Alicia. We found the bad bt of Paris and quickly left and found the Sex District where the Moulin Rouge was.... There was an Erotic Supermarket named Rebecca's too so i got a picture of that!

Yesterday was pretty relaxed since Thomas was still sick.....we went up to a market and bought a few things, then went for a trip back to Tuleries and the Louvre to take some more pictures. From there we walked to Bastielle to see the monument. That took a good part of the afternoon, but there was still another monument we hadn't seen....the Statue of Liberty.... when we found it we were thinking why did we bother :) It was tiny and took us ages to get there...anyway... TICK.

Alicia ended up getting tickets to this Crazy Horse caberet, which turned out to be a small stage show with pretty much full frontal nudity and cool lighting....it was pretty good bt not worth the 90 euro! No pictures of course, but also no spectaular.....oh well....it was quite French :)

Anyway... I have to go...since we still have to get to the airport before we fly out....I hope everyone is well and I should be able to email more often from Anna and Joels internet .

Have fun....

Oh La La...

Greetings from Paris....

What a last few days its been....

We've finally found an internet cafe, after waiting in the tourist information line for about 45 mintes and its the pokiest ace with 3 computers.....the only one for ages too....first comment, Paris is not set out for the tourists..... with a handful of tourist information kiosks at train stations (and one at the eiffel tower), it seems like they don't want the tourists here at all. Having said that, we aren't really having many problems at all, other than the language.... The train system, though dirty, is functional and easy to use, or accomodation is small yet we have our own bathroom and tv (which isn't much use when its all in French!) and there is plenty of food, that once you get past the language barrier of ordering is really tasty. We are staying in Gare du Nord, which seems to be a big touristy part of Paris, with heaps of hotels and heaps of resturants all around. Plenty of resturanteurs speak english or at least are ok with you pointing and saying "zhe vous pait wine"......though this morning we had an incident with breakfast where the person didn't understand us and was realy rude....when we went to pay she stoped smilling from the first person and woulnd't even look me in the eye and just snatched the money from me.....so from this point onwards we are trying really hard...

There is another issue with Paris and that is the beggars. Since we have only been at the toursty sites we have seen African people interupt our tours and swoop in to try and sell us postcards and junk (like floaty birds??), we were also asked about 10 times yesterday if we spoke english, to which we looked confused and said 'non' (french word for no). Others said that if you said yes, they would show you a hand written card that said their sister was in jail or hospital and needed money to get out of Burma....we saw so many people fall for it on the Eiffel lawn....another person we spoke to said the same of Rome, so we will need to be altert for that too.....the main thing isn't being begged to, its the fact that you are distracted and another person can take off with your stuff.....

Anyway, it has been lovely and hot so perfect weather but ill wil have to check the weather to see when it will change....

We have been to Paris for a few days and can see why it has such a high amount of tourists....its such a lively city, quite clean and safe.....however with every passing day I really appreciate Australia, we really do have it good in Australia. We did our booked tour that took us to the Louvre (Thomas and I could have stayed there for longer than the 2 hours). There were so many people that thomas was saying it doesn't feel like an art gallery, more so like a concert where you just struggle to get to the front of the line to see anything. I really coulndn't see why the mona lisa was go great when there were paintings that were about 15 times bigger and so much more impressive....its something you really need to see (and we couldn't take photos). After the Louvre we went to the Eiffel Tower, where we ate a 3 course meal and talked about our travels with the other people on the tour, and walked up to the second story of the tower and got some good pics.... Then caught a boat and went up the Seine River to Notre Dame cathedral. Notre Dame, though spectacular, just made me angry.......its become so touristy with tour guide talking in there and ppl taking pictures everywhere, that its initial purpose has been lost. There was absolutely no way you would have been able to sit down and pray, it was just too noisy and crowded......

Today we slept in and took a leisurely train to Versailles (said "Vers-ay"), which is where they moved the Royal Palace to when the Louvre became a Museum. Its also where Marie Antoineete stayed and hid out during the revolution. It was a magnificient chateau, and although we couldn't take pictures till later, i got a few postcards. It also has a lovely garden which just seems to go on.....

I am going to try and book a show to the Moulin Rouge, which dress code will be a problem. If i can manage to get tickets we will need to go shopping for something to wear....We also plan to go to a giant shopping outlet which may prove useful.

After dinner tonight (soon) we plan on walking down to the area where the Arc De Triumph is and get some night time photos....so hopefully all that will work out...anyway... i think that's all for me.....off to reply to some emails... Have fun...Bec

moulin rouge

We've nearly made it through Copenhagen!

We've tried to make this last 3-4days be a nice holiday but Copenhagen kept letting us down...... to my friends who are thinking about travelling to Denmark...skip Copenhagen and head straight for the villages :) There were glimpses of greatness when we went to Chritiansavn in search of the hippy village Christiania. It was instantly clean and the construction sites were fewer, however when we got to Christiania at about 11am on Sunday morning the storm clouds rolled in.......obviously sunday morning was a bad time, as it looked like the were cleanning up after a huge party...i guess that's all there is to do when no one has jobs huh... The grafiti quotient was higher there. It was a HUGE dissapointment. I remember the doco I watched was a cute little village where ppl built the houses themselves and they traded with each other for food....this was just a dump of a shithole.

After our VERY short trip to Christiania, we went back to the canals which is the tiniest tourist spot of Copenhagen had brunch (we have ony been eating two meals out here due to the cost), and got on a canal tour. This was really great.. It only went for an hour, but i got a few postcard photos. The houses on the canals are really cute unlike the rest of the city.

After that we thought we would go to the mall to see if that was any cleanner......anyway we got there and realised that it was all shut on Sunday's, then we realised the bus would be an hour wait (this just keeps getting better), so on our walk back we saw something that oppitomises our feelings of Copenhagen, and laughed so hard......it was a smash toilet on the footpath out the front of the mall. It looked like someone threw it out of a car and no one cleanned it up. Now, I haven't taken any photos of the construction sites, but we couldn't resist this one. So you get an idea of the extent of the construction sites, we've seen up to 3 major contrction sites on one block and woulndøt go for more than 2 without seeing none. For all of these contrcution sites we have seen two ppl working at them - DIGGING MORE HOLES! The other sites are just abandonned. We thouht it was a weekend thing, but we didn't see any one working on them today (Monday) either.

We got to the Danish Museum, and they had closed the Viking section for renovations (why not work on the ones they have?), but we looked at what they had. Last night we gave up on Danish entertainment and went to the movies to see Lady in the water. The film and the cinema was cool.....this is where the Dane's spend their time... :)

This morning we got up and went to Roskilde which is where the viking mueum was. It was 30 minutes away, and on the other side of Denmark, and 100% cleaner....no consturction sites, no one spitting, no one going tot eh toilet on the side of the road (because you have to pay to use public toilets)....it was just great. An CHEAPER... The museum was cool....saw a little video about vikings, saw 5 ships that were found in an archeological dig, and saw a little museum...very cool...strongly recommended... certainly the highlight of our trip here.

Tonight we went to the movies again and saw miami vice, which was a bit serious for my liking...but a good way to kill the time.

Tomorrow we are going to the botanic gardens to kill a few hours till we fly to Paris tomorrow at 5pm....

(I will fix up the spelling misakes and the strange characters sometime soon - occasionally they put local characters like ø æ in the spot where the ' should be....)

The vikings will save us...

Well Copenhagen isn't so bad....there are a few pros and cons here....

Pros: cumfy bed, (crappy shower though)

internet,

we have a copenhagen card that gives to free entry to stuff and free transport, so yuo can get out of the city if you want

English is everywhere......makes it very easy to do stuff...

Cons: dirty city - ppl just spit in front of you, theres consruction everywhere, dog crap everywhere, newspapers everywhere

expensive - the money is in Danish krone and things cost basically twice as much as they would in australia.....i got 25 dollar nachos the other day and it was inedible. It really makes you think about if you want that ice cream or not. Also they do still give big portions, so we've just been having late breakfast and early dinner and that works.,

windy - very coastal city, time for the warm clothes. Wind isn't so bad but it picks the stuff up off the ground and that makes it bad.....

I don't want to be racist, but Thomas and I agree the moslems here have it really hard, they are in the really poor area and we've been to the shops there..it seems like they are just kept down. We keep on thinking about how those cartoons came out of Denmark and caused all those riots in the middle east....it seems understandable that they were filtered from here... having said that though we will see what its like for minorities in Paris next....

Today we tried to make the best of copenhagen and went first to the Little Mermaid, we knew it would be just a statue on a rock and it was but we got there jst intime before a bus load of tourist came.....i took some pictures hoping one of them would turn out.. After that we walked over through an army fortress used in WW2. Then on to Amalienborg Palace where the royals live. Princess Mary (the Tasmanian who married into the family) was not there and non of them were but there were some guards and a few old statues that looked like they were falling appart.... After brunch we did some washing and then went to a Zooligish Museum. This was free with our copenhagen card so we thought we'd go. It turned out to be really cool..... Basically it was taxidermy animals and giant models of things like mammoths, whales, penquins, walruses etc......i got a few good pictures...man they looked real!

After that we thougt we would go to Tivoli, which is an amusment park. That was also free with our card, however when we got there we realised that you had to pay for the rides.....it worked out about 15dollars for some of the rides....so we pretty much left tehre and got dinner..... after that we were considering seeing a movie (since they are all english here), but thought we'd save that till later....

Tomorrow we're going to check out Christiania, which is a hippy village. I saw it on foreign correspondant a few years ago and it looked cool then....We're also going to go to the tourist office and see about a ballet or opera since the Danes are renound for that...see if we can get some low class tickets :)

I bet you're wondering about the title......the day after tomorrow we plan on going to the other side of denmark, 30 minutes away, and visiting a viking museum ... so hopefully that will be cool....

Things aren't all bad, and i'm glad we've visited here. I hope you are well....

Wonderful Copenhagen??

Mmmm We arrived in Copenhagen this afternoon, and so far we are not impressed. Our accomodation is good (free ADSL in our room), but when we went walking around the city we were overwhelmed by how rundown and dirty the city is. The tourist slogan for Copenhagen is 'Wonderful Copenhagen', and we're really hoping that first impressions do not last. Not to mention how expensive it is.....we can't even drink our way through the next 4 days! Our accomodation over looks a giant river which is green from algae, on the other side of that is the city where there are blown bits of newspapers and construction sites everywhere. (I can't even get a picture without a construction site in it) The city has potenital, but it just needs to be cleanned up. We were followed by some thugs so we went into a shop and lost them......We got a whole pile of tourist brochures and are hoping that if we just get out of the city we might like it. We also got a Copenhagen card which has free travel and entry to museums. We are going to go to the viking museum about 30minutes away so that should be good....on the plus side, they speak perfect english, so communication will not be as stressful as is has been in the past...fingers crossed this doesnøt turn out to be a crappy part of the holiday.. 

Will let you know how it goes........

Bigger is better...

Hello again from Berlin....what a full few days it has been...... full of excitment and full of food... the Germans do like their HUGE portions...

Well today is our last full day in Berlin before we fly to Copenhagen tomorrow morning.

Yesterday we ended up hiring some bikes and rode all through the tiergarten, which is a huge garden full of statues and footpaths, then we went up to Alexanderplatz where a rally was taking place. Alexanderplatz is near Museum Island and its full of historical old buildings and lots of statues. It is also part of the old East Berlin. A lot of those buildings have bullet holes in them too so that's a bit of a reminder.

We also went to a Film Exhibition. I was supprised to learn that the Germans invented cinema at the same time as the French so it was cool seeing some of the really early movies.....and then it pretty much died when Hitler came in, and used film for propaganda purposes. Also a lot of the movie stars were Jewish and fled to Hollywood, hence all the comments surrounding Jews in Hollywood. Last night was pretty low key as we rode all the way back into Zoo Station to return the bikes and then went to our B&B. We also found a decent bar near where we live too so we called in there.

Today we got up fairly early and went to the Riechstag, which is the German Parlament house. It has a very impressive glass dome which you can walk up and view the city. We had to wait about 1/2 hour to get in but it was worth it....There was a bit of information about it, and they were keen to point out that Hitler's 'Sham Parlament' was never held here, which i don't know why because it was uesd before and after him. One for wiki i guess.

After that we walked down to the Checkpoint Charlie location. This is the 3rd checkpoint after 'alpha' and 'bravo', and it has a museum there also which was an old house situated on the west of the Wall, where the westeners could see people trying to escape out of the east. This museum was huge and house a lot of information on how ppl escaped from the east, bulding tunnels, hiding in suitcases, hiding in car engines...there was also other memorabilia such as a cross from Peter Flisher. He was an 18 year old who tried to climb the wall, but got stuck in the barbed wire. He died after 50 minutes of calling out for help when the Western Guards couldnt enter the strip, and the eastern guards weren't allowed to be seen. This event caused huge riots in the West because they didn't act. At the shop there were heaps of bits of the wall, which myself ad heaps of other tourists bought :) Anyway after that we walked along a preserved strip of the wall up to Potsdamerplatz. It's funny because even though there are some pieces of the wall still standing, in between those pieces runs two lines of pavers in the ground where the wall used to run, it also dissappears where buildings are now built over it. In some places there are plaques on the ground. Another thing about the east and west is the traffic lights. The east has a different red and green symbol, and it can also be found on tshirts, pens, mousemats, earings (i have some :), cookie cutters, ice cube trays, lollies, postcards and even lights you can buy. It's quite an industry. It also has its own website http://www.ampelmann.de/

Anyway....we're about to catch a boat up to Charlottenburg which has a huge palace and the olympic stadium.... We will see how that goes.... I may write again from the airport tomorrow as it seems internet is a good way to wait for our flights :)