Europe 2010

More photos, German Keyboards suck. That is all

Back and time for another update. Updating this time is a little more difficult with a German keyboard.

From where we left off, having survived the bar crawl and enjoying it thoroughly we managed to get out of bed and to the British museum sometime after midday. What can be said about the British museum? On the whole it is simply a collection of stuff the Poms have stolen from various nations over the years. These ranged from small artifacts through to the walls of the Parthenon, several mummies and a bunch of other crazy crap. By the time we’d seen the British museum both the Tower of London and Westminster abbey were closed. This made for an interesting mission the next morning when, before we went to Amiens, Pixie and Hansen did a whirlwind tour of Westminster in 45 minutes and still managed to see all the dead kings, queens and important people.

We woke early on ANZAC day to get the bus to the dawn service and do the battlefield tour. The dawn service was absolutely brilliant and definitely worth the early start. Touring the battlefields was a huge eye-opener given the ridiculous number of people that died over the tiny patch of land for which they were fighting. We made it to Paris and had an early night.

The next morning saw us off on another walking tour. The free walking tour showed off the major sights of Paris including Notre Dame, The Louvre, Eiffel Tower and the obelisk. After the tour we checked out the Louvre and briefly saw the Mona Lisa. This would have been far more impressive with the aid of binoculars but some of the other paintings and artifacts were still worth the entrance fee 🙂 That evening we partook in the very French activity of sitting in a park eating cheese and drinking red wine. It was a very difficult way of spending the evening. 🙂

The next day we jumped on the Metro and headed off to the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees and joined the three hour line ride to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The views of the city were definitely worth the wait. That night we did another walking tour but this time of the Montmarte region which started out the front of the Moulin Rouge. After this tour we found a nice little French restaurant were Alan and Hansen sampled the tasty local delicacy of snails in garlic butter.

Having had our fill of the French (two days was more than enough) we jumped on a train and headed up a few hours north to Amsterdam. It was immediately less high-strung than Paris but accomodation was next to impossible to find with the Queens birthday being on the 30th April and the population of Amsterdam more than doubling. As a result we had to cut our stay in Amsterdam short by a day but we still got in a red light district tour, a bike tour and joined a bunch of other Aussies and Dutch for a barbeque on the roof of someone’s apartment block. Not a bad way to celebrate the Queen’s birthday.

This morning we headed off to the train station to embark on a six and half hour marathon train ride to Berlin from where we are currently writing. The plan at this stage is to go on some more walking tours of the city and surrounds and generally avoid the neo-nazis that will be parading around tomorrow (May day).

This is the Pixie dictatorial service for the spoken word of Hansen signing off.

A nice short one…

Liverpool won and it was grand! The crowd was really quiet and not much atmosphere. This is going to be a short one as the internet credit it almost out…

We did the beatles thing while we were there. Then off to Bath where Jen did the Jane Austin thing. We stayed in a rather odd B & B which was kind of like staying with a long lost nanna!!

On to London where we are now. We saw Avenue Q in the West End last night which was just awesome. Laughed our arses off and had a great nice. Touring around today and I dragged Al around the shops, disappointed not much out there shoes wise but snagged a couple of pairs of jeans. Pixie and Hansen have wandered out for a night on the town… which could be a whole other post 😉

Tomorrow is the museum, westminister abbey and the tower of London. We’re off on the ANZAC journey on Saturday so things will probably be quiet until Monday or Tuesday when we hit Paris.

Also I’d just like to thank my Dad for jinxing us. Pixie was a little bit sick a few days back and it’s moved on to Al. Hopefully it looks like Hansen and I are in the clear at this stage but the football game wasn’t too helpful in getting Al over it. A quiet one tonight might help rest him up.

Later.

Check out the photos page for lots of updates!!

Well, Jen here signing on as the quickest typist and the least inebriated tonight. Go and get a coffee as this is another really long one!

We’re in Liverpool tonight, getting ready for the soccer game tomorrow night. Okay, the “football” game tomorrow night between Liverpool and West Ham here at Anfield stadium. Hansen has wet his pants a little bit as we came in to town, and again when we got to the stadium this afternoon so he could spend up on merchandise. He came out of it with a jacket, scarf, mug and keyring with his name on it, dog collar for Moe, mini ball, fluffy dice and a program for tomorrow’s game. Saying he is ready for the game is an understatement!! We have spent the evening cooking ourselves dinner and writing a few postcards. The boys are hitting more Guinness under the guise that “it’s good for you Jen!!”. Which brings me to my update for the past little while…

It has been a busy few days. Ah who am I kidding, we’ve spent the last few days recharging our batteries.

The last update was in Belfast, the night before we took a black taxis tour of the city. I can safely say that all four of us have decided that Belfast is the scariest city we will probably (hopefully) ever go to in our lives. The black taxi tour was epic to say the least. The taxi driver collected us from the hostel and we went out to check out the local area and for him to explain the history of the city and all of the uprisings. I for one was completely unprepared and got fairly well spooked. He let us out of the cab in the protestant area and I swear that it couldn’t have been more desolate and at the same time freaky. The murals on the walls are impressive and the artists that painted them have serious commitment and passion for the cause. He then took us around through some of the internal suburb gates. Yep, they are separated by gates which if you look on a map you can still drive around if you come in to town so the areas aren’t really separated but it was that intense at the time!! The gates are still closed between 7pm and 7am every night like the Berlin wall!! Through the catholic areas and we looked at some of their memorials. We decided that the driver had to be catholic as he was much more passionate in his delivery and they way in which he spoke of the individuals. We were driving around and you just got the feeling that all the locals eyes were on you. Not very relaxing!! The taxi driver kept asking if we had any questions but none of us were prepared to ask as we weren’t sure how he would take them. We stuck to artists or people in the imagery.

After he dropped us off in town and it was a straight beeline for the pub!! It took quite a few beers for us to unwind and even on the walk in to the pub Al stepped on a metal plate in the path and it made enough of a clank for me to jump two feet in the air. Not a pleasant state of mind really when you hear of how much these people have injured themselves and their communities for the cause. A glorified turf war if you ask me. When religion is involved I guess it doesn’t matter… I’d be out of town quicker than you can say volunteer!!

The next day we were up and at it. Got the laptop back from a repair place and the verdict is in that the motherboard has fried itself. It will end up in the parcel of scotch we’re sending home from London in a few days. Dead weight that will get a warranty repair once we’re home. So we’re stuck to kiosks and internet cafes now. It sucks but we’ll get there.

We bailed from Belfast really quick and pit stopped just outside of a city called Drogheda in Ireland (forget the North part!). We stopped to check out some Neolithic burial mounds that are 500 years older than the pyramids. Pretty cool for grass covered mounds outside in the rolling hills. 3 acres of soil, dirt and huge granite boulders forming passageways underneath them. Think of a giant smooth hill with a tunnel in it. One of them was built so sturdy that when the Normans took over in the 12^th century they built a fort, houses and more tunnels in them.

One of the mounds called Newgrange has a tunnel in it that captures the winter solstice sunlight for 15 minutes that lights up the chamber inside. This is through a passage way that is on a 2 metre slope and that is curved. Just awesome!

On to Dublin where things got a bit posh. We bunked down at the Australian Amabassador to Ireland’s pad just south of the city centre. Al’s uncle Bruce is the current Ambassador. Sweet!!

We spent three nights recharging. He is shacked up in a rough house. Refurbished in 1909, the place has six bedrooms, four bathrooms including a formal washroom for ladies and gentlemen downstairs and a grand piano for Pixie to tinkle on. Combined with gorgeous vistas out the windows to the immaculate grounds and the ocean in the distance. It was hard work. We all would have preferred the dorms (not!!).

Bruce was a lovely host. He seemed like he was a bit starved of good Aussie conversation so we obliged by making him fire up the bbq outside for a cook up and he returned the favour by taking us out to the highest pub in Ireland. Dublin itself was gorgeous. We did another free walking tour and again we lapped up the history and architecture (this time it was an architecture student not a history buff!). Stunning.

On a serious note, we did take in the Jameson distillery (Evo I’m packin some goodies!) and forced ourselves to wander through the Guinness brewery that is rebuilt to look like a giant 7 level pint glass inside. Very cool. They throw in a free pint at the top once you wander through the galleries and fact finding areas (including an awesome interactive tv ad display!!). The top of the pint glass is a 360 degree bar overlooking the city. Just gorgeous!

Dublin was hard to leave but we jumped on the ferry and made our way to Conwy last night for another rough night sleep in a local B & B. Travel is hard work with the awesome welsh brekkie they served up this morning!!

The morning was spent exploring the extensive town (haha, extensive = 2km square!) and wandering through the ancient castle grounds. Al remembered it from his time here as a kid – we almost started playing hide and seek but Pixie kept disappearing which was entertainment enough.

Tomorrow will be checking in on the Beatles and then the big game where it’ll be the best or the worst depending on the outcome. Fingers crossed!!

OK, where did we last leave this story? I believe it ended with our entry to Edinburgh and the vast lack of right hand turns there in.

So, what’ve we been up to since then I hear you ask? Well, it goes like this. The day we spent in Edinburgh involved a walking tour of the city and a visit to the castle. What can be said about Edinburg? Well, the city is absolutely beautiful and everything is on the side of a hill. The walking tour was hosted by a very enthusiastic student from Manchester called Mark and took us to every corner of the old town from the Mercat Cross where thieves/shoplifters had the ear lobes nailed to the wall for 24 hours, to the cemetery where Greyfriar’s Bobby (small pooch) spent 14 years sitting by the grave of his dead master. Having finished the tour we headed to the pub. Surprise! This was the sight of our first haggis tasting in Scotland. And it was damn good. With our guts full of, well, guts we embarked on the mammoth stair climb to the castle. An impressive little shack to say the least. The view over the entire city was second to none and the place was so steeped in history it made your head spin. It came as a surprise to us that Robert the Bruce came up with the first S.A.S.-like invasion force when he took the castle back from the 1500 English residents with a band of only 30 skilled men. Go you Scots!

Anyway, the day we spent in Edinburgh was massive and it called for a nice, relaxing night in a nice, relaxing establishment. Thankfully this was made available to us courtesy of the parents of one of Jen’s hairdressers (go figure). Morris and Senga own a pub in the nice little seaside town of Kircaldy and they were most happy to put us up in the 2 bedroom apartment above the pub where their son current lives. The beers were flowing (even if Jen poured them) and I’m not entirely sure we actually paid for a round all night (apparently £10 gives you three beers 2 x £5 change) but their hospitality was awesome and a great night was had by all.

The next day saw us embark on a mammoth drive from Kircaldy to Dingwall. On our way up the coast we stopped in at St Andrew’s golf course (for all you golf nuts out there) which apparently has the best ladies bathrooms in the UK. Drove past the Leuchars airforce base but the were no interesting planes sitting on the tarmac so we kept rolling. Straight on through Dundee up to Aberdeen where we managed to exchange our GPS unit which had unceremoniously crapped out a few days before. Across the bridge in Inverness and finally into the fine wee town that is Dingwall. After spending the best part of an hour looking for a B & B that was actually open in the town we gave up and went for the rooms at the National hotel. Apparently Susan Boyle was staying there that night too but she spared us her company (thank god). We found out during our search for accommodation that the reason for most B & B’s being closed was the Ross County (Dingwall’s football team) were playing against Celtic in the Scottish FA Cup semifinal and that most of the residents had headed to Glasgow to watch the game. Ross County ended up winning 2-0 in a massive upset. Woooooooo!!!

As it happens, there are a few distilleries on the way to and from Dingwall and we made full use of their presence. Visits to the Glenfiddich, Arbelour, Glenfarclas and Glen Ord establishments proved highly successful. According to Jen the car smelled a bit funky afterwards but I reckon she’s pulling our collective leg.

Right, so now we’ve seen the highlands and it was back to Glasgow for us. Fortunately this involved another lengthy drive past Loch Ness and through some of the most amazing countryside any of us have ever seen. The photos are going to have to explain it to you all because I can’t find the words to describe it.

Yes, we did manage to find the Loch Ness Monster and we’ve got the photos to prove it!

In to Glasgow and with all due haste to the pub. After a few beers and a pub meal it was our turn to extend the long arm of Australia’s diplomatic influence. As it happened there was a table of deaf people sitting at a table next to us who had been at the Ross County vs. Celtic game that very afternoon and we managed to have a conversation with them about life, the universe and football for a good hour. I think both parties enjoyed the night.

And so off round Glasgow we went. A short stroll from the backpackers took us up Buchanan street to George’s square where we jump on the hop-on-hop-off bus around the town. It took us past all the major sights for Glasgow (except Ibrox) and the running commentary gave us the necessary grounding in the where’s, when’s and why’s of everything.

Which brings us to today. A nice short drive toward the coast and a ride on the ferry to Belfast. The plan is to, ummm, we’re not quite sure but I’m sure we’ll come up with something.

Given the absence of Al’s laptop (hopefully getting fixed tomorrow) our wee updates may be a bit sporadic but hopefully I’ve given you enough to read in the interim.

Gee, there’s only 6 ½ weeks to go. That’s a shame.