Arriving in Beijing was somewhat overwhelming. The simple task of getting to our hostel from the airport, with preprepared directions in Chinese characters was made difficult due to innumerable illegal taxis trying to rip us off at every turn. Ultimately we managed to bus it in to the city centre successfully, and ultimately found a legal taxi who still managed to charge us double claiming he couldn’t find our destination. A 4 km trip resulted in a 12 km trip – we find it hard to believe he didn’t know his way around the vicinity of the forbidden city. Frustrating!!!!

The top 10 highlights of Beijing were:

10. Bussing out to the Summer palace – beautiful gardens and lake. We also saw a free theatrical kung fu show.

9. The silk market which was 6 levels of the craziest market I’ve ever seen. I have never been hassled so much from every single stall you walk past, and bargaining was hard! Boy do they try you for extremely high prices! We managed to talk down 2 pairs of jeans from 1300 RNB ($400!) to 180RNB – they weren’t happy about it either, but didn’t want to miss out on a sale. I was called stingy – a title I hold with pride! Later that day a group of us were hanging out at our hostel talking about our purchases. One guy boasted he had bought 4 pairs for 400 RNB each. Everyone fell silent. Sucker!!

8. Street food – especially the crazy food at the night market - Dog stew anyone? How about scorpions? Silk worms? Sea horse? Crickets? No? Would penises, testicles or stomach take your fancy? Nick chose dumplings, sugared fruit and fried icecream....

The night market and its crazy food

7.Eating Peking Duck in one of the famous restaurants. Nick even ate the tongue, not knowing it. Apparently very tender. Not for me.

6. Our amazingly beautiful hostel – the best we have ever stayed in. The hosts were incredibly helpful , the location brilliant, and the beds were super comfy and their food was yum! Located in a hutong near the forbidden city - City Walls Courtyard House Hostel comes with our highest recommendations!

The hostel common area

5. Forbidden City. Inside the forbidden city was huge – many temples, the thickest walls surrounding it we have ever seen and beautiful imperial gardens. We also visited a student’s art exhibition (=scam? Maybe...) and did end up buying some artwork that we are very pleased with – 4 pieces representing summer, autumn, winter and spring. They are beautiful and for a total of $50 AUD, we don’t really feel we can claim to be ripped off!

forbidden jump

shot of the day - pretty sure this guy could be a model....

4. We saw an acrobatics show – we had VIP seats care of our hostel. They had some really neat tricks and tumbling acts. Nick’s favourite was a guy who balanced a ball on chopsticks in his mouth, he got to throw the ball onto the stage from the audience and the guy caught it on his chopsticks.

Crazy woman balancing stuff in her mouth while twirling rings and riding a unicyle with one foot. not bad...

3. Jinshan Park was great. There were so many elderly people in the park doing dance classes, twirling ribbons to music, singing etc. There were three temples on a hill overlooking the forbidden city, and from here there were great views of the city, only partly obstructed by smog.

The oldies doing ribbon twirling in the park

2. Hiring bikes and riding amongst the insane traffic – organised chaos. We passed Tiananmen Square – biggest square in the world, and went to the temple of heaven.

temple of heaven

1. Visiting the great wall of china from jinshanling to simatai which is mostly unreconstructed. It was a challenging and breathtaking 10 km hike. Nick had a beer to support his hbapg cause.

Drinking probably the best beer in my life, after hiking 10km on the great wall

sitting on the wall

Xian

The overnight train was not as bad as anticipated, but the smoke on the non smoking train made fi feel light headed. Consideration of others does not appear to be always the norm in Chinese culture. They have no concept of personal space, letting people off a train in order to get on, waiting in lines, obeying non smoking signs and general public hygiene (spitting, children defacating in public, availability of toilet paper...).

We did a day trip out to the terracotta warriors and were surprised to find so many remain unexcavated. Each warrior is unique, and their placement there, near Emperor Mings tomb, is thought to have been to ensure him protection as a ruler in his afterlife.


the terracotta army

In the evening we saw a water, light and music show at the big wild goose pagoda (biggest in china) near our hostel in Xian. We made good friends with the staff at the hostel. Nick had a Chinese lesson and managed to get the boss to let us borrow Jimmy to take us to a really hard to find traditional dumpling restaurant. It was amazing, the dumplings come on plates of 30 or 60! So we had one of each. 90 dumplings between the 3 of us!

Dumplings with Jimmy

The highlight however, was our trip to Hua Shan (mountain). Fi got really upset at a website which claimed that it was the most dangerous tourist attraction mountain in the world. We found it to be perfectly safe, and we had a lovely time hiking around the peaks and leaving a momento padlock at the highest point we reached.

Cloud ladder on Hua Shan

A lock with a view

Shanghai
Another night train and we were in the hustle bustle of Shanghai. Shopping galore! “fake stuff heaven” as promised by one of fi’s work collegues – thanks Emma! We did enjoy walking along the main street and being solicited by agents who took us down side streets to fake shop fronts and false doors that lead to a plethora of desiger ripoff’s along with rip off prices. Here we sharpened our bargaining skills and picked up a few really nice things at up to 80% off their original offer. We always felt a hint of satisfaction when the seller was not so happy with the final price. We ended up becoming "Kiwi’s" while shopping, to ensure the exchange rate game they play was to our best advantage!

yiyuan gardens

Shenzhen

We were met on arrival by Fi’s dad who preceded to spoil us for a week. Late night foot massages, delicious Australian wine and many "pijio", (our favourite being kingway, pronounced “ching way”) and we had some of the best food we have had this trip: teppanyaki, sichuan hot pot, yum cha, NYPD pizza (officially the best pizza in china), spicy prawn, thai, a lavish 6 star buffet at the Shangri la hotel, but the piece de resistance was drunken prawns at “the Island” cooked by the man himself! Nick made his spectacular karaoke debut, i think most people clapped when he finally got off stage. Shenzhen had amazing architecture and was more westernised than the other citys we had visited, the influence perhaps of so many "Guaylo" expats. Special thanks to Tim, Lindsay and Tracy, and Ian and Shirley for so many good times shared, and thanks to Bonnie for successfully taking us shopping for a new camera! We wish all the best for the opening x-pats bar, guarenteed to be the best bar in Shenzhen!

Sich uan hot pot, yes it tasted even better once it hits your lips.... so tingly

Fi's Dad in action, drunken prawns

Shenzhen municipal center

Hong kong

We spent a quick couple of days in hong kong. What a difference from mainland china! The taxi driver was really helpful, people stopped to help us numerous times and they actually queued for public transport!! We took the peak tramway to the lookout on Victoria peak. Spectacular night view of hong kong and hong kong island. Rode the 800m travelator/escalator, the longest in the world. Paid too much for the vietnamese visa’s cos we told we needed “express service.” We strolled the temple street night market - the best market we have seen so far. Space is obviously precious in HK, and we found ourselves paying the most for accomodation since Europe, for a room smaller than a prison cell and no windows!

The market at night in HK

the 800m travellator!

The view from victoria peak.

We are on to Vietnam next, and will be in Cambodia for Christmas. We wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. We do not have mobile phones functioning at the moment, but would love to hear from everyone via email. We look forward to seeing everyone back home in Melbourne early next year! xx

China Beijing to Shenzhen and Hong Kong remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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the gang at a great bar in amsterdam - Nick, jess, fi, bunx and chandler

amsterdam by day

even more gorgeous at night

It was very cool riding around town looking at the architechture and canals. we found a brewery in a windmill and sampled their beers.

windmill brewery

We drank the La trappe beer, the only dutch trappist brew. Amsterdam was having the Saint Nicolas festival, celebrating christmas or something. they had black helpers and were dancing everywhere. very politically incorrect, but they gave out yummy treats to all the kids (and us too!) We did go for a good walk through the red light district and toured the sex museum, and sampled the bakery treats in the coffee shops. (Thanks Jess and Westy for a fwe of your photos!)

by the canal when we were bike riding

nick, i knew you and your mate westy were dodgy - check out that dirty mo!

the scary sinterklaas

bike riding through dam square

Belgium
Belgium, finally! in beer heaven, i have never been so happy, within 3 hours i was ready to move to Antwerp. We found the best bars in Antwerp. The first bar we walked into was Oud Arsenaal, a bar favoured by local old men, but as the guide map said - old men often know what is good. Kulminator is run buy a husband and wife team that collect rare and aged beers. Some aged from the 70's. Here we drank the trappist beer Westvletern, which is pretty much impossible to get and is supposed to be illegal to sell. They served old beers in a basket. swanky! We did a trip out to the Westmalle abbey and beer cafe. we tried the Westmalle double and triple and a special one called half and half, which true to name is a mix of the double and triple. we had lunch there and ate the trappist cheese and their delicious paprika soup.

famous belgian fries

nick loving life at the kulminator in antwerp

the owners of the Kulminator - Leen and Dirk

Bruges was cool. we watched the Colin Farrel movie In Bruges before we went, giving us a bit of an insight to this lovely town. The belfry tower was a treat, there was a guy playing the glockenspiel while we climbed it. very cool. Unfortunately 2 of the best beer cafes were closed on the night we were there but we managed to find a brewery cafe called De Garre, which was excellent. A visit to the chocolate museum rounded out the tour of Bruges. They had a demonstration of the making of pralines, and tasting too of course.

chocolate tasting after the demonstration at choco story in bruges

bruges view from the famous belfry

Old men playing bocce in a square, near the church of the holy blood. You can also see part of the modern artwork the locals call the car wash.

Brussels. Street art of Tin Tin while you walk from bar to bar is a cool sight as you wander the streets. We saw the city from above by going up a parking high rise, a cheaper alternative to other cities. We toured the Cantillon brewery, the last brewery in brussels. they brew lambic style, which is spontaneously fermented by air-bourne yeast that only occurs in belgium. Manniken Pis, the little pissing statue, and the open air urinal on the side of a church were interesting sights. Brussels is home to Delirium, which holds the world record for beers, 2004 different beers available. we sampled a few.

cantillion brewery in brussels

Mannekin pis

So in the last few days we have drunk beers including....
Hoegaarten, Hoegaarten special, Traubadour, Westmalle double, Westmalle Triple, Orval, aged Orval (2006), Archel, Timmermans Kriek, Adelardus, Karmeleit triple, Gordons Xmas ale, Westvletern, St Louis Gueuze, Oud Beersel Gueuze, Kasteel Kriek, Kasteel Blonde, Chimay Blue, Mort Subite Kriek, Gouldin Carolus christmas ale, Malheur, De Koninek, Stella, Brugse Zot blonde and bruin, Hoegaarten Rosee, Kriek Max, De Garre Triple, Lindemans Pechehesse (peach kriek), Kwak, Celise Witte, Jacobins Gueuze, Rodenbach, Cantillon Gueuze and Kriek, Delirium Tremens, Delirium Nocturum, Rochefort, Mort Subite lambic blonde, Gulden Draak, Kapittel triple, poppering hommel beer, La trappe tripel, Maes, Jupiler, and probably a few others that we tried when the memory was a bit fuzzy.
highlights were the Westvletern and chimay, the karmeliet triple, the christmas ales and some of the krieks in particular the Max and Kasteel.

nick and his favourite beer, drinking at oud arsenaal

drinking the kwak in the cool glass at de garre in bruge

Nick trying to choose one of the 2650 beers available at Delirium

Austria
Last but not least we had a stopover in Vienna on our way to Beijing. This part of trip was a comedy of errors of sorts....
When we got to the airport train station, we accidentally ended up going the wrong direction on the train - only realising this at the end of the line, in the middle of countryside and nowhere! Had to wait an hour for the train to return to vienna airport and continue on half an hour in the opposite direction! What better way to see the countryside right??!! Once in vienna we found our hostel without too many dramas, and headed out for a night at the opera! Having missed the show at the state opera, we planned to see the other opera which was apparently starting an hour later at the other venue. When we arrived we found that we must have been told the wrong start time, but could get in cheaply anyway at intermission - standing room tickets at 3€! We didnt miss much - neither of us particularly loved the opera, it was in german, but translated in english on little screens. the orchestra was cool though, and the opera house was beautiful, lots of old important looking people very dressed up and eating hors'deuves and wine during the intermission.

We ate wiener schnitzel for dinner - massive servings of veal schnitzel, and dry and greasy and sadly dissappointing. Wanted to catch the christmas market afterwards - but it was closed!

The Wiener Schnitzel, not bad but got nothing on a parma

Next day we rode the tram around the city loop. We were told we could get on either the 1 or 2 tramin either direction. Lies! The number 2 took us somewhere the equivalent of Preston!!! another wasted hour on our 30 hour stopover! grrr! But then we caught the right tram, saw the spanish riding school/palace etc. We also visited the state opera - and it turns out we had been there the night before!! we had somehow ended up at the wrong opera!!!! so we saw the nice one anyway without realising it!

At the Opera.

Vienna had beautiful architecture, we had a lovely yet very cold time here. The highlight was the giant christmas market in front of the town hall, which had been made into an advent calender with numbered windows up to 24. Gorgeous! So was the Gluhwein that brought back memories of Germany 10 years ago for Fi...

The night market

Now onto China and a very different travel experience......

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cliffs of moher at sunset from a distance

cliffs of moher

Stayed the night in Doolin, in the cosy, well recommended Rainbow hostel. For dinner we went to the famous McGanns for a pub meal. Unfortunately we were too sick to stay for the live music that the pub was most renouned for. The Irish weather had finally got to us, as we were both suffering from the most severe colds that we can remember.

Doolin old cemetary

Next stop was Galway, where we had a quick walk around of the sights and the town center. On the way to Galway we passed through "The Burrens", best described by Fi as looking like the rock man from the never ending story movie.

The burren

We also drove through the Connemara, a beautiful part of ireland just north of Galway that was described in our guidebook as "so beautiful it makes your brain hurt". Unfortunately it was raining so hard we couldnt see 10 meters outside the car, in driving conditions so difficult, it made our brains hurt. We had a pitstop in Westport which seemed like a beautiful town, but as it was 4pm and getting dark we pressed on to Sligo. Our Hostel receptionist in Sligo asked us what month it was.... It's a bit of a slow town. For dinner Fi had the "recession special" - Dont ever be tempted to try curry cheese chips. It tastes even worse than it sounds.

We stopped at a waterfall just out of Sligo, and visited the Carromore Megalithic tombs. 2500BC stone tombs and stone circles. pretty impressive stuff. It was actually closed but there was a contractor emptying the sewerage tanks and he let us in for our own self guided tour. Nearby was another massive stone tomb on a hill of some important queen, but time restrains and more rain dissuaded us from scaling the hill for good views etc.

megalithic tomb with knocknorea in the background

waterfall near Sligo

We pushed on to northern Ireland, where the roads were much better maintained and the distance was now in miles. We visted the Giants Causeway. The legend goes a Giant named Finn McCool built a stone bridge from ireland to scotland to challenge a rival giant. He got scared and when he saw his rival approaching and ran home to his wife for advice. His wife disguised him as a baby to hide him. When the rival saw the baby he was scared at the size of Finn's "baby" and ran away destroying the giants causeway behind him. So the moral of the story is.....

a castle on the cliff edge - apparently built so close to the edge, the kitchen fell in

Giants causeway rock formations

giants causeway

After a massive day on the road we ended up in Belfast. In the morning we did a black cab tour of Belfast. Our very thickly accented driver took us to all the politically important sites - Shankill road with its pro loyalist, anti IRA murals, to Belfasts very own "Berlin Wall" which has gates that still close every night to separate the two communities. We saw the most most bombed hotel in the world (it has been blown up 36 times), and visited the IRA headquarters. For 90 minutes we were submerged in the turbulant history of Northern Ireland, learning that there are no easy answers to this political (not religious) land dispute, about the desparate struggles, hunger strikes, and the 18 bombs that have been disarmed in the last 6 months.... It also really brought into perspective the situation in palistine. We were also given the opportunity to write a peace message on the wall - and so are now part of the history. We found it absolutely fascinating, one of the best tours of our trip so far.

shankhill road mural

dividing wall

republican mural

On our way back to kilkenny we went via powerscourt waterfall and glendalough - fi's favourite place in ireland, so beautiful.

powerscourt waterfall south of dublin

Glendalough

Glendalough

We covered a lot of ground and managed to see a lot of things in such a short time. A few things stood out about the green isle...

- the irish really do love their guiness and drink a lot of it
- the country roads are somewhat narrow, and all the roads are country roads... and there are ALWAYS tractors driving slowly and nowhere to pass them!
- the names of towns read like an obituary - kilkenny, killarney - there are heaps!
- other favourite town names include - Borris, Borris-in-Ossory, Two-mile-Borris, Doon, Emo park, and Bally.... (insert about 1000 names here..)
- they always talk about the weather (but its always raining)
- you are "just after" reading the end of our blog.

Trippin around Ireland remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We have been living in Ireland since mid August, trying to earn a few euros, and have been enjoying not living out of a back pack for a while!

We have also been lucky enough to do a couple of "small trips" around Europe - we travelled to Munich for Oktoberfest at the end of September, then went to the Czech republic where we stayed in a brewery spa (and had beer baths), then explored Prague. From there we reunited ourselves with all our friends in London and watched the AFL Grand Final in an Aussie "walkabout" pub at 430am! We also explored Oxford and visited Christchurch College where the famous Harry Potter dining room was inspired.

Oktoberfest

At the Lockenbergs - Michael Tina and Lasse. Dressed for Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest - in the Hacker Pschorr Tent with Alix and Felix

Being a beer wench

Outside with nicks mates

Czech Republic

Hutchy having his beer bath in Chodovar

Prague square at sunset

clock

nick in praha town square

Oxford

The Harry Potter dining hall at Christchurch College in Oxford.

Paris

We also spent a few days in Paris recently, doing all the sights. Loved the Musee D'Orsay, and were fortunate enough to have glorious weather to explore. We stayed in the Latin Quarter which was a perfect location for amazing food at reasonable prices, and great base to explore from. We also travelled out to Epernay in the champagne region and toured Moet Chandon which was a highlight - 17 miles of cellars, stood next nearly 100000 bottles of Don Perignon, and ended up having the "full tasting" after making friends with the tour host!

Champagne tasting

Outside the Louvre

Eiffel tower

Paris at night

Fountain outside Musee Pompidou

Kilkenny

After a couple of weeks in Dublin with Bec and Dave, I (Fi) came to Kilkenny Ireland in mid August to visit Tony who was doing some physio work here, and fell in love with the place. Fortunately I found work pretty quickly at an awesome wine and tapas bar called the Grapevine. I moved in where Tone was staying, just a 15 min walk from the centre of town. Through work at the wine bar I've made some great friends and had some wonderful times - many involving drinking yummy wine from all over the world, and eating lots of tuscan ham and cheese!!! (And the occasional peroshki thanks my my lovely polish friends!) I'm really sad to leave as I have enjoyed my time so much here, I love the people I work with, and its even better since Nick and Bec both moved to KK. It has also got me thinking - maybe I will open my own wine bar one day....

My work

My lovely work colleagues - Lizzy, Anna, T, and Sabastian (Irish, Polish, Aussie, New Zealander and another Polish!)

wine tasting at the Grapevine (my work)

I also recently started a second job (the recession is hitting everyone hard over here), and have been working in Monsoon/accessorize for the past few weeks too. AWESOME discount, and a great excuse for a new wardrobe and some jewellery - no doubt I needed some new clothes!!!

KK is an old medieval town with a castle and gorgeous castle grounds great for walking around, and old cathedrals and other buildings. It also has a surprisingly high amount of pubs and bars - our favourites being - the grapevine of course! and matt the millers on monday, langtons on tuesday, left bank any day! and an honourable mention to lanigans for playing a live version of skippy dedicated to us!

town hall with the Hurling teams colours draped over it

castle grounds on a nice day

main street kilkenny

Jumping the castle

We have become well accustomed to drinking guiness - it really does taste a million times better over here in ireland, had many an irish stew and plenty of potatoes (sometimes done three ways in one dish!). We are used to the rain, but I will NEVER get used to the cold - and its starting to get REALLY cold now in late october.

We are hoping to see a little more of the country over the next couple of weeks before we leave. Although, we have had a few wonderful day trips and so far have been to Kells Priory, the rock of Cashel (no blue cheese to be found anywhere in town however!), kissed the Blarney stone near Cork, seen the cliffs of Moher in the west, and Dublin.

My turn now, thanks fi, not a bad job....

When we arrived in Ireland i headed down to county kerry to Killarney to find work there. As it is a popular tourist spot i thought it would be a good place to find bar work. turns out that ireland is suffering badly from the current economic situation and they are having a poor tourist season and there is high unemployment everywhere. After much frustration i went on the ring of Kerry tour, which was quite impressive. Diverse landscapes from national parks to sheer cliffs and mountain passes to beautiful beaches.

From Killarney i decided to go to a larger city with more employment oportunities. Cork, as ireland's second largest city seemed like the best place to go. Cork was not as picturesque as other places in Ireland as it is quite a big port town and was pretty industrial. I found work within a few days with a catering mob but quit with out starting as the hostel i was staying at offered me a job. the pay was lousy (8.70 an hour) and they charged me 15 euro a night to stay there (even though i was working for them!!), but it was good craic, run by a bunch of NZ'ers they were always having a party and something on all the time.

I did a day trip to the Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney stone. All the locals say they have pissed on it or done something unsavoury to it, and laugh at all the stupid tourist kissing a stupid rock. Anyway i went out there with some friends and we had a good picnic and a few pints.

The Blarney Castle

Upon returning from Oktoberfest, i moved up to Kilkenny. Fi had pretty much arranged a Job for me at a traditional Irish bar. Its very different to the hostel in cork, all my work collegues are irish and understanding their thick kilkenny accent is a constant challenge. I have regulars called Paddy, Mick (trouble), Jim, Jack, Brian, Mick, Jack, Brian and Paddy. (no joke) and they all have things they like being done the same way every time.

Kilkenny is much more beautiful than Cork, the people are much friendlier and it has a real small country town feel to it. I feel much more relaxed here and could really be happy living here for an extended time, except for the freaking weather. everyone will comment on it. It is so cold and it is a good day if it doesnt rain all day.

Kilkenny City main street.

Kilkenny, center of town. note the brewery in the background.

Life in Ireland, Oktoberfest, and Paris! remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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On the first and second of August 2008, the first ever team from Australia - Team Barramundi, entered the 2008 World Championships of Kubb.

These brave 10 Aussies, entered their team online back in May, confident of taking out at least a bronze medal for their country. Despite their being 160+ teams perhaps this was a little cocky, especially as the majority were from Sweden. There was a team also form France, Germany and Switzerland, but that was about as international as it got.

With classy uniforms (thanks social comittee), a killer theme song, and plenty of sledging ability, team Barramundi set up camp in their teepee headquarters in a field somewhere near Rone, on Gottland Island Sweden. This was where the games would take place.

team barramundi

Barramundi headquarters

It appears we may have misjudged our competitors. Initially thinking we should set up our HQ somewhere away from the rest of the campers as to not completly disrupt them with our reunion antics, it was us who were kept awake all night by the crazy swedes (one lot of campers had set up a nightclub in their caravan!), the night before day 1 of competition.

An early morning start on Friday saw us too sober - conditions we were not used to when playing the game - training sessions usually took place late friday nights at the Belgian Beir Cafe, with pints in hand. Our first opposition was a family with young children form Gottland. Mum was captain and a solid performer. Even the 10 year odl with the rats tail hair was impressive. Embarrassingly we lost in straight sets in record time - we barely hit one kubb over... The shame...

Kubb spiel

The opposition - smashing us

Jane the metronome Elliott takes one for the team

The second opposition were another lovely family from Gottland. They agreed to wait a couple of hours until the other guy arrived, and to give both teams a chance to have a few drinks (G and T at 930am through long straws - desparate times called for desparate measures...) We played much better this game, although were still beaten convincingly in 2 sets. And I should mention that one of the opposition had Downs, and not only was he more consistant than us - he even could sledge us in English... Our medal dreams were dashed - it was all over for us. We got to play in the mini championships in the arvo but continued our losing streak. One of our earlier opposition even tried to coach and cheer for us - to no avail. Rubbish. All we were good for was cheering/sledging.

kubb spiel - action shot of Terry-fying

But we had a wonderful time - we made page 7 of the local newspaper which did a huge article on us, our training techniques and the fact we were the best team in Australia (being the only team). It was hilarious! We made lots of friends with the Swedish, they loved our punch - thats what really unites people and brings peace on Earth.

we made the news!

The second day of competition was alarmingly serious and the quality of play was quite outstanding! The team that won did so for the ninth consecutive year - they need to find girlfriends and do something with their life seriously!

The team also visited Visby where there was a medieval festival on - Nick loved it. We ate swedish meatballs and watched people hurp giant logs and walk around in costume.

We did a fly by through Stockholm old town on the way to the airport - getting lost in the city and unabl to find the road out was quite stressful. the old town was pretty neat - would be gorgeous when covered in snow.

We flew to Liverpool (thank you ryanair 2 cent flights) and managed free train tickets to Edinburgh the next day (long boring story).

Edinburgh

This is one of the best cities Ive ever been - its absolutely charming with its old Harry Potter style stone buildings, haunted pubs and graveyards, and the beautiful story of Greyfriars Bobby (slept on his masters grave for 14 years after he died.) We were there for the Festival and the town was abuzz with comedy, theatre and the military tattoo. We were there for a week - and I wish I had a UK visa coz I didnt want to leave - tried to apply for a job at the awesome hostel we stayed at - but they were too official about things. Maybe next year! We saw heaps of comedy and lots of free shows too. Highlights were seeing David O'Dougherty, Mark Watson, and Sammy J. I also saw a great impro musical. Can't wait to go back to Edinburgh - nxt time I might do some of the real sightseeing - the castle, palace etc. We did climb Arthurs Seat aka the Craggs, which gave an awesome view of the city.

Edinburgh castle

Hollyrood palace

one of the comedy venues - the udderbelly

greyfriars bobby

Now we are in Ireland looking for work. Probably wont have anything interesting to write for a while. Will put up more photos when we can.

Maybe check out www.vmkubb.com for more stuff on kubb.

Hope you are all well wherever you are - please email us - we always love hearing from everyone. xxxxx Fi and Nick

Sweden and Scottland remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We spent many hours just walking the streets, checking out tapas bars, looking for the elusive flamenco. We eventually found a place, with lots of locals and expensive drinks (€4 for a 200ml coke....ouch!) another night we joined a walking/bar tour and were taken to some of the better spots (maybe) and found places with cheap drinks and a flamenco club. it was great fun trying to join in with the locals, who were very encouraging and tried in vain to teach us the complicated flamenco. i just couldnt work out the beat or the timing.

A great speciality that Fi sampled at nearly every occasion was the Vino Tinto Verano, which is a red wine mixed with soft drink, usually a lemon flavour like solo or lift. It was very popular, and even available on tap in some bars.

Granada
Home of the Alhambra, we loved this town, with beautiful streets and free tapas with your drinks. we were up early one morning to get in line, and only had to wait for 45! to get in. The Alhambra is surrounded by beautiful grounds and gardens, Carlos V's palace, the Alcazar and the Generalife gardens. The Alhambra itself is an old islamic temple/palace. the carving and detail in the palace was quite astounding.

Sunset on the Alhambra

Despite being in spain and portugal for about 3 weeks, we had our first, second and third churros (spanish doughnuts dipped in chocolate) here. this resulted in us singing a song munch on some churros, to the tune of munch on muncherros, or the one tonne rodeo song. if you know the song you will know what we mean.

churros!

We saw flamenco here again. this time is was a semi professional show where we had to pay to see. The performers were all in costume and they put on a spectacular act.

we booked a bus ticket for an overnight bus to barcelona, and headed into town to have a few drinks and tapas to help us sleep on the overnight journey, but when we turned up for our bus we found that we had read the departure time wrong and had missed our bus by 2 hours! doh!! we figured we could swap it for the later bus (which left in 1 hour) but the ticket guy was a jerk and was having nothing of it. did we mention this was the most expensive bus trip we have taken so far (€70 each) Fi even tried crying but the jerk said you have to buy another ticket and you have to move aside there were other customers to serve.

So we decided to head down to the bus and try our luck with the bus drivers sympathy. As soon as the bus arrived the driver abandoned the bus and we thought this is going to be easy, just put our bags on and we'll be away. To our dismay there was a couple guarding the baggage compartments saying no-one could put bags on as they were trying to give their dog some air. This was a complete freaking joke as she was sitting next to the dog smoking!!! we looked on board and could see there were a few spare spots up the back but decided it would be too obvious if took our packs on the bus. so we waited 30 min for the driver to return and put our bags underneath then snuck on the back door. we kept our heads down as he came on board to collect tickets and didnt ask us for tickets. he then did a head count, and then redid the head count, then finally pulled away. silent hi-five!! it was still a nervous ride as every hour the bus would stop and new passengers would get on and the driver would show them to their seat and often kick someone out of the seat.

we made it to the border of Catalunya, the bus driver changed and 2 police in helmets with big batons came on and asked all the non spanish looking people for id and passports. they didnt ask us, however the driver asked us for our tickets and we gave him our unvalidated ticket for the bus we missed. he took it without question as by that time the bus had been going for 11 hours and the departure times would have not been as obvious. he was also the 3rd different driver for this trip. he then did a head count and ticket some things off on his list, then came back and asked for our ticket. he stared at it for a long time then gave it back to us and we pulled away. Woo hoo!! we made it!

Barcelona
We stayed here 3 days which wasnt close to being enough. we got a fair dose of spanish art and architechture. we visited all of gaudi's masterpieces. the sagrada familia, casa Mila, casa batlla, and park guell, parlou guell. Gaudi was an absolute genius, his architechture was inspired by nature and Fi loved it because it used shapes and colours and he made ergonomic chairs and door handles. we did a day trip to Figures to see Dali's museum, another fascinating excentric genius. We also went to the picasso museum.

Wandering the streets we explored la ramblas, la baroque market and the barri gothic distric. At night most of the sights on the block of discord were lit up and the magic fountain provided a spectacular show of light and water to classical music.

Roof of the casa Mila

We are currently resting up in Dublin with Irish Dave, getting in somelast minute training against the Irish in preparation for the world Kubb Championships which start on fri- we fly into Sweden tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Spain. Andalucia to Catalunya remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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This place is home to the Pena Castle and gardens, a cute village and a Moorish Castle. It was only 40 mins by train from Lisbon. The highlight of Sintra was their extravagant palace and gardens, previously home to King Ferdinand II and his wife Amelia. This King was an artist, and decided he wanted his gardens to be a mixture of home (Germany) and other exotic places - even had a section dedicated to Australian/New Zealand rainforest ferns. The result was magical - and then you hit the palace - talk about a fairytale. We spent hours here just wandering. This is one of my most favourite places so far.

Pena Palace

The gardens

Lagos

Well known as a party and beach town, Lagos held up to its reputation. Again we ran into our Sydney mates and hung out on the main beach with them, bodysurfing some pretty aggressive waves, and Nick enjoying watching old people and kids get dumped by the surf - he reckons it was like watching funniest home video show. (I hate that show).

the boys body surfing

We finally ate Piri Piri Chicken - not as hot as we expected - but you could just ask for more sauce and that spiced it up plenty! The party scene was impressive - so many bars with so many cheap drink specials... There was one bar that is famous for tallying beer bongs consumed per country (Australia was winning, surprise surprise, and all the boys added one to the tally - but were very very very sorry for it later...) They also had a ¨9 deadly sins¨competition, where one had to shot 9 shots as fast as possible - if you beat the record (8.5 sec for men, 11 sec for the ladies) you didn´t have to pay the 30 Euro they cost. But you got a tshirt. Wisely we did not attempt this. The 2 for one cocktails at 5 Euros, and the free shot on arrival at Red Eye bar were enough to keep us in bed most of the next day as it was...

The highlight of Lagos was the kayaking adventure, where we paddled 3 hours along the coast exploring secret caves and grottoes that you could paddle right into. Glorious!

Kayaking

Portugal part 2 - Sintra to Lagos remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The Reina Sofia is a modern art museum, most famous for holding Picasso´s Guernica piece, and lots of surrealist Dali work. I don´t know much about art - but these two crazy artists are definitely my favourite so I was super excited to go. It was a really good exhibition - showing the progress of these guys work, from early days portraits (pretty standard) into the art they became famous for - some of it bizarrely minimalist - eg another cool artist called Miro (similar style to Picasso) last few works were giant canvasses with nothing more than a couple of black dots?! Thats art?!
Nick liked Luna, an artist who did many wartime pieces (ww2) in black pen only, just thousands of lines in so much detail it was jaw-dropping.

We also did a walking tour of Madrid which made us fall in love with this city - rumour had it that Madrid was missable, but we found it anything but! A clean modern city with plenty of character, the "oldest door in europe" a street called "fist in the face" street, the largest palace in Europe, and free tapas with drinks if you know where to go. Again I was fascinated and astounded by the turbulent recent history - cruel dictators ruling up until near the time I was born? Its hard to believe. They say this is why Spain has such a festive feel about it now - enjoying their freedom...

Segovia is an ancient city an hour out of Madrid, and its famous for its aqueduct and castle and cathedral - all very impressive. Most impressive however was the torrential downpour that descended upon us just before we left - we got completely saturated!

the aqueducts of Segovia

The castle with stormy skies

Oporto
Our first impression of Portugal was how wonderfully helpful and lovely the Portuguese are - but then again we did arrive at 6am on a Saturday morning - we were catching everyone on their way home from a big night out! Famous for port and chicken, we really wanted to visit to taste the port, despite not having much time. We were exhausted, but still managed to see the sights and get the feel of this beautiful, but gritty city. The port was pretty good - you got to do free tastings along the river where the warehouses were, and we did a tour of one - the most well known - Sandemans. Awesome advertising, and the best of the ports we tasted. But not as good as Aussie port!

The cellars of Sandemans

View of Porto, old town

Portuguese architecture seems quite different to Spanish - purely in that they cover all their outdoor walls in tiles, which makes for very pretty contrasts among the houses along the streets.

Lisbon
We are staying in the coolest hostel - what a view! we are on the major square and have the castle on the hill in the background. Awesome! This afternoon we toured the castle, and took a tram (just like ours) through the hilly cobbled narrow streets of the old town - just beautiful! you could reach out the window of the tram and run your hand along the walls.

at the castle in Lisbon

We also went to a district called Belem to visit its Monastery (which closed two minutes before we got there, bugger). This little part of town was also know for its custard tarts - some say the best in Portugal. And you should have seen the line out the door! They were amazing - puff party base which was sweet and crispy. hmmmm.

The eating of the custard tarts. freaking tasty

Going to try and catch a Fado show tonight after dinner at the hostel, then will check out Sintra tomorrow, before heading down to Lagos for more beach time.

more photos on flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27613924@N06/

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San Sebastian

After Bordeaux we trained it to San Sebastian, a beautiful beach town renowned for its unique Basque style of tapas called pinxtos. Here we stayed for 5 nights to soak up the sun, relax by the beach, eat drink and party!

This town really came alive at night, hundred of bars displaying elaborate pinxtos and serving cheap wine and sidra. The way to eat dinner here was to wander bar to bar, pick what you like off the plates on display and eat it, then tell the barman at the end how many you ate before paying. This was accompanied by red wine costing 90 cents a glass, or the even cheaper option of sidra, natural cider that nick fell in love with (but Jane described as olive brine), poured from 1 meter above the glass.

Pinxtos tended to be bread covered with seafood, say tuna or crabmeat with mayo and eggs, or salmon. There were vege stacks with brie cheese warmed, and bocodillos - little rolls often filled with prosciutto or seafood. There were also lots of tapas with sardines and anchovies - but we didn´t really get into those. We also tried Paella from ¨the best paella place in town¨- and it really was the best I have ever eaten - jam packed again with seafood.

Pinxtos in the old town

We were also there for the euro cup final between spain and germany, and everyone packed into an irish pub to watch the game. Pretty crazy and very exciting when Spain won, and the celebrations overflowed into the streets after the match, cars beeping and flags out windows. We were surprised however that the celebrations weren´t bigger than they were, as an hour later, the night life was pretty average. Apparently this was because we were in Basque country and they don´t consider themselves really part of Spain, and they are currently campaigning for independence.

The beach was beautiful - pontoons were the highlight as they had a waterslide. Unlucky for us we only got 2 days of sunny weather, the rest were overcast and cold.

Yep we have a new underwater camera!!

Pamplona

We have survived a week of festivities in Pamplona for the world famous San Fermin festival - aka running with the bulls. This bit is gonna be pretty long - as i have never experienced anything like it. Ever.

We stayed at the fanatics campsite and I now remember why i hate camping - worst sleep Ive had in years (made all the more difficult by 1200 other ppl partying around the tents til the early hours... jeez im getting old...! The festivities at the campsite were almost as big as those in town with live bands, backyard cricket and my favourite, lying by the pool.

Opening ceremony

San Fermin officially started at midday on the 6th of July, when thousands packed in to the square awaiting the announcement from the mayor. This is the craziest partying I have EVER seen. We arrived at 10am, Sangria already flowing, and waited for two hours, filling in the time with singing, chants, drinking some sangria, but mainly squirting more of the same all over everyone.

Opening ceremony celebrations

The human crush towards 12 was worse than any mosh pit, and due to the copious amounts of broken glass on the ground, this claimed more casualties than the first run with the bulls. After the announcement at 12, with everyone holding up their red scarved, and now being allowed to wear them around their necks, the procession headed towards the muscle bar - a statue in another part of town. Here, the craziest of stupid people would climb this 4 metre high statue, and throw themselves into the crowds. No joke that this part of the festival really does claim more lives and injured than the rest of all the bull runs put together. Somewhat good to watch in a car crash sort of way, and fortunately we saw noone seriously hurt - a few broken noses and feet though. The rest of the afternoon was spent at white horse square to mellow out, where one unfortunate soul apparently overbalanced while relieving himself over a wall, and fell to his death. Stupid and ironic way to go in such a dangerous festival.

We watched the first bull run the next morning from the finishing arena, catching the bus in at 5:45am - ouch. The atmosphere from the arena was even better than watching a cricket crowd at the MCG - the spanish have so many chants! It was very exciting counting down the hour until the 8am run - bands played, we saw footage from previous years and from bull fights, and then met all the bulls by name and weight. The largest was 620kg. Thats gotta be as bad as being hit by a car?! The first canon at 8 signals that the bulls are ready in the pen - the second signal is the gates are open - this is when the run begins - the aim being to pass ¨dead mans corner¨ before the bulls catch up to ensure your safety. Then its sprint like hell to try and make it into the arena before the 3rd and 4th the canon signals´meaning the first and last bulls have entered the arena. Not everyone makes it before the gates to the arena are then shut. Hopefully for the runners, the big bulls (there are 6) enter one end and exit the other. Sometimes if they get split up, they get mad, and run dangerously around, both on the course and in the arena. this is when people get hurt. There was one straggler causing some trouble on day 1 - we thought some guy got gored in the guts on the fence, but he was alright. We saw the pics in the paper the next day of this - he hd a horn either side of his torso - luckiest man alive!

Bull gone wild day 1

Once the bulls have exited, they release young bulls to play with the crowd in the arena, one at a time. This is actually pretty funny and almost looked fun, many people getting head butted or thrown in the air - but all getting up fine afterwards, feeling like heros (clowns).

Day 2 saw Nick joining in the run - Ill let him describe his experience later in the blog. Needless to say he survived to live to tell the tale....

Thanks Fi, well the day began at 5:15am, getting up and going in on the bus to the course. I found a few other friends who wanted to run and we found ourselves a place on the course by about 6am. this was the worst part of the run - the anticipation. Just standing there talking tactics and generally just shitting myself and fearing the worst. Sorry mum i know i promised i wouldn´t run....and i nearly didn´t. so we wandered down the course a bit and suddenly the police had blocked off the course and kicking everybody off the course that was too far down the track. So we dashed around the streets and found another way in and found a good place to start. The clock was going so slowly, but it finally came to 7:50 and they opened the course. we walked down a little and then boom the rocket was off and the bulls were on the course. they were so quickly on us and past us. it was over in about 90 seconds. apparently the record for the fastest run is 45sec for the bulls to run 850m. i made it to the arena and the bulls went out quickly, then it was time to play with the little bulls. lots of running around and dodging, i managed to slap one on the bum, but at the same time some clown pulled its tail and it spun round quick as a flash and i was face to face with the bull. luckily someone else attractted its attention and it ran in another direction. ahhh good fun. Back to you now Fi...

Wheres Wally (Nick). Clue. Hes the one in the fanatics top.

Later that day Nick and the boys went to a bull fight (not for me) and partied hard. The street parties were the best thing about the festival - live bands roaming the streets, drummers roaming the streets -its hard to explain just how fun it was...

Sorry Fi, ill just jump in here again. the bull fight was excellent. not for the weak of stomach though. the atmosphere was just amazing. we sat in the midst of the locals. as every person entered the stands they would be showered in drinks from everyone, and drinks were constantly thrown throughout the event. after the 3rd fight everyone opened their picnics and shared food, then threw what was left!! some bad sports brought a 20ltr tub of spaghetti and threw it on our section. others told us this was poor form. anyways it was so much fun it was like a really good game of cricket, with the crowd going off and sometimes it was hard to believe anything was happening in the arena. After the bull fight we followed bands through the streets then met friends and partied in the streets.

We have finally made it to Madrid to enjoy a real bed and eat more tapas (these ones come free with your drink purchase if you find the right place!), and I think I will go see the Reina Sofia Art gallery tomorrow to see some Picasso and Dali works. Its a really nice city, we did a walking tour today, and the history - especially recent history is quite fascinating.

The famous bear statue in Placa du Sol Madrid

Then its off to portugal!

Spain Part 1 remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Monaco was pretty impressive, the casino was a great sight to see, an endless procession of very very expensive cars. There was a 10$ cover charge just to enter the gaming room. The harbour was full of multi million dollar yachts too. The princes palace and gardens were quite nice but the rest of the town seemed to be getting on a bit and did not look as impressive as we were expecting.

Cannes was also really cool to see, lots of shopping and good beaches. We walked along the promenade and took photos in cutouts of spiderman etc.

Cap de Ail was one of our favourite beaches, we could swim out to a beautiful cave and jump off rocks. And it turns out that pebble beaches are not so bad, if they are small pebbles they arent too uncomfortable to walk and lay on and no sand to stick to you!

But the highlight was actually Nice itself, when we arrived it was in the middle of a free music festival. There were live acts all along the streets - singers, dancers, drummers, dj´s. excellent! In the main square they had put up a massive stage and there was a french band singing Queens songs. The lead singer was hilarious! Dressed in white with a little yellow jacket. Nice itself was really cool, we found it quite similar to melbourne, it was very multicultural, which we hadnt seen in many other citys.

Bordeaux
Ahhh Bordeaux.... just about the best place in europe. ok well i may exaggerate, but seriously we had a good time. We had originally just wanted to go to taste the famous bordeaux wines on a wine and cheese tasting course run by the tourist center, but when we got there they told us that the course was full but Bordeaux was having a 4 day wine festival - Fest de Vin. which is held every 2 years, that just so happened to be starting that day!! So we bought a ticket to taste wine at the festival and a ticket on a wine tour of the graves and sauternes districts.

The Festival was excellent, we got great value for money as most of the stalls would not even bother to take the tasting ticket or we would chat with them and they would give us more tastings. There were many free stalls and free bavarian ham (sweet proscuito) all around. Fi won a bottle of wine at one stall too! they had a live entertainment shows - classical orchestra, light show and the most entertaining quartet! The end of each night was finished with a MASSIVE fireworks show, it was setup on a barge on the river. including some types of fireworks i have never seen before. they would shoot flares on the water, some would then explode up later like normal fireworks. there were one that fall like a chandelier and others that were like fairy lights suspened with parachutes at each end. these fireworks lasted for so long i think they were even better than the turn of the millenium ones

Our favourite wines were the reds from the medoc region and the sweet whites from the sauternes.

Wine tasting in Sauterne - famous for its sweet white

So sad to leave bordeaux, wished we could stay another night or two, but spain was booked, san sebastian awaited us and it is great to be seaside again.

France - Nice to Bordeaux remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Venice
Our first stop was beautiful Venice with its 117 islands and plenty of little bridges. It was here where we got to savour our first real italian coffee - about a million times better than eastern european coffee! Venice didn't smell, and St Marco's square really was breathtaking, especially at night when they had live classical acts dotted around the restaurants on the perimeter. We did a day trip by ferry to Murano where they make world famous glass things and saw a demo - amazing that they can create a horse in less than 5 minutes...

A mask shop

Grand canal

Pizza in Venice

Bologna
There wasn't much here except a provocative fountain of a muscular neptune (and women with breasts that could squirt water in 6 directions). But lets be honest, we only stopped here to sample Bolognese from its origins (but they only call it ragu here), and it was even better than nicks and my mums! This place had the hardest to find, dingiest hostel ever... just catch this bus to this stop they say... 20 mins later we find ourselves outside what looked like commission housing in the middle of nowhere with no signs... the directions said just a 10 min walk from the stop... but in which direction?! Fortunately for us, we harrassed a family who called the hostel, and ultimatley the dad abandoned his family and drove us there, even getting lost a couple of times himself. So lucky for us, we would never have found it otherwise!

Florence
We stayed in an awesome hostel in Firenze (Archi rossi hostel). They ran 2 free three hour tours daily which gave us a much better appreciation of the history of the place and the significance of all the buildings. The duomo was amazing, both from the outside and inside, as was the beautiful view from Michaelangelos hill in the evening. We also loved the Ponte Vecchio the only bridge to survive the WW2 bombings, which had only jewelery stores along it after an order from a Medici ruler, because he had a mezzanine passageway above it connecting his palaces, and he didn't like the smell of the old butchers that were once there. Sacreligiously we didn't actually visit the real David, Nick was satisfied by the two replicas around town and we didn't want to spend our valuable time in a three hour queue... We had a wonderful time here, it really is a beautiful town.

The Duomo

David at night in Michaelangelo´s Plaza

Rome
Rome was just as unbelievable as I remembered it from last time. Here we met up with Jane and Kate again and stayed in a camping village out of town which had a pool...luxury!
A lifetime isn't enough in Rome, we ended up staying for 5 days and would have been happy to stay longer, but we managed all the sights - Colosseum and Palatine hill, Pantheon, Sistene Chapel, St Peters Basilica and Square... A perfect time to be reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown... And the girls actually saw Tom Hanks near the pantheon filming it!!

Highlights:
- History and ruins around Palatine Hill and the Forum - the best ruins we have seen.
- Finally seeing the Trevi Fountain (it was completely covered in scaffolding when I was here last time)
- Hanging out in Piazza Navona and Trastevere - great for people watching
- Fashion! No more double denim of Eastern Europe, but making me crave a new wardrobe.
- The Gelati near the pantheon - so many flavours! 12 flavours of chocolate alone! The best is my opinion - meringue... hmmmmm
- the vatican museum - you could easily spend over 4 hours here and not even realise
- climbing the vatican cuppola - the view from the top the best we have seen anywhere
- sending postcards from the smallest country in the world
- Riding bikes along the Appian Antica (an ancient cobbled road) seeing the ruins either side
- toga party
- Not falling for any scams and not having anything stolen!

Napoli
The home of the mafia and the birthplace of pizza. We weren't sure what to expect here, but it was a really cool place - so different to the rest of Italy - heaps of modern art around the place. And despite Nick being cynical that pizza could taste better from here - it really did! The best being the "Vesuvio" a flat calzone - ie it looked like a margerita, but it had fillings inside the crust! Amazing! Our hostel was great, and organised a big screen to watch the Italy v France soccer match, and it was packed full of their Italian mates - the atmosphere was electric! And the next night was "Brazilian night" where they invited there mates to do capoera which is a kind of martial art/dance with singing and drums - very cool!

From Naples we did a day trip to Pompeii (and Ewan McGregor was there) which is so amazingly preserved - I couldn't believe the condition of the frescoes etc. And we saw the plaster casts of the people who got buried in the ash... creepy.

Day trip to Capri - a beautiful island off the coast, with designer shops galore and designer people... And convertable taxis! It's also the home of the blue grotto, which was.... CLOSED!!! Ripped off!!! The water was too rough to go there, but we did a boat tour of the other grottos on the other coast instead which was fun anyway. Then we soaked up the sun on the beach.

Pisa
It really leans! We did the obligatory pics of holding it up, pushing it over etc. It really is the only thing there though.

Our plan was to head to the cinque terre from pisa, but unfortunately there was no affordable accom (being a weekend) so we have powered on up the med and are chilling out in Nice France!

Next blog - France then Spain!

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Ljubljana
Ljubljana was a really beautiful city, not a large population so it was really easy to get around, really clean and very friendly people everywhere. We spent a couple of days there with a very nice old man who picked us up from the train station, after the most helpful tourist info girl arranged our accomodation. Unfortunately he had parked in the bus zone and we got waved down by a cop as we left and he got a parking ticket. doh! His place was above the Vegedrom - a delicious vegetarian restaurant with excellent indian food and chai lattes. We walked all around the city, enjoying very picturesque river side cafes and bars, (buy 1 get 2 cocktails,) huge slices of pizza and a great night at a comedy club. The acts were from the UK except for the first guy who was apparently hilarious. The last act was good - made even funnier to us as he had to explain all his jokes, many of which were a play on english words, therefore completely lost in translation...

Bled
We arrived in Bled and found our accomodation above the George Best Bar (for people who dont know, George Best was a alcholic soccer ledgend who died from liver disease) - good name for a pub!? The hostel owner Robi organised everything for us over a few beers, introducing us to Canyoning Bob and the tour organiser for the Emerald tour.

Canyoning was awesome, right up there with paragliding. Fi says its the best thing she's ever done - what could be better than sliding, jumping and abseiling down canyons and waterfalls? There was even a flying fox! Bob was sensational for an old bloke (40) and the next day we were sorry to hear he hurt his back and couldnt take us canyoning again. He probably hurt it when urged him to jump off a 4m waterfall through a narrow gap that we had all slid down... didn't think he'd actually do it the crazy guy! Crazy Bob with the coolest job ever.

Fi on the speed slide

Rapelling down a waterfall

The "Emerald tour" took us all over the national park's Julliane Alps. We hiked through the highest pass of the alps, saw the face of the lady imprisioned in rock, scrambled rocks to the source of the soca river, then went white water rafting on it - the best in Slovenia. The water was a brilliant light blue colour, and the rapids were especially good due to the terrential rain we had had the previous day. The rafting guide was great, making us walk around the edge of the boat (and therefore fall in), and turned the raft over on "penguin rock" so we could bellyslide down it! So fun, except the raft left without a few of us and we had to bob down the rapids to catch it - a little scary... We also hiked to a waterfall in a gorge, but it was too cold to swim in it- apparently only 6° in the water. Kate and I were gutsy enough to jump off a 12m bridge, despite the freezing waters below, Fi was impressed! We rode a train in the car and had beers on the train. It was a fantastic day and the best way to see all of the national park.

The Goldenhorn monument at the base of the alps with our tour group

Rafting the Soca river

Bled has a gorgeous lake, there is a castle sitting up high on one end. There is an island in the middle of it with a byzantine church. It's about 6km around and I ran it one morning with Kate. There was a nearby gorge which we tried to walk to by i misheard the directions and took us down the wrong road on a 2 hour wild goose chase. But we did see some nice towns along the way. Ther other thing Bled is famous for, so we found out, was there cream cake - pretty much the most delicious french vanilla slice we have ever wrapped our lips around....

Next stop Italy - Venice, Bolognese in Bologna, Florence Rome etc...

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The highlights:

-The organiser at the port asking Nick if he was Tony Beecroft... busted tobes!
-Playing Twister and limbo on the roof of the boat
-Jumping off the boat, especially at midnight

-Floating on our beloved lilos, especially the HMAS Ladyboy (don't ask how much Tony paid for his...) and traipsing them through the old town of Dubrovnik to our favourite outside the wall bar (where we were met with rough seas unlike our last placid visit..)

-Ice cream in Dubrovnik - especially kates free birthday icecream - 20 scoops!?
-Fresh Bar Dubrovnik and their cocktail towers
-Eating mexican at Chiuauas in Dub for kates bday - excellent sangria! pipe down chachi!
-Jane and I talking our way onto a luxury cruiser in Hvar
-Making enemies with the rival busabout boat - Lab-ra-DOR!
-Hvar in general!

view from Hvar castle

-The long straws at a Mikaska nightclub
-The party shirt
-Scotty's ˝silverback˝ dance
-So much seafood!!
-After breakfast naps, followed by pre lunch naps, then after lunch naps, and pre dinner naps...
-Captains dinner dressed in our (tony's) best shirts and ties, only to be greeted by a captain who wasn't planning to attend, in a dirty polo shirt. Later followed by a round of coin up the kyber and dancing in the dark!
-Norwegians (ask the girls)
-Getting awesome mediterranian tans...

Captains Dinner dressed in our finest, with Nick in the party shirt. Nice krevat Tony.

The Lowlights:

- Black risotto. Completely overrated.
- Eating too much food on the cruise - but it sure was delicious!
- Diesel fumes in our cabins
- Seasickness and even worse, seasickness tablets that make you drowsy
- Unfortunate wet and windy weather for 2 days straight and getting stuck in Dubrovnik

On our return to Split we watched the Eurovision contest (sadly from our beds - so exhausted!). Azerbijian you rock! Wow some acts are amazingly bad aren't they?!

We bussed it north to Zadar with the girls, where we discovered the apparently world famous one and only water organ on the shores (eh).

From Zadar we hired a car and made our way up toward Rijecjka (where we would train it to Slovenia) over a few days, stopping in many cute seaside old towns.

Senj harbour at sunset

The highlight of Northern Croatia was without a doubt their national park - Plitvici Lakes. The water here was an amazing aqua colour, we did a beautiful hike/train ride/boat ride that took us from the top of the lakes down about 7 levels of waterfalls. Highly recommend a visit here!

Our last night in Croatia was spent in Opatija which turned out to be very snazzy, with lots of hotels along the waterfront. Nick claims to have eaten the best pizza of his life here.

Now we are in Slovenia - will write about our time here at a later date - but i have to say, it's competing for the best country in the world title as we speak. Ljubljiana was awesome, Lake Bled is stunning and we went canyoning today, going rafting tomorrow... you get the gist!!

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Albania
so the bus that was supposed to take us to Saranda took us to Himare (70km north of Saranda). instead of backtracking we decided to keep heading towards Jane and Kate in Montenegro with the plan to stop somewhere along the way if something good came along. We waited at a cafe with some of the locals who had gotten off the bus with us. no-one spoke english, but we managed to make some friends. The albanian people were so friendly they gave us breakfast and bought us coffee and raki. Nothing like coffee and raki to start the day at 8am!! we managed to ask someone to help us find a bus to north to vlora, but once we got there we decided the beaches were too cold to stay so we kept going to Tirane (capital of Albania).

Once there, we stepped out of the bus and into chaos. again it was very difficult to get directions, it felt like we were on amazing race getting clues to take us to the next destination. There are no organised bus timetables and routes. it kind of works that there is a bus somewhere and it will wait til it is full then it will head to the destination. anyways after taking another public bus and walking round we finally found the fergeon (the bus) down a back alley in the middle of nowhere, to take us to skodra, the next piece of the puzzle to get us to montenegro.

We got to skodra at 5.02pm to find that the mini bus across the border (the last one of the day) had left 2 minutes ago. Doh!! a pushy taxi driver convinced us he could chase down the mini bus and get us across the border. we thought we would give it a shot as we had come so far and if we could just get across the border we could see Jane and Kate by sunset. a hellish ride at 100+kmph speeds, overtaking on blind turns, we flagged the mini bus down with a couple of k's to go.

Montenegro
the fergeon dropped us in Ulcinj and a friendly guy on the bus gave us a lift to the next town of Bar, where we caught the next bus to Budva. At the bus station in Budva we met an american backpacker who had taken a photo of a map to get us to the hostel that Jane and Kate were staying. At Hippos hostel we took the girls by surprise with a joyous reunion a couple of days earlier than planned.

reunion in budva drinking Niksicko!

Budva was fantastic, we stayed here 4 nights. enjoying the beaches, the paddleboats equipped with waterslides and chilling out at the hostel. One day we hired a car and toured the surrounding area seeing amazing fjords and surviving Kates excellent driving for the first time on the wrong side of the road in a manual car. On one lane roads being overtaken by busses. think great ocean road but one lane, having to move off the road into the trees and allowing the bus to barley brush by.

the view from a hill on the road trip

We bought the local specialties Prsut (proschuito), Sir (cheese) and Vino (wine). they claim its the best proschuito in the world and i would have to agree. i have never eaten so much smoked meat. we managed to integrate it to almost every meal for the following week!

the search for prsut

we also scaled the fortress in Kotor which has a beautiful old town.

above kotor

Croatia
we spent a couple of days in Dubrovnik exploring the old town then we headed to split to get on our 7 day cruise. here we were met by surprise by the international man of mystery himself - Tony Beecroft. We toured the south islands of Croatia, the highlight being Hvar with its beautiful city and nightlife. After a hard week of partying and seasickness for Fi we have rested up after watching the eurovision last night and are debating our method of transport to head north to Slovenia.

a cool bar outside the walls of the old town

walking the walls of the old town

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Samos
we arrived from turkey by ferry to Samos town where we had planned to catch a bus to our accomdation 20km's away. but unfortunately we found everything closed down due to easter monday. all the greeks were eating and drinkning and smashing colored eggs while we pondered our options. luckily Dougie came to our rescue and fetched us from the port. crisis averted! We stayed with Dougie and Sue in their wonderful apartment in a little town on the north side of the island - Agios Konstantinos. from there we did a few walks to neighbouring mountaintop villages - Manolates was awesome, a labyrinth of white washed walls and red roofs with no cars. walking room only. Stavrinides was similar, here we had lunch in the remoteness of greece. no english and we ordered a salad, everyone else was getting greek salads, and we were surprised when we received a bowl of lettuce. Doh!. who would have thought you would have to specify you wanted a greek salad in greece!

On our last day there, there was a festival that the whole town attended. souvlaki (meat on sticks), pommerades (fried honey dumplings) and as much free wine as you could drink. this lead to a cute old greek, maybe senile man dancing on his own to the live band.

The beach of kokkari (walk from where we stayed)

The foreshore of agios konstantinos

The streets of manolates

Naxos
Here we stayed with a recommendation of Dougie and Sue's In Agia Anna. Glorious beach only 400m away. but still a little cold to go in the water, but we went in anyway. its our beach holiday right... we hired a 4wd bike and toured the island, this was awesome! the best part of the day was clambering up to the cave of Zas on the highest point of the island mt zeus. we finally had a real greek salad and perfected the ordering of greek wine. meso kilo kokkino crasse parokalo.... did we mention the greek feta and olives and olive oil are amazing! the other side of the island was freaking windy and cold but we saw the beautifull town of apollonos and the unfinished statue of dionysis lying in a quarry. pretty cool!

the view from Mt Zeus

Standing on the statue of Dionysis with Apollonos in the background

Santorini
Santorini is everything you imagine a greek island to be. as you come into port on the ferry you see high cliffs, dusted on the tops with white washed walls of the towns. they look like icing sugar. we stayed in the old port town of Fira, where we discovered the best gyros ever! (except for the richmond kebab house, they are still number 1) Fi fell in love with the town of Oia (ee - ya) which is exaclty the town seen on the postcards, paintings etc. we crawled all over the town trying to find all of the postcard spots! we went there both night to see the famous sunset of santorini looking out over the caldera. did i mention that santorini is a live volcano and our guide said it will probably erupt in the next 5 years?! we took a boat tour of all the islands that make up santorini and swam in volcano heated hot springs. considered taking a donkey up the very very steep climb into the villages but saved our money and hauled our own asses up instead - gotta work off those delicious gyros and greek wine. on our 4wd adventures to see the closed archaeological site of the ancient akritori (like pompei) and the black and red sand beaches, we got distracted by the oldest winery on santorini. Here we were given a tour and tasted the wine. our favourite was the local speciality of sweet wine called vinsanto, its a bit like a port. given the option of purchasing a 500ml bottle for 22 euro or a 1.5 water bottle filled diretly from the barrel for 23 euro, you can imagine the outcome of that transaction!

View from the middle of the caldera. you can see the villages of Fira dotted on the horizon

Waiting for the sunset in Oia, amazing view of the caldera

The sunset in Oia

Athens
today we are in athens - arrived this morning by ferry and leaving this evening by bus to albania. we concluded that this was plenty of time and we could have seen everything here in about 4 hours. thus the blog. we did see the acropolis, the parthenon and the ancient agora (market). all massive and impressive but all except the market were under total renovation and covered in scaffold or even removed for restoration!

The next few days will see us working our way towards dubrovnik in croatia and catching up with our friends jane and kate in montenagro. then it's cruise time.....

Us at the Parthenon

yasas

Nick and Fi

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today we saw Pamukkale - famous for ıts hot sprıngs that Cleopatra bathed ın, and amazıng calcıum rock pools. Took a long tıme to get there from Selcuk where we are stayıng though!

the hot springs where cleopatra swam to make her beautiful!

Tomorrow we leave for Samos - the begınnıng of our Greek Island Adventure!

We are lookıng forward to more sun and beaches, and eatıng the Greek cuısıne - salads and lamb gyros and souvlakı.... hmmm.....

Turkey has been wonderful - we have really loved our travels here. The people are so welcomıng and happy, the food ıs delıcıous - our faves beıng pıde (turkısh pızza) varıous Meze (cold appetızers such as eggplant, dıps etc). We love the Gozleme (pancake/rotı wıth what ever you lıke ınsıde) and the apple tea - pretty much hot apple juıce but delıcıous, whıch they serve ın glass tulıp shaped teacups, and you can be guaranteed to be offerred one anytıme you walk ınto a store.

Shoppıng ın Turkey at the bazaars ıs relatıvely cheap and you see heaps of leather goods, carpets/rugs, pashmınas and clothes and handbags.....

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We took an overnıght 12 hour bus (complete wıth tea and cake and a steward wıth a bow tıe!) to cappadocıa from ıstanbul. In Cappadocıa we stayed ın Goreme, a beautıful vıllage - ın a 'cave' hotel. here we dıd two days of tours around the area - where the rock formatıons were just amazıng.

mushroom cıty

people here lıve ın caves ın these rocks and we also went to an ancıent underground cıty - see the pıctures, ıts too hard to descrıbe! we made frıends wıth the people on our bus and went to a turkısh nıght of good food and turkısh dancıng.

another overnıght bus took us to beautıful olympus - the treehouse commune on the beach! here we stayed ın a treehouse, where they were fılmıng a realıty tv show called anatolıan warrıor (kıckboxıng!), so we shared the place wıth 30 kıckboxers! at olympus there was a beautıful but rocky beach, and down the road and up the mountaın a 5km walk away was the chimera... we dıd a nıght hıke to thıs spot where there ıs fıre comıng out of the ground (natural methane gas supposedly) - ıt was really cool!

nıck at the chımera

next day we got on a blue cruıse to fethıye - 4 days and three nıghts. pretty much everyone on the boat was aussıe-all headıng to anzac day afterwards. we cruısed past many beautıful sıtes, ruıns and fıshıng vıllages - even played skıppy and dodgeball wıth some young kıds ( ı thought ıt was goıng to be keepıngs off - wrong!). saw pırates cave, butterfly valley, the blue lagoon.

butterfly valley

great swımmıng and sun bakıng and the food - yum! and great fun people - we had a ball (despıte me dıscoverıng ı stıll get seasıck - bugger!) the colour of the water was amazıng...

dınner feast!

when we arrıved ın fethıye we met up wıth alı - a frıend from ıstanbul - who took us on another day and nıght of cruısıng on a cruıse of hıs own!! thıs was agaın awesome fun and amazıng seafood! great tımes! and nıck snorkelled for the fırst tıme and loved ıt - although there weren't heaps of fısh to see.

jumpıng off the front of the boat!

fethıye ıs such a beautıful seasıde vıllage. we took a walk through the town centre. Nıck had hıs fırst shave for the trıp from a turkısh barber. It ınvolved a knıfe, fıre, aftershaves and full upperbody massage for 6 Lıra! Also there ıs a fısh market where you buy seafood and then take ıt to the restaurants around ıt and they cook ıt for you and all you pay ıs for the salad and bread sıdes! about 4bucks! ( plus 10 for seafood!) so cool!!

clean shaven at the fısh market

thıs mornıng we went paraglıdıng - from 2000 metres! there was snow on top stıll! thats hıgher than mt hotham!! came ın over the blue lagoon - ıt was wonderful - even nıck loved ıt despıte a fear of heıghts! ıt was very relaxıng though - untıl we dıd trıcks - corkscrews etc - thought ı mıght pass out - so much g-force!! but soooo much fun!!

paraglıdıng - the vıew of blue lagoon from 2000metres!

next we are off to selcuk and from here we wıll be checkıng out ephesus (ruıns) and pamakkule - hot baths!

then ınto the greek ıslands and greece! good tımes!

cappadocıa, olympus, blue cruıse and fethıye remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We found the Turkısh people ın Istanbul so frıendly, everyone on the street wanted to chat to us when they dıscovered we were from Australıa - and not just to sell us rugs (but sometımes just to sell us rugs...)

We dıd all the sıghts - Aya Sofıa, the Blue Mosque (but unfortunately not ınsıde as ıt was prayer tıme), the Grand Bazaar ('buzzer') and spıce bazaar, where we dıscovered that we really lıke Turkısh turkısh delıght! I bought a new bag hooray - leather and unıque! But ı have been lıberated by my no bag carryıng sınce ıt was stolen, so ı havn't used ıt yet.

We have been enjoyıng all sorts of turkısh food - dıscovered that turkısh bread ıs more lıke a french baguette than what we have ın aus - but delıcıous. we are lovıng Meze - lıke tapas/dıps wıth so much taste. we also love pıde - turkısh pızza shaped lıke a boat, and all the delıcıous meat! ı love lamb. doner kebab were not as ı expected - ı thınk we are used to gyros ( the greek type) at home.

at our hostel we had a bbq party wıth meze, meats, a belly dancer and water pıpes - an awesome nıght!! we had all the moves!

we dıd a day trıp to gallıpolı (whıch ıs a penınsula not a town - am ı the only one who dıdn't learn about ıt at school?) wıth a turkısh tour guıde who was excellent ın gıvıng us the hıstory and lots of storıes and showed us all the sıghts - anzac cove, north beach, lone pıne, chanook baır, the tunnels and fronmt lınes - some only 8metres between enemıes. ıt was really nıce to hear how much the turkısh people embraced the anzacs, despıte us beıng enemıes at war.

we also dıd a cruıse on a ferry down the bosphorous from Istanbul to see where ıt met the black see and clımbed up to a castle ruıns. then ıt was a race back to the hostel to catch our overnıght bus to Cappadocıa. but Nıck mısread the tıcket and we had a spare 2 hours to relax before a gruelıng 13hr overnıght bus.

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Thursday we went into the city and got tickets for the original bus tour of london. its a double decker bus with an open roof so you can see all the sights with audio commentary or a live guide. they include a couple of walking tours and a ride on the ferry. One of the tours was a Jack the ripper tour. our guide took us on the path of jack the ripper and showed us all the locations and the history of the killings. pretty interesting. then we took a ferry ride down the thames.

Fi with the tower bridge in the background (most people mistake it for london bridge)

Friday we attempted to see the changing of the guard at buckingham palace, but found they only change the palace guard every second day in winter so we were taken on a tour for the changing of the horse guard. which was actually alot better because there were not so many tourists and you could get a lot closer to see and hear the changing much better. we then took a ride on the London Eye. its a giant ferris wheel that gives an aerial view of london.
The london eye

Trafalgar square has this most photographed monument in the world

we then caught up with bunx and some of his mates for friday after work drinks

bunx on the left, Paulie on the right

On satuday, Fi's friends Bec and Tony arrived and we all went out for a drink, but unfortunately Fi's bag was stolen. luckily we had backed up our photos that morning.

Sunday was nuts. Tony recommended we go to this place called the church, it is an old converted church. Apparently it doesnt have a liquor licence and runs by selling drinks like a bottleshop, as you can drink in public in london. The church is popular with travellers and the place was totally packed with Aussies, kiwis, south africans and irish. they placed music accordingly and had live acts including a magician midget freakshow, who stapled playing cards to himself. we then caught up with hammo and fergus.

tuesday we met my brother and went to the tower of london, very interesting, full of history. our guide was a yeoman warden. He was awesome, funny, entertaining and informative. These guys take so much pride in being the keepers of the tower. there have only been about 150 yeomen warden's since 1800. it is a job for life. That night we went to the theatre. what's london if you dont go and see a show. We saw the Lion King. The costumes were amazing. Fi loved it.

wednesday we saw the official changing of the guard at buckingham palace. the best bit was at st james palace where the soldiers line up for inspection, just before marching to buckingham palace for the ceremony. this was heaps better cos you actually got to see and hear the inspection and they marched right past us. once they marched down the road to buckingham they went behind the fence and we could not see very much at all.

We have pushed our flight back a couple of days and we are going to have a couple of lazy days relaxing and catching our breath after a hectic week to prepare ourselves for Turkey.

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We also stayed at their beautiful lakeside cottage and played boardgames, sat in front of the open fire, or went for walks exploring the snowed over beach.


this is the view out on the lake - lake huron. sensational! the brown is frozen sand washed up on frozen breakers.
sunset at the lake

We have had a really lovely relaxing week. Ready now to gear up and see the Niagara falls on a day tour, then we are flying to London England!! Our Europe adventure is about to begin!

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Spent a couple of days down in Fernie - Canada's best kept secret mountain of brilliant powder dumps! Here we spent Nick's b'day, snowboarding by day, hot tubs at night - that's the life! Loved it there.

We then drove to Lake Louise, via some natural hot springs little known about by tourists, called Lussier Hot Springs. Well worth the drive off the main highway, quite bizarre getting into bathers in subzero temperatures, to sit in sulphury stinky 40 degree water!

Lake Louise was FREEZING!! The coldest I've been! Obviously it wasn't the stunning blue lake you see on all the Canada travel posters - as it was frozen (something I only figured out when we got there...). So we walked around it, and over it, and could have ice skated on it if we wanted(but I have discovered I have a huge fear of slipping over on ice, coz it HURTS!). Also had a very cold picnic lunch in the snow. The scenery there was amazing.

Next we drove the Icefields Parkway up to Jasper through the Columbia Icefields. Probably better enjoyed in summer as all the lakes and waterfalls were frozen, and many of the hikes and services along the way closed for the season. Despite this, it's one of the most amazing drives due to the endless rocky mountains and glaciers, and the views at Peyto Lake, the Athabasca glacier, and falls, were brilliant.

We hiked a little around Jasper, saw some wildlife - sapsuckers, red squirrels, big horn sheep, mule deer. The views from the island on pyramid lake, and from the top of Old Fort Point overlooking Jasper, were breathtaking.

On the way back to Calgary we stopped in Banff to check out this famous ski town (the mountains in this area hadn't had much fresh snow so we didn't bother snowboarding). A very beautiful town with a great bakery!

Now we are back in Calgary, we are going to go out and try the famous alberta steak or maybe bison, then to the ice hockey again tonight. We fly to Toronto tomorrow for a couple of weeks to explore Niagara falls, and up to Montreal.

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went to chilliwhack and the fraser river to catch us some sturgeon (MASSIVE fish!) on an 8hour charter. was about 2 degrees outside, we had to leave at 530am to get to this place, and best of all NO food supplied and NO TOILET! could it get any better? luckily these promised fish were massive, and it was pretty fun to catch them... had nick and westy working up a sweat on a 6 footer (no joke) and i caught myself a cheeky little 4 footer.

Whistler
went to whistler/blackcomb with sara and westy on sunday, checked out the town. its beautiful - everyhing you imagine an alpine village to look like but bigger! they even have a starbucks! we went to the tube park - sooo fun! like a waterslide but not....

stayed overnight with mooses mate brian who then showed nick the slopes today - apparently a double black diamond run! they went from nearly the peak, all the way to the base which was nearly 13km long run! meanwhile i practiced picking myself up from falling frequently, as i tried to learn to snowboard on the kiddy runs. after two days startin to get the hang of it - but wasn't much fun the first day!

next stop calgary and banff after a few more days in downtown vacouver as guests of the west family. good times!!

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Departure and Vancouver remains copyright of the author hutchie, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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