The Travels of Trevor and Amanda

Agia Marina-Chania-Piraeus Day 8

2010-07-09T02:52:00.001-07:00

June 21,2010

Day 8 Agia Marina-Chania-Piraeus

Another earlyish day for me today. Again I got up and got ready for the beach and then woke Trevor up. This time we watched the butterflies on our balcony for a while before heading down to breakfast. Breakfast was just as yummy as the day before. I couldn't eat quite as much, having eaten way too much the night before. After eating, we headed back to the room, observed some more butterflies, then headed down to the shore. Again I managed to grabbed front row seating. The day was looking really nice, and no clouds in the sky this time. I decided to hang out on the beach until just before check out time at noon, and then met up with Trevor in our room where we grabbed our stuff and went down to check out. I headed right back to the beach after we checked out. Someone had taken our seats by that time, but that wasn't too much of an issue. I just sat one row back. Most of my day was spent reading again. For lunch, we ate the chocolate cake! It was awesome. It wasn't too long before we had to go get ready for our bus back to Souda to catch our ferry. We were able to use the spa showers, since we had already checked out. I ended up having an issue because I had brought my bag into the shower with me and while in the shower, the lights were turned off and when I tried to leave the shower the other door to the girls change area was open and there was a man there. Thankfully he moved and so I went to close that door, which turned the lights on again. I found out my bag was soaked because water had leaked out of the shower. When I tried to move my bag, it fell and my cosmetics bag spilled all over the floor. It was a bit of a nightmare, but I finally made it out alive and clean. We headed down the street to catch the bus that went back to Chania. It came after a little while and it was packed. Trevor and I ended up having to sit in different spots on the bus. I sat by some creepy guy who kept looking at me and talking to himself. Thankfully the ride wasn't too long. Once in Chania, we thought we would buy some food for the ferry back, but the stores didn't seem to have anything really good to eat, so we caught the bus back to Souda. Our ferry was already there. We went in, again, via the fancy escalator. This time we got cabins. Because we didn't want to spend too much money, we ended up getting the gender separate cabins. When I went into mine, I was the only one there. In Trevor's there was a man there already. Our cabins had 2 bunk beds and an ensuite bathroom (with shower!). So cool! We decided to wander around a little and to check out our food options, because we were starting to get hungry. We got to see a bit of the sunset, but because my dress kept flipping up, I opted for the indoor option. At 21:00 the ferry started moving and their restaurant opened and that's where we had dinner. I had a traditional Cretan pasta with cream and nutmeg and Trevor had some other pasta. It was good and filling. After eating, we decided to separate and head to our cabins, because the ferry would dock at 05:00, so we wanted to get some sleep. At my cabin, the family that was sharing with me was there finally. I was in a room with a Grandmother, mother and son (I assume under the age of 12 which is why he was in the girls cabin). I got into my top bunk bed and got ready to go to sleep when all of a sudden I heard this awful noise. It wasn't too long before I found out that the Grandmother in the bunk below mine was vomiting. Her family didn't seem as concerned as I was, so I tried to relax. Unfortunately, this went on for some time and they even called a doctor to check up on the lady. Thankfully after a little while, I was able to drift off to sleep.

Agia Marina Day 7

2010-07-09T02:51:00.001-07:00

June 20, 2010

Day 7 Agia Marina

My birthday! I can't believe that a quarter century has passed! It's unbelievable! How does time go by so quickly as you get older? I can't even imagine it feeling like it's going by any faster, and from the sounds of it, it does! Wow. Anyways, our morning started off wonderfully. I woke up with no trouble, put on the sunscreen, got dressed and woke up Trevor. We headed down to the breakfast that was included with the room. Amazing. I love buffet breakfasts. It allows you to try so many things and they all seem to taste so good. After eating way too much food, we headed straight for the beach. I wanted to claim a front row seat! There wasn't any trouble there, seeing that the beach was pretty empty. Our hotel didn't have a ton of beach space, but it was definitely plenty. Unfortunately, you had to pay for your seat, so Trevor spent most of the time not in his seat. In actual fact, the lady only came by once to get money and then never bothered to come back, so I paid for my seat, but later when Trevor came back, he could sit in the seat next to me without paying. The weather was strange this day. It started out really sunny, but then it got windy and cloudy and for a while looked like it was going to rain. Thankfully, Trevor used his quantum mechanics and pushed all the clouds away and by the end of the day it was beautiful again. I spent all day listening to the waves, reading my book and just enjoying the view. It was so wonderful. There were people walking by offering massages, but they were a little pricey, so I decided I wouldn't get one. At the end of the day, I went into the pool for a while, then headed to our room to change. On our bed I found a lovely bottle of Cretan red wine and a card from the hotel wishing me a happy birthday. We got ready to go, and headed down to the buffet supper (not included in our stay). It was as yummy as breakfast. I can't believe how much food I ate. Once stuffed to the brim, we headed back to our room. I noticed that I had forgotten to hang my clothes, so I stepped out on the balcony to hang them and when I returned, there was Trevor with a cake and candles in his hand! It looked incredibly tasty. Unfortunately, after eating the amount of food at dinner that I had, I had no more room for cake. Luckily we had a fridge in our room, so we stored it there for the next day. After, I was presented with my present. So exciting…we're going to Croatia!!! Not only did I get to spend my birthday on the beach, but my birthday present is a week on a beach! So awesome! After all that food and all the excitement (and all the sun), it was time for bed. Another beach day to get ready for!

Pireaus-Chania-Agia Marina Day 6

2010-07-09T02:50:00.001-07:00

June 19, 2010

Day 6 Piraeus-Chania-Agia Marina

We had planned to wake up early this morning (sort of, around 09:00), but it didn't quite work out that way. We got ready then headed to a super market to get some snacks for the ferry. After buying way too much food, we walked to our ferry. We had planned to be an hour early for the ferry, but ended up being only about half an hour early. We walked up to it and were put on a very fancy escalator with chandelier and bell boys. They directed us to our unassigned seats (we had purchased the super economy seats which really meant that we were in a lounge area with metal lawn chairs and plastic couches along the edges. At first it seemed super hot, but once the ferry got moving, it was actually quite comfortable. For most of the ride, we both read. The ferry was pretty big and the views along the way were so pretty. The sea was so blue at one point and you could see the sun rays in the water. I was getting super excited for my birthday beach day! After the six hour ferry ride, we were there! We had to do a little investigating to figure out how to get to our resort, but after asking a few questions, we were told to catch the bus to Chania and from there a bus to our resort. I had thought we would be docking in Chania, but it turns out we docked at Souda, a little ways from Chania. We grabbed the bus into town and after dealing with the grumpy bus driver, we walked to the bus station and caught our bus to get us to Agia Marina. This bus was like a coach bus, so it was really comfy. Once we got off the bus we had to walk a little ways, but finally we were there! Thalassa Resort. It was so exciting. The resort was so pretty! It looked like the fancy resorts in Mexico. Our room was really nice too with a balcony and two rooms! It was amazing! It was getting late, so we decided to first check out the super markets right across the street to see if there was anything cheap to buy. When we didn't find anything interesting, we headed to a pizza place and grabbed a pizza to take back to the room. They offered us a shot while we waited too! Back in our room, we ate our dinner on the balcony. After that we headed to bed. I was super excited about the next day!

Thessaloniki-Athens-Piraeus Day 5

2010-07-07T03:53:00.001-07:00

June 18, 2010

Day 5 Thessaloniki-Athens-Piraeus

The border crossing at 02:00 was not exactly a pleasant wake up call. Like last time, we got marched out of our bus and made to stand in a line up. We probably stood there for 30 minutes waiting for everyone to get stamped. This part was just the exit stamp. A few people were having issues. The guards singled people out and even held onto one girl's passport for a while. They were eventually okay. After using the bathroom in duty free, we got back on the bus to drive about 150 m to the Greece side and were marched out of the bus again. This time it was so that we could get our entry stamp for the EU. At this stop we started talking to a girl from the States who had been traveling for a while. It made the time go by much faster, which was nice. It was a bit cool out, but pretty soon (probably another 30 minutes) we were back on the bus and heading to Thessaloniki. We got a few more hours of sleep before being awaken at our final destination. Here, we ended up sticking with the American girl for a while since we were all heading to the train station anyways. We bought tickets to get back to Athens and then chatted for a while. She described our method of traveling as "traveling as a sport". I found that really interesting. While chatting, we found out she works for Couch Surfing, which was really cool. We parted ways after a while and Trevor and I decided to head to Goody's to use some free internet before our train came. We ate some food, used the internet and then caught our train. This time the train was awful. It was crowded and uncomfortable. I don't think the people sitting across from us actually had tickets, because every once in a while someone would come by, mention that it was their seat and then would say nevermind. The fact that we had people sitting across from us made the whole experience more uncomfortable. But we survived and made it into Athens around 18:15. At this point we needed to figure out how to get to Piraeus, the main port of Athens, where we would be catching the ferry the next day. After finding out that there was a 24 hour metro strike, the route we had planned to take, I managed to find out that you could take the train over there. So we waited for the train. It almost seemed like it wasn't going to come, and when I asked the guard standing on the platform, in his broken English, he tried to tell me that that's how it is in Greece. It wasn't too much longer when the train finally made its way into the train station, thankfully. Piraeus was a couple of stops away and once there, we went on a hunt for our hotel. Along the way I bought some delicious looking cherries from a street vendor. We found our hotel after a few twists and turns. It was a much nicer hotel than we usually stay at (although the price made it a lot less nice) at least in the lobby. Once settled into our room we headed to the Anek Lines office to pick up our tickets. Along the way we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed back to the room where we got ready for the next day.

Istanbul-Greece Day 4

2010-07-07T03:46:00.001-07:00

June 17, 2010

Day 4 Istanbul-Greece/Turkey border

We got up pretty late this day. We were obviously tired from the lack of sleep the night before and the long day of walking in the heat. I woke up noticing a few mosquito bites on me (that would turn into a lot of bites by the end of the day). I wasn't very happy about that, but nothing I could do about it at that point. We headed out of the hostel sometime around 11:00 and walked back across the bridge, buying some fruit and a street vendor bun along the way for breakfast. Almost at the point where we were going to start our touring for the day, I realized I had left my SD card back at the hostel. Trevor, being the wonderful husband that he is, rode back to the hostel while I waited for him at the gardens near the palace. When he finally came back we walked over to the palace, but decided not to go in. We took some pictures and walked around. We noticed a crow-like bird attacking some cats. The cats were eating and as we watched, the bird nipped one of the cats in the tail! He attempted to do it again a couple more times and even stole some of the food. It was pretty funny. We walked out of the palace grounds and headed in the direction of the Hagia Sofia. As we walked we saw a watermelon vendor and the watermelon looked so tasty so I figured why not buy some. He was being outrageous, charging 4 euro for a little tray of watermelon and I noticed that for one of the women he let her buy it for 2 euro. I figured I would pay 2 euro, but he wasn't budging for me. So I sent Trevor in to see if he would drop the price for him. He wouldn't and then noticed me standing off to the side, he gave me a thumbs up. I don't know if that was his way of telling me, "nice try working the system". I didn't like that. We went in search of another watermelon guy. While Trevor went off to get some watermelon, I went to mail some postcards. Trevor came back with the watermelon, that was very tasty and refreshing, and as we were sitting there, we got approached by two guys who were practicing their English. They asked us a few questions, took notes and then went off. We decided to check out the mausoleums that were free of charge. They were really interesting and in one there was a shroud that had covered prophet Mohamed's sarcophagus! After that we made our way toward the sea. We just started heading in that direction hoping that we wouldn't get too lost along the way. At one point we knew we were close, but there were train tracks blocking us. Thankfully, not much further, we found an underpass. We then crossed a highway and ended up right near the sea. There were a bunch of men swimming or hanging out on the rocks, because there wasn't a beach. We sat down on one of the benches and hung out for a while. We watched as a cop van came close to us (driving on the side walk) and asked a guy selling tea and cold drinks out of a bucket, for something to drink. Then one of the cops decided to get a henna tattoo and got a nearby henna guy to go in the back of the police van to do the tattoo. After that entertainment, Trevor figured we should get some seafood food and we walked along a strip where there were restaurants. We ended up picking one and ordered some calamari. As we waited for our snack, Trevor noticed something in the water (we were sitting right along the water's edge). It took us a while, but figured out that it was dolphins! There were two and they would surface every once in a while. They did that for about five minutes until some local boys decided to swim out to them. After that they were nowhere to be seen. The calamari was really good and I'm glad that we decided to try some. It was then time to head back to the hostel because we would have to catch the bus in a few hours and we were quite a ways away. We started making our way up a hill and passed an area of empty touristy restaurants. Here I found a cat interested in coming up to me. He was super cute. Continuing our way up we found a place where we grabbed a bite to eat. It looked a little like a kebab place. We got this sandwich filled with meat. It was all right, but not the best thing I've ever eaten. We also grabbed some Turkish delight and a piece of baklava across the street. All of it was pretty cheap, which was nice. You could tell this part was a little less touristy. As we continued up, we realized that we were getting pretty close to the Grand bazaar, and ended up going through it one more time, checking out all the crazy stores. We went down an area that sold snaps for clothes. The whole store was different sizes of snaps! Crazy! We then grabbed a seat for a little while in the shade just to take a break, but because Trevor and I sat in slightly different areas because of how the shade was, I ended up getting approached by a restaurant owner who called over a son/nephew/friend who was about my age. I had to explain that my husband was sitting just over there and the guy asked "are you sure?" to which I replied "yes I'm sure" (no, not that clever, but clear at least). The restaurant guy then gave us free tea. Trevor refused, so the tea was given to a guy sitting next to us. I drank mine and then we headed over to the pet area again and looked at the adorable (though not necessarily very healthy looking) animals. It was then back to our hostel to grab our bags. We took a few more pictures along the way, grabbed some food and went into the hostel to grab a shower. After getting cleaned up and using a little internet, we headed back towards the bridge to catch the tram which would get us to the bus station (with a transfer). At the transfer Trevor grabbed a kebab. We got to the massive bus station just after 21:00. After checking in and giving the bus people our bags, we walked around a bit then settled into our seats. The kebab was disgusting! It was tasteless! Definitely not good. At just after 22:00 we started our journey back to Thessaloniki. Once again we had TVs on the backs of the seats, though I didn't bother with mine. We were also offered tea and coffee, a snack and water and pop. After taking in a little food, it was time to take in a little sleep before the dreaded wake up at the border crossing.

Istanbul Day 3

2010-07-07T03:36:00.001-07:00

June 16, 2010

Day 3 Istanbul, Turkey

We got into Istanbul around 07:00 and found out where to go to catch the metro and started heading for our hotel. We had to do a bit of money exchange, but we didn't see any exchange places. I was super grumpy, hot and had to use the bathroom. Trevor was wonderful and put up with all the complaints during our ride to our hotel. We ended up having to transfer twice, once that we knew about and the second time because I guess there was an issue that caused the train only to go to a certain point and you had to go to the other side of the platform to catch a train that continued onwards. It was so packed. We had to push our way in. It was definitely rush hour! We got to the stop that we were directed to and went on a hunt for our hostel which was tricky to find. We found it, but even then it was hard to know for sure that it was a hostel, except that a bunch of young people were standing outside of it. We met the spaced out hostel guy who told us that after we tour around we will have beds, though it was interesting how he designated the beds to us. He pretty much just sort of said 'well these are going to be your beds, I think' not really knowing who was staying and who was leaving. We had a shower and headed out to explore Istanbul. We decided to walk over to the main area, near Hagia Sofia. On the way we saw a man weaving a blanket using an old loom. It was incredible to watch. We also saw some criminals in handcuffs being put in jail (we assumed). That was less cool, especially since we didn't even know what was going on and practically walked right next to the guards and the criminals! Anyways, along the way we searched for an info place, but had a hard time finding it. As we walked around and took pictures of the garden area by the Hagia Sofia, we were stopped by two girls who were practicing their English. They asked us some questions and took our picture and went on their way to find more tourists to practice on. We headed to the Blue Mosque. The inside was really pretty with really nice tiling all over the walls and ceilings. After, we headed for a park bench and I nearly fell asleep, but we got up and started heading towards the Grand Bazaar. We managed to find the info place then and we grabbed some info on what to see and then headed to grab something to eat (I was hungry). The food was okay. We had kofte, which are basically oblong meatballs. We had tried them before in Egypt. We also had corba, a lentil soup I think. It was then off to the Grand Bazaar. We made it, after a lot of walking. It was incredible! It's a huge indoor market. It has a ridiculous number of shops and you can easily get lost. Each area seems to have a theme of what it's selling. You turn one way and you see tons of shops with leather jackets. Another aisle will have silver, another will have tourist stuff. After wandering a little I wanted to find the spice market. It took a lot of effort. We ended up going by the pet area of the Grand Bazaar, first. There were tons of baby birds (ducks, chickens, and quail I think). The hamsters in most of the cages didn't look so good. The kittens were cute and so were the puppies. It was crazy how they were selling the animals. After some time spent looking at baby animals, we were back on the hunt for the spice market and after asking for directions, we made it. It really wasn't anything exciting, just another area in the market, but this time with spices, dry fruits, Turkish delight (which we tried and it was pretty good). We kept wandering up and down when all of a sudden I turned and who should be standing two metres away, but Daniel Dae Kim (Jin from LOST)! I sort of freaked out and told Trevor to guess who it was which caught the attention of who I assume to be the body guard. This guy was super tall and didn't look like someone you should mess with. I panicked and ended up not going up to Daniel. Instead and I just kept rambling to Trevor how I shouldn't bother him because he probably doesn't like crazy fans. He seemed really happy and he was with "the body guard", his wife and some other girl (maybe "body guards" girlfriend/wife?) So off we went on our way. After a little while, Trevor managed to convince me to go and talk to the actor so we headed back to the place where he had been, but it was too late. So next we headed for the ferries, because we figured we should go to Asia since Istanbul is the only bi-continental city in the world. We hopped onto the ferry and took a 10 min ride over and spent most of our time in Asia napping on a bench, grabbing something to eat and then having a difficult time trying to figure out how to get back. We asked a ticket lady if the ferry was going to a certain place and she said no and told us to take a bus. What we learned soon after, is that the ferry that was leaving would take us really close to where we wanted to go, just not to the place we had asked about. But it wasn't until I asked where that ferry was going that we found this out. Meaning, it makes more sense just to ask where the ferry is going than to ask will it go wherever you want to go. So silly. We made it back to the European side by ferry and decided it was time to grab some more food. We went back to the market and bought a pizza like thing and then went and got ourselves some tea and relaxed a bit. Finally, we were getting tired, so we headed back to our hostel, on the way grabbing a street vendor corn on the cob. Here we finished off our evening talking with some of the hostel people in the upstairs lounge area and heading to bed in our packed room.

Athens-Thessaloniki-Turkey Day 2

2010-07-07T03:22:00.001-07:00

June 15, 2010

Day 2 Athens-Thessaloniki-Turkey

We woke up pretty early, around 08:00 to get some free breakfast. Waking up was hard after coming into the hotel around 03:00 the night before. After grabbing a simple, but good breakfast in the completely empty breakfast room, we headed to the train station to find out if we could get to Istanbul, Turkey. After a tricky conversation and being sent back and forth between windows, we ended up buying tickets to Thessaloniki. Trevor ran to get some food while I read, waiting for our train. It was super hot, so it was nice not moving around. The train arrived and we left at 10:50. The ride was uneventful. At first there was a guy sitting across from me, but he moved to another seat and Trevor and I ended up with four seats between the two of us. We got in to Thessaloniki around 16:00 and went straight to the line to try and get tickets to Istanbul. First we found out there was a problem with the train so there was no train to Istanbul, but there was hope. There was a bus. We headed to the next window that we had been directed to, this time found out the train was destroyed and we were given info to take the metro to a square to buy bus tickets to get to Istanbul and the lady wrote it down (using the Latin alphabet). When we went to buy metro tickets, I asked the guy where the metro was. He laughed and finally explained that this (the bus depot) was the "metro" and that they would have a real metro in 10 years. He told us which bus to take to get to where we wanted and we headed over. Being silly, I didn't bother to ask the driver to tell us when to get off and we ended up missing our stop and walking over a kilometer back. At least the walk was along the water. The view was nice, but the walk was HOT HOT HOT! We finally made it to the place (with Trevor's excellent sense of direction), and after much discussion, bought the tickets to Istanbul. We had a bit of time so we wandered a little (not too much, because we were cooking) and ended up in Goody's, a fast food joint, where we grabbed dinner and hung out. They offered beer with their meals, so of course we ordered a beer. We sat and chatted for a couple of hours until it was time to head over to catch our train. We had to be at the bus at 21:30. We got there early and hung around and finally bordered the double decker bus (so cool!) that would be taking us to Turkey. We changed our seats at the start so that we could sit at the front of the top level (to watch out the front window), but headed back to our seats soon after because we knew they would be taken at the next stop but didn't know when that would be and I was too anxious to stay. We were served tea on board, an unexpected pleasure. All the seats had their own screen/TV, also nice, unfortunately ours didn't work. No worries, I ended up finishing one of the books I brought along. After finishing, I tried to fall asleep, but very soon we were at the border. We were told to unload. We got our exit stamps from the EU and headed back onto the bus. I started to settle in when we stopped and were told to unload again. This time, the Americans and Canadians were sent to a different area and we had to purchase a visa. Apparently a Canadian has to pay 3 times as much for the visa! We bought the visas and then back to line up so that we could get an entry stamp into Turkey. Finally we got back into the bus (it was close to 02:00 at this point) and we got to fall back asleep. It was quite warm on the bus, so the sleep was not as pleasant as it could have been.

Warsaw-Athens Day 1

2010-06-16T10:31:00.001-07:00

June 14, 2010

Day 1 Warsaw-Athens

We had a bunch of time this morning to get ourselves ready to catch the flight to Athens. We left our place around 15:00, headed to the airport and had plenty of time before our 17:25 flight to Amsterdam. The flight was good and the snacks they provided were nice (a sandwich, half egg salad and half chicken curry). They also offered free beer, wine or other drinks. I haven't seen free alcohol on a plane in a while! After landing in Amsterdam, we quickly headed to our next gate, stopping near an area where you could sit in lounge chairs and watch planes take off, and checking out the chocolate shop that sold chocolate by the chunk with signs saying "help yourself". We quickly bordered and were off to Athens. Again we got fed, different sandwiches this time, but still free alcohol (thank you KLM). It was a nice flight and the views of Athens and area were awesome. They have lit highways and you can see them go forever from the plane. Once in Athens, we grabbed our bags (one of the first ones off the plane) and caught a bus that took us near our hotel (near being just over a kilometer walk). We passed by a slightly sketchy area with the creatures of the night out and doing their thing and finally got to the hotel. Our room was huge and we could see the Acropolis from our huge balcony. We went to bed soon after because we would be up early the next morning.

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Berlin-Warsaw Day 37

2010-06-10T02:48:00.001-07:00

May 6, 2010

Day 37 Berlin-Warsaw

The morning was pretty calm as we packed our bags and headed to the train station. We had one last thing on the agenda before heading back to Warsaw. The plan was to buy a piece of the Berlin wall. It wasn't hard to find. The pieces were everywhere, attached to postcards. It was just something we had to do. Then we headed to our platform. It was insane getting on the train. There were people pushing and getting in the way. It was not fun. Even once on the train we had to push our way through. People were crowding the aisles. Unfortunately this train was a cabin train, so it meant that there was a very narrow hall where you could get from one side of the train to the other. People decided it was a great idea to stand in the middle even though people were trying to pass. We finally made it to our cabin. We ended up having a little girl sit next to us who was probably about 2 years old and she entertained us for the trip. The ride was okay. Pretty soon, we were back in Warsaw. The end of an epic journey.

'Til the next one…

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Berlin Day 36

2010-06-10T02:46:00.001-07:00

May 5, 2010

Day 36 Berlin

Claudia ended up getting us a private tour of the Reichstag, the German government building, because one of her friends works for one of the MP's! We headed over to meet her, went through security and met up with her friend. He spoke English, thankfully, and took us on a tour of the government buildings. They were really cool. There was a ton of art in the buildings and I think we ended up going into three buildings because they are all connected underground and with pedways. The stuff looked really cool and one of the coolest, and more mysterious, pieces of art was an area that had a brown box for each MP that ever served in the German parliament with their name, the years they were MP and the party they represented. One of the boxes was black with no name or year or party and our tour guide said that you can interpret it as either Adolph Hitler's box or as all the government people at the time of WWII since there was no government per se (at least no MPs). Very crazy. There was also a piece of a tunnel which was said was the tunnel that someone went through when they burned down one of the buildings. It was really interesting. There were other crazy pieces of art like in one court yard that had water in it, there was a sidewalk that lead out to the middle and on the walls there were pairs of statues walking up the walls (they were horizontal), or in another courtyard was a garden that had soil brought there by each MP (I think when there was democracy in German again) from all parts of Germany and it was allowed to grow as is (no pruning or anything). I think it was to represent the coming together of Germany. We also went inside the Reichstag which has a cool funnel thing in the top of it. It was a very cool tour. At the end, Claudia went back to work while Trevor and I headed to another museum that would explain more about the Berlin Wall. When we got there, we read through a bunch of info which got me very up to date on Berlin Wall info. We took some pictures of the wall there and then headed to the East Side Gallery. This was cool. A whole bunch of artists painted a big chunk of wall (I think it's over 1 km long). They each got an area to decorate and they went nuts. There were some amazing pieces of art. It was awesome. We took a bunch of pictures. After a very enjoyable walk along the wall, we headed back to Claudia's to wait for her phone call. Around 20:00 we headed out and met her at her research lab and then walked over to the bar where she worked before. We walked by an area where there are apparently squatters and a bunch of artists living and they put out their art for everyone to see. It was interesting, though slightly intimidating. It was a pretty run down apartment building and you walk into the courtyard where there are a bunch of metal sculptures. The lighting was dim and eerie. We looked around then kept going to the bar. On the way, we saw a bunch of prostitutes all dressed the same (as if they had a uniform) and in warm jackets (it was cool out). Finally we made it to the bar. There were so many beers to choose from and we got a beer each as well as some traditional German food. We had a great time. After a fun dinner we headed back to Claudia's to say our good-byes because we wouldn't see her the next day. That's how the final night ended.

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Amsterdam-Berlin Day 35

2010-06-10T02:41:00.001-07:00

May 4, 2010

Day 35 Amsterdam-Berlin

We had an early start to the morning to catch our train from Amsterdam to Berlin. Today was our last day that we could use our Eurorail pass. After having to write all the trains that we took using that pass, I counted 68! Once we arrived in Berlin, Claudia, Trevor's roommate from Seattle, was waiting for us on the platform so that she could walk us to her house where we would spend the next two nights. The walk was a short one. We talked for a bit and dropped off our stuff and then we separated because she had to go back to work. We decided to head for the Jewish museum and the Berlin wall. We started walking and ended up passing the Reichstag without knowing what it was as well as the main gate. We found the Jewish museum. The area above the museum is covered in blocks of concrete of various sizes. Some were a metre taller than me. It was really cool because you could totally play hide and go seek or other fun games in there. It would be awesome. Anyways, we headed to the museum. It was free of charge. We read some really sad info about WWII. We then headed out in search of the wall. We finally found a small chunk of the wall in the middle of downtown and took some pictures. We realized here that the city is actually covered in small chunks of the original wall with a path made of bricks showing where the wall stood. I had no idea how crazy the Berlin wall actually was! I guess I didn't pay enough attention in social class. We decided to follow the path that showed where the wall was and ended up walking to the Charlie Checkpoint, the place where the American soldiers were stationed. That was crazy. The booth, like a border crossing, is still there. After this we headed to meet up with Claudia. We walked around and found a restaurant where we grabbed a pizza and beer and chatted and then headed back to the apartment. Claudia headed back on her bike while we caught the metro (not called metro here). Back at her apartment, we chatted for a bit and then went to bed.

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Amsterdam Day 34

2010-06-10T02:37:00.001-07:00

May 3, 2010

Day 34 Amsterdam

Even though it was raining, we decided to head out of the hostel after eating and changing rooms. Today we decided to check out the Van Gogh museum. At first it looked like we would be waiting in line for a VERY long time. I went to line up while Trevor checked out what we could do to bypass the mess. When he finally met up with me in line (which was probably 15 min later) I remembered that you could purchase tickets at our hostel that would let you bypass the line. So Trevor ran to the hostel while I continued to stand in line in the rain. Trevor finally came back with the tickets and we went in. Trevor had to give his backpack to coat check (stupid regulations) which meant that he ended up carrying his laptop around the entire time. After standing in line there (thankfully inside where it was dry and warm) we went into the museum. I have to say I was a little disappointed by the amount of Van Gogh paintings. They made it seem like they had a lot of paintings because the museum was three floors, but in the end there were a lot of paintings by people that were influenced by or influenced Van Gogh. It was interesting seeing Van Gogh's paintings, though. It's funny how all painters seem to paint the same things early on in their career, but thankfully at some point they are able to find inspiration to do their own thing. After finishing up in the Van Gogh museum, we wandered around and grabbed some food at an Italian place which at first glance appeared to have great deals on pizzas and pastas (only 5 Euro!) Once we got hooked on the price, we found out that you have to order a drink to get the cheap food. Now, thankfully, it ended up being cheap for us even with the purchase of a drink each, but many of the other people that came in after us ended up getting a little upset because the restaurant wasn't up front about the fact that you had to purchase a drink. Plus, one of the waiters even told a group of young guys (probably 18 year olds just out of high school who were from Canada) that they didn't have to buy a drink. We weren't very happy that we were told we had to when they didn't. But a few minutes later another waiter came and said that they had no choice and had to buy drinks. It was stupid, really. Very tourist unfriendly! Anyways, we ate and then headed out toward the Red Light District to see the Sex Museum. This was an interesting museum, even if a little crude (they had paintings on the walls that farted and a mannequin that flashed you when you walked by). The museum had a lot of artifacts with sexual paintings or carvings and of course porn and it explained the progression of sex in the public eye. It was definitely eye-opening. After this we went and grabbed some street vendor fries because they looked so delicious, and finally made it into the Red Light District. We wandered around a bit. Some of the ladies were out in their windows even though it was pretty early. I got myself a burger at Febo, which is a place that looks like a giant vending machine McDonald's. You put coins into a slot and select your burger and take a nice warm burger out of the little window. Apparently it's not a good place to eat at because the high school kids pay for a burger, open the little window and spit in the burgers, but I wanted to try this novel thing anyways. Hopefully no one spit in my burger. After wandering around a bit more, we headed back to our hostel where we spent the rest of the night hanging out in the lounge, meeting new people and watching TV on the laptop.

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Amsterdam Day 33

2010-06-09T05:58:00.001-07:00

May 2, 2010

Day 33 Amsterdam

We grabbed some breakfast in the hostel and then headed out for another adventure. I didn't mention how much Amsterdam reminded me of Venice with all its canal systems, although there was also a good mix of car traffic as well. Day 2 in Amsterdam was actually not spent in Amsterdam. We headed out of town by train to a little town that had the M.C. Escher museum. It wasn't a pleasant day (rainy) so I'm glad that we decided to go indoors. It was unfortunate, because yesterday the sun had poked its head out in the afternoon, but there was to be no sunshine today. Anyways, the museum was actually pretty cool and since the art was quite a bit different than any art museum we had seen up until this point, it ended up being a lot easier to appreciate. There was even a section with Science centre type experiment explaining the art. It was cool. We finished up at the museum and then headed back to Amsterdam. Not knowing what to do next, we headed to the Heineken Brewery for the Heineken Experience. We've been to the Atlanta's The World of Coca-Cola and it was pretty similar to that, just with alcohol. It takes you through how the beer is made and you get to see some of the bottling. It tells you about how it became popular and showed the different bottles it use to be stored in. We got to eat some of the ingredients and drink some wort and of course we had beer at the end as part of the tour. It was interesting. I've noticed that ever since we moved to Europe, I have acquired a taste for beer. That's good, because we ended up getting 3 glasses with the tour (and it was an expensive tour, so we had to drink the beer to make it worth it!) It was still raining by the time we got out of the tour, so we headed back to the hostel. We ended up staying in for the night, with the weather being like it was.

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Brussels-Amsterdam Day 32

2010-06-09T05:55:00.001-07:00

May 1, 2010

Day 32 Brussels-Amsterdam

We had breakfast again at the hotel and headed over to the train station, which was a quick 5 minute walk. Only one train today, all the way to Amsterdam. I was pretty excited to see what this city had to offer. We got into Amsterdam and the first thing we had to do was deal with a bunch of lines. The day before had been Queen's Day, a huge celebration day, and there were tons of people in Amsterdam. You should have seen the aftermath of this party. There was orange garbage everywhere! There were Heineken cans all over the streets and silly string in the trees and some deflated orange crowns. It was insane. It's too bad we missed the party, but there weren't any reasonably priced hotels left by the time we thought of it. Maybe next time. Anyways, even though the weather wasn't looking great, a lot of people were outside. After getting a print out of where we were heading (for free out of this info machine that was pretty cool) Trevor knew where we had to go and what tram to take, but we had to get our transit tickets. So, Trevor went to buy some. He had to get a number for the line and figured that he'd get a number for the info line too (who knew there would be lines to get to either?) and we waited for over half an hour until Trevor finally got the bus tickets. Now we had to find where this bus was. Thankfully that wasn't too difficult. After a bit of a tram ride, where we found out you have to scan your ticket when you go in and when you get off the bus, and a bit of a walk, we made it to our hostel. The first two nights we would be in a 12 person room on a double bed (that was nice) and the last night would be in an 8 person room. We climbed the 5 narrow flights of stairs (reception was 2 floors below ground level and we were on the third floor) and waited as our beds were made and then we finally headed out the door to do some exploring. We decided to check out the Anne Frank Haus which was actually really well put together. It was sad. We had to wait in line for a bit to get in, but I figure it was worth it. Then we headed toward the Red Light District. It was still light out and man was it crowded! There were so many people. The Red Light District looked nothing like I had imagined. I thought it was going to be a sketchy back street with all the prostitutes in their windows and the whole "alley" tinged red. It ended up being a huge area around canals (like in Venice) and sure, there were sex shops everywhere and a few girls in the windows, but definitely not like I had thought in my head. Plus, the number of "coffee shops" and fast food joints overwhelmed the number of sex shops anyways. We ended up having dinner at a place called Walk to Wok which was super busy and ended up tasting really good. It was a place where you picked your noodles, the meat and the sauce and they made it for you fresh. Then we walked around and headed to a fair that was going on, checked stuff out and headed back to the hostel. We were one of the first people back in our room. I think we're getting old!

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Brussels Day 31

2010-06-09T05:48:00.003-07:00

April 30, 2010

Day 31 Brussels

We had breakfast this morning in our hotel, it being included. That was a nice change. It was pretty decent. Then it was off to the Atomium, another Expo monument. It was a giant molecule monument that looked pretty cool. Trevor wanted to go inside and I had no idea what was in it, so I said sure. We ended up waiting in line to go up inside this monument for probably over half an hour. At this point I still couldn't figure out why we were going inside. Finally we were in the elevator that took us up to the top atom. This ended up being a viewing floor which was similar to any viewing floor for tall structures. You could see Brussels. It was neat, but nothing like some of the other tall structures we've been in. We then started our decent which ended up being quite boring. It was suppose to be sort of like a museum that talked about the World Expo and what its purpose was, but the displays were old and the information repetitive. Had we known, we wouldn't have bothered going inside. Oh well, live and learn. Once out of the structure we decided to go for a bit of a walk around the park area which led us to the Planetarium. We went in and Trevor ended up talking to guy who did a similar thing at this Planetarium as Trevor did at the Telus World of Science (the star shows). They chatted for a bit and then we headed back to the centre of Brussels where we found the main square with some really cool buildings (or rather, art on the buildings). We looked around and checked out some of the chocolate stores (they looked so yummy) and we passed many waffle places (Belgian waffles!) Next attraction was the Manneken Pis, a small statue of a boy peeing into the fountain. When we saw him, he was dressed as a soldier. Apparently he has many outfits, including a Santa Claus outfit at Christmas. By this point I was starving and definitely acting like I was crazy (I'm blaming it on low blood sugar) and thankfully Trevor was willing to deal with the crazy lady. We found a Quick, a fast food joint we had wanted to check out, not for lack of trying I might add. Here is where we found out that apparently you have to pay to use a bathroom, even if you order! Outrageous! Neither of us was happy about it. We even went to the McDonald's to find a free bathroom. Nope, couldn't use it there either (without paying). Not cool. So we returned to the square figuring the info place could tell us a place to pee for free. They suggested eating at a café and using their bathroom. So that's what we did. We grabbed a seat at one of the cafés in the square (outside so we could catch the view) and bought ourselves beers and enjoyed the luxury of free toilet use. I wasn't feeling great, I think I had caught something again, so I decided to head back to the hotel while Trevor went crazy around the city. I ended up reading and writing postcards and we called it an early night when Trevor got back, after watching some shows on the laptop.

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Paris-Luxembourg-Brussels Day 30

2010-06-09T05:48:00.001-07:00

April 29, 2010

Day 30 Paris-Luxembourg-Brussels

We took it easy this morning. We ended up having a late breakfast at a nearby Asian restaurant and then we found a seat on a bench near our hotel. We read for a while before it was time to head to the train station. We went back to the hotel to grab our bags and then headed over to the train station to catch the train to Luxembourg. Once in Luxembourg, we left our bags at the baggage storage and walked toward the centre of town. We stumbled upon a fair and ended up indulging (a little too much) in the yummy food. We started off with chocolate covered fruit (I had white chocolate covered strawberries and Trevor had dark chocolate covered banana) as well as having chocolate crêpes. We wandered a little and I found a pasta place that had all kinds of sauces to choose from and it was super cheap so I ended up buying that too. So much food, so little time! After we finished eating, we decided to head away from the fair to explore the town a little, but there didn't end up being too much to see. We found a grocery store and bought some snacks for the train ride. We found some amazingly red strawberries and when we tried them, they were incredible! They were the best strawberries I had ever tried! After eating our strawberries, we ended up back at the fair and finally decided to head back to the train station to catch our train to Brussels. To get there, we went through a park that was very pretty. It was a nice walk back. We caught the train and headed to our next country. We made it to Brussels quite late and unfortunately we weren't sure which way to go to get to our hotel. Trevor went in search of internet while I hung out with our bags. I had an interesting view of a sleeping homeless man and a man who I believe was hallucinating, explaining to "someone" that he was strong. Thankfully he was at a safe distance from me. A guy walked by and noticed that I was hanging out by myself and approached me asking if I needed help. He said he had been in my position many times. He was from the U.S, but I think living in Brussels. Trevor ended up getting back before the guy could really help us, but at least he was nice and not creepy like the other people around. Trevor found internet and we headed to the hotel, which ended up being about 150m from the station. We got to our very cramped little room and headed to sleep.

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Paris Day 29

2010-06-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

April 27, 2010

Day 29 Paris

Today was suppose to be our last day in Paris, but due to hotels being ridiculously expensive in Luxembourg, we decided to stay an extra night in Paris and make Luxembourg a day trip. Today we headed to the train station to exchange earlier reserved tickets to Luxembourg. After getting that all straightened out, we headed to the Louvre. We had a quick snack in the McCafé (that looked out over a room in the Louvre) and Trevor explored in the Apple store just outside the entrance and then we made our way in. Again I got in free (so awesome!) Our priorities here were the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. First we headed to the Mona Lisa (very well marked for easy access.) Throughout the museum there are signs that tell people that they can take pictures, but no flash. When we walked to the Mona Lisa, all you could see was a crowd of people and flashes going off constantly! I guess there's a reason why there is a glass case in front of the painting. We took some pictures and headed to Venus de Milo. On the way we found an Argo medallion, the French version of the Prime Meridian, on the floor in the museum. Once at Venus de Milo, a similar situation to Mona Lisa was happening. We squeezed our way into the crowd and took some pictures. We then planned out what we really wanted to see. My feet were aching (keep in mind this is day 27 of go go go action on our part and even 24 hours in a train isn't enough to rest my poor aching feet!) We picked out the things to see and headed to each. I have to say that I think the best way to see a museum, or at least to appreciate it, is to see only one per month. I no longer had the patience to look at everything in the Louvre. We managed to appreciate a few things by the time we left the museum, but there was so much more we missed. Next, it was off to the Arc de Triomphe. The craziest thing about the Arc was the insane traffic circle surrounding it! I have no idea how people knew when to get in or out of the circle. There were no lines on the street indicating lanes. It was a huge free-for-all. I'm glad we took the metro! Off we went next to see the Moulin Rouge, took some pictures, and thinking we still had some time, Trevor wanted to head to a Planetarium. Unfortunately, it was closed. We figured it was time to try another exotic culinary dish, frog's legs, so we headed to the restaurant I had read about. It was really expensive, but luckily someone at the restaurant pointed us to a different restaurant (same owner) that specialized in frog's legs, La Grenouille (frog). It was a very cute restaurant with all kinds of kitchen tools as chandeliers. We ended up having frogs' legs (and like they say, they taste like chicken). They were tasty, but small. As we headed back to the hotel, Trevor and I were still having a craving and ended up getting sushi and calamari at a nearby restaurant. So tasty! We then headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

Paris Day 28

2010-06-08T10:19:00.001-07:00

April 27, 2010

Day 28 Paris

We grabbed some hot drinks served free of charge in the basement in the hotel. It was then time for our first destination: the Catacombs. We had to wait in line for about 45min, but the time passed quickly because we ended up talking with the people behind us who were from New Zealand. The Catacombs were crazy! You had to walk down quite a few stairs and then had to walk about 400m in a dark tunnel before getting to some pretty cool stone carvings on display. Finally we got to the bones. It was insane. There were bones stacked on top of one another in piles about 6 feet high. In each pile there were usually 2 or 3 rows of sculls. It went on for probably 500m or more! It was incredible. I thought it would be way creepier than it was. I managed to take some pictures. It was awesome. As you left the Catacombs, they asked to check your bag because apparently people sometimes steal sculls! Trevor had made a joke about it earlier, but I just thought he was being silly. Turns out, he wasn't. Next, we headed to the Notre Dame Cathedral where we ate lunch in the square in front. We went inside and saw some nice stained glass and statues, but the line to get up to the top was too long and we figured we wouldn't have enough time. So we headed next to the Panthéon where the original Foucault pendulum was. It is also where a lot of famous people are buried including Marie Curie, Victor Hugo and others. It was pretty cool. I was able to take advantage of being under 26 and an EU citizen here and got in for free! Next, we headed to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, another item in Trevor's Geek Atlas. It was pretty cool, but I was already tired of museums and I was tired of walking, so I'm pretty sure I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have. Finally, it was time to head to the main attraction in Paris, La Tour Eiffel. We got there and we were like pros (having been there once before, before heading to Egypt). We stood in line and made another friend. We talked to this girl who was going up by herself while her family waited for her. She was visiting from England, though she was originally from Croatia. She was super nice and super nervous about going up to the top. Trevor and I ended up buying tickets to go to the very top (level 3) while she decided, because she was afraid of heights, that she would only go to the second level. We rode up and took a bunch of pictures, said our good byes and then Trevor and I headed for the 3^rd floor. That floor was a lot smaller and super crowded. Here you could buy champagne to drink (at 11 Euro a glass!) The view was cool. We decided to head back down, which meant waiting in line for the elevator that only took you to the second floor. We decided to hang out here for a while again and take pictures of the sunset (very romantic). While re-exploring the second floor, who do we bump into? None other than the people we had talked to in Hendaye who were heading to Paris at the same time as us! We then waited in line to get down to the ground, but in the elevator decided to stop on the first floor to look around. It was a cool floor and we would have eaten at the restaurant, but it was way too expensive. We took the stairs down from here and again bumped into the guys from Hendaye. At the bottom, we decided it was time to eat and found ourselves a cute café that had a blocked view of the Eiffel Tower. It was very enjoyable. We headed back to the tower to take some last minute pictures and unfortunately due to me not feeling well we ended up heading back to the hotel (although it was 23:00 by this time!) Trevor stayed up doing a bunch of hotel bookings for our next leg of traveling. Then, off to bed to get ready for the next day of craziness!

Porto-Hendaye-Bordeaux-Paris Day 26 and Day 27

2010-06-08T10:08:00.001-07:00

April 25-26, 2010

Day 26 and Day 27 Porto-Hendaye-Bordeaux-Paris

Today was spent relaxing mostly. After saying good-bye to our fuzzy friends and checking out of the hotel, we had a wonderfully filling breakfast for super cheap again, although not as cheap as the day before. After that we went on a hunt for stamps. I thought it would be like the last countries where the tobacco shops or other type of stands would sell them. I don't know if they did because someone told us about some post office that was open Sundays and holidays, so we headed there instead. Turned out that on the outside of the post office was an automatic stamp dispenser. It was cool (the smallest things amuse me). So I bought my stamps from the dispenser, sent my postcards and then we were off to the park in front of the city hall where Trevor and I both read for about an hour and a half. I guess it was more like a square with a few chairs under a few trees, but it was very pleasant none-the-less. After, we headed down to the water after walking through some backstreets and climbing down a bunch of stairs. The views were very nice and the weather was especially warm. According to some of the signs around, it was about 25 degrees! We then went in search of a grocery store, bought a bunch of food and headed for the train station. We had 2 trains to catch today. Once was a 5 min train to the other train station in town and then we caught our 12 hour train ride to Hendaye. The train ride was uneventful. The sleep wasn't great, but at least we saved ourselves a hotel night! Once in Hendaye, we went to check if we could get to Paris by today. We could get to Paris, it would just be at 21:00. We figured that was good enough for us, so we bought the tickets. We talked with some people in the line after who were also going to Paris and they had managed to get tickets to get to Paris earlier, but we decided to stick with our tickets. We ended up having a delay once we got to Bordeaux, where I spent most of my time reading. Trevor went grocery shopping and tried to find power for his laptop. And finally after a ridiculous amount of time spent in trains, we got to Paris. Next difficulty: finding a hotel. Because of the uncertainty of making it to Paris by today, we hadn't booked anything, but Trevor had sort of picked out an area that was cheaper and we headed there (Voltaire metro stop). We found the hotel that Trevor had been looking into and after attempting to speak French and ending up having some guy translate for us, we managed to get a room for cheaper than originally mentioned (even though you had to "rent" sheets!). Unfortunately, I can't say it was a nice hotel, but it was a place to sleep. There was suppose to be internet, but it wasn't connecting and the lady didn't want Trevor touching the connection, so tonight we couldn't do anything on the computer. Later I heard the people in the next room swearing about how stupid the lady was. Oh well. It was time to rest before the insanity of Paris.

Porto Day 25

2010-06-08T09:45:00.001-07:00

April 24, 2010

Day 25 Porto

Today was our beach day! YAY! I checked up on our fuzzy friends before showering in the morning, and there were 3 of them sun tanning on the roof below us. I didn't want to get them excited, so I didn't open the window. We then started out with a late breakfast. We found ourselves a cute café and ended up with super cheap, very filling breakfast. It was great. We then took the metro which took ridiculously long. I think there were 14 stops before ours! But after a little walk, we had made it to the glorious sandy beach. I ignored what appeared to be an industrial area right next to the water, and headed away from it. It was awesome. The sand was so soft and the water was clear and there were very few people. It was amazing. We found ourselves a spot and the sun tanning and relaxing began. I read for probably about 4 hours. Trevor kept running off and coming back, but I stayed, listening to the waves and enjoying my book. It was awesome. After some time I met Trevor in the shady spot he had found and we had ice cream and then we decided it was time for supper so we found a restaurant on the beach and ate as the sun started to set. Unfortunately, it was a little cloudy so we didn't see the end of the sunset, but it was lovely just the same. After that we decided to go for a walk along the water. They had a lovely boardwalk. Trevor found an area full of shells, so I went collecting for a bit, but it was getting dark, so we decided to keep walking. It would have taken a long time to walk to the hotel from the beach so we caught the bus that took us along the water most of the way. It was very nice. After searching the streets to see if there were any groceries stores and if they were open (we didn't find any) we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Porto Day 24

2010-05-29T08:25:00.001-07:00

April 23, 2010

Day 24 Porto

After a lovely sleep, it was time to start our adventure in Porto. First thing to do was find an info booth to figure out what our adventure should include. We found the info booth on a hilltop overlooking the city. Though the day didn't start off warm, it was clear and you could see all the buildings around. It was nice. We decided to do some Port tastings that day, so we headed to the other side of the river. The river was very pretty and the houses along the way were really neat. A lot of them had beautiful tiling on the walls. We headed to the other side of the river to have some lunch because most of the Port wineries were open after 14:00. We found a bar with a great view of the river, had our lunch and went in search of the free entrance wineries. The first one, right next to the bar, didn't seem to be open, so we went with our second choice. We had to walk around some back streets and happened to stumble upon doors open to the back areas of one of the wineries. The smell of wine was so strong! We finally made it to our second choice, Croft. They started up with a free sample of their Port Branco, a white wine aperitif, which was so delicious. Unfortunately, the next tour in English was in 2 hours, so we said we'd be back and headed to another winery. This one, called Taylor, Fladgate and Yeatman, was offering a tour right away, so we waited. After waiting for 10 min, we finally started the tour which took us to see the barrels that the wine was held in and the vats. The guy told us about why the climate was great there and some interesting info and then we went to the tasting. This involved a white Port and a ruby Port. The white wasn't as good as the other place, but the ruby was very tasty. I knew as soon as I tried it that my dislike of red wine had ended (well, in a sense). I had found my new drink of choice. Especially when they kept mentioning how good it is with cheese and dark chocolate. Who could resist? We then headed back to Croft to get our tour. We had a little bit of time to wait, so we decided to pay for a sample of Croft's Pink Port. It was tasty. Then off to the tour. This time I actually learned the difference between wine and Port wine. Turns out they stop fermentation and it makes the natural sugars stay in the wine, so it's sweet. That's the way I like it! We figured that they had already given us a free sample and remembered us, so we wouldn't get another, but it turns out at the end of the tour you get to try their 5 year old ruby vintage (I think). Also very tasty. After having our fill, and me purchasing a bottle (how could I resist at 7 euro a bottle?) we went down to the water. We decided that we would buy some snacky foods and hang out by the water on the green grass. They had a little grass mound that you could prop up against and watch the water action. After buying some cheese from a little shop and some stuffed pastries we went back to the water and started our relaxing. It was so nice. The sun had come out at this point so it was extra lovely. Once we had our fill and after a short nap we headed back to the other side of the water. After the nap I was feeling groggy and didn't want to do anything anymore so we headed back to the hotel for the night. At the hotel, I gave in to the meows below our window and fed the cats a little bit of cheese. You should have seen the one growling. Thankfully they didn't fight. They were so adorable, I couldn't resist. After a bit of reading and watching TV on Trevor's laptop, we headed to bed.

Lisbon-Porto Day 23

2010-05-29T08:18:00.001-07:00

April 22,2010

Day 23 Lisbon-Porto

Today we headed for the Oceanario (Aquarium). To get there you had to go to a more modern looking area with a fancy mall and a nice boardwalk. Apparently they had built this area for the Expo '98. It was a nice area. When we got out of the metro, it had started to drizzle, so doing indoor stuff today was great planning on our part. We walked along the water for a little bit in search of the Aquarium and finally found it. The Aquarium was so nice and peaceful. In the centre was a huge tank that you could see from all areas as you went around, and from the centre were 4 areas: the Pacific, Atlantic, Antarctic and Indian Oceans. They had penguins and cute otters and, obviously, all kinds of fish. The big tank was so mesmerizing. It was great, definitely a nice way to spend the day. After the Aquarium trip, we grabbed some food at the food court (somehow I was able to eat seafood) and then we headed to the area around the Lisbon castle. To get there we had to walk through the poorer parts of town and climb uphill quite a ways, but it was definitely interesting. At the top we decided not to go into the castle since we didn't have much time left before our train. We sat for a bit people-watching and then headed back down the hill to our hotel to get our bags. We caught the train to Porto and the 3 hour train was pretty uneventful. By the time we got into Porto, it was late and dark. We had to walk uphill to get to our hotel. (What's with all the uphill?!) The place looked completely abandoned. There were only a few people in a square near our hotel outside a café. Otherwise, there seemed to be no one in the streets. We got to our hotel and were shown a room bigger than most of the ones we had been in since the start of the trip, which was nice because we were going to be here for 3 nights. We went to check the view out of our window and noticed that we had some furry friends sitting on a roof that was about 2 meters below us. It was 3 cats and they started meowing when we opened the window. I couldn't resist so I fed them some crackers, the only thing we had in our bags. I didn't think they'd eat them, but they gobbled them up and attracted the attention of another cat. They didn't look like they were strays. They had nice fur and didn't look overly skinny, but they seemed famished. They were so cute. After explaining that we had no more food, I had to close the window so I wouldn't hear them meowing anymore. I hoped that I would see them again the next day.

Lisbon Day 22

2010-05-29T08:14:00.001-07:00

April 21, 2010

Day 22 Lisbon

We arrived in Lisbon around 07:30 and proceeded to the ticket counter so that we could book our Porto-Paris portion of the trip. We couldn't do it in Spain because the trip didn't start or end in Spain. This ended up being a problem because the train we had planned to be on ended up being full so we had to book for the following day, making our stay in Porto a 3 night stay instead of 2. I guess that's the nature of train travel (with a Eurail pass anyways. No worries. We figured we'll just cut that day out of Paris and have an extra beach day (I had no issue with that!) Then it was time to find our hotel. We got off the metro where Trevor's instructions told him to go, but as we looked around, we didn't see the street we were suppose to be on, let alone the address. Right as soon as we got out of the metro station, we could see water and that made me happy, but when we found out that our hotel was actually over a kilometer from where we were, my happiness dwindled. We decided to grab a little breakfast at a café before walking to our hotel. A good chunk of it was uphill, not fun with our big bags, but we made it eventually. Thankfully the lady let us check in early. I went straight for the bed. Trevor was feeling adventurous, so I told him to go wander and I would stay in the room for a little while. I needed a nap (or at least down time) after our not-so-restful sleep on the train. After having a little down time, I was ready to go. We headed for the water. We found an info booth along the way, but didn't end up using the info much. We decided to head towards Belem. I'm not sure if this is just a neighbourhood or an actual town outside of the Lisbon border, but apparently it was the place to eat. So off we went, not quite sure how far we were going to go. There wasn't much of a boardwalk or really many nice areas for the first bit. We stopped in at a stand along the way and bought some deep fried snacks like samosas and continued along. We finally got into an area that was nicer and had more of a sidewalk along the water. By this time the weather was getting cooler. Trevor found a dead rat on a little "beach" along the way and we had seen some dead fish floating in the water, so we were astonished that there were fishermen fishing along the walk. It frightened me a little about what kind of seafood they were selling in the restaurants. It clearly didn't frighten me enough because by the time we got into Belem (almost 7 km later!) we ended up having a fantastic meal of seafood in a restaurant right on the water. The food was awesome! I had shrimp soup, shrimp salad and a shrimp pastry. Trevor (and I) tried barnacles for the first time. I didn't care for them much, but Trevor seemed to think they were tasty. He also got a ridiculous amount of prawns and a crab stuffing as they called it. After our meal we headed to a popular pastry shop that apparently has the best custard tarts in all of Portugal. They were good, but I don't really like custard tarts, so I was definitely not the best judge. We then took the train back and I took the metro to the hotel while Trevor decided he wanted to walk back from the train station. It was a nice day.

Madrid-Lisbon Day 21

2010-05-29T08:09:00.001-07:00

April 20, 2010

Day 21 Madrid-Lisbon

We woke up the next morning and by accident realized that we had had free internet all night and didn't use it. So Trevor quickly tried to take advantage of some of the internet. We then headed to breakfast at a nearby café that served really good food. It was off to find an info place next to see what the must do's in Madrid were. There was one in Plaza Mayor, a popular square in Madrid. After finding out that seeing a Flamenco show would be a pretty big must do, we went in search of a place to make reservations. Along the way we walked by the Royal palace and saw some cute Spanish streets and alleys, though cleaner and less narrow than Barcelona's. We made it to one of the places that have Flamenco shows, but they weren't open so we tried to find a pay phone to call. Heading to a pay phone, we found a little market where Trevor finally bought himself sunglasses and I got myself churros while making our phone calls. After reserving a spot at one of the places, we went back to the Royal Palace to do a tour there. The palace had an amazing courtyard and inside the actual palace we got to see some armor, which was cool. We also saw a peacock that had opened its tail and was trying to impress 3 females (to no avail, it appeared). The palace had some beautiful rooms and amazing art on the ceilings, but it was similar to those in Poland. Another cool part of the palace was the Royal Pharmacy full of all kinds of bottles labeled with different plant names. It was neat. After the Palace tour we headed back towards our hotel and stopped to eat at a pub that felt like we had been dropped in to Ireland for an hour. We had a less than tasty Greek salad and some pasta and then headed towards Plaza Mayor where we did a little bit of people watching. Along the way we went to buy some juice and found chocolate covered Oreos!!! I was so amazed, I had to buy them. We then headed back to the hostel but made a pit stop in Plaza del Sol where we watched some Spanish singers. In the square there were a bunch of characters walking around including Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Mickey and Minnie. It was like a thing of nightmares when I saw Mickey take his head off! We also watched a man making huge bubbles. Then it was off to the hotel to pick up our bags and off to our Flamenco show. The café that the Flamenco show happened was quite nice. To stay and see the show you had to purchase at least a drink so Trevor ordered a beer and I ordered Sangria. When it came, I was astounded how much Sangria I got. It was basically a pitcher! Very tasty! The Flamenco show was super cool. They had a live band singing while a bunch of women danced, young and old. There was even a guy who danced. The best part, Trevor and I agreed, was when one of the guitar players played a solo. I can't even believe how fast his fingers moved. It was amazing! And the music was beautiful! It was a lot of fun and it was a bit sad that we had to leave early to catch our train. Thankfully we made our train. We had stayed at the show later than we originally had planned and practically ran to the metro. This train ride was a 10 hour train so we had to get comfortable cause we would be in our seats for a while.

Barcelona-Madrid Day 20

2010-05-17T15:27:00.001-07:00

April 19, 2010

Day 20 Barcelona-Madrid

Most of our room got woken up this morning when a girl fell off the bed from the top bunk. Trevor asked her if she was okay and another guy went up to her, but she fled the room and wasn't seen again. I went to the bathroom soon after and didn't notice her in there (though truly I thought it was a guy that had fallen off. Trevor had a better view because we were sleeping in 2 different beds on opposite sides of the room and he was one of the closest out of all of us to the girl who fell.) After getting up and getting our free breakfast, we headed to the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, an amazing church in Barcelona. It looks like it was carved out of one solid piece of rock. (Unfortunately it was under construction, but it still looked crazy!) It looked incredible. We then figured it was time to head to the beach (so I could get my beach day in) and even though it was a long way, we decided to walk there. On the way we saw the outside of the bull fighting stadium. We thought about going in, but it was way too pricey and decided just seeing it from the outside was satisfying. We then tried to make our way through a lovely park. In the park there were some cool things like a temple of sorts and a huge mammoth. Unfortunately, all our chosen routes were blocked so we ended up going right back to where we entered the park and took the long way around to get to the beach. Finally, we made it! It was definitely cooler when we finally got to the water, but the sun was shining and I was ready for some lounging. Trevor went and climbed on some jungle gym while I suntanned and watched as some girl was getting a massage. After much contemplation, I finally got up the courage to ask one of the passing masseuses how much it cost. 5 euro for 15 min and I was hooked! So there I was getting a massage on the beach! I commented to Trevor that it's funny how normally when I've gotten a massage they play ocean sounds in the background. Here, you got the oceans sounds along with "Cervasa, beer, Fanta, Coke" as the drink seller passed by. The massage was awesome!!! I'm so glad I got up the courage to ask how much it cost. We hung out until the wind got so cold that we couldn't stay any longer. It was time to hunt down some food. We found a cute place just off the beach and I ordered some paella while Trevor got the squid. The food was very good. The prawns in my paella were so sweet and so good. It was awesome. After the good food, we headed back toward our hostel so we could pick up our bags before our train to Madrid. On the way we stumbled upon a street band. They were a lot of fun and I'm pretty sure the guy who was dancing as if he was made of rubber also thought so. It was some random dude dancing and his dance moves were interesting to say the least. When he swung his arms as if he were jumping rope backwards, it definitely caught your attention. We took the music in for a while then headed towards the hostel. We took a detour toward the Christopher Columbus statue and finally made it to our hostel. We headed to the train station that apparently is a bus station and an airport (or at least the signs showed airplanes). We had to walk through security this time and it felt like we were going to board a plane. They even checked our tickets before we got on the train (which was weird since normally they do that in the train) and once on the train we got headphones to watch a movie or listen to music. It was very fancy. The train ride was good and uneventful (other than our sneaky 1.5L of delicious Sangria). Once in Madrid, Trevor led us to our hotel and we settled in for the night.

Andorra La Vella-Barcelona Day 19

2010-05-17T15:18:00.001-07:00

April 18, 2010

Day 19 Andorra La Vella-Barcelona

We shared a lovely breakfast with Kristin this morning. And then it was time to separate. Kristin was heading back to Toulouse that day and we were heading to Barcelona. We said our good-byes and off we went to catch our bus. The bus took 3 hours and cost us money, but we were happy not to head back into France because of the issues with the train strike. The bus ride was uneventful. When we got into Barcelona we had an interesting time at the train station. We needed to book the next part of our trip, but it turned out that not only were there problems with people trying to get into France, them having issues due to the "indefinite" train strike, but apparently there were also flights cancelled due to the volcano erupting in Iceland, so there were ridiculous line ups for people trying to buy that day's train tickets. I would say there were probably somewhere around 300-500 people in line. To get a train for another day, it was a different line up (thankfully), but first you had to line up to get a ticket (a number) for the actual line up. That took 30 min. It took us another 2 hours to actually get to the window to talk to someone. It was insane! We helped some other travelers with contingency plans because apparently their whole trip had been mucked up due to flight cancellations and the strike. Apparently every flight they had planned to be on had been cancelled. Thankfully they were able to get their tickets to Madrid for that night after a little help from us (we let them into the line up to get a sooner number). After the insanity, we headed to the hostel where we would be spending our night. The street that lead us to the square where our hostel was located was really neat. There were all kinds of street people dressed up as crazy things. There was an invisible man, lots of statue people, a guy in a fruit stand that would move if you paid him, a guy dressed up like a ghost in a bed with a skeleton and other crazy things. It was actually really fun. After getting to the hostel, we headed to the Picasso Museum. We lucked out because the museum was free that day (apparently it's free on Sundays). It was actually a really interesting art gallery and you could really see the change in his painting. It was very cool. After the museum we walked around some of the narrow streets and headed toward the beach. It wasn't very warm and the closer we got to the water, the cooler it got, but I was desperate to see a beach. Along the way it was interesting to hear the people's conversations. It felt a little like Rome in the sense that everyone seemed to speak English. Very few people were speaking Spanish or even looked Spanish. It was crazy. We made it to the water and walked along an area that was like a market, right next to the sailboat docks. And then we finally made it to the beach. It was lovely to see the Mediterranean Sea and the sand beach. At the beach we saw a few cool sand castles, like the ones you see on those chain emails. Once we got a little too cold, we headed back for the hostel. Apparently if you were at the hostel at 20:30, they offered their guests free dinner. So we managed to get some free food! It was good too. After we ate, we decided to get some water and on our way we figured we would get ourselves a pitcher of Sangria. When in Rome, afterall. It was awesome! Then we headed back to our 10 person room for the night. Barcelona, in my opinion, feels like the party town. It felt like Cancun Mexico, except less American and better.

Toulouse-L’Hospitalet près l’Andorre-Andorra La Vella Day 18

2010-05-17T15:17:00.001-07:00

April 17

Day 18 Toulouse-L'Hospitalet près l'Andorre-Andorra La Vella

If I had only known how crazy this day would be… The day started out early so we could catch the bus at 07:45 to l'Hospitalet près l'Andorre, a town in France just a few kilometers from Andorra, a country between France and Spain. We had no idea that getting on the bus would be so insane. There was a huge mob of people that were just trying to stuff themselves into the bus. There were two busses going to the same place, but both mobs were about the same size, so we just got into one of the mobs and started pushing our way in. Unfortunately, a group of guys that were trying to get on our bus managed to block off the mob and get themselves on and just as Trevor and I were to load the bus, we were told that it was full and there was no more room for us even though Trevor saw 2 empty seats. Trevor wanted to just take the seats and ignore the bus driver, but I didn't want us to get into trouble, so we turned around and headed back to the train station to find out what our options were. We were told we could take another bus that would be arriving at 09:00. It was already 08:30 so we wouldn't have to wait long for the next bus. We went back to the bus area, sat on our bags and waited. While waiting, Trevor started talking with a girl who happened to be heading to the same place we were, but to hike rather than just to make it to another country. She lives in Toulouse, but is American. We chatted a bit and waited some more until 09:45 when the bus FINALLY came. Thankfully this time it was practically empty with just the few of us (about 10 or so) that hadn't made it on the last 2 busses. We were off. A few hours later, we were in l'Hospitalet près l'Andorre and Kristin, the girl from Toulouse, was the only other person that got off the bus with us. We decided to stick together for a bit until we got into Andorra. We walked around this tiny little village and Trevor and I figured we would leave our bags at the hotel here because the plan was to return after a few hours in Andorra. We then realized that there wasn't a bus that night to Barcelona, as was our plan, so we figured we'd take our bags with us when we went to Andorra, and we would likely be spending the night there. We grabbed some food and waited for the bus that would take us into Andorra. Unfortunately, none of the busses stopped for us at the time that the bus was suppose to come (several passes by) and after waiting an extra 30 min just in case (and getting really frustrated), we decided to make a plan B. Trevor figured it couldn't be that far to Andorra, about 15km to the capital and really we just wanted to get to the border. So we started hiking, us and Kristin. At first we tried hitchhiking, but that was very unsuccessful. So off we went, thinking it wouldn't be too far so carrying 17 kg bags wouldn't be that hard. We hit the first sign about a kilometer into our hike (so far all uphill) that told us that the border was 12km! Now we had some serious thinking to do. Would we be able to make it to the border with our bags? The idea of hitchhiking came to us again, but we tried again and yet again was unsuccessful, so we decided, "Let's do this, let's hike". (I was still sick and feeling not too hot, I think I lost my mind somewhere!) Trevor had a map and was thankfully able to cut down our hiking by quite a bit. We decided to hike straight up hill instead of following the windy long road. In one kilometer we were able to walk 3 kilometers (according to the sign). This was helpful, but I still wasn't feeling great, so it probably wasn't a good idea for me to be exerting so much effort to get to the border. None-the-less, we continued to hike. The scenery was beautiful and thanks to Kristin being with us, I managed to keep my complaining to a minimum. After another couple kilometers and several more attempts at hitchhiking, we finally made it to the border crossing between France and Andorra. You can't imagine how happy I was. We figured we would ask about a taxi to the nearest town, so we went into the building. This also made me happy because they had a vending machine with water and I had run out a little while back. I was so ecstatic to have made it! The border patrol guy was super nice and even stamped our passports. He told us to talk to the guys outside to get a taxi. We waited for about 10 min before the black Mercedes came to pick us up and drive us the remainder 3km into the closest town. From there we took a bus that took us into the Andorra capital. The whole country appeared to be mountainous. It was quite beautiful. Once in Andorra, Kristin, Trevor and I tried to find the info booth. It was closed, so we tried to find some wireless internet so we could book ourselves into a hotel for the night. Thankfully we found some and Trevor was able to work his magic and find a hotel close by. We dropped off our stuff and then headed out for supper. We found a lovely buffet and shared a bottle of wine. I couldn't stop smiling. I was happy we hiked as far as we did. I was happy that we finally made it and I was happy we made a new friend. We then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep after our exhausting adventure. It was nice making a friend and sharing an adventure.

Corseaux-Geneva-Toulouse Day 17

2010-05-07T06:02:00.001-07:00

April 16

Day 17 Corseaux-Geneva-Toulouse

We said our good-byes to Matt and Heather early this morning before catching way too many trains to get to Geneva. Our plan was to visit CERN, home of the largest particle accelerator the LHC. After dealing with a strange lady at the Geneva train station (who tried to buy our bus tickets for us) and finding out that we won't be able to reserve seats on our Marseille train due to the French strike, we caught our bus to CERN. CERN was an interesting place and at 10:00 we began with a video and then one of the scientists took us to a station called Atlas where we saw one of the observation stations for the collisions occurring in a 27km tunnel 100m below us. The scientist was funny and informative. Unfortunately you can't see the LHC now because it's in operation and it just looks like a wall of metal apparently. After our tour, we headed back to the train station to catch our train to Marseille. Once in Marseille we thankfully got some free drinks offered by the train station (I needed something to drink so bad) and we went to talk to the train people to find out if our next days' train plans were going to work. Our next train took us from Marseille to Toulouse where Trevor had booked a hotel right across the street from the train station. That was all the travel for tonight and hopefully we get into Andorra tomorrow.

Corseaux-Vaduz-Zurich-Corseaux Day 16

2010-04-29T01:26:00.001-07:00

April 15,2010

Day 16 Corseaux-Vaduz-Zurich-Corseaux

Today we decided to head to Liechtenstein, one of the smaller countries on our list. It took us 4 hours to get there, but we made it to Vaduz in Liechtenstein. This is a country between Switzerland and Austria. It still has a Prince and apparently the royal family's net worth is more than the British Royal family! When we got to Vaduz we decided to walk up to the castle that sits above the city. You're not allowed to go in, since the royals still live there, but the hike up to the castle was really nice. We saw a bunch of huge snails along the trail and took our sweet time getting up to the castle. At the top we took some pictures and then headed back down. It was a quick trip to Vaduz, but very pleasant. We then headed to Zurich. We decided to have some supper there before we headed back to Corseaux. Trevor found a cute Swiss restaurant. We ordered fondue and snails! You'd think I wouldn't be interested in the snails after seeing them crawling along the path earlier in the day, but they ended up being okay. They pretty much had the texture of seafood. After our very lovely, but expensive, dinner we headed back to the train station and headed back to Corseaux. We got there around 21:00 and ended up packing and trying to figure out what to do about the French train strike. The next day we would be trying to take a train through France, but we weren't sure if that would be possible. Unfortunately our internet searching was not very successful so we would see the next day how everything would work out.

Zermat-Corseaux Day 15

2010-04-29T01:24:00.001-07:00

April 14, 2010

Day 15 Zermat-Corseaux

The day started out beautifully. We woke up pretty early so that we could rent our skies and head up the mountain pretty quickly. We didn't quite make it for the 08:00 ski rental opening, but it was early enough. The views of the Matterhorn from the city were amazing and we were crossing our fingers that it would stay that way for the rest of the day. Once we got our skies, we decided to head for the highest gondola first which would take us to 3883m! Heather and Matt had been up there and had warned us of how thin the air was up there. We also got a warning from our fellow gondola riders on the lower gondola saying that they had been up there and had skied as fast as they could to try and catch their breath. I was a little worried. We rode one gondola to the first highest level and then took a special cable car to get us all the way up. That car fit about 20-30 people. I didn't think that was the smartest thing if people were going to start passing out, especially since it started getting super warm the higher we got. Finally at the top we had to walk through a tunnel to get to the ski hill. Halfway through the tunnel was a view point area and to get to it you had to take an elevator up and then you had to climb stairs. I also didn't think this was a good idea at this altitude, but luckily both Trevor and I were fine. You could definitely feel there was less oxygen here, but it just meant (at least for us) that you had to move a little slower. Climbing the stairs, especially with ski boots, took a little longer that usual, but the views at the top were unbelievable. Words can't describe how amazing it was. All you saw was mountains and the bluest sky you've ever seen. It was so amazing. After getting back to the tunnel, we walked toward the ski hill and Trevor decided that he would try and climb to 4000m while I purchased some postcards and waited for him. I thought it would be hard to pick him out as the climber, but thankfully when he climbed back down I spotted him and met him down the hill a bit. We then went for our first run and it was awesome! The entire time we pretty much skied blue runs, but the snow conditions were amazing so even Trevor had a good time, minus the waiting for me. Our lift passes that we purchased allowed us to ski into Italy, so for the first little while we tried to get ourselves over to the Italy side, but once there, we realized the ski conditions were not as good as on the Swiss side, so after skiing all the way down the Italy side we took a few chairs and a gondola and got back to the Swiss side. At this point we decided that I would take a break while Trevor did a big run, so I went to one of the bars on the hill and eventually found myself a lounge chair and relaxed while I waited for Trevor to meet me. We then went down a bit further together and decided to split again, allowing me to take my time and Trevor to be super speedy. All the while the weather was gorgeous with the sun shining bright and the sky clear. At the point that we split, I started a run that turned out to be super slushy and horrible to ski. I crashed a bunch of times and felt so out of control. By the time I got to Trevor I was so unhappy. It had been such a great ski day for me and this run was awful. Thankfully Trevor suggested we finish our day and get back to Corseaux earlier than planned. The rest of the day was good with us catching an earlier train and getting to hang out with Matt and Heather for a bit. Turns out I burned my face really really bad. The later it got, the redder my face got. Beautiful day at 3800m meant very little escape from the sun. Should have worn sunscreen. Still, I was so excited that the day turned out so good for us. It was awesome.

Corseax-Zermat Day 14

2010-04-29T01:23:00.001-07:00

April 13, 2010

Day 14 Corseax-Zermat

Thankfully I had been drinking lots of water during night because by the morning I was feeling better. We decided to let me sleep just a little longer than originally planned, but by around 09:30 we were on the train heading to Zermat, home of the Matterhorn. The train ride was nice, with views of castles and churches on cliffs. We even saw the tops of the mountains across from Heather and Matt's (we had only seen the bottoms since our stay). It took us a few trains to get to Zermat, as usual for our train trips. In Visp, the views of the mountains were starting to get incredible. These were real mountains. When we got on the train from Visp to Zermat, they checked our tickets (nothing unusual) and this time we found out our Eurail passes were no good. We ended up having to pay for the tickets for this portion because it's a private line. It was definitely worth it, even if it was unexpected. We got into Zermat around 13:15 and since the tourist office wasn't open, we started to wander. It was another town like the one we skied by the day before. There were only electric cars and horses as vehicles. It was very nice. The town was super cute too. By this time, I was starting to feel a little sick again. We headed towards the "view point" for the Matterhorn and saw our first glance of the great mountain. It was a nice clear day so it was a great view. We then tried to find out hostel and after a very roundabout way of getting there, we made it. Turned out, you couldn't check in until 16:00 and there was no one at the office until then, so we left our bags where it said we could and headed back to the tourist office to get some info about skiing and a hike. I was still trying to decide if I was up for a hike, even though I could feel my body starting to give up on me. Once at the tourist office, Trevor found a pamphlet on spas and pools in the city to encourage me to relax, before our skiing day the next day, but when he came back with the info about the hike, I just couldn't refuse. So we went to a grocery store to pick up some food and headed on a 3 hour hike. The first part of the hike was uphill entirely, and just at the start of the trail we had a little picnic. The hike we took was called the Matterhorn trail. It was uphill for about 45 min before we made it to Zumutt, a little village that looked like a ghost town along the path. The next part was a little bit uphill until we hit a fork in the road where we split up. It had started to get cloudy and now you really couldn't see the Matterhorn. I headed directly to Furi while Trevor headed to a place called Stafel. We agreed to meet at the hostel. This part of my hike was pretty much a road the entire way right next to what I would learn the next day to be the ski out to Furi. I kept seeing signs telling me how far until Zermat and I kept taking pictures of them to see if I was slower or faster and it turned out I was about 30 min faster than the signs. When I finally got back into Zermat, the path took me directly to the hostel where I checked in with a less than pleasant front desk man. I then thought I would go out and walk around a bit more until Trevor got back from his hike, but when I left the hostel it had started to snow hard enough that I didn't want to be out there so I returned to our room where I got acquainted with two of our roommates. It wasn't long before Trevor arrived. I had started falling asleep when he got there and was told that I had been snoring. I must have been tired. Our evening was pretty uneventful from there. We ate at the downstairs restaurant called Sparky's and paid way too much and then pretty much went to bed at 21:00. That was the first day at Zermat.

Corseaux-Portes du Soleil-Corseaux Day 13

2010-04-28T15:21:00.001-07:00

April 12, 2010

Day 13 Corseaux-Portes du Soleil-Corseaux

Today Heather and Matt took us skiing. It was awesome. The place that they took us allowed us to ski the Alps on both the Swiss side and the French side. The day started out pretty good. It definitely wasn't a clear day, but we could see some of the views. Matt drove, so we got to the ski hill pretty quick, around 09:00 after renting our equipment and we were off. We never had to ski the same hill twice, there was so much to ski. I had some issues at the start of the day, but after a pretty ugly wipe out, I was good to go. Everyone was so nice, skiing a little slower to allow me to keep up. Each person took turns waiting for me so that I knew where I was going. At one point we skied by a little town where you can't drive your cars into it. Everyone uses horses. It was cute. The skiing was pretty good and though the runs were mostly blue and red (in between blue and black) Trevor seemed to like the runs, too. Unfortunately, the last third of the day the snow started to fall and it was really wet snow that stuck to our jackets. We all looked like snowmen from the front and every time we sat on a chair lift, it would all melt and we'd be soaked. The visibility was awful at that point and on the last run of the day (for everyone, but Trevor) you had no idea what you were skiing. Everything was just white. Trevor was good about sticking with me. Once at the bottom Heather, Matt and I went in while Trevor ate a quick snack and went back to do a few more runs. We then headed back to Corseaux so that Heather and I could make it for her synchro practice that night. It was nice watching synchro again. I had missed it for sure. It was also interesting how much French I understood, at least when Heather was talking. Unfortunately, as the practice went on, I started to feel really sick. I had woken up with a sore throat in the morning, but had thought nothing of it, and then with crashing my head on the snow and getting wet all day, my body had clearly given up. I was shivering on the pool deck and as soon as we got back to Heather and Matt's, I went straight to bed. Not a great ending to the day.

Corseaux-Geneva-Gruyere-Corseaux, Switzerland Day 12

2010-04-27T15:54:00.001-07:00

April 11, 2010

Day 12 Corseaux-Geneva-Gruyere-Corseaux

We got up and headed to Geneva to see how much we could fit in before heading to have a quick look around Gruyere and then heading back to Corseaux. When we got into Geneva, things were pretty quiet. At first we were just going to do either the Red Cross Museum or the walking tour that was in the Lonely Planet guide we had borrowed from Heather and Matt, but as we headed toward the museum, we stumbled upon the UN building where we noticed that they were giving tours, so we went looking for the entrance to see if we could do a tour. It was a tricky thing find the entrance, but Trevor found it and we went in. I got a lovely visitors pass (with picture and everything) and then we were told the next tour wasn't for another 40 min and it cost 10 CHF (Swiss francs) each. If we did the tour, it meant we wouldn't see anything else. We figured it would be pretty cool, so we said we'd do it, but since the Red Cross Museum was across the street, we figured we'd check out how much things cost over there and what we could do there. So we paid for the tour, went to the Red Cross Museum, looked around the little portion that was free, a few archive pictures that were displayed, then ran back in time for the UN tour. The UN tour was pretty neat. We saw some of the conference rooms, including one where all the countries had their places marked. We learned a little more about the UN and how it works and where the 4 headquarters are in the world (if you're interested they are in New York, Geneva, Nairobe and Vienna). It was then off to catch the train to Gruyere, home of the Gruyere cheese. It was such a cute little, typical Swiss town. If you picture Switzerland with green grass and mountains and little villages everywhere, you have hit it dead on (at least the rural parts). Gruyere was up on a hill with a cute little castle on the top. Along the streets of this village, you could buy cheese, meringues and fondue (specialty of Switzerland). It was awesome. We explored a little, bought some of the meringues and bought some cheese at the factory before heading back to Corseaux. Back in Corseaux, we finally saw Heather and Matt. It was nice to talk to them and hang out. We went to the grocery store together and Heather made us a wonderful fondue. We ate and drank wine and talked until it was time for bed. It was a lovely evening.

Milan-Bern-Corseaux, Switzerland Day 11

2010-04-27T15:53:00.001-07:00

April 10, 2010

Day 11 Milan-Bern-Corseaux

Our day started at 07:00 rushing to get some breakfast before our train to Brig. The train ride was nice with great views of the Alps the closer we got to Switzerland. At one point our train had issues and we had to go back to the nearest station and change trains. It delayed us a little bit, but wasn't a big deal. We finally arrived at Bern, a place that we thought we would have to cut out of our trip, but we managed to work it in. The reason why we went there in the first place was that Albert Einstein lived there and you can walk through his house and there is a museum devoted to him. So we walked down the cute streets of Bern with statues of jesters in the fountains and made it to Einstein Haus. Apparently the one floor was the original house. There were family pictures, pictures of his wife and his kids. It was really interesting. We looked around, watched a little movie, finding out that Israel had asked him to be their president and he had declined, and then we headed to the Einstein Museum. Bern was quite cute and crossing the bridge to the museum allowed us some pretty views of the river. At the Einstein Museum we learned about the womanizer that Einstein was and got to see a bunch of his belongings including his passports, a letter to President Kennedy, letters to Sigmund Freud and a picture with him and Marie Curie! Craziness! We also learned that Trevor is following Einstein's path pretty nicely (I can't wait to see what happens next!) After pretty much getting kicked out because we stayed until the last possible second, we headed back to the train station to get to Corseaux, where friends of ours live. I would say Bern was our first introduction to how expensive Switzerland is. We made it to Corseaux easily and after following the scavenger hunt to find the key to Heather and Matt's home, we finally got in. Their place is gorgeous, with views of the lake and mountains. We also met Piper, their cat, who was super adorable. We spent the rest of the night settling in. At one point we tried to find a grocery store, but instead found a neighboring field with 3 sheep and 3 little lambs. They were pretty cute. We ended up just eating food at Heather and Matt's and going to bed to get ready for the next day.

Nice-Ventimiglia-Milan Day 10

2010-04-27T15:52:00.001-07:00

April 9, 2010

Day 10 Nice-Ventimiglia-Milan

We woke up pretty early to try and get some information from the train station. We went in and lined up and at the front of the line we found out that there were no trains heading to Switzerland this day or the next. Don't get me wrong, it would have been very lovely to be able to stay in Nice for 2 days, but our schedule didn't work with that plan, especially since we had Heather's kitty cat to worry about. We figured if we couldn't get into Switzerland the French way, we would try the Italian way. We had thought we weren't going to see Italy for a long time, but it turned out, we would see it again very soon. There was a local train to Ventimiglia that was running at 15:23, one of the only trains running this day. We headed back to the hotel to figure out what our plan was going to be. Unfortunately, going to Monaco was out of the question because the best way to get there was train and the first one in that direction was the one we would take back to Italy. We had to decide how far we would go in Italy this day and where we would spend the night. After all that planning was done, we went to eat at a café on the street and then headed to the Promenade des Anglais to see what the beaches of the French Riviera look like. It was a beautiful view at the beach and a really nice day to top it off. I had no idea that the beaches were not sand here. They were rock all the way along. We stayed on the beach for about 2 hours, suntanning and enjoying the sound of the ocean and then headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and headed for the train station. Looking at the boards, it looked like the train we had been told would be running was cancelled, so I went back in line to ask while Trevor went running around trying to figure it out from other sources. Luckily someone told him everything was good (though he did say that our train was leaving in 2 minutes even though we should have had 20) so he ran and got me and then we ran to the train. We left on time and headed into Ventimiglia and then booked our Milan tickets and got on to the train for Milan. This train was like the sleeping train with the 6 seat cabins facing other people. Near the end of our ride we started talking to the people next to us, who lived in Milan, but were from Chile and USA. They told us some great info on couch surfing. We then headed to our hotel through the massive train station of Milan and found it to be an amazingly fancy 4 star hotel. We finished our night off with a bit of food, some gelati and a movie on the laptop. At least we were now closer to Switzerland, even if we were behind schedule.

Venice-Bologna-Parma-Le Spezia- Cinque Terre-Le Spezia- Ventimiglia- Nice Day 9

2010-04-27T15:50:00.001-07:00

April 8, 2010

Day 9 Venice-Bologna-Parma-Le Spezia- Cinque Terre-Le Spezia- Ventimiglia- Nice

Our first train took us to Bologna, arriving at 02:15. We had about 2 hours at this station. The first place we found to sit was the floor at the entrance of the train station. It was cold and there was a mix of homeless people and other travelers scared to sleep because of the homeless people. At least we weren't in the "homeless hallway" (my nickname for it) where there were probably about 30 people sleeping. It was definitely warmer there, but also smellier. I was not in a good mood since it was 2 in the morning and I was tired. Thankfully Trevor went hunting for a better, warmer spot and found a seating area (almost full) for us to sit in. I laid my head on my backpack (like a desk when you're in school) and tried to get some sleep. Then at 04:15 we caught our next train to Parma and there we had another layover. We found a seating area there too, but when we opened the door, you could automatically tell that most of the people in there were homeless. It was warm, but smelly and I told Trevor there was no way I would stay there. I think almost all the people (if not all of them) were men. It was crazy. This time we decided to spend our layover in a café drinking some thick hot chocolate and trying to stay awake until our 06:00 train to Le Spezia. Once we arrived in Le Spezia, we searched for somewhere to store our back packs, grabbed some breakfast and then hopped on the train to Manarola, one of the 5 villages of Cinque Terre. All 5 villages are built on cliffs and there is a walking trail linking all 5 towns. The trail is along the coastline. We decided to do the hike between Manarola and Vernazza (there are actually 4 trails, and we would be doing 2 of them.) Apparently the trails get progressively harder and we were going in the direction of harder rather than easier. Our first hike started with a somewhat difficult uphill portion, but then eased up considerably until the end where you have to climb 382 steps. The views were incredible. Some of the little villages could be seen from the trail and they looked so cute with their colorful houses. The first hike didn't take us too long and we stopped for a quick snack in the village between Manarola and Vernazza, Corniglia. Then we started the next trail. It started automatically uphill and it seemed like it wouldn't stop. It was crazy and the steps were high. The trail was not flat so you had to pay attention more to the trail than the amazing views. I was surprised how difficult the trail could be. They warn you, but you would never guess that it was actually true. I have to say, though, I was very impressed that no one was wearing flip flops. I have been on too many hikes and walks where people think it's okay to have flip flops. Here, everyone had runners or hiking shoes! Thankfully, about 45 min into our uphill climb, the trail started to head downwards and didn't stop until we got to Vernazza! With all the downhill, I couldn't imagine walking the trail from the other direction (even though I'm sure our direction was just as bad). One lady along the way asked how much more uphill and I just couldn't give her false hope so I said, "Lots". It was not very reassuring, I'm sure. Once in Vernazza, we had a lovely lunch by the seaside where a group of 4 people sat next to us wearing Hockey Canada caps. I couldn't help asking where they were from. Would you believe Saskatchewan?! Not only that, but then the people behind us chimed in that they were from Calgary! We had a lovely chat after that about where we had been and where we were going. It was fun talking to fellow Canadians. After our good meal, we walked around the rocks a bit and then I headed to the beach to relax a little. Trevor bought us some gelati and we ate it on the beach. We then walked around some more and decided that we weren't going to do the last hike and since we were pretty much done in the village, we tried to find a train that would get us into Nice sooner. We had already booked tickets for one of our trains to Nice and so we asked if we could change our reservation. Apparently the only way to do that was to head back to Le Spezia. So, since we were ready to leave, we headed back to Le Spezia. Waiting in the train station I heard two girls singing the Teletubby song. It was hilarious. The train ride was really nice, with views of the sea along the way. In Le Spezia, we lined up to ask about an earlier train and were told we don't need reservations for the next train, but it would only get us in an hour earlier to Ventimiglia (even though the train left 2.5 hours earlier). Since we were already there, we took the train. It was a good train because it had bench seats instead of individual seats, so we took a bench each and we were able to sleep. We got into Ventimiglia around 22:00 and were waiting for our train into Nice when we started to realize that there might not be a train into Nice. Trevor ran out and found some internet where he read that the French train drivers were on strike. Now we started getting into a little bit of a trouble. We had already booked a hotel in Nice and we didn't want to lose the money, but if we got into Nice, would we be able to get out? At first we were going to take a taxi in to Nice with another man that needed to get there, but the fear of not getting out of Nice was causing us a bit of an issue, plus the unknown cost of the cab. Luckily at 23:32, when our train was suppose to leave, a coach bus showed up to take all the people to Nice. We were talking to some people and they were telling us that the strike was going on since Tuesday and that they already had had problems with the trains. They told us to get into the train station early the next morning to find out when the next train left Nice to get us to Switzerland. They were very helpful. Riding to Nice, we drove through Monaco and saw some of the cool hotels and the Grand Prix track. At around 01:30 we got into Nice. Thankfully our hotel was right across the street from the station, so we quickly walked to the hotel and pretty much passed out as soon as we got there.

Venice, Italy Day 8

2010-04-27T15:49:00.001-07:00

April 7, 2010

Day 8 Venice

Our morning began with a lovely breakfast included in our hotel. It was very nice. Then it was time to explore Venice. With the sun shining on the city, I instantly fell in love. Amazingly beautiful with all the canals and clean little streets (and no cars), it was such a pleasure walking around. First stop was San Marco Square, the main tourist area on the main island. Along the way we saw some incredible stationary stores and bakeries and other cute little shops. It was so awesome. At the square I noticed some girls feeding pigeons and the pigeons actually landing on their hands. Trevor had some crackers so we decided to try. Sure enough, the pigeons started landing on us! It was so much fun! Then we decided to go up to the top of the bell tower in the square to see views of Venice. It was very nice at the top, though maybe not worth the 8 Euro a person to see it. Next destination was Murano and Burano, islands near Venice that were easily reached by water bus. Our first stop was Murano. There were a lot of people waiting to get on to the boat and it just happened that Trevor and I were standing in different parts of the loading area when the bus came and sure enough, we got separated. Trevor got on the bus and I was stuck trying to tell the guard that my husband was on the boat. He didn't seem to care too much, saying that there was another bus coming. Figuring that we both knew we were to head to Murano, I tried not to panic too much and go onto the next boat that came 5 minutes later. I sat down and tried to stay calm. Not 30 seconds later Trevor shows up! Turns out, he got off at the next stop and sprinted back! Thank goodness! The trip to Murano was about 20 min. Murano is apparently famous for its glass and pretty much every store on the island had some sort of glass souvenirs. They were incredible! They made little animals (and I'm talking little. They had ants that were almost as small as ants!) and other different shapes. We walked around looking at the shops, taking pictures and enjoying the weather. It was then time to head over to Burano. Right before we left, Trevor performed a mini rescue. A little girl (maybe 3 years old) slipped about 4 feet from the sidewalk to a little beach area that Trevor was on. Trevor grabbed her and handed her back to her parents. Thankfully she was mostly just shocked. We took the waterbus over to Burano, an island famous for its colorful houses and it sure was colorful. Most of the houses were painted very vibrant colors. They were so pretty. It made you so happy just walking around and looking at them. After a bit of walking around, we went back to Venice where we decided it was time to get lost (apparently a must when in Venice). Trevor is too good at knowing where he is, so it was up to me to get us lost and by the time I was done, I had no idea where I was, but Trevor apparently knew too well. When we finished with that game, we decided to go back towards San Marco to buy a souvenir that I had only seen there. Unfortunately, when we got there, the store was closed. Seeing that people were cleaning inside, Trevor figured he could convince them to give us the items if we had exact change. Sure enough, they let us in and let us buy the souvenirs. We then went back to the restaurant we ate at the night before and had some yummy supper. Going back to our hotel (to pick up luggage) we used some the free internet again before catching the waterbus back to the train station to catch our next train. Here began the awful night train. When we got into the train, we were kicked out of our seats by some train workers who decided that they were going to take over our cabin until the next stop, and we had reservations! I was not happy. Luckily there were seats in the cabin next door. We transferred cabins when we got to the next stop, but quickly had to change again because a group of people got split up between 2 cabins and wanted to know if we would switch with them. We said sure, and moved into a different cabin. We were in cabins of 6 people, 3 on each side facing each other. It's definitely an interesting way to have to sleep, but thankfully we got a few hours in before our first destination.

Venice, Italy Day 7

2010-04-07T11:53:00.001-07:00

April 6, 2010

Day 7 Rimini-Pisa-Venice

I woke up today thinking that we might have been wrong about what time our train departed. It's a good thing I woke up, because it turned out instead of our train leaving at 07:30 like I had said the day before, it actually left at 07:01, so needless to say, we were rushed. Thankfully we made the train, starting our insane trip for the day. We took a train from Rimini through Bologna to Firenze (Florence) to get to Pisa. In Pisa, we walked 20 min to the leaning tower of Pisa. Very cool! Definitely leaning, it is also falling a part. They had boundaries preventing anyone from coming within 3 metres of the building. We had wanted to go up to the top of the tower, but unfortunately the earliest tour was 15 min before our next train left. We were there around 11:30 and the earliest tour was at 14:40! I had tried to book tickets before, but had a heck of a time finding the site on line, so we lost out on that opportunity. Oh well. We took a bunch of pictures and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and then headed back to the train station. Our next train took us from Pisa to Firenze and then to Venice (through Bologna, though we didn't change trains this time). It was amazing driving into Venice. The water was everywhere. It looked so gorgeous. At the station, we did some more booking of tickets, got ourselves all the info we needed then headed to catch a waterbus (a ferry of sorts) to get to our hotel. It was an awesome boat ride. By the time we got to our hotel, it was dark. We had some dinner next door (very yummy) walked around a little bit and then spent some time using our free internet at the hotel. It was a good day.

Rome-Naples-Pompeii-Naples-Rome-Rimini, Italy Day 6

2010-04-06T14:18:00.001-07:00

April 5, 2010

Day 6 Rome-Naples-Pompeii-Naples-Rome-Rimini, Italy

Today begins at 06:00. We had to leave our hotel at this time to make it to our 06:45 train to Napoli (Naples). The train ride was pretty uneventful, but very comfortable. Once in Naples we had an interesting time trying to figure out where to go to take the train to Pompeii. Thankfully, Trevor worked wonders as usual and got us onto the train we wanted. A short ride got us into Pompeii and then it was a 15 min hike with our backpacks to get to the Pompeii Ruins. We had planned to store our luggage in a storage locker at the train station, but there weren't any that we could see. Luckily, there was an area at the Ruins. The Pompeii Ruins are ruins after Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD (I think). They were pretty incredible. You could just imagine what the city looked like. A really cool thing at the ruins was the plaster of paris casts of the victims. Some of them had the bones! You could see their facial expressions at the time of their death. It was crazy. After about 3 hours of walking around, we headed back to the train station to get on a train back into Napoli, where we grabbed a slice of pizza (it is, after all, where pizza was invented), booked another train (one of the one's you must reserve) then headed to the train to Rome. This was a super speedy train. It made your ears pop. They even served us like in an airplane. That was nice. We got drinks and a snack. When we had reached Rome, they even gave us an Easter egg chocolate on the way out! Then it was off to catch our final train of the day, to Rimini. The plan in Rimini was to visit one of Trevor's University friends, who just happened to be there at the same time, and to see if we could get to San Marino (another country to check off the list). I decided I was too tired to care, and left Trevor to do some running around Rimini to see if he could manage to check off these two items. After having a lovely late evening meal, I headed back to the hotel to read while Trevor went off. Unfortunately nothing worked out. At least we had a good hotel really close to the train station. It was time to sleep before another crazy day.

Rome, Italy Day 5

2010-04-06T14:07:00.001-07:00

April 4, 2010

Day 5 Rome, Italy

I figured we should get to the Vatican earlier than the day before so that we could get good seats and it's a darn good thing we did! Thinking that the weather would be similar to the last few days (gorgeous), I didn't bring a jacket, just my scarf to keep me warm for the first hour or so. That was a mistake. When we got out of the metro it started to sprinkle a little bit. I figured it was no big deal and that it would stop. There was an amazing amount of people heading to the Vatican already, even though mass was at 10:15 and it was only 08:30. We walked as fast as possible, by-passing as many people as we could and passing all the vendors trying to sell us umbrellas. I still thought we were in the clear, weather wise. When we got to the wall of Vatican City, the guards had it blocked off to everyone. You had to stand in line. Trevor found a huge gap in the line and we snuck ourselves in pretty close to the front. You have to understand that the line was probably 10 people thick, kind of like a big crowd of people swarming. It took a little bit of patience, and finally a small group of us was let in to get in line at the security screening. Once past that point, it was a mad rush to find some good spots in the same place that we had sat the night before. Thankfully this time the Pope was going to be outside as well. Trevor found us some great seats, while I got us some great souvenir mass books. And then we waited. The longer we waited, the worse the weather was looking. It started to rain. I hid under my scarf (it was big, so it did a great job hiding me from the rain) while Trevor curled himself up with his Gortex jacket. Behind us was guy praying the rosary annoyingly loud. I think Trevor wanted to punch him. At 10:15, mass began and for the second time this trip, we saw the Pope live. It was awesome. Mind you, almost the entire time we were looking at the Pope through umbrellas and people's shoulders, but it was still very cool. About halfway through the mass, some nuns sitting behind us offered us an umbrella. That made the mass much easier to sit through. I was cold and wet, but excited. Then, for the briefest moment, the rain stopped and I was able to get a bunch of pictures, but it was not to last. After the mass finished (only 2 hours this time), we waited because people weren't moving and then I realized that the Pope was going to the balcony to address the people. Everyone clapped when he came out. After a while of listening to him speak in Italian, we decided to start heading out before the crowd. This seemed like a great plan, but it turned out others had the same plan and worse than that, there was only on way to get out of St. Peter's Square. Trevor called it a mosh pit. We were pushed from all sides, packed together ridiculously close. It was crazy. At one point, a girl grabbed my arm and walk with me for a while. A little weird, but we bounded over the fact that we both spoke English. And then we were out. It was still raining and I no longer had my umbrella (or other people's umbrella's to hide under as I did during our exit). I was soaking. We decided to head back to the hotel so that I could take a hot shower and warm up. We tried to get down to the Metro, but it was crazy packed. Good thing if you crossed the street, the other entry was completely empty. We headed back to the hotel, I took a hot shower and we hung out for a while before venturing out again. We had wanted to go to the Catacombs, but apparently they were closed due to Easter, so we went back to the Vatican after eating a lovely lunch at our downstairs restaurant. I wanted to see the inside of St. Peter's Basilica and after waiting for 40 min in a line that went almost all the way around the edge of St. Peter's square, we were in. We happened to be there just in time to see the start of another mass (this one not lead by the Pope). Then we walked around taking pictures of the crazy huge and very pretty Basilica. Other churches around Rome had nicer paintings or better decorations, but this one was by far the biggest with crazy huge marble statues. It was neat. With no more plans, we headed back to the hotel to spend our evening there (mentally preparing for the insanity of the next day). We bought a 3 Euro 1.5L bottle of wine and shared it. It wasn't that good, but what do you expect for 3 Euro. And that is how we ended our stay in Rome.

Rome, Italy Day 4

2010-04-06T13:58:00.001-07:00

April 3, 2010

Day 4 Rome, Italy

We had an early start to our day today because we had bought Skip the Line tickets and they were for a set time…8am!!! So off we went and even though we were early (7:45) there was a line in the reserved area as well as in the non reserved area. It was crazy. Lucky for us, as soon as the building opened, we were let in (super quick too) and now we had the museum (or museums I should say) to almost ourselves. We didn't have to fight through a crowd at all. It was amazing. Almost in every room the ceiling was painted and all the ceiling paintings were outstanding. At the same time almost all the floors had mosaics or some cool design and even the walls were sometimes outrageously painted. And then there was all the stuff. There was just so much to see. It was overwhelming! So awesome. There were a few places where there was a hallway and along the entire hallway were Roman statues (both sides). That was super cool. As part of the Vatican Museum(s) we had access to the Sistine Chapel. Now that was cool. It is just amazing how much work was put into it. We saw the very famous Creation of Man. I would have thought it would be bigger than all the rest of the scenes, but it almost blended in. But it was cool, none-the-less. Another neat thing in the centre of the museums was a courtyard and right in the centre of the courtyard was this gold colored ball that looks like it is splitting apart with a smaller sphere inside. We've seen a similar one (smaller) in Washington DC and Trevor says there is one in San Francisco. There was no caption, no artist named and Trevor has a theory of what it is, but I'll let you ask him if you're interested. Definitely stuck out like a sore thumb there though. After 3 hours of wandering (you stop appreciating the amazing things after a while, to be honest) and after mailing a couple of postcards through the Vatican Post, we were off again. When we left the Vatican Museum, we saw proof of what it would have been like had we not booked tickets in advance. The line (at least 5 people thick) wrapped around 3 walls. It was ridiculous! I'm so glad I found the "Skip the Line" ticket option. We needed to pick up our tickets for mass tonight and tomorrow and when we went to the info place the lady said it was probably too late, but we could wait in line to get into St. Peter's Basilica, go through security and the office was in there. The line for the Basilica was longer than to get into the Vatican Museums! It was absolutely insane and there was no way we'd make it in time to get the tickets. I was devastated. This is what I had come to do, go to Easter Mass at the Vatican, and I wouldn't be able to without the ticket! What would we do? Thankfully I have a husband who makes miracles happen and knows how to handle me when I'm stressed and after sitting me down he went by himself and 10min later produced the tickets!!! He's amazing! Next, it was time to eat and after getting sucked in by a lady advertising on the street, we went to eat at her restaurant only to be ripped off. It was awful. They were going to charge us 14 Euro more than they had said! I was really angry, but didn't show it too much. I was hoping Italians were better than that, but I guess there's bad apples everywhere. We then walked around a market we found and headed to the Cappuchin Crypts. This was super cool and disgusting. They took the bones of monks and decorated the walls of 4 little rooms. They even had skeletons dressed up as monks and chandeliers made of bones. Really amazing. At the end of the little area is a sign that reads "As you are, we once were. As we are, you will be". Interesting thought. It was back to the hotel after this for a nap before mass. Mass was at 21:00 and we decided to back to the Vatican about an hour before it started. When we got there, there were a lot of people there already and after asking a few Vatican guards who didn't speak English where to go we figured out we should stand in line to get into St.Peter's Basilica. Once through we quickly headed to get seats outside and I thought I was pretty good and had gotten great front row seats when all of a sudden the guards let through a bunch of people into the actual church. At that point I realized that mass (and the Pope) was going to be inside and our tickets didn't give us priority seating inside. It was a first come first serve and we didn't come soon enough to get the privilege of being inside. There were TV screens and speakers so that we could be part of the action, but from the outside. Many people tried to sneak in, but got caught, so we didn't push our luck. We sat outside for over 3 hours! It was really cold! I was probably shivering for an hour! The mass was interesting, but not what I had had in mind when I reserved the tickets. We ended up getting back to the hotel around 00:30 since the mass went until 00:00. We had to go to sleep so that we could get back to the Vatican early for the next mass.

Rome, Italy Day 3

2010-04-06T13:56:00.001-07:00

April 2, 2010

Day 3 Rome, Italy

Definitely feel the burn on the feet from today. Today was a day with a lot of "to do's" to check off including moving hotels and reserving train tickets. So we got up (with difficulty on my part. I could have slept another 2 hours.), ate our breakfast of Melba style toast with jam and cream cheese, chocolate croissants and some sort of pastry as well as choice of hot drink and fizzing orange/lemon juice while looking at the awesome view, and then caught the bus/train/metro to our new hotel. We were now in the heart of Rome (or at least pretty close). It took us a while to get in contact with our B&B people (we're actually staying with people in their own apartment), but they finally came. They're a super nice older couple. Very limited English which makes it all that much more authentic! And then we were off. Today we decided to explore the National museum of Rome (which gives you access to 4 sites as a combo ticket). One of the sights wasn't open today and I am so thankful it wasn't. I don't think my feet could take anymore today. After we booked our tickets at the Termini (which looks like an airport) we went to hunt down the museum. First we stumbled upon a church called Basilica Santa Maria Degli Angeli E Dei Martiri which turned out to be super cool. There was a sundial meridian thing on the floor of the church that at certain times each day will have a beam of sunlight hit it and tell us what time of year (what day) it is! Super cool. It had gorgeous decorations (mostly paintings) and a lot of information on Galileo and the church. Then we headed to the first museum which had a ridiculous amount of typical Roman statues and pillars. It had a beautiful courtyard and some of the statues were outside. It was really neat. The next museum was close by and had a lot more heads of statues (it's as if it's rare to find a whole statue. They either have a body or a head, but not both). There was also a huge coin collection dating as far back as the 2^nd century! They also had a collection of beautiful tile mosaics. Unbelievable! After seeing all the museum had to offer, it was off to find the third museum. We ended up at the Spanish steps on the way there. They're amazing and the amount of people there was just incredible. Right in front of the steps is a street with designer store after designer store. We're talking Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Cartier, etc! It was crazy. I can't even imagine how much money is on that street! Walking down that street Trevor got us to the last museum of the day. This one was in a building that itself was a ruin and in parts of the building you could see what the original looked like including ceiling paintings. It was awesome! We figured we were done for the day, but ended up at the Colosseum after taking a wrong bus. We decided that since we were hungry and it was 20:00 already, we would find a restaurant and hang out until the Way of the Cross Mass started at 21:15 by the Colosseum. After pushing our way through the crowd (after supper), we got to see the Pope!!! We only stayed until the 4 th Station of the Cross and figured it was time to get back because we have a crazy early day tomorrow. The crowd was amazing and much less pushy than you'd expect for the amount of people. It was great being a part of it, but my feet were just crying out, so home we headed. Until tomorrow…

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Rome, Italy Day 2

2010-04-01T14:09:00.001-07:00

April 1, 2010

DAY 2 Rome, Italy

Today was a day of exploring. First, we had breakfast at our hotel in the cutest breakfast nook. It had views of the mountains. It was awesome. Then we were off. Our challenge was getting into Rome from Monterotondo which ended up not being as much difficult as long. It took us about 1.5 hours to get into town, but once there we went straight to the Colosseum. It was incredible. One thing that is really amazing is that it is in the middle of Rome among all the streets and chaos. The amount of tourists was incredible and even more amazing was the amount of people who spoke English with a Canadian/American accent (tour guides included!) We went inside the Colosseum and lucky for us we had purchased Roma Passes which allowed us to bud a ridiculous amount of people and pretty much walk right in! It was awesome. The Colosseum was incredible and I can only imagine what it looked like so many years ago. After taking it all in, we grabbed a snack (panini and pizza with Trevor commenting "It's like the Italian market") and then we headed into the Palatino where we walked amongst a bunch of ruins which were really cool, though it reminded me a little bit of Egypt, in the sense that there were parts of columns lying all over and no one cared if you sat on them or touched them. They're a little more careful about preserving the artifacts, but not all of them. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out and the weather was warm. It was prefect weather for a walk. Palatino's ruins were not your typical Roman ruins. It just looked like brick buildings and walls that had been damaged. After walking around Palatino, we headed to the Roman Forum. This was more like what you would imagine Roman ruins to look like. Some of the typical columns were still standing. After a lot of walking and picture taking (even though my camera was being fussy) we decided to head for the Pantheon. Since mass was in progress we headed to the Trevi fountain to toss our coins in. This is an amazing fountain! It was huge! It is said if you toss a coin over your shoulder into the fountain, it will ensure your return to Rome. Figuring we still had time before mass ended we went to buy gelati at a place recommended by a girl on the internet who said it was the best gelati, San Crispino. It was pretty amazing and very much a Cold Stone/Marble Slab type place with incredible selection. I got chocolate meringue and honey and Trevor got lemon and banana cream. It was awesome! Then it was back to the Pantheon, a church that has an incredible ceiling. It is dome shaped with a hole/skylight in the centre. Pretty amazing. After this incredible day it was time to eat and we chose a restaurant in the square and were entertained the entire time by a clown, a live band and an opera singer. It was great. Unfortunately I didn't like the food much at this restaurant (and it was way too expensive), but no big deal. Better luck next time. We headed back to Monterotondo, and though we thought we were going to be in trouble with the buses and train, we lucked out and made it home safe and sound. I wonder what adventures await us tomorrow!

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Rome, Italy Day 1

2010-03-31T13:49:00.001-07:00

March 31, 2010

It's been a while since I've written anything for the blog. It's about time!

Today starts our insane journey, visiting the Western countries of Europe. Proper English grammar may be lacking due to my constant use of Polish in the last few months, so I apologize if something isn't clear.

Our journey begins in Italy! I have been waiting eagerly to visit this country and can't believe the time has finally come! Today started off with me waking up an hour early because I had reset my iPod touch (my alarm) to be an hour ahead (not realizing that it accounts for daylight savings time on its own), but luckily I figured it out when I realized that Trevor was not getting up (even though I know he had planned to be up earlier than me). So, I got an extra hour of sleep (yippee!) When Trevor woke up, he double checked where our hotel was and realized I had made a major error and booked us in a hotel that wasn't in Rome, but rather on the outskirts. After calling expedia and trying to finangle our way out of it, we figured we'd deal with it when we got to Rome, and off we went. The flight was uneventful, though we got really good seats (first row after 1^st class, so lots of leg room), and by 15:30 we were at the Leonardo DaVinci Airport (or Fiumicino). We took the train into Monterotondo (where our hotel was booked). Once at the station, we realized we had no idea where we were going. At first we had no GPS, so we really had nothing to work with, but luckily the satellites kicked in and we realized we were a ridiculous distance away! Now what? I encouraged Trevor to walk (not very usual, but good practice for a later leg of our Italian adventure). We walked all the way to our hotel which, as I look it up now, was a 3.4km walk. Now that I write it, it doesn't seem bad, but when you factor in the not knowing, the fact that we had our bags on our backs, it was uphill most of the way and the fact that there were no sidewalks, it was definitely difficult. It was good to see the small town though. The views at the top of the hill were awesome! It was an interesting way to see Monterotondo. We finally got to our hotel. Our hotel guy told us all about how to get to Rome tomorrow, and then we headed for dinner. It was awesome having Italian food in Italy! Nothing special, pizza and pasta carbonara with Chardonnay and then tiramisu (that was amazing) for dessert. It was a great way to end the day. So for a day that we didn't do much sight seeing, I definitely had a few words to say about it. Tomorrow, we're off to visit Rome. When in Rome…

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Rovaniemi, Finland (Lapland)

2009-12-19T17:03:00.001-08:00

Rovaniemi, Finland (Lapland)

December 6-8, 2009

Day 1

Snow, snow and more snow! It was early when we arrived. We got in around 7:50am. When we got off the train, there was at least 10cm of snow on the ground. This is pretty much the first time we saw this much snow the entire time we've been in Europe! It was funny how excited I was, since normally I hate snow. I guess I do like it around Christmas time. Trevor had planned that we would take a bus to our B&B, but once we got to the bus stop, we realized that our bus wasn't running today. Actually, most things wouldn't be open today because it was Finland's indepence day and apparently all the shops are closed this day. Anyway, we ended up taking a taxi and arrived in our very out-of-the-way B&B in the middle of a foresty area where we met the couple we would be living with. They were very nice and offered us tea and we were allowed into our room right away. Once we got all the info from them about where to go and what to see, we decided to head to Santa's Village. They were kind enough to take us into town where we caught the Santa Express bus #8 to Santa's Village. It was awesome. First we went inside the info place where they have the Arctic Circle line (though according to Trevor's GPS that wasn't true, but why ruin the fun) so we took pictures. Then we headed to Santa's workshop where we got in line to see Santa and take pictures (though we couldn't use our own cameras, and the pictures were way too expensive!) Then we headed to the Santa Post Office where we saw letters from kids all over the world. You could even buy envelopes from the letters as a donation to Unicef. It was really neat. You could also send postcards and letters from there and get the Arctic Circle stamp. It was awesome. Next we headed to a husky park where we got to walk around and pet some of the huskies. The "bigger than puppies, smaller than adults" ones were super adorable and super excitable. They were fun. Did I mention that daylight here is only 3 hours at this time of year and that we went to eat around 2 and by the time we came out it felt like 7p? It's crazy! We walked around a bit more and looked in all the gift shops and took more pictures and then eventually decided to catch the bus back into town. When we got there, Trevor went on a hunt for some wireless while I went looking through the little market stalls (which I was surprised to find open, though I guess any time is tourist time). We then struggled to figure out if we would be hungry before we got to our B&B and decided to order some food and head back. We decided to walk, now knowing where our B&B was relative to the town, but we didn't quite realize how far and after probably about 30-40 min (and a couple of wrong turns) we got back. We ate and headed to our room to read where I fell asleep around 9p! It was a fun day!

Day 2

13 hours later, I woke up!!! I couldn't believe I slept so long, but I guess when the sun doesn't rise until after 10am, it's hard to believe you need to get up. We decided to hang out mostly around the B&B today until our Reindeer Safari! We were to be picked up at 1:30p from our hotel so we hung out in the B&B and went for a short walk around the neighbourhood (to get at least a little Vitamin D). I hung out with our B & B's dog, Mori, for a bit too. Then our ride came taking us to downtown Rovaniemi to begin our adventure. I was really hoping to be at the Santa's Village again, because I had read they will stamp your passport with the Artic Circle stamp (until I was informed that it's probably not likely that it's the real passport they stamp since that's official documentation). When we arrived at the Erasetti main office, we were pretty much the only ones there. They provided the winter clothing for the safari, so you didn't have to remember your own stuff. We got into our one piece snowsuit and boots and waited. More people started showing up and then finally the bus came to pick us up. They drove us to the site where the reindeers were and the adventure began. Thankfully it had snowed the day before we got to Rovaniemi, because otherwise we might not have been able to go on this safari at all! We were introduced to our guides and then one showed us how to harness the reindeer and let us touch one of the reindeer (who shook every time people touched him; apparently they don't like being touched). Then we were put into sleighs and covered with blankets. Trevor and I shared a sleigh. It was very romantic! All the reindeer were basically linked. There was a leader reindeer, he had a sled and attached to that sled was another reindeer who also had a sled and so on. It wasn't a fast ride, by any means. The tour guides were leading the two lead reindeers, walking them along the track, so you can imagine how quick that would be. It was nice though. The reindeer that was suppose to be behind our sleigh kept wanting to lead so he was pretty much right next to us the entire time. His name was Beekie and ours was Blackleaf. It was a little scary having reindeer antlers in your face, but he was really cute (I'm sure it one of the antlers got too close, he would stop being cute.) We were riding pretty much in the dark as soon as we started, and as much as I would have liked it to be in daylight, the night ride made it much more romantic ; ). They took us to a wooden cabin where we sat around a fire on reindeer skins (that we took from our sleighs and Trevor and I made one of the ladies very angry that we were taking skins from her sleigh instead of ours. I tried to tell her that our guides told us to, but she was not pleased.) We had coffee, tea and cookies around the fire and I learned that it's rude to ask how many reindeer someone owned (apparently it's like asking how much money you have in you account). The same lady that got upset about the skins told the guides that clearly they didn't have a crisis there (as in "the recession"), since all the tours were booked solid! This lady was crazy! Then we got back in our sleigh and rode back. When we got back, our bus wasn't quite there yet, and again the crazy lady who yelled at me about the reindeer skins was super upset and taking it out on our guide because she was cold. It was only about -5C! She just kept yelling at the guide that she paid for the tour and wanted the bus right now! I felt so bad for him. Fortunately the bus did come and took us back to the main office. From here we decided to get some supper (an all you can eat pizza and pasta place, yeah!). Then, since we were downtown, we went to see some buildings built by some famous Finnish architect. We stopped into the library so that Trevor could understand why the Arctic Circle moves and where it's at now, then we headed back to the B&B. When we got back, Trevor decided to do the most ridiculous thing. He had calculated that he hadn't actually reached the Arctic Circle, so he decided to go on an 11km run to actually cross the circle!!! I was so worried about him. Thankfully he made it home alive! And he had made it! It even had a sign! I'm just glad he made it home.

Day 3

We decided for our last day, we would head to their major museum on the Arctic called Arktikum. Once we walked around for a bit we realized that it was not exactly the best museum we had ever been to. It was really expensive, too. It did mention Canada quite a bit, since I guess this is also a research centre for Arctic related things. There was also a section on the Sami people which was kind of interesting. After exploring most of the museum we went to grab something to eat from the café. I've always found it very trusting of people and restaurants where they feed you first and then ask you to pay. This situation proved why you should worry. We got all our food and when we went to pay with our Mastercard, the machine didn't work, and we had no more cash with us. They kept telling me to eat before the food got cold, but I just felt so silly going to eat something that I knew we couldn't pay for. Thankfully, they were absolutely okay with us going back to our B&B and getting money to pay them back. It's a good thing we're trustworthy, because we easily could have not paid for our meal. But, after walking back to our B&B, we told the cab to stop there before we headed for the airport. The airport had a lovely banner hanging saying Official Airport of Santa Claus! For our first flight (to Helsinki) we boarded with no boarding card and no assigned seating! That was a little weird. Once in Helsinki, we had to rush to our next gate and got told that our bags might not make it to Warsaw because there was very little time before take off. I figured it wouldn't matter much. Good thing I had that attitude, since it was my bag that didn't make it! Otherwise, the flights were good. My bag didn't actually make it until 3 days later! But, luckily, nothing was missing or damaged. All in all, a FANTASTIC trip!

Helsinki, Finland

2009-12-10T15:26:00.001-08:00

Helsinki, Finland

December 3-5, 2009

Day 1

Today we were up around 6:15 am so that we could check-in for our ferry by 7:10 am. We also tried to sneak in some breakfast before check-in which was interesting since breakfast didn't start until 7am. Luckily the ferry was across the street and the breakfast was set up 10 min early. We ate quickly and off we went to the ferry. I pretty much slept through the whole ride. Once in Helsinki, we figured out our ferry had docked in a different location than expected so it was a bit of a search to determine how to get to our hotel cheaply. Thank goodness Trevor is good at that kind of thing and he got us there with very little trouble. Since our room wasn't ready we headed out to do our exploring. Unfortunately, Helsinki does not have an Old Town, so there was no seeing medieval buildings. We followed the Lonely Planet walking tour and saw some nice churches including one built into rock! That was really cool. Of course I also wanted to see the beach here so we headed in that direction. Helsinki is the first city to show evidence of winter since we started this trip! There was frost on the ground and ice patches and once we got to the beach, the sand was frozen. We got to the beach around sunset so we got to see some beautiful colors in the sky. We then headed back to the hotel and realized we wanted to go out for supper so back out we went, into the chilly, humid air, had some Thai and then headed back to the room for the night. Helsinki is extremely modern compared to the other 3 cities we were in. There's also a lot of English everywhere, the buildings are all newer and the people here are much more relaxed with their fashion. It's interesting to see the differences between the countries. The prices here are also interesting to point out. The numbers are all pretty much on par when it comes to prices for items, compared to the Canadian dollar, you just have to remember they're talking in euros, 1.5 times the price. For example, we went to McDonald's for lunch and paid 9.75, which is the same as we would have paid back home, except when you convert, our meal actually cost around $15!

Day 2

First sign of real snow. It was all over the ground when we woke up this morning. We decided to go see the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress today. It is on an island about 15-20 min by ferry from Helsinki, but still Helsinki. I believe that the island was used as a defense system against people invading Helsinki. It was started by the Swedish when they owned Finland and then the Russias rebuilt it or something. Anyway, it was really cool. The ferry was fun. We saw many little islands with one house or two houses on them along the way. When we arrived on our island, there was a map showing us the basic path to take to get from one side to the other (but really it's 2 islands because you cross a bridge over water at the halfway mark.) On the first side there were pretty much just houses and information buildings (maybe museums too) but the second side was neat with hidden underground rooms and cannons everywhere. It reminded me of the movie Tristan and Isolde. Trevor enjoyed sticking his head into the cannons sayng that it was warmer in there. We climbed around took pictures, explored the rooms (some with water in them). It was fun. We then headed back to the ferry, and since it was to be another half hour, went inside and had a drink. Once back in Helsinki, we walked around downtown a bit and looked into some gift shops and then went to eat at a place called Zetor which was a very dark but very fun pub looking restaurant. They had tractors inside and chicken wire everywhere. It had a farm feel. They were suppose to serve Finnish food, that's why we came (and Trevor likes wacky décor). Trevor had sautéed reindeer with ligonberries and I had salmon with mushroom sauce. It was quite tasty. It was then back to the hotel for the night. It gets really dark really early and it's easy to forget it's 4 o'clock when it looks like 7 or 8.

Day 3

Part of our hostel cost included 3 hours in the morning when you could use the sauna. Saunas are really big in all the countries we visited on this trip. Figuring that I had to take part in this Finnish tradition, I woke up early to get to the sauna before 9:30am. It was a very pleasant way to wake up. I started with the sauna to myself, but soon there were 4 of us squished into the tiny sauna. The saunas are all gender specific (most people go naked). After my lovely relaxing morning I went back to the room to "waste" time until checkout. We had to be a little inventive today because we no longer had a tourist bus ticket. It would have been expensive purchasing a day ticket for the bus so we had to figure out where we were going to go to be long enough to take a whole day, but short enough that we wouldn't miss our train for Rovaniemi at 7:26p. Trevor wanted to go see the Sibelius monument (looked like frozen organ pipes from the picture) so we headed out there. We realized that we were really close to the monument when we had gone to the beach on day 1, but we hadn't known the Sibelius monument was going to be cool, so we never went. We headed over and along the way we saw more of Helsinki downtown. There was a ski sale happening. It took us about 30-40min to get there, but we made it. There was a large tour group there, getting in the pictures, so we waited patiently until they left, at which point we pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves (at least for 5 min) before another smaller group came. We took some cool pictures, and Trevor tried to climb inside the pipes and then we headed to the old Olympic stadium. My goal was to find the Olympic sign which took us walking around the entire complex (and after walking for quite some time, felt like forever). We then headed back to downtown where we decided to eat in the food court of the Forum shopping centre. This was unlike any food court I had ever been to before. It was like a restaurant. You order at the place you want food and then you sit down and they bring the food to you, dressed as waiters and waitresses. And, it was way cheaper than a real restaurant. Only problem was finding a place to sit. Otherwise, the food was great and cheap. It was back to the hotel to pick up our stuff so that we could walk back to downtown to catch the train. My feet were hurting, but we kept on walking. We made it to the train station with plenty of time and waited on a bench until it finally came. Our train was very nice and roomy. The seats went back really far. I ended up having a short nap (8-10p) at which time we headed to the restaurant car to have some drinks. We then went back to our car and went to sleep to await our early morning arrival in Rovaniemi.

Tallin, Estonia

2009-12-03T13:14:00.001-08:00

Tallin, Estonia

December 1 and 2, 2009

Day 1

It was an early morning again, so that we could catch our 7 am bus ride over to Estonia. I made a friend waiting for the tram. It was a cat who made it appear as if he had been starved all his life and I would be the best person in the world if I gave him some food. He was super cute and fluffy and I couldn't resist (I know I shouldn't have, but you should have seen him begging). After a short tram ride, a bit of a wait and some tea, we were on the bus. Again, lots of leg room, very nice bus, this time with a "special seat" section for those willing to pay a little extra for even more leg room and for the ability to move your chair sideways as well as back! We cheaped out, who needs that stuff anyways? A 4.5 hour bus ride got us into Tallin, the most modern looking of the 3 countries. We walked to our hotel, which we found out was directly across from the ferry (made me very happy since we were to take the ferry 2 days later). Everyone was once again willing to speak English with no problems. Our room had a view of the Old Town (sort of. It was at quite a distance) which was cool. Now it was off to explore another Old Town. Third times the charm. We found a guide map to get us to all the important buildings. This Old Town seemed much more interested in telling tourists about its history. There were plaques on a lot of buildings with info on who had lived there during the medieval times. Very cool! We wandered around and got rained on as it started getting dark. We decided to have some groggi (hot wine) at the market and earlier I had seen a girl with a cup of melted chocolate, so I figured I might as well try it. Man, it was AWESOME! I love hot melted chocolate! The hot wine was interesting, though less appealing than the chocolate. After the warm drinks we went in search of some food and decided to eat at Hesburger, a burger place from Helsinki. They were pretty good at making their stuff taste McDonald's like. Then back to the hotel to do some reading, writing, watching TV and then bed time.

Day 2

We had some lovely breakfast at the hotel to start our morning. It was then off to find a bus to take us to Pirita beach. We found out that wasn't too difficult and found ourselves at the beach very quickly. The beach was separated from the road by a forest that looked like someone had planted rows of trees. It was a fun day walking on the beach, searching for shells, jumping over the little streams that formed. We even got to see the moon rise! It was beautiful. With not much else in mind, we headed back to the hotel and had a lovely supper. This was very much a quiet day.

Riga, Latvia

2009-12-02T01:20:00.001-08:00

Riga, Latvia

November 29 and 30, 2009

Day 1

We got to Riga this morning. We walked to the bus station from the hotel in Vilnius and had a quick McDonald's breakfast (but they had no breakfast items so Trevor had a cheeseburger and I had a tea) and then off we went on our 4 hour bus ride. It was amazing how uncomfortable more leg space can be when you plan to sleep on the bus. Both busses so far have been very clean, very modern busses. This one had exceptionally big spaces between seats and it felt like you were slipping all the time because there was nowhere to catch yourself. I shouldn't complain, though. How often do you get more leg room than you ask for? The bus driver on this bus was good, too, and got us into town early. From there I made sure we took a cab, but it's ridiculous how expensive the Latvian currency is. It's 2.6 times American dollars! So, things that appear to be cheap (a 0.40 Ls bottle of water) isn't really all that cheap. We got to our hotel (Dodo) after driving through a very rundown old neighborhood and went off to start our exploring. First we walked to the mall near our hotel (5 min walk) that was out of place in the rundown neighborhood. The mall was very much like any nice mall in North America. Once we got our day tram tickets, we were off to the Old Town. It was pretty incredible, but really the first day in the Old Town was spent looking at cool buildings, but not really knowing what they were. It was still fun. In the middle of the Old Town was a beautiful Christmas market and good ol' St. Nick (he's got to make it back to Rovaniemi before we get there, I hope that works for him ;) ). We wandered until we got hungry and found a really cool medieval restaurant to eat at. It was awesome. It was in a basement of a medieval shack where the chairs and tables were solid wood and the walls were cement. The lighting was low and the waitresses had on medieval dresses. The menu even had explanations of what time period the food was from and who served it! It was a really cool (but expensive) experience. The drink I had was pretty cool too. It was apple juice with honey and mint leaves. Very interesting flavor. At this point it was getting dark and after a little more walking around we decided to head back to the hotel. Great day!

Day 2

We had a slow start to our morning, but once we got up we headed back to the Old Town with more of a purpose. We had found a map with points of interest for the Old Town and we planned to see all those places now knowing what they were. So once again we wandered around the Old Town (though I could really do that all day any day) and this time learned some interesting facts. This time, to stir things up, there was a protest going on because apparently they were going to tax motorcyclists, so there were a bunch of bikers and a bunch of regular and military police all over one edge of the Old Town. It was quite intimidating! It was a rather quite protest, but there were plenty of people there. After taking some pictures we headed to a park next to the Old Town with a canal and bridge. The bridge is called the Bridge of Love because married couples come and put locks on there with their names and date of marriage. It was neat. Then it was off to eat. We were in search of a place to eat called Lido. Once we found it (in the opposite direction than I thought it was) it was really cool. It was kind of an amusement park. It was all decorated in Christmas stuff. We took pictures near the really awesome giant Christmas tree and then went to eat in this cafeteria style establishment where food was much cheaper than the night before! After our lovely meal we decided to head to the skating rink and go skating. It was so much fun! I haven't skated in years! It was a very slow start for me (and it didn't speed up much by the end) but it was a ton of fun. The crazy thing is that the rink was open air, but it was definitely not cold enough for an open air rink. There was no snow or ice (or any evidence of either)anywhere in Riga. It was awesome. The temperature was great for skating! Trevor skated like crazy, so he was pretty sore after. We decided to head back to our hotel to get ready for the bus ride the next day. It was a really good day!

Vilnius, Lithuania

2009-11-29T15:49:00.001-08:00

Vilnius, Lithuania

November 28, 2009

Hello everyone. Trevor and I decided that it was time to see what Europe has to offer. We took a bus that was suppose to take 10 hours (11pm-9a), but our bus driver was awesome and got us there in 8 hours. Our first stop on this crazy trip was Vilnius, Lithuania. So at 7am we decided to find our hotel in Vilnius by walking. It only took us 20min to get there and the lady at the hotel let us check in early (which was super sweet). Unfortunately we had a bit of a set back with my not feeling well, but after a couple of hours I was able to start our exploring. We decided to head to the Old Town and that's pretty much where we spent our day. We first saw the egg statue, that was slightly less impressive than the Vegreville one, and then proceeded to the Gates of Dawn, the only remaining original gates to the Old Town. The Old Town was cool, with cobble stone streets and beautiful Gothic churches. They were just incredible when you went inside. The ceilings were painted and they had beautiful statues everywhere. It was awesome. Searching for a cash exchange place was quite a struggle and after some time we decided that Trevor would run back to the bus station to exchange money. What a wonderful man! After some exploring we went to have some Lithuanian food at a restaurant called Cili Kaimas, where they had a pet rooster (that I was hoping wouldn't be what we were having for lunch). I opted for chickenless dishes and went with fish instead. It was very yummy. Next I wanted to go see the Museum of Genocide (apparently not to be missed). It was incredibly moving and creepy. In the basement is the original KGB prison (with execution chamber). This place was definitely more creepy than Alkatrez. After some debate we decided to hang around the Old Town some more and went to the Cathedral where there is apparently a miracle tile that if you find it (first) and stand on it and turn around clockwise your wish will come true. Luckily some girl found it for us (and it was clearly worn from people standing on it) because you really would have to look hard to find it. Trevor spun on tile now we wait to see if his wish comes true. We then went to Vilnius University which is pretty cool, but unfortunately it was dark at this point and difficult to see. We also stopped by St.Anne's church, which looks really gothic from the outside, and walked by Pilies gatve which is a road that has sunken into the ground due to the town being built on a swamp. Lots of cool stuff, really neat town. I'm hoping we'll have a chance to come back. We then headed back to the hotel to get ready for our trip to Riga the next day!

More to come!

SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices

Poland-November 9, 2009

2009-11-18T12:29:00.001-08:00

November 9, 2009

Trevor and I just had our 15 month anniversary (not that we really celebrated it, but it passed yesterday). Poland is feeling more and more like our home each day. It's funny though. There are days I step outside and, of course, know that I'm in a "foreign country", but I listen for a second to people talking and am surprised to realize that I understand what they are saying. It's such a strange feeling. In Edmonton I would get excited to hear someone talking in Polish because it would happen once in a blue moon. You hear Chinese and Arabic way more that you ever hear Polish back home. But here, I hear it all the time, see it on all the signs and posters and it's just plain weird. I like it but it's still taking some time to get use to. In the last little while Trevor and I have done some more exploring around Warsaw. We actually haven't done much, if any, exploring on our own. It has been mostly with my family. I have now met another family member and it wasn't really until this morning that I completely understood the relation. I've always thought of her as my mom's cousin because that's the way my mom quickly explained it to me. Really she's my mom's second cousin. It's my Ciocia Halina (ciocia meaning aunt because as we do back home, everyone is called aunt and uncle here). Her mom and my mom's mom (my grandma) were cousins. We had a lengthy chat about my grandma's family. We're trying to work out a family tree and we managed to add 100 people just last night! It's incredible! Anyways, she has been great, taking us to a couple of the big touristy spots in Warsaw. We went to two palaces now, one that literally translates to washrooms because of a new concept in bathrooms that was incorporated into the palace, and the other is Wilanow (from the combination of words meaning new village). They have both been pretty specatular, though I have to say the palace Lasienek was by far my favorite. Around this palace is an incredible park with free roaming peacocks and squirrels that will eat out of your hand and if you're good enough they'll even climb your leg for a little bit of food. The pigeons here are crazy about food too and you'll have about 20-30 pigeons surrounding you before you know it. The peacocks will also eat from your hand though they're a little bit less crazy. I would love to see all the places we've seen, in the summer time. I have been told they look incredible. Now that the leaves have all fallen, it's a bit less impressive, but I'm sure it's like our river valley. We have also been getting to know my other family more and more too. They have been incredibly generous, inviting us over to their house every few days. Trevor and I have had so much Polish food and it's been awesome. The last time I had this much Polish food was when my Grandpa was still cooking at home, maybe 10 years ago. It's been a long time. It's funny how when you have it, you don't really care for it. It's even funnier that I didn't really miss it until now when I'm having it every other day. Maybe it's because I never really thought of it as Polish food before. I always just figured that soup, or meat and potatoes were a common house food and didn't think anything of it. Now that I'm seeing that the recipes my Grandpa was using are almost the same as those that people here are using, I'm realizing that I was eating typical Polish food, not just typical home cooked food. It's fun to think about these things. More to come soon :D

Poland-November 4, 2009

2009-11-09T07:16:00.001-08:00

We've made it and we're at least good for the next three months without anyone wondering what we are doing here. We have a house that we can always return to. We have a place to cook food and we have the most basic stuff, like a bed and some dishes and cutlery. It has been a very interesting week. We have met many people, eaten lots of Polish food, experienced a Polish holiday and visited an attraction. At the same time, I have had plenty of opportunity to do absolutely nothing. It's been pretty terrible, on the lazy front, but maybe it's good for me. Okay, let me tell you about how this week has gone.

The first night we learned how uncompatible our electrical devices are with their outlets because Trevor blew our fuse by putting the power bar into the wall without a transformer. No worries, my uncle is an electrician. We decided to wait until the next day (since we were going to sleep already). Day two in Poland we found out how far Centrum was, downtown. Our house is only 3 stops of the metro away from downtown. We walked around a bit, but it rained on us so we headed back and waited for our family to get off work. They were to come by to help us get a plan for Trevor's cell phone. When they arrived we told them about our lack of electricity (thank goodness for headlamps, because at this point the sun had set.) There was a bit of panic and very innovative uncle was able to fix the problem temporarily saying that we better not stick anything else into the outlets. There would be no need to fear. We headed out back to Centrum where we found out that had we walked South rather than North we would have seen a giant mall rather than just little shops. They also explained to us the Palac Kultury i Nauki (translated the Palace of Culture and Knowledge) that has within it 2 theatres, a pool, a museum and a movie theatre! That might not be all, but I'm not sure. We also found out where we would be getting internet for the next little while. They have a store called Empik (it looks like a Chapters) with wireless. We then headed back to their house for a little while and then headed back to ours. They are 1 metro stop away from us. Day 3 we went to Empik where Trevor got some work done. I actually went after him, staying at home to be lazy that day. We experienced the Polish McDonalds this day, which was actually almost identical if not even better than at home! This is going to be a good place ;) Anyways, I decided to return before Trevor because my uncle was coming over to fix our fuse. He came over and we had a chat and then he invited us over to their house again. So off I went and phoned Trevor to meet us there. It was a bit quiet over there. My cousin, or second cousin or whatever position he is at (my uncle is actually my mom's cousin) was there too. It's been a bit awkward with the new family, but nothing unexpected. Their English is incredible so when Trevor's over they tend to talk in English more. It's funny because both my uncle and Trevor are in the same position. Each only has one language, though understands the odd word in the other. Everyone else knows much more English and can converse. I have been labeled as a walking dictionary since I know more in both languages than anyone else, though I have failed the odd time because my Polish is good, but not that good. English though is starting to slip. My brain is definitely getting some exercise! This night was especially entertaining because my family got to experience a conversation between my mom and I. They thought it was absolutely hilarious how I spoke to my mom in English while she spoke to me in Polish. I'm sure some of you have found that hilarious too. The next day as a group we went to see This Is It. The theatre that we went to was a lot more flat than our theatres, but otherwise, not much different. This was the most exciting part of Halloween. Trevor missed Halloween back home. The following day was the day we had come for. All Saint's Day. Here, everyone goes to the cemeteries and goes to see the gravesites of their relatives on this day. It's a huge occasion. The cemeteries are packed and they sell candle holders and huge flowers leading up to the cemeteries. It was incredible to see. We went to my grandma's site first and then off to my Grandpa's parents. We met my Grandpa's brother and his wife. They are now filling in as my grandparents while we're in Poland. It was incredible how many people were there. The flowers that they bring are mostly chrysanthemums and they bring them in pots. The flowers are massive (two feet high and two feet wide). The gravesites are not like in Canada. They have tomb like structures that stick out of the ground. It looks like marble coffins everywhere. On these they place the massive flowers and candles. At night the candles look amazing. Here in Poland they believe it's extremely important to remember their dead. After our cemetery visit we were invited to late lunch at my aunt's mom's house. Here we met my aunt's siblings and their families and ate a traditional Polish meal. Included in this meal was tripe soup which I had always heard about but never tried. Reluctantly I tried it and it was very tasty. Trevor had no problem with eating intestines. After we had our fill here we ended up going over to my Grandpa's brother's house for another meal. The idea of losing weight was definitely lost this day. We looked at some pictures from 1966 of my mom, Grandpa and uncle. It was great. The next day was uneventful. The following day we spent time with my Grandpa's brother and his wife and we went over to the Stare Miasto (old town) to walk around, as well as visited my mom's old home and then back to their house for food. Homes here are mostly apartments and even the houses appear to be town houses. I think if you want to see a house, you have to get outside of Warsaw. I find Warsaw to be very Americanized. There are a lot of the typical stores like H&M, Sephora, and others and a lot of things you can buy here are American brand like soaps and shampoos. They only really big difference I see is that everything is written in Polish (which also makes my brain work because I can read but somewhere at a Grade 2 level where words are not yet familiar so I have to sound everything out. It's extremely tedious but good because after some time it will be faster.) I will write again soon.

SMILEJ
Amanda

Day 14 London to Warsaw

2009-11-04T04:19:00.001-08:00

Day 14

Oct 28/09

Trevor took our Wicked Van back into town without me while I had to get all of our luggage into the main building of our hotel. For most of the day I wrote emails and did some other computer work until Trevor arrived. We then quickly bought some lunch at a nearby grocery store and it was off to the airport. When we had purchased our Aer Lingus flight to Poland we had understood that you could have one 20kg bag each and then each bag weighing up 20kg was an extra fee. We had automatically paid for an extra bag because I knew there was almost no way for me to have only one bag. Unfortunately we found out that in actual fact the TOTAL weight of the bags you bring can be 20kg! And, for every kg over it would cost us 9 pounds! We were 18kg over which would cost us 162 GBP or $320 ish!!! That was ridiculous! Thankfully the person we were talking to said that he would only charge us 15 pounds for being one bag over our 3 bags we had already told him about. That was a relief. The flight wasn't very eventful. It was neat that many people on board spoke Polish and that they played the instructions for flight safety and other announcements in Polish. It was once we landed that my nerves started going again. I was so scared. I didn't know who was going to pick us up or really what they looked like. I was just hoping that they would recognize us (we had sent them a picture earlier). Customs was ridiculously easy. They just stamped our passports and off we went. And finally the moment of truth arrived. The few pictures I had seen of my mom's cousin and his family were almost 20years old, but they only looked slightly older. Everyone came; my mom's cousin Grzegorz (Gregory), his wife Grazyna (Grace) and their two kids, Mateusz (Matthew) whose 19 and Ola whose 13. The meeting wasn't even too bad. We said our hellos and we realized that everyone but Grzegorz speaks a bit of English and they said my Polish isn't too bad. They drove us over to what will now be our home for the next (at least) 3 months. A cute little apartment, it has a small kitchen, a bathroom (with only a tub, no shower), a very tiny washing machine, closet space and a living room that works as both that and a bedroom. It's perfect. We also went over to their house for a bit where we saw how a typical Polish family normally lives. They too have a tiny apartment. They have 2 bedrooms (each of the kids has their own) a living room, a bathroom and kitchen. Their bathroom doubles as a laundry room (as does ours). Their apartment apparently just got renovated so it has a very modern look to it now. Ours looks like a typical older apartment building in Edmonton. We had a late supper with their family with tomato soup and sandwich type items and then we headed back on the metro to our apartment. They only live one stop away from us. That was enough excitement for one day. We would see what we would do the next day.

Day 13 Downe

2009-11-04T04:18:00.001-08:00

Day 13

Oct 27/09

Today was another slow day. We visited Downe, a small town outside of London. Here, Charles Darwin and his family lived for 40 years. Because we started our day so early, we were too early to visit Charles Darwin's house so we sat on a bench and read and watch TV until 11a. The tour of Darwin's house and garden was really neat. It was an audio tour again and described how he used his children to help him with experiments and pretty much his whole house was a huge experiment. It talked about his wife (and how they were first cousins). It was really neat (not the first cousin thing). Apparently Darwin studied plants a lot and in the green house he had venus fly traps and other carnivorous plants. I thought it was an extremely interesting thing to take a look at Darwin lived and how he came to the conclusion that evolution existed. Once we finished with the tour we decided to drive to Gatwick to check in to our hotel and do a last minute clean up of our van. We wanted to make sure we were ready for our flight the next day. We did some internet stuff and went for supper and watched some TV (like British Who wants to be a Millionaire) in the lounge. It was a very nice and relaxing day until I had to call my Polish family. This was essentially the first contact that I would have with my family. I was to make a phone call to them letting them know that everything was going according to schedule and we would be there the next day. Man I was so nervous it was ridiculous. Thankfully the conversation was very quick and painless. Now for the meeting…

Day 12 Kelvedon Hatch

2009-11-04T04:17:00.001-08:00

Day 12

Oct 26/09

Today would end up being very calm. Our only destination for the day would be the Secret Nuclear Bunker Kelvedon Hatch. We decided to take our time in the morning and didn't check out of our room until we had to at noon. Apparently this bunker had been ready to go at a moments notice only a few years back. They had built sometime after WWII in case of a nuclear attack. It could hold up to 600 people! It was really weird. The whole thing had an audio tour and the only contact with people that you would have on the tour is with other tourists. Otherwise, you paid at the end of the tour and they just kept telling you that you are on camera and you are not allowed to take pictures (on signs). The whole thing stunk, as if the air flow wasn't very good. They had mannequins set up everywhere to look "realistic" though people clearly played with them because their wigs were falling off. It was a 3 story bunker with only 200 beds so they way it worked was that you would sleep for 8 hours and then someone would take your bed. They had films all over talking about how to be safe in your own home in case of a nuclear attack. Every once in a while on the audio guide they would say "you'd die, but this was to help pass the time" or "you'd die, but this was to keep you busy until then" or messages like that. It was absolutely ridiculous! At the same time, it was a very interesting concept. Trevor is now all gung ho about creating our own bunker. We'll see… After our very interesting (and slightly creepy) tour, we made ourselves pasta as the sunset and watched Star Trek on the computer and then headed out to find our last parking spot for the rest of the trip. We had supper again at McDonald's ( I know I shouldn't but I couldn't help it. I have to try it in each country. Unfortunately we missed Scotland, but even for me, 3 X in 2 weeks is a little much). We ended up having to park in an actual parking spot. Luckily it didn't charge us until 8:30a so we set an alarm so we could leave before then. That was the end of that day.

Day 11 Cambridge

2009-11-04T04:16:00.001-08:00

Day 11

Oct 25/09

Once again I woke up before Trevor and took a walk around the "wood" which turned out to be an area with lots of ferns and flat plants, and some trees around the outside, just beside a farmer's field. It also apparently was an area for people to walk their dogs because the only people that came in the area were those with dogs. We drove over to Cambridge and found ourselves a parking spot and then headed over to the many colleges that make up Cambridge University. This town was really neat. Everyone here seemed to ride their bikes everywhere and there were tons of bikes parked all over the sidewalks. The first stop was to the college where Stephen Hawking now teaches/researches, Gonville and Caius. In this college in the Great Hall is a series of stained glass windows made for the past professors of the college among those include Francis Crick, one of two men who discovered the DNA structure and John Venn, the man who invented the Venn diagram. It was then off to Trinity college to see Sir Isaac Newton's apple tree descendant. Some of the colleges charge entry fees, so we decided not to enter Trinity college to look around. Luckily the tree is just outside the college. Next geek atlas motivated destination was the Eagle pub where Watson and Crick had announced their discovery of the DNA structure. We had lunch there, where I had a traditional English Sunday roast. Next we went to the Mathematical bridge, a bridge claimed to have been built by Newton, but our geek atlas told us that it wasn't the case and it was just a nice wooden bridge. While there we watched some people punting boats down the little river. You could rent a little wooden boat and punt down the "canal" like in Italy. It was hilarious to watch as people almost fell into the water. Finishing up in Cambridge we try to seek out some free internet, to no avail, so we headed out of town to our next parking spot, as close to our next destination as we could. It was tough work and in the end I decided I wanted a shower so we headed to another Travelodge for the night.

Day 10 Glasgow

2009-11-04T04:15:00.001-08:00

Day 10

Oct 24/09

After Trevor woke up, it was off to the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. This museum was a collection of items collected by William Hunter as well as other scientists that taught or worked at the University of Glasgow. There were some amazing items. William Hunter was an amazing collector and had and Egyptian mummy, Roman and Greek stones and all kinds of medical items. He had body parts in jars because he figured it was important for students to see first hand the items they will be looking at. Another scientist had his urine in a vial that apparently he had boiled and sealed off to see if it would stay sterile and apparently it had stayed clear for (I think) over 100 years! It was a really interesting museum. We also went to see the Hunterian Gallery where there were paintings from the 1500-1900's. Some really interesting paintings. After taking a look at the art gallery it was off to Cambridge where we would be hanging out the next day. It was another long drive today, all the way down to Cambridge. Parking again was a bit tricky but we found it (thankfully).

Day 9 Edinburgh to Glasgow

2009-11-02T04:18:00.001-08:00

Day 9

Oct 23/09

Today we headed off to the National Museum of Scotland. Again free (I love free), it had really cool displays. It sort of doubles as a history museum and a science centre. In the science centre part they have THE Dolly, the first sheep that was cloned from an adult cell! They also have the original Gemini space capsule (or whatever it is). We also learned a little bit about Alexander Graham Bell in the phone section. It was then time to expore the Scottish history side of the museum. Once we were museum'd out we headed to lunch a cute little Italian restaurant in a rather touristy area and then headed back to our car to head out in the direction of Glasgow, our final stopping point that night. Just before we left Edinburgh, we drove by Alexander Graham Bell's home and took some pictures, then we were off. First we had to go see the Falkirk wheel (one of the Geek Atlas items.) It's a type of lock for boats, but it raises boats about 50m! It was kind of cool. It's hard to describe, but when I post pictures, you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. After this it was time to find parking. It was rather tricky finding a parking space this night. Edinburgh to Glasgow is only about 45 min and between the two is mostly bigger town/city so there weren't the typical blue P signs to indicate parking. It probably took us about 2.5 hours of driving to find a spot to park. Somehow we found one. It was in a cute little spot. It was away from the highway which was nice. It was now time for bed to get ready for the next day.

Day 8 Edinburgh, Scotland

2009-11-02T04:15:00.001-08:00

Day 8

Oct 22/09

Edinburgh. Today was the day we would go see our first castle. First we needed breakfast, so off we went to find a restaurant that Trevor found on the internet called Toast. It took us a bit of time to find it, but we did. After we ate, we had a tricky experience trying to get our car out of where we parked. Trevor had commented earlier in the trip that he now understood the Austin Powers joke when he tries to turn around and has to move back and forth a bunch of times. I don't recall the part, but it is ridiculous to turn around on the roads. They are so narrow, and when you considered we are driving a car 1.5 times the length of any other car, we are definitely too wide to turn around. Trevor ended up having to back out of the alley for quite some time to get us out of our predicament. Next it was off to the castle. The castle sits on top of volcanic rock and overlooks the city. The views were amazing from there. We took a little tour and then looked at the Scottish crown jewels, which only have 3 items: crown, scepter, and sword. They are the oldest crown jewels in Western Europe and the second oldest in the world (the Hungarian crown jewels are older). They were nice but not as shiny as the English jewels. We also went into the War Memorial for WW1 and WW2 that is at the castle and Trevor believes he found his great-great uncle's name in the WW1 books!!! After we explored the castle I decided I wanted to see the beach so Trevor drove us over to the water and we walked up and down the beach. It was then time to find a hotel for the night (we hadn't showered for 3 days at this point and we weren't looking or feeling very wonderful). We ended up getting a room in the Travelodge (yup they have them here, but they're different here). We decided to eat at Ryan's pub that night which apparently is a very popular pub in Edinburgh, and then it was off to bed.

Day 7 Cardiff to Edinburgh

2009-11-02T04:12:00.001-08:00

Day 7

Oct 21/09

I woke up to beautiful scenery of the lake the next morning. I went down to the lake for an early morning stroll while Trevor continued to sleep. This seems to be the way things are on the trip. I wake up early and do something (read, write, walk) for 20 ish min while Trevor sleeps and then we start driving. So off I went took some pictures and then it was time to drive. There wasn't much else that happened this day. We drove until we were just outside Edinburgh and then parked for the night. The drive between places in the UK is very minor (especially compared to our ridiculous road trip). Within the hour we would be in the next destination. The drive today was a much longer one. From Cardiff to Edinburgh was a 7 hour drive (still minor on the road trip scale). Very uneventful day.

Day 6 Cardiff, Wales

2009-10-28T05:53:00.001-07:00

Day 6

Oct 20/09

This morning we went out and explored the stone circle. The stone circle here surrounds the village and you can walk right up the stones and touch them. It was a bit of a drizzly day, but that didn't stop us from taking a hour or so walk around the stones. It was really quite fascinating. They were placed essentially in farmer's fields with sheep grazing around them. I guess the stones weren't placed in farmers fields, more like the farmer's fields surround the stones. Well we walked around, enjoyed the sheep fields and stones and headed out to Bath. At Bath we walked around and saw the beautiful Roman style buildings. This was the place the Romans lived a few centuries ago. They also had this giant map on the ground where for just a moment I standing in Edmonton. We then saw the Roman baths from the outside and headed back to the car to continue driving to Cardiff, a city in Wales. We drove off and then remembered that we probably should have looked for a money exchange a little more seriously, but I figured we'd be able to find one in Cardiff. Not long after that thought we made it upon our first and only toll booth of the trip. We ended up having to pay for most of it in Canadian dollars. Crappy thing was, they would only accept foreign dollars in denominations of $10. Since $10 is about 5 pounds and the toll was 5.40 it meant if we had paid it in Canadian dollars, the toll would have cost us $20! Luckily we had 40p and were able to pay the $10 and then 40p (in British pence). Man oh man. But we had made it across to another country. We were now in Wales. You could tell we were in a different country, but it's hard to put it in words why. There were still fields of sheep and green rolling hills with lots of colorful trees, but it was different. Mind you the signs helped since they were written in both English and Welsh. When we got to Cardiff, there wasn't too much to see. We could have gone into the Castle, but right now we have to be smart with money and we knew we'd be seeing Edinburgh Castle shortly. When circumstances are unknown, it's best to err on the side of caution. We walked around a bit and of course as I usually need to do it, I had McDonald's in Wales. My Big Mac tasted drier than in Edmonton, but still same old Big Mac. So we walked around a bit more and took pictures and then it was back to the car to decide where to next. We decided that we would spend the night in the Black Mountain National Park. We drove over and found a cozy spot near a lake, Trevor cooked up some pasta and we went to bed.

Day 5 London and Stonehenge England

2009-10-28T05:52:00.001-07:00

Day 5

Oct 19/09

Trevor left after breakfast to pick up our Wicked Van. We decided that it would be cheaper if only one of us went. I stayed and carried all of our luggage down the narrow stairs to wait for Trevor's arrival. It was not an easy task since at least two pieces of luggage weigh over 40lbs and are not exactly the easiest thing to carry down stairs with little vision. Trevor arrived in our Tutti Fruitti van with fruit all over the sides and on the back the following message was written "Warning: the consumption of alcohol is the leading cause of inexplicable rug burns to the forehead and knees". I thought it was cute, Trevor was less impressed stating it wouldn't have been his first choice. We were off on another road trip. First destination, Greenwich to see the Prime Meridian. It was definitely not an easy task to get there because we learned that London's streets change names as you drive on them! But we made it and we stood on time 0. It wasn't anything overly exciting, but it was just neat to be on, to say we've seen the Prime Meridian. We also walked around the Royal observatory and then drove to our next destination; Stonehenge. On our way we stuggled to find somewhere to pull off quickly to eat and ended up spending the last bit of cash that I had exchanged. We made it to Stonehenge just as the sun was setting and that's when we learned that you can only go to the stones at set hours. Otherwise you had to be satisfied with Stonehenge from 50 m away (not that you can walk up to the stones anyways, because there is a rope around them and a trail you must follow. It was pretty neat to see Stonehenge, though not as exciting as I anticipated. We took a bunch of pictures and drove to Avebury, a village which is the site of the largest stone circle. Right before we got there we decided to stop into a grocery store where we learned that our mastercard was not necessarily going to work in small town grocery stores (because they don't take credit cards). We had to scramble to find some sort of cash (which we had thought we had run out of the day before). We somehow managed to find 6 pounds between the two of us and went off with our groceries. It was to be our mission to exchange money as soon as possible after this. For the night we parked in a parking lot of a pub in the village after asking permission, though not getting a clear Yes in response. Apparently to ask the proper people was to find another company that was in charge of the parking lot. But we took our chances and slept there the night.

Hello from England #2

2009-10-27T13:31:00.001-07:00

Day 3

Oct 17/09

We decided to head down to Portobello Road, a market famous for it's antiques. Not too far of a walk, we decided to head there by foot. It was an extremely packed and extremely interesting market. Set on Portobello Rd, the area is awesome. The buildings are all colorful and the street isn't very wide, so when we encountered the garbage truck trying to get through, it was definitely a tight squeeze! The antiques were really neat. I never really had an appreciation for antiques, but this was a good way to start. We had a snack at the market and then headed to purchase a ticket for the Underground to get to our next destination. That destination would be the London Tower. This is a fortress in the middle of London that is from the 1200's! It was used as a residence for royalty as well as prison and a place of private execution. It was really neat. People still live there today. It looks like a fairytale. Unbelieveable that real life actually looked like the stories they tell. It also amazes me how London looks. Depending on where you are, you will find areas that look old, older than anything I'm used to with our modern day Edmonton. I think the closest thing we have in Canada to London is Quebec city (the old part) and even that doesn't look quite that old in comparison. It's crazy. So, we went around London Tower, saw the Crown Jewels of England, which I must say are very impressive, saw some graffiti from the early day prisoners and then we headed out. We also saw the London Tower Bridge and then went to see the London Bridge (I had to. The song kept playing in my head over and over.) We crossed over the London Bridge and walked over to the Shakespeare Globe which is a theatre rebuilt in the image of the original theatre that his plays took place on. We only looked at it from the outside. Again my feet were tired. It was time to go back home. I believe this was the day that jet lag hit me so hard that I fell asleep around 8p and woke up around 5a and had issues falling back asleep. Oh how I love jet lag.

Day 4

Oct 18/09

Today we again headed to the Underground, this time heading to St. Paul's Cathedral, the church that Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married in. We looked around and then we were off to the British Museum. The nice thing about most museums in Britain is that they're free. And they're really good ones too. The British Museum has incredible items from all around the world including Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mexico and others. They have the Rosetta Stone on display (that was pretty cool). They also had mummies, Greek and Roman statues and all kinds of other very museum like items. It was a quick trip here so that we could make it to the next two destinations in time. Next was the British Natural History museum. Trevor has been following his Geek Atlas which tells him all the geeky places to see all around the world. This was one of them. I was a little disappointed after seeing the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Next it was off to the Science Museum next door. Now this was cool. Unfortunately my feet (again) were giving up on me, but I had a bit of strength left to see some of the amazing displays including a section on history of Medicine. Wow, the craziness of how modern medicine began! It's amazing. I also learned of William Hunter. I had heard of him before, but very little. He was a doctor of obstetrics and apparently an amazing one at that. There were some pretty things on display about him. They also had "the closest thing to Watson and Cricks original model of DNA" on display and a huge display on clocks. This was definitely a cool Science museum. We spent a bit more time at the pub next to our hotel after all the museums this day, this time having a traditional meat pie and Trevor had sausage and mash (better known as bangers and mash). We then went back to get ready to leave London the next day.

Day 2 London, England

2009-10-26T05:17:00.001-07:00

Day 2

Oct 16/09

We decided to head to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. Instead of paying for the Underground, we decided to do the 45 min walk according to google from our hotel to the Palace. We walked through Hyde Park where we saw people riding horses and continued on to the Palace. At the end of the park we saw a procession of police on horses heading towards the Palace. We chased them for a bit to take pictures, but they were much faster than us. We arrived at the Palace 30 min before the changing and we stood with the crowd pressed up against the fence. Our view wasn't great but at least we were right up at the fence so we could see inside. It was an interesting ceremony for the changing of the guard with two marching bands and a lot of military commands being yelled, but near the end of it it was hard to focus. It was funny though that the marching band played ABBA music. I'm not sure if it was just to entertain, but it was funny to see the red coated black hat men playing Dancing Queen! Next we were off to see Big Ben. Only a couple of blocks away, we saw him took pictures and then moved on to West Minster Abbey where we thought it too expensive to go inside and continued on to the London Eye. Now we sort of regret not doing into the Abbey because one of Trevor's favorite scientists is buried in there (Sir Isaac Newton). We headed to the London Eye (a giant Ferris wheel like ride that takes 30min and you see views of London). It was a nice day so it was perfect for the ride. At this point my feet were not doing so well. Poor planning also meant I had no water and little to eat. We went on the ride and saw the amazing view. Next it was off to Trafalagar Square and the National Gallery. Inside the National Gallery we saw authentic paintings from Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo! Though most of it was of Mary and Jesus, it was really neat to see. We also went into the National Portrait Gallery where we saw a lot of photos of British celebrities and a sculpture of a man's head made of frozen blood! Gross! Finally we decided to head home. We walked (and at this point my feet were on fire!) On the way we stopped into the National Geographic Store which was super cool and we saw Picadilly Circus, an area that looks like a mini version of Time Square. We walked down the main shopping street which was fully of cool shops and tons of double decker busses. We finally made it home and decided to eat at a pub next to our hotel where I had the fish and chips (a must in Britain). Then it was off to bed for the next day!

Day 1 London, England

2009-10-26T05:14:00.001-07:00

October 15, 2009

Day 1

We have made it to our first destination, London, England. Our flight took us through Chicago, and was fortunately very uneventful. I'm not use to only 8 hr flights, so when they fed us supper and then with less than 2 hours sleep woke me up for breakfast, I wasn't too impressed. Saying good bye to family and friends was definitely difficult and I'm not eager to have homesickness set in (and around Christmas, I can see it being inevitable).

Getting our luggage to the hotel was a pain. I know I probably should have packed less and maybe had better luggage, but this was the only way to fit 40lbs of stuff (instead of 35 lbs with 5 lbs of suitcase). We took a train called Heathrow connect from the airport and then walked a couple of blocks to our hotel when we hit Paddington Station (as in the bear!) I waited in the train station until Trevor found the hotel because the luggage was so heavy (2 trips to get the bags in the hotel!) Our hotel is the Shakespeare Hotel and it's in an old Victorian building. The room is tiny, but at least we have an in suite bathroom. There is no elevator and the stairs are ridiculously steep once you get to the third floor (where of course we ended up) so dragging our bags was interesting.

Today was spent walking around our neighborhood and napping. I only meant to nap for 1 hour, but it turned into 5 hours. The weather was warm and sunny so I wish we had taken advantage, but I guess my body had no intention of functioning with only 2 hours of sleep. In our neighborhood there are a ton of double decker buses as well as fun red phone booths. We walked through Hyde park a bit (it's massive) and we'll try and see the Peter Pan Statue (the one from the movie Hook) tomorrow. We also walked around after supper and ended up in a very Egyptian part of town with tons of Shisha bars.

So far everything is great. We are 7 hours ahead of Edmonton so right now it's 10p as I write (3p Edmonton). That's all I have for now.

I'll talk to you all soon!

The Travelling Prentices

Hello from Montreal

2009-09-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

September 21, 2009

Hello everyone,

A lot has happened since we last talked. We were heading to Rhode Island to meet up with Emanuela and Fil. We had a chance to get together with them and they took us on a tour of Brown University where Emanuela is doing her PhD. She walked through their traditional Van Winkle gates with Emma Watson (Hermione) and Bruce Willis’daughter Scout!!! Apparently she sees Emma Watson quite often! Wow! I was hoping for a glance, but no such luck. We stayed the night in their place, then it was off to Boston where we checked out the MIT museum. Very cool! The museum holds stuff that is/was made by people going to MIT. There were jumping robots and a robot named Kismet that responds appropriately to human speech intonations! So crazy! They also had these crazy art sculptures that would move with gears. Crazy stuff. We also stopped by Quincy market and had some atlantic lobster, clam chowder and Trevor had oysters and clams. Very yummy. I also managed to get us a parking ticket because I was parked too far from the curb! At least there wasn’t any face to face cop action happening with us. Laura, I know you warned us about how crazy Boston was, but it wasn’t until I was super angry with Trevor that I remembered you telling us! Next stop was crossing the border back to Canada!!! We were welcomed back by a very unenthusiastic and uncaring border officer. That was nice. Trevor found a lovely campground at 5 am atlantic time (we lost an hour crossing into the maritimes) that we parked at for the night in New Brunswick (though unfortunately I slept through the arrival, the park and most of the departure from the campground). We then stopped into Saint John where we had some breakfast and I felt a bit of nostalgia from being there back in 2002 for nationals. Then it was off to Nova Scotia to meet up with Moriah and Jared. Their place is AMAZING! They have a river in their backyard! Just insane. This is the kind of place I want to live in. Very cute house (small) with a netted back porch that looks out into the small yard and river flowing by. That river meets with the ocean only a few hundred meters away. You can walk about 2 min and swim in the ocean!!! Unbelievable! We celebrated Moriah’s birthday and went to bed for the night and the next day headed over to Peggy’s cove, a cute tiny village with randomly placed and randomly colored houses. Trevor and Jared jumped around on the huge boulders and Moriah and I took pictures of them and the lighthouse. We headed then into Halifax and walked the boardwalk (apparently the longest in somewhere…Canada maybe?) We stopped into a restaurant there to have oysters (well, Trevor had oysters and mussels, I had the chowder and the crab dip). You got to take advantage of the seafood while on the coast. That night we drove all the way to Charlottetown PEI! It was a cute small town and for some reason all the hotels were completely booked up but we managed to find a deal on Orbitz for this one hotel (that when asked inside told us all they had was suites that would cost $150). Turns out they were all booked, so through the deal on Orbitz we ended up getting a suite!! Very cool! It was a two story hotel room, very spacious with a microwave. The next day we went to their international shellfish festival where we indulged in mussels, Trevor had a ridiculous amount of oysters (some of them for free!) and clams and we both got to eat award winning chowder!!! They were having a competition and after the judges got served the chowder, everyone could go up and get a sample. We sampled 4 different kinds! We also got a free taste of a lobster dish that was being demo’d. We watched her cook it and then we ate it! How fabulous! And then we were off. Off to Quebec City. We made it 50km out from the city and parked in a rest area for the night. Today we walked the walled city and checked out all the cute little shops. It was like Europe (not that I’ve been, but I assume from the pictures I’ve seen). So very cute. We had crepes for breakfast and had poutine for lunch from chez ashton, apparently one of the restaurants claiming to have invented the poutine! We then drove to a chocolate museum (very small little chocolate store with a display) and then it was off to Montreal. We figured we wouldn’t do much in Montreal so we went to dinner and ate and were heading back to the hotel when a couple stopped us and offered us free tickets to the Canadien’s hockey game that had already started (because they had to leave early) so luckily our hotel is right outside the bell centre, so we went. We watched the Canadiens score 3 goals against Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh score 1 on the Canadiens. It was very exciting! (The score was 4 vs 3 for the Canadiens, but we missed the first two of Pittsburgh and the first one from the Canadiens). Now we’re hanging out in the hotel. Tomorrow we are heading to Ottawa!

HOPE EVERYONE IS DOING GREAT!

SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices

Hello from Maine

2009-09-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

This is an amazingly long email! I apologize for the length and hopefully you'll be able to get through it so that you can see all the crazy stuff we've done. Right now we are in a Welcome Centre in Maine heading to St.John New Brunswick. We'll see how far we make it tonight. Watch for the next email with details about the last day or so.

SMILE:)

September 12, 2009

We did a bunch of stuff in the last few days. Kennedy Space Centre was super cool. We did the NASA up close tour which brought us around to the launch sites and other areas of the Centre. Okay, they were from a distance, but still cool. We got to see a shuttle and touch a moon rock. Then it was off to the beaches of Miami. We got an awesome hotel using Hotwire. It was called Whitelaw and it was literally 30sec from the beach (not beachfront, but pretty close). The beach was awesome!!! It was a nice way to just hang out and do nothing. They were pretty empty too because it was a Tuesday. Unfortunately half way through the day it did cloud over, but it was still warm, so we hung out until around 5p and then headed back to get supper. We found out that our hotel was serving complimentary drinks from 7-8p so Trevor and I took advantage. It was great, until I realized that getting burnt at the beach and then getting drunk meant that my immune system had been down for too long and I was going to get sick (in retrospect, everything is so clear). After Miami we drove to Fort Lauderdale to see if I could meet up with one of the girls I worked with. Unfortunately she wasn’t there and I couldn’t get a hold of her L oh well, next stop. We drove as far as we could toward Washington DC. We passed through North Carolina (Kami, I did a little wave for you and Ron) and South Carolina (obviously not in that order) and then Virginia where we pulled off for the night. The next day around 5 p we finally made it to Chantilly, VG where we went to a sister Smithsonian. We saw some pretty cool air and space stuff including the concord that in Transformers is the old guy (okay I have no idea any Transformer names, but if you see the second one, you know who I’m talking about) and we saw the Enterprise shuttle and cool artifacts like their food and personal items. We also saw the Enola Gay which is the airplane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Crazy stuff. Then around 7p we got into Washington DC and went searching on Hotwire to get a hotel. We got a Hilton, but once we got to the Hilton we realized that the Hilton is not all it’s cracked out to be. It means that parking costs $30 a day and you pay for every bloody thing including internet! It was such a scam. The room was also much smaller than our Best Western and Whitelaw AND no fridge or safety box (well you could ask for it, but the other hotels just had them in the room). At this point in the trip I was starting to feel crappy. The next day we were off to see the Smithsonian’s. We saw “the castle” where the loot pile from The Night at the Museum 2 was held and also one of the American Idol desks. And then we went to the Museum of Natural History full of stuffed animals. It sounds worse than it was. It was actually pretty cool. Ash, you would have been right at home at this place! They had a bones display from pilgrims in the 17^th and 18^th century and their analysis of the bones. It was cool. Then we went to the air and space museum but at that point I was definitely museum’d out! I was not pleasant company, but Trevor was awesome! We also went to see the Washington monument, the White House and the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know how far we walked but it was insane! We got pizza that night and went back to the hotel. The next day was another round of museums and the zoo which has a panda!!! That was awesome!!! We tried doing that quick and then headed back to where the monuments and stuff were but some crazy rally and concert were going on and it was impossible to drive. We parked and ended up going to the Museum of American History which goes through how science spread and how the Americans travelled and there is one display on Pop Culture with one of 5 pairs of the original Ruby Slippers as well as a Kermit puppet and other things of that sort. We saw a CP30 from one of the movies and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle from one of the movies. Weird things like that. It was cool. But I was definitely done! We headed to our now new favorite place to eat (at least my favorite) Duccini’s grabbed a ridiculous amount of food and then headed out of Washington DC. We drove until we got to Jackson, New Jersey and parked by a lake for the night. The next day we were off to Six Flags! It was AWESOME!!! I LOVE ROLLERCOASTERS! Trevor didn’t feel too well for most of the day, but I went on most of the rollercoasters twice! It was awesome. By 5p we decided to head out and drive to New York. Once again, Hotwire put us in a Hilton. We used Hotwire outside a Crowne Plaza where we found internet. Finding internet has been interesting. There isn’t much unlocked wireless down here. Since we were going through New Jersey anyways, we decided to stop by Trevor’s old co-workers place. It was neat to see another person we knew on this crazy trip of ours. That night we got into our hotel by the Newark Airport (cheaper than New York) and slept until 10a. I just couldn’t get out of bed. We didn’t get out of the hotel room until 12p. At that point we headed to the Liberty State Park from the New Jersey side so that we could go see the Statue of Liberty. First we took a Ferry to Ellis Island, the main island of immigration. We went through the building where people would register to be immigrants in the USA. It was really neat. Then we took the ferry over to the Statue of Liberty where we actually got to go inside of the monument. We could only go up to the base of the statue on an oberservation deck that looked out to New York but it was still pretty cool. The view was great. Took some pictures then headed on the ferry back to our car. Thank goodness we went through the New Jersey side because there were probably 50X more people going on the ferry headed to New York than New Jersey. It was insane! Back at our car I figured we should head into New York but once we got there we were pretty much at a stand still. Traffic was awful. It was at that point Xenia, one of my old synchro kids, called and we told her we’d meet her. Never agree to something unless you know the full details. Apparently to get out to Long Island where she lives is 1.5hours from NewYork! But we drove out there and had supper with her which was really good. We were there quite late and then had a 1.5 hour drive back to the hotel, so once again we slept in until pretty late. This time we drove into Brooklyn and parked outside Trevor’s cousin’s place because she got back to us and said we could spend the night. It was the most interesting neighborhood. There were all these Jewish people with top hats and ringlets(the men) and the women wore black skirts and these cute hats or head wraps. It was crazy! I didn’t realize that New York had these kinds of neighborhoods. We took the metro into New York and headed to the World Trade Centre memorial site first, then it was off to Time Square where we saw the Mayor of London. Time Square was incredible! I can’t imagine seeing it all the time. This is where ADHD develops I think. So many flashing lights and adds, it’s crazy. Then we headed to Central Park before our Broadway was going to start. We went to see Wicked! It was AMAZING! That was definitely a great broadway musical to see and I highly recommend it to anyone going to New York. The singers were amazing and the set was incredible. It was so well done! After the show, we went through Time Square to our metro station. Time Square was showing Fashion week on the big screen! You should have seen all the people staring at the giant screen. It was very cool to be there. It was amazing how quiet it was even though there were so many people. Very neat. And then it was off to Manda’s for the night. We finally got in touch with her and got to talk to her briefly before she headed to bed. Her apartment was really neat. It was a very spacious high ceiling apartment with 2 bedrooms and an amazing view of New York! It was really awesome. Today, we are off to Providence to see Emanuela and Fil.

Hope everyone is doing great!

SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices

Hello from Orlando

2009-09-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

September 6,2009

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a while since I wrote so I’ll see if I can remember all that we’ve done. Okay, so we ended up catching up with Aurelie the next day over coffee then we began our intense drive from Indiana down to Georgia. We pretty much drove straight through. We stopped in Kentucky for Kentucky Fried Chicken, and then we stopped in Nashville, Tennessee to see the Country Music Hall of Fame. It doesn’t sound that exciting if you are not a country fan (which I’m not, but figured that since we’re in Nashville, you got to do it)but it actually was quite spectacular. It was kind of like a history of music at the beginning and had a bunch of cool outfits on display and a bunch of gold and platinum records. Very cool. Then it was off to Atlanta where we hotelled it that night. The next morning we went to check out the World of Coke. That was awesome! We got to try a bunch of Coke products (60 ish) from around the world. My favorite was one from Africa and it was a Bilbo drink-Kiwi Mango. There was a terrible one from Italy called Beverley. It was a ridiculously bitter drink. We also walked into the CNN building. It was pretty cool.

Then we were off to Orlando. We drove straight there from Atlanta and arrived at our ridiculously cheap Best western. The next morning we needed to buy tickets for Disney and lo and behold got sucked into going to a timeshare talk to get cheaper Disney tickets (I kinda wanted to go having heard from other people what they were like). They guy showed us some nice timeshares, but when it was time to say no, he was not interested. He wasn’t even making valid points by the end. In fact he told us that he didn’t want to sell to us anymore by the time we were through. We told him that if it truly was a good deal, he wouldn’t have to worry because we would be back to buy from him. Well, clearly it isn’t a good deal, because he said he wouldn’t sell to us. Oh well.

We grabbed our cheap tickets and off we went. We decided to do Typhoon Lagoon and Downtown Disney that night. It was a great hot day for the water park. We were tired at the end. So off we went back to the hotel to get rested for the next day.

The next day was Epcot in the morning until 2p and Magic Kingdom until 10p. It was a long day full of running back and forth between FastPass and regular rides. We made it though (barely). We actually ended up getting stuck on several rides(for short times. Who knew Disney rides could break down?) but the one that was craziest was Haunted Mansion. From what the ladies next to us were saying, we got stuck for 25min (where I took a nap and refreshed) and then they turned on the lights and walked us back out of the ride!!! It was cool to see the inner workings of the ride! We also had a bit of rain hit us. W e still rode rides but there were plenty of umbrellas and ponchos out.

Today we went to Animal Kingdom until 5p and Hollywood Studios until 10p with Fantasmic ending our DisneyWorld experience. It was a very hot and humid day. We got a little rain again today, but really it was more like mist. Again we ran everywhere and almost died from exhaustion, but we saw a bunch of stuff! It was a good time.

Tomorrow we are heading to the Kennedy Space station and then off to Miami!

Hope everyone is doing well!

SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices

Hello from Lafayette, Indiana

2009-09-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

September 1, 2009

Hello Again,

Well the highlight yesterday was the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. Trevor did a lot of calling to get us into the museum and when the lady finally came she actually let us into the “shed” where the big ball is kept. Trevor had to buy a bunch of souvenirs as the song says and then we were off. It was a lot of driving. Unfortunately just before we got to the ball, we ended up being stopped for “speeding”which is ridiculous because Trevor was driving. Anyways, we got off with a warning. That would be #2 cop attention (border crossing being #1)

We made it to just outside Chicago last night with plenty of toll booths to greet us (as you said, Laura). We ended up parking in a bit of a residential area, kind of country like. Well, guess what woke us up? That’s right, the cops. We really need to stop running into these guys. That was #3. Anyways, they let us go, but it wasn’t a pleasant hello that’s for sure. We drove into Chicago and did an extremely long walking tour that the Lonely Planet suggested. Saw some pretty cool things including a mirror ball sculpture which was really cool. We listened to some live jazz and ate at the original deep dish pizza joint called Uno Pizzeria. We even took pictures at Harpo Studios. It was so exciting. It was just a wall (and a few body guards) between me and Oprah!

Next it was off to Purdue (Lafayette, IN)to visit Trevor’s friend Aurelie. We haven’t had any success connecting with her. We did get to take pictures next to a statue of Neil Armstrong. That was pretty cool. I guess he went to school here. We decided that we are going to stay overnight at a hotel. So we were driving from Aurelie’s house to get to the hotel, when there were flashing lights AGAIN behind us. Seriously! Fourth time in 5 states! You’d think we were criminals! I guess that’s what you get when you have foreign plates (and don’t have a front plate). Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day when it comes to cop stops.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful Edmonton weather. Wish you were here!

SMILEJ
Amanda

Hello from North Dakota

2009-08-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

August 31, 2009

Hi Everyone!

First leg of our trip is done. We made it into Winnipeg at 1:30p on Saturday Aug 29. Just outside of Edmonton we decided to visit the big pysanka. We drove into the night Friday and stayed in a cute little recreation area outside Saskatoon. We then woke up at 6a Edmonton time and drove pretty much straight to Winnipeg. We did stop in a little town called Mennidosa where we stood in a 15 car line up outside a gas station. Once we got to the front we found out the reason it was a 15 car line up was because they had been giving away free gas but they were out by the time we had got to the front. Just outside Winnipeg we took pictures next to an incredible field of sunflowers! It was like out of a movie. Just incredible. And then there was Winnipeg. We started out at Stan and Paula’s with a shower and clean clothes and some very excited boys. After some discussion as to what the plan was, we decided to head to the Oasis, Auntie Judy’s and Uncle Gord’s and Auntie Loreen’s cabin. It was chilly, but nice when we were out in the sun. The boys taught us about frog catching at the Oasis. We ended up with over 30 frogs in a bucket! It was quite the gathering at the Oasis. Judy, Gord, Loreen, Sandy, Herman, Stan, Paula, Kieran, McKinnley, Kara, Brian, Cathy, Riel, and us. It was fun. The next day we went to the forks and met up with Elizabeth and Cathy and saw the 2 most important things according to McKinnley: the skate park and Sugar Mountain (a candy store). We then had another gathering back at Stan and Paula’s and this time saw Kristin, Richard and Chelsea. After that gathering we met up with Sarah and Billy for gelati. It was a great day. This morning we had a pretty sweet farwell from Kieran, McKinnley and Auntie Loreen. We are now off to the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota which is in Darwin and then as close to Chicago as we can go.

We just went across the border and got searched. They pulled out my purse contents and then made Trevor and I sit in a little room with a two way window (where we couldn’t see our car) and they searched the car. I guess they found Trevor’s American passport and the lady told us that Trevor should use it next time instead of his Canadian. They were much nicer to us after that. They let us go no problem. We’re now at a rest stop in North Dakota just outside Grand Forks.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Miss you all!

SMILE J

The travelling Prentices

Leaving Fiji

2008-09-06T00:05:00.000-07:00

Bula Everyone!

Well, the honeymoon is quickly approaching the end. We spent an incredible 6 days in Fiji, hanging out in the clear blue waters, playing in the sand and watching absolutely incredible sunsets! We're definitely more burnt than either one of us wanted, but it was well worth is to hang out here. We went snorkelling and the reefs were amazing. We even got to see an octopus!!! It was so cool! We learned how to husk a coconut and to weave a basket from palm leaves! It was so much fun. Every night we had dinner on the beach listening to a live band play. It was so much fun.

Can't wait to see you all soon.

SMILE:)
The returning honeymooners

We're still in New Zealand!

2008-08-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

We're still alive. We are now on our way back North. We went skiing in Queenstown, which was an absolute thrill since the scenery was incredible and the snow was awesome. Trevor actually boarded so that he could stay with me awww! We've seen the ocean and the mountains. We've frozen a bit and had some fun in a bit of warmer weather (maybe 15 degrees). We've been driving lots, but the scenery is so awesome. We went down to Milford Sound and went on a cruise that took us out to the ocean and back to the little cove ish area. We saw seals in the wild (they were so cute). We actually saw one on a rock when we were still on land. We camped in the awesomest areas with beautiful rainforest and mountains as our surroundings. I know I'm just rambling off a bunch of places, but believe me, it's been awesome. It is definitely a beautiful country. We're right now in Hokitika, jade country. It is a little town where the ocean meets mountains. We went swimming in the pool (mainly to take a shower since we've been sleeping in the van for the last few days. Yesterday we did a couple of walks leading us to the glaciers (Fox and Franz Josef) on the west coast. We'll be heading Kaikoura next and then up to the North Island after. We're having a great time and we hope everyone is doing well back home!

Talk to you eventually!

SMILE:)
Amanda + Trevor

We're in New Zealand!

2008-08-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

August 17, 2008

Hello there from the land down under (Kiwi land),

We’ve made it, not without some rough times to start us off though. We got to Edmonton airport only to realize that our tickets were apparently suppose to be paper tickets vs electronic tickets and obviously we didn’t have any paper tickets. When we got in contact with our travel agent, he said that on his computer it showed that the tickets were electronic and we figured that Air Canada was the one at fault. In some split second decision making, Trevor REpurchased our own seats (that’s right, we bought our own seats back) to Vancouver with 6 minutes to cut off time for check-in. Once we flew into Vancouver we actually had smooth sailing (thank God for Air New Zealand). Our flight to New Zealand was not welcomed with a seat upgrade, but rather a glass of champagne for each of us and eventually a card signed by the pilot and stewards on board to start the honeymoon (we had a very nice concierge on board). The plane was awesome. We had individual TVs, very comfy seats and some awesome food (I love plane food). Trevor slept better than usual (plane wise), I did my best, and 15 hours later, we landed in Auckland. It took a few hours to find a place to spend the night, but we got a hotel, rented a car and off we went to explore. We walked around the harbour and went into the Minus 5 bar, a bar made entirely (well, almost) of ice. We had drinks in ice glasses. It was cool (literally). We got caught in rainstorm on the way back to the hotel. We then decided to visit Mission Bay (Stephen’s suggestion) and I found TONS of shells on the beach there. We had some fish and chips and then called it a night (we fell asleep around 8pm!) We got over jet lag by sleeping until 8 the next morning. We did a walk around Auckland Domain, a beautiful park area in the middle of Auckland. Our walk was appropriately named “Lover’s walk”. We then headed to the airport for our domestic flight to Christchurch (south island). It was delayed by an hour, but that’s okay. With all the technology Trevor brought along, we were able to watch Fear Itself while we waited. We’re now in Christchurch, after a very scenic flight. It’s cool (probably around 10 degrees), but livable. We have a fabulous hotel and we’ll be picking up the Wicked campervan tomorrow to start our southward driving adventures. We are having a great time so far, enjoying married life! We’ll update you again soon.

SMILE ☺
The Honeymooners!

August 18, 2008

So the continuation of the above is from yesterday. We went to an awesome arts market and pretty much walked all of down town Christchurch. We went to the Botanical Gardens and saw a black swan sitting on her nest. It was quite a beautiful day spent in relaxation. We then headed home to watch the wedding and to enjoy some left over spaghetti we had made the day before. It has been a wonderful couple days so far.

Hope it’s warmer back home than it is over here!