London was everything we hoped it would be and more. Our hotel was right downtown, a ten minute walk away from Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and Westminster bridge... Awesomeness. We were in London for four full days, and each day was busy. Our first day was gorgeous, pure blue sky and sunshine, so we spent our day walking along the river side and taking pictures of the skyline with big Ben, the bridge and the rest of the sweet old buildings along the water. Big Ben is so cool... Its huge. And its so detailed and intricate. The clock face looks like stained glass with roman numerals on it, and there's so many carvings and grooves all up the sides of the clock. When the clock chimes every hour, you can't really decide whether to appreciate the beautiful tones of the chime, or try and place what movie you've heard a clear recording of these intense gongs that are usually meaning doomsday. I really wanted to get a picture of the clock and bridge scene, like in peter pan, but discovered that you have to be in a helicopter or something to get that kind of view.
We really enjoyed being in a big city again. We would wander up and down the alleys and streets, discovering how big theater is here. Huge is the answer. There were advertisements for musicals and shows everywhere. We didn't get to go see any because they were ridiculously expensive, but it was still cool to see all the different theaters and posters of the shows.
It was fun going into different little pubs for dinner. In the other countries we'd been to we never saw too many pubs where you could just grab a cheap meal, but London is all over it. We would have two meals for ten pounds, and it would be real food! Not fast food. Im talking like salmon and vegetables and stuff... Oddly graeme still got hamburgers at the pubs, but they were fresh hamburgers in his defense. Y'know, real meat and real fries. Anyway, the pubs had a cool environment that we loved being apart of. They weren't big restaurants with huge, elaborate meals, just a small little room with a bar and some tables for people to sit at. Everyones just there to grab some food, and enjoy conversation before going out to see what the night brings them.
So now we are at the end. 21 cities within 10 countries. We have taken 15 trains, 5 planes, 2 ferries, 1 rented car, and countless busses, metros, and trams. We start our journey home today, stopping in toronto for the night to see friends Hodg and Laura, and baby Coral. We've been through a lot on this trip, experiencing amazing things we never thought we would. We've enjoyed a week of being on a nearly deserted, tropical greek island, tasted delicious deserts from Portugal, France, and Belgium, searched for hotels that don't exist, had all id and bank cards stolen, had a white Christmas in Germany, new years with friends and fireworks, and walked through the Red Light District of Amsterdam. Like i said, amazing experiences, even though some were scary.
Our plans for when we come home are to move to Vancouver, live in an apartment, and enjoy the city life. Graeme wants to go back to school in the fall, and I'm going to look for a job downtown... No more teaching for me. We're excited to see what this year brings for us and where it takes us. Its hard to believe that its over, but we are ready to come home. The crazy hours that graeme worked, and the hard budgeting and saving were totally worth it. This trip was once a hopeful dream that we had together, and now it is a wonderful memory that we share.
See you soon!!!
g&k
Friday, January 14, 2011
Prague and Amsterdam
Welcome to the second last blog we will be posting...feels crazy but its true, only another two days or so until were back kicking it on the west coast. I think Kalia's mostly stoked because it means the patchy hair on my chin, I like to call a beard, will finally be leaving.
Well prague and Amsterdam...lets get started.
As we heard on the train from a local, and later found out to be true for ourselves, prague is a postcard city. The city of a thousand steeples as its called is just that. Hundreds of years of architecture poking it's head out above the skyline trying to prove that its still got claim over the city. Prague for myself was one of increasing respect. We came there, hearing from literally everyone that prague was the most beautiful city in Europe. The whole situation reminded me of a movie we watched on this trip, Despicable Me. Basically everyone that I had talked to, or every review I read online raved about it, saying it was amazing, the funniest movie ever. After watching it though I remember thinking, it was good... but not amazing. But after a few days, and a few thousand times of kalia doing some of the quotes such as, "is this an annoying sound" and proceeding to flick her mouth, or "ITS SO FUZZY!" I remember chuckling to myself and thinking I had been wrong. And so the same went for this city, it continued to grow on us even long after we'd left.
We were only in Prague for a couple days, which was fine cause the city isn't actually that large. We got through the main sights fairly quick, checking out the astronomical clock, the cathedral, and st. Charles bridge all within the first day. Every hour on the hour the astronomical clock does a show, described by a website as depicting love, betrayal, greed and death... all too music I might add. So sure enough I dragged kalia over there and waited a very cold ten minutes for the bell to strike and the performance to begin, expecting some sort of mini czech version of Romeo and juliet... Only when the clock struck seven a lone trumpeter (trumpeteer? Trumpetie?) started blaring a few notes while four puppets came out on a wheel one after another and then went back in, all in about ten seconds. To say it was not what i expected would be a little bit of an understatement.
The clock was already more than impressive though, as it lays out the time, the days and months, and many other trippy things I couldn't understand, so it was all good.
Other than the sights, we did a lot of wandering around the cobblestone streets, or going out for coffee in the town square. This kind of routine made its way into Amsterdam as well, which was our next stop on the list. Amsterdam, like Prague, was a very quiet little city that was more about getting lost in it's winding streets than rushing around to any tourist attractions.
The first day to kalias delight we found ourselves an amazing antique market housing thousands of pieces of jewelry, furniture and a number of other things. While she spent a good hour or so in there, I wandered around discovering amsterdams unique independent clothing shops where sweaters cost a couple hundred dollars. That's always the problem. No matter where you are, the stuff you can afford is always crap, while the stuff you like is always way too much.
Come back NOMIS!!
Aside from this though, Amsterdam is also home to the most H&M's we have witnessed in a city. Make your guesses....three you're thinking? Possibly four? Couldn't be more than five??? Down a total of two roads there were...count them....nine H&M's!!! Not bad for a city that was close to the smallest we had been in the whole trip. Needless to say some window shopping was definitely done.
The next day we checked out the van gogh museum. Don't know what more to say than there was a lot of van gogh paintings. Along with monet, manet and george seurat. Pretty awesome.
Everything was within walking distance so we made our way down to the city center from there, walking over canals and watching endless bikers weave their way through the city, (making Vancouvers attempt at being green look fairly pathetic in the process). Although im not sure if it was in an actual attempt of being green or the mere fact that this city is so mellowed out that they just don't care if they get somewhere in a hurry. I'm guessing you already know why this city is mellowed out, but if you don't it's the same reason why every time we would go to burger king there would be endless lines of youth salivating at the pictures of burgers. Even though Amsterdam didn't have tons of tourist attractions, everything it lacked in giant colosseums or ancient parthenons it gained back with its charm and character, making it a city that I'm glad we made the time to see.
And on to London!
g&k
Well prague and Amsterdam...lets get started.
As we heard on the train from a local, and later found out to be true for ourselves, prague is a postcard city. The city of a thousand steeples as its called is just that. Hundreds of years of architecture poking it's head out above the skyline trying to prove that its still got claim over the city. Prague for myself was one of increasing respect. We came there, hearing from literally everyone that prague was the most beautiful city in Europe. The whole situation reminded me of a movie we watched on this trip, Despicable Me. Basically everyone that I had talked to, or every review I read online raved about it, saying it was amazing, the funniest movie ever. After watching it though I remember thinking, it was good... but not amazing. But after a few days, and a few thousand times of kalia doing some of the quotes such as, "is this an annoying sound" and proceeding to flick her mouth, or "ITS SO FUZZY!" I remember chuckling to myself and thinking I had been wrong. And so the same went for this city, it continued to grow on us even long after we'd left.
We were only in Prague for a couple days, which was fine cause the city isn't actually that large. We got through the main sights fairly quick, checking out the astronomical clock, the cathedral, and st. Charles bridge all within the first day. Every hour on the hour the astronomical clock does a show, described by a website as depicting love, betrayal, greed and death... all too music I might add. So sure enough I dragged kalia over there and waited a very cold ten minutes for the bell to strike and the performance to begin, expecting some sort of mini czech version of Romeo and juliet... Only when the clock struck seven a lone trumpeter (trumpeteer? Trumpetie?) started blaring a few notes while four puppets came out on a wheel one after another and then went back in, all in about ten seconds. To say it was not what i expected would be a little bit of an understatement.
The clock was already more than impressive though, as it lays out the time, the days and months, and many other trippy things I couldn't understand, so it was all good.
Other than the sights, we did a lot of wandering around the cobblestone streets, or going out for coffee in the town square. This kind of routine made its way into Amsterdam as well, which was our next stop on the list. Amsterdam, like Prague, was a very quiet little city that was more about getting lost in it's winding streets than rushing around to any tourist attractions.
The first day to kalias delight we found ourselves an amazing antique market housing thousands of pieces of jewelry, furniture and a number of other things. While she spent a good hour or so in there, I wandered around discovering amsterdams unique independent clothing shops where sweaters cost a couple hundred dollars. That's always the problem. No matter where you are, the stuff you can afford is always crap, while the stuff you like is always way too much.
Come back NOMIS!!
Aside from this though, Amsterdam is also home to the most H&M's we have witnessed in a city. Make your guesses....three you're thinking? Possibly four? Couldn't be more than five??? Down a total of two roads there were...count them....nine H&M's!!! Not bad for a city that was close to the smallest we had been in the whole trip. Needless to say some window shopping was definitely done.
The next day we checked out the van gogh museum. Don't know what more to say than there was a lot of van gogh paintings. Along with monet, manet and george seurat. Pretty awesome.
Everything was within walking distance so we made our way down to the city center from there, walking over canals and watching endless bikers weave their way through the city, (making Vancouvers attempt at being green look fairly pathetic in the process). Although im not sure if it was in an actual attempt of being green or the mere fact that this city is so mellowed out that they just don't care if they get somewhere in a hurry. I'm guessing you already know why this city is mellowed out, but if you don't it's the same reason why every time we would go to burger king there would be endless lines of youth salivating at the pictures of burgers. Even though Amsterdam didn't have tons of tourist attractions, everything it lacked in giant colosseums or ancient parthenons it gained back with its charm and character, making it a city that I'm glad we made the time to see.
And on to London!
g&k
Friday, January 7, 2011
Germany
So we covered four cities in Germany, and each have been very different from each other, minus the fact that each of them are buried under two or three feet of snow.
We started off in Nurnberg. We had heard that Germany was extremely well known for their Christmas markets in each city, but Nurnberg was where the biggest one was. This market definitely lived up to our expectations. The market is held in the old part of the city, where everything was built in like the 1500s. First you have to walk through this huge stone castle to cross into the old city, and then walk down a super steep, super snowy and slippery cobble stone hill into the heart of the town. What we didn't know about the christmas markets in Germany is that its the weeks leading up to Christmas that they are in full swing, and they close at two on Christmas eve and thats the end of them. So on the twenty third we woke up early, and went out to enjoy the christmas spirit, The first vendors we started to pass were packed with people drinking "special" apple cider, and chowing down on sausage sandwiches. Graeme's head started to spin from one brotwurst vendor to another sausage vendor. I feel like i cant bring justice to the supposed greatness of the German sausage, but according to graeme they were some of the best sausage sandwiches he's ever tasted. Of course nothing compared to the half a meter long smoked hotdog piled with mustard and onions he ate for dinner one night. These half meter hotdogs were a common occurrence to run into or dodge and avoid in the crowds.
The rest of the two hundred vendors were filled with handmade wooden ornaments that reminded us both of the old claymation of Rudolph, gingerbread (not nearly as good as yours mom and brad), little porcelain houses that are lit up inside just like the ones both moms bring out at christmas time, hand painted tree ornaments, and graeme's favorite puzzles and toys. Even though a number of vendors were all selling the same thing, the difference was in how the the vendor was decorated. If any of you have seen a christmas story, it was like being ralphie staring at the super cool christmas display in the window. The vendors would have their ornaments or toys hanging from the ceiling of their little shop, hanging up both sides, and displayed on levels up the whole front of it just so that there was a a little window the seller could peek through. It was incredible. We also went into the infamous Christmas store Kathe Wohlfart (yes go on and laugh, we laughed too) and found a small fake christmas tree, and a beautiful woven star to set up in our hotel room. In the evening we listened to a choir sing Christmas carols infront of the old church that was built in 1509, and then headed back to the hotel.
On Christmas eve we went back to the market to see it one last time, and then it was so so so cold outside we ran into star bucks to enjoy hot caramel machiattos, which i may be slightly addicted to now. It started to snow while we were inside, and it kept snowing right through till the end of the next day. Our Christmas eve evening consisted of indulging into the mini bar food, eating mandarine oranges, and glasses of white wine while playing rook. We ended the evening with watching Trading Places, a classic.
Christmas morning Graeme let me sleep in till twelve, and then we watched the grinch, a favorite of mine. Later that day we ventured out to see if there was anything open for us to go eat at, but found that literally everything closes on christmas day, evereything nearby us anyway. We walked back to the hotel and got more mini bar food to eat until we walked to the train station where we knew there were restaurants of a fast food nature. When we got back to the hotel, we were looking out our window and had an idea... The flat roof of the hotel was right outside our window, just a hop over our balcony railing. There was about two feet of fresh snow on that roof, unspoiled and not being enjoyed. So we took part in an epic snowball fight together until we were too wet and too cold to keep going. We came inside and skipped our parents wishing them merry Christmas, and then headed out to the train station to catch the tram to a little theater that showed English movies. Our christmas dinner consisted of some delicious burger king, and then we were off to see Little Fockers, which was better than the second one, but nowhere nearly as good as the first Meet the Parents. All in all our Christmas was pretty simple and sweet.
On boxing day we left for Munich. Side note, in germany dec.26 is actually called "second Christmas", a wonderful part of Christmas that i think should be brought back home. Anyway, Munich is a very small city. The main sight to see was this big gothic clock tower building, and it's right there as soon as you step out of the tram. That was the main historical sight to see, but what Munich is especially known for is its beer halls, which makes sense because it's considered "the beer capital of the world". So we of course had to check this main attraction out. Both nights we went to a beer hall called Hofbrauhaus, where a glass of beer is a liter. This beer hall was huge. You walk through these huge wooden doors into a huge open room housing a few hundred people all sitting together at large wooden tables, on long wooden benches with a liter of beer in their hands, and listening to traditional German music played by a band dressed up in laderhosen. For our first night we squished onto a bench, each enjoying a beer, but deciding it still didn't compare to Belgian beer. Our second night however, we apparently came on an especially rowdy night. We sat down at a table, ordered one beer for us to share, Graeme ordering a sausage meal of some sort, then the band began to play a song. Instantly, everyone raised their huge glasses into the air and started swaying them and singing along to the song. Once the song was done, the table beside us lead everyone in this loud cheer or chant. They had the biggest voices, so loud. This scenario happened around six times in the span of the two hours we were there. At some point in the evening the loud cheering table turned to us and asked us where we were from, and got super stoked that we were from Canada. We're not sure how the next event came around, but it was super entertaining. One of the guys at the table (a tank of a guy), Felix was his name, wanted to bet us a beer that he could down a liter glass in 15 seconds. We said make it 10 and he's got a deal. So we paid for the beer, and if we won he'd giver us our money back. He hopped over the benches, came to sit with us, with his friends cheering him on. One of the girls came over to time him, and it was on. The rowdy table was cheering, we were cheering, so were the random French and italian guys beside us. Like i said, this guy was a tank, the big friendly giant. He downed that beer in 8 seconds flat. Everyone cheered some more. And with that he shook our hands, got up, and ended with "now I must go to the toilet". We hung out with that group for a little while, sang some more chants, and then we called it a night. Munich was a very fun and exciting little city.
Our next stop was Dresden, which wasn't a veery entertaining city. We went and saw the "Church of Our Lady"; cathedral that got bombed and completely obliterated in world war 2, but rebuilt in the original architecture 100 years ago. It was very beautiful, but very strange to see a building of such old design looking so bright and new. The colors were so vibrant and the carvings to clean and sharp or curved. After seeing the church we wandered around in the cold successfully finding a star bucks to warm up in. This is pretty much where we spent the rest of our afternoon... We were in a very lazy mood and just felt like cozying up with some tea and coffee.
We left the next day for Hamburg, a small overnight pitstop on the way to meet up with our friends Jonas and Kristina on new years eve. On new years eve we trained over to their tiny town and got picked up at the station and brought back to Jonas' parents house. It was so wonderful to see familiar faces again! A bunch of people were there, a couple friends from church we hadn't seen in a few years, and lots of German friends of jonas and kristinas. We all hung out inside talking and playing guitar or listening to music until it was time for dinner; Kristina had bern cooking two huge pots of chili for us to eat. We all headed out to the barn where two long wooden tables were set up in the small room, and the wood burning stove was going keeping the room relatively warm. We all sat down, squishing together on benches, ready to eat our big bowls of chili and huge hunks of focaccia bread with a glass of beer. It was such a warm atmosphere bring with everyone for a celebratory meal. We learned of german new years traditions. The first one was that people, young and old, dress up in costumes and go door to door singing a traditional German song in exchange for a traditional German sweet and/or a shot of hard alcohol. The second tradition our friend Ian told me about just because he thought it was hilarious, and had no idea he was saving me from a potential allergic reaction. The germans make custard cream and jellied filled donuts for everyone to eat, but one of them is filled with mustard, and whoever gets that one will have a bad year. Of all ingredients! We had a great laugh over that. When midnight came around we all had champagne outside by the blazing fire pit and the guys lit off fireworks. It was beautiful. We all ended up staying up until about 4am telling traveling stories and explaining our cultures to one another. It was a wonderful night.
The next morning we all had breakfast downstairs together; boiled eggs, cold cuts, buns, cheeses, jams, tea and coffee. After breakfast everyone took off and it was just the 6 of us left; Graeme and me, Jonas and Kristina, and Ian and Danielle. We all hopped in the car, on the way to the Baltic Sea. On the way there we got to experience driving on the autobahn. There's a sign that indicates there are literally no rules when driving on that stretch of road. It was insane! So fast. We made it to the sea, and man oh man it was freezing up there. Like -5 with 30km/h winds.... My friends, that is very cold. There were huge boulders of ice resting all across the shore line, it looked like a mini version of the Titanic scenario with all the snow along the water. We hung out there for a very short time, all deciding we'd freeze over if we stayed any longer, and went to the town in search of hot drinks. Later that night we all sat down again to another big meal downstairs with jonas' parents, and some relatives of his that came in that day. It was leftover chili and cheese fondue for dinner. Grae and i had never had cheese fondue before, and discovered we love it! It was delicious. We've really enjoyed the big communal dinners weve been able to have with our friends and their family. It feels like we really got to experience the culture of a German family.
So that bring Germany to a close, a country i wasn't really sure about being stoked on before we left, but is now probably one of my favorite countries we've been to. The next time you read our stories we'll have been to Prague, and to amsterdam.
g&k
We started off in Nurnberg. We had heard that Germany was extremely well known for their Christmas markets in each city, but Nurnberg was where the biggest one was. This market definitely lived up to our expectations. The market is held in the old part of the city, where everything was built in like the 1500s. First you have to walk through this huge stone castle to cross into the old city, and then walk down a super steep, super snowy and slippery cobble stone hill into the heart of the town. What we didn't know about the christmas markets in Germany is that its the weeks leading up to Christmas that they are in full swing, and they close at two on Christmas eve and thats the end of them. So on the twenty third we woke up early, and went out to enjoy the christmas spirit, The first vendors we started to pass were packed with people drinking "special" apple cider, and chowing down on sausage sandwiches. Graeme's head started to spin from one brotwurst vendor to another sausage vendor. I feel like i cant bring justice to the supposed greatness of the German sausage, but according to graeme they were some of the best sausage sandwiches he's ever tasted. Of course nothing compared to the half a meter long smoked hotdog piled with mustard and onions he ate for dinner one night. These half meter hotdogs were a common occurrence to run into or dodge and avoid in the crowds.
The rest of the two hundred vendors were filled with handmade wooden ornaments that reminded us both of the old claymation of Rudolph, gingerbread (not nearly as good as yours mom and brad), little porcelain houses that are lit up inside just like the ones both moms bring out at christmas time, hand painted tree ornaments, and graeme's favorite puzzles and toys. Even though a number of vendors were all selling the same thing, the difference was in how the the vendor was decorated. If any of you have seen a christmas story, it was like being ralphie staring at the super cool christmas display in the window. The vendors would have their ornaments or toys hanging from the ceiling of their little shop, hanging up both sides, and displayed on levels up the whole front of it just so that there was a a little window the seller could peek through. It was incredible. We also went into the infamous Christmas store Kathe Wohlfart (yes go on and laugh, we laughed too) and found a small fake christmas tree, and a beautiful woven star to set up in our hotel room. In the evening we listened to a choir sing Christmas carols infront of the old church that was built in 1509, and then headed back to the hotel.
On Christmas eve we went back to the market to see it one last time, and then it was so so so cold outside we ran into star bucks to enjoy hot caramel machiattos, which i may be slightly addicted to now. It started to snow while we were inside, and it kept snowing right through till the end of the next day. Our Christmas eve evening consisted of indulging into the mini bar food, eating mandarine oranges, and glasses of white wine while playing rook. We ended the evening with watching Trading Places, a classic.
Christmas morning Graeme let me sleep in till twelve, and then we watched the grinch, a favorite of mine. Later that day we ventured out to see if there was anything open for us to go eat at, but found that literally everything closes on christmas day, evereything nearby us anyway. We walked back to the hotel and got more mini bar food to eat until we walked to the train station where we knew there were restaurants of a fast food nature. When we got back to the hotel, we were looking out our window and had an idea... The flat roof of the hotel was right outside our window, just a hop over our balcony railing. There was about two feet of fresh snow on that roof, unspoiled and not being enjoyed. So we took part in an epic snowball fight together until we were too wet and too cold to keep going. We came inside and skipped our parents wishing them merry Christmas, and then headed out to the train station to catch the tram to a little theater that showed English movies. Our christmas dinner consisted of some delicious burger king, and then we were off to see Little Fockers, which was better than the second one, but nowhere nearly as good as the first Meet the Parents. All in all our Christmas was pretty simple and sweet.
On boxing day we left for Munich. Side note, in germany dec.26 is actually called "second Christmas", a wonderful part of Christmas that i think should be brought back home. Anyway, Munich is a very small city. The main sight to see was this big gothic clock tower building, and it's right there as soon as you step out of the tram. That was the main historical sight to see, but what Munich is especially known for is its beer halls, which makes sense because it's considered "the beer capital of the world". So we of course had to check this main attraction out. Both nights we went to a beer hall called Hofbrauhaus, where a glass of beer is a liter. This beer hall was huge. You walk through these huge wooden doors into a huge open room housing a few hundred people all sitting together at large wooden tables, on long wooden benches with a liter of beer in their hands, and listening to traditional German music played by a band dressed up in laderhosen. For our first night we squished onto a bench, each enjoying a beer, but deciding it still didn't compare to Belgian beer. Our second night however, we apparently came on an especially rowdy night. We sat down at a table, ordered one beer for us to share, Graeme ordering a sausage meal of some sort, then the band began to play a song. Instantly, everyone raised their huge glasses into the air and started swaying them and singing along to the song. Once the song was done, the table beside us lead everyone in this loud cheer or chant. They had the biggest voices, so loud. This scenario happened around six times in the span of the two hours we were there. At some point in the evening the loud cheering table turned to us and asked us where we were from, and got super stoked that we were from Canada. We're not sure how the next event came around, but it was super entertaining. One of the guys at the table (a tank of a guy), Felix was his name, wanted to bet us a beer that he could down a liter glass in 15 seconds. We said make it 10 and he's got a deal. So we paid for the beer, and if we won he'd giver us our money back. He hopped over the benches, came to sit with us, with his friends cheering him on. One of the girls came over to time him, and it was on. The rowdy table was cheering, we were cheering, so were the random French and italian guys beside us. Like i said, this guy was a tank, the big friendly giant. He downed that beer in 8 seconds flat. Everyone cheered some more. And with that he shook our hands, got up, and ended with "now I must go to the toilet". We hung out with that group for a little while, sang some more chants, and then we called it a night. Munich was a very fun and exciting little city.
Our next stop was Dresden, which wasn't a veery entertaining city. We went and saw the "Church of Our Lady"; cathedral that got bombed and completely obliterated in world war 2, but rebuilt in the original architecture 100 years ago. It was very beautiful, but very strange to see a building of such old design looking so bright and new. The colors were so vibrant and the carvings to clean and sharp or curved. After seeing the church we wandered around in the cold successfully finding a star bucks to warm up in. This is pretty much where we spent the rest of our afternoon... We were in a very lazy mood and just felt like cozying up with some tea and coffee.
We left the next day for Hamburg, a small overnight pitstop on the way to meet up with our friends Jonas and Kristina on new years eve. On new years eve we trained over to their tiny town and got picked up at the station and brought back to Jonas' parents house. It was so wonderful to see familiar faces again! A bunch of people were there, a couple friends from church we hadn't seen in a few years, and lots of German friends of jonas and kristinas. We all hung out inside talking and playing guitar or listening to music until it was time for dinner; Kristina had bern cooking two huge pots of chili for us to eat. We all headed out to the barn where two long wooden tables were set up in the small room, and the wood burning stove was going keeping the room relatively warm. We all sat down, squishing together on benches, ready to eat our big bowls of chili and huge hunks of focaccia bread with a glass of beer. It was such a warm atmosphere bring with everyone for a celebratory meal. We learned of german new years traditions. The first one was that people, young and old, dress up in costumes and go door to door singing a traditional German song in exchange for a traditional German sweet and/or a shot of hard alcohol. The second tradition our friend Ian told me about just because he thought it was hilarious, and had no idea he was saving me from a potential allergic reaction. The germans make custard cream and jellied filled donuts for everyone to eat, but one of them is filled with mustard, and whoever gets that one will have a bad year. Of all ingredients! We had a great laugh over that. When midnight came around we all had champagne outside by the blazing fire pit and the guys lit off fireworks. It was beautiful. We all ended up staying up until about 4am telling traveling stories and explaining our cultures to one another. It was a wonderful night.
The next morning we all had breakfast downstairs together; boiled eggs, cold cuts, buns, cheeses, jams, tea and coffee. After breakfast everyone took off and it was just the 6 of us left; Graeme and me, Jonas and Kristina, and Ian and Danielle. We all hopped in the car, on the way to the Baltic Sea. On the way there we got to experience driving on the autobahn. There's a sign that indicates there are literally no rules when driving on that stretch of road. It was insane! So fast. We made it to the sea, and man oh man it was freezing up there. Like -5 with 30km/h winds.... My friends, that is very cold. There were huge boulders of ice resting all across the shore line, it looked like a mini version of the Titanic scenario with all the snow along the water. We hung out there for a very short time, all deciding we'd freeze over if we stayed any longer, and went to the town in search of hot drinks. Later that night we all sat down again to another big meal downstairs with jonas' parents, and some relatives of his that came in that day. It was leftover chili and cheese fondue for dinner. Grae and i had never had cheese fondue before, and discovered we love it! It was delicious. We've really enjoyed the big communal dinners weve been able to have with our friends and their family. It feels like we really got to experience the culture of a German family.
So that bring Germany to a close, a country i wasn't really sure about being stoked on before we left, but is now probably one of my favorite countries we've been to. The next time you read our stories we'll have been to Prague, and to amsterdam.
g&k
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Paris and Brussels
So I'm a little bit late on this one, as we've already been in germany for about five days now but here is the update on Paris and Brussels.
As you already know we had to stay long in barcelona for unfortunate reasons, which cut down on our France stay substantially. We were originally going to have two days in Avignon and then five days in Paris, but instead we were stuck with only two days in Paris. Now I'm not saying its impossible to experience a city in two full days....but its Paris....in two full days...common. Now you're not going to get this reference unless you watch how i met your mother but... "Challenge accepted!!!".
We pulled in the first day to some light snow, and made our way down the street to our hotel. We were told before hand that the french were somewhat snobby but we were not prepared for what we were to encounter. Looking like "the albino" from the princess bride, (google it, I feel bad even saying it but its uncanny the resemblance) this woman at the reception continued to snoot and laugh at everything we would ask or any sense of miscommunication in the least. Finally after half an hour of arguing and phoning managers we were able to get ourselves our reserved room and get out to the city.
Thankfully aside from the people, paris had more than enough to offer. Our first stop was of course the Eiffel tower. The weather was supposed to turn gross so we thought we should get there first to ensure we see it in its prime. When we got there it was still daylight, and Im not saying I wasn't impressed, just...i can see why people say its more of an eyesore than a thing of beauty. Basically just a huge hunk of metal thrown together and propped up in the middle of town. The size of it was ridiculous though, I'll give it credit for that. To get that classic standing in front of the tower picture that everyone has you actually have to stand in the next city over it felt like. Once it turned to night though, you really could appreciate it for what it was. Glowing in all it's lights (except once an hour when they do a light show which is basically just the tower having a seizure), is when you really feel the magic of everything come to life. You begin to understand why the eccentric romantic Pepe Le Pue makes this city his home.
One of the funnier things about it though is these flocks of immigrants who make their living by selling cheesy little glowing Eiffel towers. Now we were used to these people as every city in europe has their own version, but what we hadn't experienced yet was what happens when bike police come cruising through. With one tug of a rope all their little models would be tied into a bag and within seconds twenty or thirty of them would be sprinting down the street, with the jingling of their toys on their backs. This would happen about once an hour or so, like a bunch of renegade Santa clauses or something.
The next day we decided to check out the louvre. Being basically the most famous museum in the world we felt we kind of had too. Not too mention kalia was more than stoked to see all the paintings from the artists that she had been teaching her kids in school, like van gogh, Monet, da Vinci etc... Now i won't get too into it but basically we had some major false impressions and realistically ended up paying twenty dollars to go see the mona Lisa. She was really cool too see though, had the same smirk on as usual and, as kalia loved, her eyes would follow you wherever you went.
Also that day we went and saw the champs elysees. Its apparently the second most famous street in the world next to fifth avenue in new York. It's basically a two km long shopaholics dream that starts at a main roundabout and ends at the 'arc de triumph' (which was also kind of cool, just a little too cold at the time to enjoy). Oh but when I say 'shopaholics dream' I of course mean the kind that wear fur around their necks and have twenty black credit cards to use, not two broke travelers including one who is used to shopping at army and navy. But nonetheless it was a great time for window shopping and pretending. It wasn't all a bust though, Kalia managed to find a beauty of a coat to replace the burlap sack that her previous coat had turned into.
At the end of the street where the roundabout is, it continued into their own version of a christmas market and this is where we experienced the sensation of the french crepe. Not a breakfast food as we have altered it to be, but a fresh off the pan, layered with nutella, desert from the heavens. Mothers, you have two and half weeks to perfect this by the time we get home...
The only other thing we really saw in Paris was the notre dame, which was pretty amazing. We've already had a few things be a let down throughout the trip, as they're so hard to determine in pictures, but I would say this one lived up. And don't worry I got tons of pictures of the gargoyles as I know this is what everyone like myself is actually interested in...
So that was pretty much it for Paris. From here we went on to Brussels, which actually came very close to not happening. When we were deciding way back when , we had the options of Amsterdam, Brussels, or stretching out France a little bit more to fill the gap until we got to Nuremberg. Thankfully we made the choice we did, as the city turned out to be one of our favorites. We had kind of felt like most of the cities had been selling out to the western ideals and losing their soul that made them each unique... mainly Spain and portugal. But Brussels felt like it must have way back when, except instead of a blacksmith and a butcher they now have a Footlocker and a Burger King which I will actually agree was a good upgrade.
But other than that, this small city was lined with ancient buildings, cobble stone roads, and chronicles of narnia looking lamp posts. We spent most of our days there just wandering the streets popping into any shops that looked intriguing, and strolling through the endless vendors of the Christmas market. Although none of these came even close to the best part of the town. Belgium beer. We found online this pub in a basement that contained a ridiculous two thousand different types of beer. Needless to say I attempted to try every flavor there, but came a little bit short......1996 flavors short actually. But it didn't matter, with those four flavors that we tried, our minds and taste buds were blown. Not even the infamous Sleemans honey brown came close. Not too sure what were gonna do when we get home, but Europe has officially ruined deserts and now beer for us.
Other than that belgium didn't have a lot of sights or anything, just a great little city to get lost in for a few days.
Until next time
g & k
As you already know we had to stay long in barcelona for unfortunate reasons, which cut down on our France stay substantially. We were originally going to have two days in Avignon and then five days in Paris, but instead we were stuck with only two days in Paris. Now I'm not saying its impossible to experience a city in two full days....but its Paris....in two full days...common. Now you're not going to get this reference unless you watch how i met your mother but... "Challenge accepted!!!".
We pulled in the first day to some light snow, and made our way down the street to our hotel. We were told before hand that the french were somewhat snobby but we were not prepared for what we were to encounter. Looking like "the albino" from the princess bride, (google it, I feel bad even saying it but its uncanny the resemblance) this woman at the reception continued to snoot and laugh at everything we would ask or any sense of miscommunication in the least. Finally after half an hour of arguing and phoning managers we were able to get ourselves our reserved room and get out to the city.
Thankfully aside from the people, paris had more than enough to offer. Our first stop was of course the Eiffel tower. The weather was supposed to turn gross so we thought we should get there first to ensure we see it in its prime. When we got there it was still daylight, and Im not saying I wasn't impressed, just...i can see why people say its more of an eyesore than a thing of beauty. Basically just a huge hunk of metal thrown together and propped up in the middle of town. The size of it was ridiculous though, I'll give it credit for that. To get that classic standing in front of the tower picture that everyone has you actually have to stand in the next city over it felt like. Once it turned to night though, you really could appreciate it for what it was. Glowing in all it's lights (except once an hour when they do a light show which is basically just the tower having a seizure), is when you really feel the magic of everything come to life. You begin to understand why the eccentric romantic Pepe Le Pue makes this city his home.
One of the funnier things about it though is these flocks of immigrants who make their living by selling cheesy little glowing Eiffel towers. Now we were used to these people as every city in europe has their own version, but what we hadn't experienced yet was what happens when bike police come cruising through. With one tug of a rope all their little models would be tied into a bag and within seconds twenty or thirty of them would be sprinting down the street, with the jingling of their toys on their backs. This would happen about once an hour or so, like a bunch of renegade Santa clauses or something.
The next day we decided to check out the louvre. Being basically the most famous museum in the world we felt we kind of had too. Not too mention kalia was more than stoked to see all the paintings from the artists that she had been teaching her kids in school, like van gogh, Monet, da Vinci etc... Now i won't get too into it but basically we had some major false impressions and realistically ended up paying twenty dollars to go see the mona Lisa. She was really cool too see though, had the same smirk on as usual and, as kalia loved, her eyes would follow you wherever you went.
Also that day we went and saw the champs elysees. Its apparently the second most famous street in the world next to fifth avenue in new York. It's basically a two km long shopaholics dream that starts at a main roundabout and ends at the 'arc de triumph' (which was also kind of cool, just a little too cold at the time to enjoy). Oh but when I say 'shopaholics dream' I of course mean the kind that wear fur around their necks and have twenty black credit cards to use, not two broke travelers including one who is used to shopping at army and navy. But nonetheless it was a great time for window shopping and pretending. It wasn't all a bust though, Kalia managed to find a beauty of a coat to replace the burlap sack that her previous coat had turned into.
At the end of the street where the roundabout is, it continued into their own version of a christmas market and this is where we experienced the sensation of the french crepe. Not a breakfast food as we have altered it to be, but a fresh off the pan, layered with nutella, desert from the heavens. Mothers, you have two and half weeks to perfect this by the time we get home...
The only other thing we really saw in Paris was the notre dame, which was pretty amazing. We've already had a few things be a let down throughout the trip, as they're so hard to determine in pictures, but I would say this one lived up. And don't worry I got tons of pictures of the gargoyles as I know this is what everyone like myself is actually interested in...
So that was pretty much it for Paris. From here we went on to Brussels, which actually came very close to not happening. When we were deciding way back when , we had the options of Amsterdam, Brussels, or stretching out France a little bit more to fill the gap until we got to Nuremberg. Thankfully we made the choice we did, as the city turned out to be one of our favorites. We had kind of felt like most of the cities had been selling out to the western ideals and losing their soul that made them each unique... mainly Spain and portugal. But Brussels felt like it must have way back when, except instead of a blacksmith and a butcher they now have a Footlocker and a Burger King which I will actually agree was a good upgrade.
But other than that, this small city was lined with ancient buildings, cobble stone roads, and chronicles of narnia looking lamp posts. We spent most of our days there just wandering the streets popping into any shops that looked intriguing, and strolling through the endless vendors of the Christmas market. Although none of these came even close to the best part of the town. Belgium beer. We found online this pub in a basement that contained a ridiculous two thousand different types of beer. Needless to say I attempted to try every flavor there, but came a little bit short......1996 flavors short actually. But it didn't matter, with those four flavors that we tried, our minds and taste buds were blown. Not even the infamous Sleemans honey brown came close. Not too sure what were gonna do when we get home, but Europe has officially ruined deserts and now beer for us.
Other than that belgium didn't have a lot of sights or anything, just a great little city to get lost in for a few days.
Until next time
g & k
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Spain
Well, Spain was interesting. Let's start at the beginning shall we?
Madrid is a very busy city. Everybody is on fast mode, they just done stop! Run to the metro, run away from the metro, its crazy! The roads are just packed with people trying to walk along the sidewalks, and the starbucks we hung out in for free internet was always crammed with wall to wall people trying to get seats. Mom, thanks to your lessons on stalking "those who might leave" in parking lots I was always able to sneak two seats and a table for us. It's an art form i think. On our first day we went and saw the Royal Palace; the biggest palace in Europe. It is huge! Goon As Graeme would say. It was so long with so many columns and all the lampposts in its courtyard were trimmed in gold. Each time we see palaces or "houses" like this we always go "Can you imagine this being where you live?". The next day we went and saw the Crystal Palace. This is not a palace that was lived in. Both the walls and ceilings are made completely of glass. It was so nice to have a completely clear day to this, so the sun shone through the glass and it was beautiful. That was such an awesome day. We sat on a bench looking at the palace and the pond, with the ducks waddling around, eating our delicious lunch of mandarin oranges and cupcakes. Mandarin oranges have become a staple us. We really miss fruit and fesh produce. On our third day we went down to the river and had another picnic lunch, and then walked along the shore to the temples of Debod; temples that the Egyptians built in 2nd century A.D. They had hieroglyphics all along the walls. I cant remember why they were built... Sorry :) information overload. Our fourth day was just a whatever day, we had seen all the big sights that you we ere supposed to see, so we just enjoyed our last evening in Madrid walking along the streets and drinking hot drinks.
Barcelona.... Well if you haven't heard yet, my purse was stolen the day before we were supposed to leace for France. It was really stupid of us, but we had everything in there; our passports, our debit cards, my credit card, my glasses, contacts, iPod, ect. So that little hiccup cost us 4 more unwanted days in Barcelona. Yes some would say that being stuck in Barcelona is not a bad thing, it could be worse, but after starting off the trip to this city with a walk through the suburbs looking for a hotel that didn't appear to exist and conveniently is nonrefundable, having to book a new hotel for the week onto of that one, and then the hotel in Avignon, France having to be charged because it was too late to cancel, we we were pretty ready to leave.
Before this all happened, Barcelona was pretty sweet. We really like cities that are on the waterfront. They just have a much nicer vibe to them, way less intense. Everybody just walks alone the walk ways having a good time, not rushing around. We loved hanging out by the water after sight seeing and such during the day. We went and saw the Sagradia de Familia, a very strange looking cathedral thats still in the process of being built. The guy that designed it, who seemed to design everything famous in Barcelona, definitely liked things to look different. It has like lizards crawling up the sides of the steeples. Graeme thought it looked pretty weird, beautiful is definitely not the right descriptive word for it. We went and saw the Parque Guell; a park designed by the same guy. Guadi is his name. The park theme was Hansel and Grettel. Everything looked like it was made out of gingerbread and gumdrops, a kids dream park. It was a beautiful park, with super tall palm trees all around. When do you get to walk through a park of palm trees? Not in BC thats for sure. We walked down to the beach one day, and the waves were huge. People were surfing, even though it was a pretty cold and windy day.
This brings us to the day everything was taken. So spain was kind of a hectic time, it kind of feels like a whirl wind. That unwanted experience didn't ruin our feelings to towards Spain at all, it just made the last few days a bit of a haze. We'll tell you more about it when we get home :) which is in 3 and a half weeks by the way, surprise! Can't wait to see everyone again, we miss you guys! Graeme will blog next on Paris and Belgium. Hope everyone is having awesome Christmas holidays!
g&k
Madrid is a very busy city. Everybody is on fast mode, they just done stop! Run to the metro, run away from the metro, its crazy! The roads are just packed with people trying to walk along the sidewalks, and the starbucks we hung out in for free internet was always crammed with wall to wall people trying to get seats. Mom, thanks to your lessons on stalking "those who might leave" in parking lots I was always able to sneak two seats and a table for us. It's an art form i think. On our first day we went and saw the Royal Palace; the biggest palace in Europe. It is huge! Goon As Graeme would say. It was so long with so many columns and all the lampposts in its courtyard were trimmed in gold. Each time we see palaces or "houses" like this we always go "Can you imagine this being where you live?". The next day we went and saw the Crystal Palace. This is not a palace that was lived in. Both the walls and ceilings are made completely of glass. It was so nice to have a completely clear day to this, so the sun shone through the glass and it was beautiful. That was such an awesome day. We sat on a bench looking at the palace and the pond, with the ducks waddling around, eating our delicious lunch of mandarin oranges and cupcakes. Mandarin oranges have become a staple us. We really miss fruit and fesh produce. On our third day we went down to the river and had another picnic lunch, and then walked along the shore to the temples of Debod; temples that the Egyptians built in 2nd century A.D. They had hieroglyphics all along the walls. I cant remember why they were built... Sorry :) information overload. Our fourth day was just a whatever day, we had seen all the big sights that you we ere supposed to see, so we just enjoyed our last evening in Madrid walking along the streets and drinking hot drinks.
Barcelona.... Well if you haven't heard yet, my purse was stolen the day before we were supposed to leace for France. It was really stupid of us, but we had everything in there; our passports, our debit cards, my credit card, my glasses, contacts, iPod, ect. So that little hiccup cost us 4 more unwanted days in Barcelona. Yes some would say that being stuck in Barcelona is not a bad thing, it could be worse, but after starting off the trip to this city with a walk through the suburbs looking for a hotel that didn't appear to exist and conveniently is nonrefundable, having to book a new hotel for the week onto of that one, and then the hotel in Avignon, France having to be charged because it was too late to cancel, we we were pretty ready to leave.
Before this all happened, Barcelona was pretty sweet. We really like cities that are on the waterfront. They just have a much nicer vibe to them, way less intense. Everybody just walks alone the walk ways having a good time, not rushing around. We loved hanging out by the water after sight seeing and such during the day. We went and saw the Sagradia de Familia, a very strange looking cathedral thats still in the process of being built. The guy that designed it, who seemed to design everything famous in Barcelona, definitely liked things to look different. It has like lizards crawling up the sides of the steeples. Graeme thought it looked pretty weird, beautiful is definitely not the right descriptive word for it. We went and saw the Parque Guell; a park designed by the same guy. Guadi is his name. The park theme was Hansel and Grettel. Everything looked like it was made out of gingerbread and gumdrops, a kids dream park. It was a beautiful park, with super tall palm trees all around. When do you get to walk through a park of palm trees? Not in BC thats for sure. We walked down to the beach one day, and the waves were huge. People were surfing, even though it was a pretty cold and windy day.
This brings us to the day everything was taken. So spain was kind of a hectic time, it kind of feels like a whirl wind. That unwanted experience didn't ruin our feelings to towards Spain at all, it just made the last few days a bit of a haze. We'll tell you more about it when we get home :) which is in 3 and a half weeks by the way, surprise! Can't wait to see everyone again, we miss you guys! Graeme will blog next on Paris and Belgium. Hope everyone is having awesome Christmas holidays!
g&k
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Portugal
First off I just want to thanks my parents, the funks, for the awesome early Christmas present that they gave us. I don't want to get into the whole Mac vs PC, or Steve jobs vs bill gates debate, because I know the salmonds are reading this and i don't want them to feel like they are winning this topic at all. But In case you didn't already know, we were given an iPad and I don't even want to imagine how this trip would be going if we didn't have it. I think we would still be trapped in italy somewhere flabbergasted trying to find available hotels. So thank you again!
We just ended about a week and a half in Portugal. Well...more like four days in portugal and a week in "little Britain". We booked this amazing four star hotel in a place called albufeira for a week, for only twenty dollars a night. All we saw were pictures of amazing beaches, pool side bars, and a ginormous room. Sounds perfect right? Right?? Wrong! A little bit of research probably would have shown us that being there you will experience as much Portuguese culture as being in britain, or Canada, or pretty much anywhere else in the world except for portugal. Our first clue was when we arrived at the hotel and we were surrounded by retired British people. Kalia refers to it as the Waikiki of Europe. We thought maybe if we went out into the town we could get away from it but no such doing. Every shop in a two mile radius was serving fried beans for breakfast, or playing some "blokes vs mates" football game. We did manage to get on a bus and get to someplace called city center where there were a bunch of shops where we could get some authentic Portuguese swag. Or so we were hoping. We felt like when joey from friends was in England and the vendor salesman convinces him all the locals wear the tall british flag hats.
Needless to say that was a painful week. We at least got a couple days of sun out of it and got to chill poolside for a few hours, but we were over the moon when we finally got to ship out and head to Lisbon.
Finding the Lisbon "hotel" gave finding the venice hotel a run for its money. We arrived in the city around noon thinking we would go drop off our things and head out onto the town and get a nice full day in still. What we weren't aware of though was that if the information people in Lisbon don't know where something is off the top of their heads you're pooched. We were basically running around town asking everyone in sight if they knew where the hotel or even the street it was on was, resulting in about twenty different ideas of where we should go. Finally we were able to find the street on a map and started our trek. After arriving at the address located conveniently on top of a giant hill in the ghetto, we discovered there was no place called residencial Alegre there, and were left running around for another two hours or so. To cut the story short, some other young people who worked for the "hotel" found us wandering and showed us that in fact we were in the right place but the hotel was actually just a spare room in their parents three bedroom complex. Kalia suitably calls this place "the room".
Enough with the venting though and onto Lisbon. The city is really quite nice. We arrived just late enough in november to see the city with all its christmas lights up, which of course makes any city look that much nicer. We spent countless hours walking up and down the pedestrian only streets looking at all the quaint jewelry shops, or chowing down on the most delicious tarts ever to have graced our mouths. I even ventured out to try a baked good called a brisa which is basically a brick of icing sugar, dough, and lemony goodness. Even though im sure I have severly damaged my insides it was oh so worth it.
Aside from the city center we also managed to check out the infamous jeronimos palace and Belem tower, which were no rome, but were definitely interesting seeing the different styles of architecture going on in the world hundreds of years ago.
Lisbon is also home to some of the coolest contemporary architecture out there, and thanks to the heads up from janaya we made sure we checked it all out.
One of the funnest things in the city that i forgot to mention was their epic trams. We managed to hop on one which is apparently famous as it was the first one ever in the city around a hundred years previous, and by the looks of it's wooden stature was probably the exact same one used back then. It basically went for a tour of the city ripping up and down steep narrow streets, taking you to all sorts of sights like st jorges castle that overlooks the city, or ancient churches which I have no idea what their names are but you know they've got to be important in someway so you take a picture and act like you know whats going on.
I think that's about it from portugal though, we just arrived jn Madrid today after another pleasant overnight train and look forward to seeing everything this city has to offer.
g&k
We just ended about a week and a half in Portugal. Well...more like four days in portugal and a week in "little Britain". We booked this amazing four star hotel in a place called albufeira for a week, for only twenty dollars a night. All we saw were pictures of amazing beaches, pool side bars, and a ginormous room. Sounds perfect right? Right?? Wrong! A little bit of research probably would have shown us that being there you will experience as much Portuguese culture as being in britain, or Canada, or pretty much anywhere else in the world except for portugal. Our first clue was when we arrived at the hotel and we were surrounded by retired British people. Kalia refers to it as the Waikiki of Europe. We thought maybe if we went out into the town we could get away from it but no such doing. Every shop in a two mile radius was serving fried beans for breakfast, or playing some "blokes vs mates" football game. We did manage to get on a bus and get to someplace called city center where there were a bunch of shops where we could get some authentic Portuguese swag. Or so we were hoping. We felt like when joey from friends was in England and the vendor salesman convinces him all the locals wear the tall british flag hats.
Needless to say that was a painful week. We at least got a couple days of sun out of it and got to chill poolside for a few hours, but we were over the moon when we finally got to ship out and head to Lisbon.
Finding the Lisbon "hotel" gave finding the venice hotel a run for its money. We arrived in the city around noon thinking we would go drop off our things and head out onto the town and get a nice full day in still. What we weren't aware of though was that if the information people in Lisbon don't know where something is off the top of their heads you're pooched. We were basically running around town asking everyone in sight if they knew where the hotel or even the street it was on was, resulting in about twenty different ideas of where we should go. Finally we were able to find the street on a map and started our trek. After arriving at the address located conveniently on top of a giant hill in the ghetto, we discovered there was no place called residencial Alegre there, and were left running around for another two hours or so. To cut the story short, some other young people who worked for the "hotel" found us wandering and showed us that in fact we were in the right place but the hotel was actually just a spare room in their parents three bedroom complex. Kalia suitably calls this place "the room".
Enough with the venting though and onto Lisbon. The city is really quite nice. We arrived just late enough in november to see the city with all its christmas lights up, which of course makes any city look that much nicer. We spent countless hours walking up and down the pedestrian only streets looking at all the quaint jewelry shops, or chowing down on the most delicious tarts ever to have graced our mouths. I even ventured out to try a baked good called a brisa which is basically a brick of icing sugar, dough, and lemony goodness. Even though im sure I have severly damaged my insides it was oh so worth it.
Aside from the city center we also managed to check out the infamous jeronimos palace and Belem tower, which were no rome, but were definitely interesting seeing the different styles of architecture going on in the world hundreds of years ago.
Lisbon is also home to some of the coolest contemporary architecture out there, and thanks to the heads up from janaya we made sure we checked it all out.
One of the funnest things in the city that i forgot to mention was their epic trams. We managed to hop on one which is apparently famous as it was the first one ever in the city around a hundred years previous, and by the looks of it's wooden stature was probably the exact same one used back then. It basically went for a tour of the city ripping up and down steep narrow streets, taking you to all sorts of sights like st jorges castle that overlooks the city, or ancient churches which I have no idea what their names are but you know they've got to be important in someway so you take a picture and act like you know whats going on.
I think that's about it from portugal though, we just arrived jn Madrid today after another pleasant overnight train and look forward to seeing everything this city has to offer.
g&k
Monday, November 15, 2010
All of Greece
okay, so I'm going to try and sum up 9 days of Greece into a paragraph or two...
We got to Athens last Friday on November 5, and discovered the men of Athens have no fear when it comes to gawking at women. It was quite creepy. They just stare right at you, even straight at your face, and just continue to look at whatever they want. So nasty. We were so worried that Kefalonia, the supposedly magical island we were heading to the next day, was just like Athens. The next morning we gathered all of our stuff and began our 7 hour journey to what we hoped would be an amazing and tropical week of paradise.
After our 3 hour bus ride, and 3 hour ferry ride we arrived at the port of the island. The ocean was clear turquoise blue, and the houses of Sami (the town of the port) were painted bright colors, and had a mountain of bright green trees and grass behind them. This place couldn't possibly have a gross place, it just couldn't! We hopped back on our bus and got taken to Argistole, the bus depot. This place was also along the water, the road lined with palm trees. We realized that we had totally forgotten to write down the address to our hotel that we were staying at, we just had the name of it and the beach it was near. We asked the bus driver how to get there and he laughed, telling us that we had to taxi, the island was pretty much shut down and there was no more public transportation. We were stunned. He told us to wait 5 minutes, so we did, and then he came back and told us to hop on his bus he would take us near there because he had to fill up with oil. We drove for about ten minutes, him showing us the orange tress, olive vineyards, and the beaches that had the best swimming. The bus finally dropped us off on a dirt road, with directions to follow the road and head right, our hotel should be over there somewhere, so we started walking. We turned the first corner and saw the sun setting on the open ocean. It was incredible. I think we both danced a little bit. It was so beautiful! The road continued along the cliffs by the ocean and we saw a sign for Ammes, where we were staying. We saw the familiar image of the yellow building with blue windows And a blue roof, we found our place. Isabella the owner came out to us saying they'd been siting for us, turns out we were the only ones staying there. She showed us our room, which was huge, and opened our doors onto our private balcony with an amazing ocean view. She then left us to get settled in. We danced again! This was the tropical get away we had wanted.
For the next week we enjoyed going to Myrtos Beach, which you should google and drool over, lying in the sun while enjoying the fact that there was practically nobody else on the beach, and that you couldn't hear constant people sounds, just the waves. Oh and the sound of bells! There are hundreds of free range Billy goats all throughout the island, and one of their favorite spots to hang out is on the hills by the beach. We went swimming and ate a healthy lunch of a bag of chips and small Greek cupcakes for lunch everyday. We would come home around 4, shower, and then either make dinner in our apartment that had its own kitchen, or treated ourselves to a dinner made by Isabella, either pizza or a sandwich. Every evening was spent down at her little bar having drinks with a group of retired couples that had moved to the island from england. We all had a great time sitting around talking about traveling stories, music, and at some point in the night soccer, or football as they call it. One of the couples even had us stay with them for two nights so we wouldn't have to go back to athens as soon as we were. It was super sweet of them. The one and only downside to our trip to the island is that Graeme's wedding ring got eaten by the waves of the beach. All we can think of is that since the waves were really strong that day, and maybe the super salty water had a part in it, the pull just sucked the ring off. So Graeme is ringless, we're hoping to find him another ring maybe in portugal or Spain? They seem like countries that have lots of jewelry.
We've now arrived back in Athens, which isn't so bad now. There's like a mass rally going on for communism at the moment, it's pretty crazy. Thousands of people marching through the streets chanting something in Greek, with commy flags, and police and military soldiers keeping everything in check. Grae feels Ike we're witnessing history, but all i can think of is the seinfeld episode of where Elaine's communist boyfriend tries to convert Kramer.
Next time you hear from us we'll be in Portugal! Finally get to see this part of my heritage, i am so excited! Hope everyone is doing well back at home, love and miss you all!
g&k
We got to Athens last Friday on November 5, and discovered the men of Athens have no fear when it comes to gawking at women. It was quite creepy. They just stare right at you, even straight at your face, and just continue to look at whatever they want. So nasty. We were so worried that Kefalonia, the supposedly magical island we were heading to the next day, was just like Athens. The next morning we gathered all of our stuff and began our 7 hour journey to what we hoped would be an amazing and tropical week of paradise.
After our 3 hour bus ride, and 3 hour ferry ride we arrived at the port of the island. The ocean was clear turquoise blue, and the houses of Sami (the town of the port) were painted bright colors, and had a mountain of bright green trees and grass behind them. This place couldn't possibly have a gross place, it just couldn't! We hopped back on our bus and got taken to Argistole, the bus depot. This place was also along the water, the road lined with palm trees. We realized that we had totally forgotten to write down the address to our hotel that we were staying at, we just had the name of it and the beach it was near. We asked the bus driver how to get there and he laughed, telling us that we had to taxi, the island was pretty much shut down and there was no more public transportation. We were stunned. He told us to wait 5 minutes, so we did, and then he came back and told us to hop on his bus he would take us near there because he had to fill up with oil. We drove for about ten minutes, him showing us the orange tress, olive vineyards, and the beaches that had the best swimming. The bus finally dropped us off on a dirt road, with directions to follow the road and head right, our hotel should be over there somewhere, so we started walking. We turned the first corner and saw the sun setting on the open ocean. It was incredible. I think we both danced a little bit. It was so beautiful! The road continued along the cliffs by the ocean and we saw a sign for Ammes, where we were staying. We saw the familiar image of the yellow building with blue windows And a blue roof, we found our place. Isabella the owner came out to us saying they'd been siting for us, turns out we were the only ones staying there. She showed us our room, which was huge, and opened our doors onto our private balcony with an amazing ocean view. She then left us to get settled in. We danced again! This was the tropical get away we had wanted.
For the next week we enjoyed going to Myrtos Beach, which you should google and drool over, lying in the sun while enjoying the fact that there was practically nobody else on the beach, and that you couldn't hear constant people sounds, just the waves. Oh and the sound of bells! There are hundreds of free range Billy goats all throughout the island, and one of their favorite spots to hang out is on the hills by the beach. We went swimming and ate a healthy lunch of a bag of chips and small Greek cupcakes for lunch everyday. We would come home around 4, shower, and then either make dinner in our apartment that had its own kitchen, or treated ourselves to a dinner made by Isabella, either pizza or a sandwich. Every evening was spent down at her little bar having drinks with a group of retired couples that had moved to the island from england. We all had a great time sitting around talking about traveling stories, music, and at some point in the night soccer, or football as they call it. One of the couples even had us stay with them for two nights so we wouldn't have to go back to athens as soon as we were. It was super sweet of them. The one and only downside to our trip to the island is that Graeme's wedding ring got eaten by the waves of the beach. All we can think of is that since the waves were really strong that day, and maybe the super salty water had a part in it, the pull just sucked the ring off. So Graeme is ringless, we're hoping to find him another ring maybe in portugal or Spain? They seem like countries that have lots of jewelry.
We've now arrived back in Athens, which isn't so bad now. There's like a mass rally going on for communism at the moment, it's pretty crazy. Thousands of people marching through the streets chanting something in Greek, with commy flags, and police and military soldiers keeping everything in check. Grae feels Ike we're witnessing history, but all i can think of is the seinfeld episode of where Elaine's communist boyfriend tries to convert Kramer.
Next time you hear from us we'll be in Portugal! Finally get to see this part of my heritage, i am so excited! Hope everyone is doing well back at home, love and miss you all!
g&k
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