Shandy Shenanigans

The Urban Jungle - Hong Kong

2009-11-03T04:06:00.000-08:00

us in a dirty window reflection

sweet job...

evening cityscape

tall buildings!!!

poor wee lizards!

Night time lights

mmm, this looks good, smells good too!

one of the many shopping streets

We were sad to leave Europe after such a good trip and lighted the plane almost not keen to see Hong Kong as home was calling. We arrived at Hong Kong in the morning which for our body was about 1am in the morning and fumbled our way through customs, not telling whole truths to be allowed into the country while still feeling unwell and managed to somehow find the correct bus, with all our luggage and both of us in tow (a minor miracle). The bus trip took around one hour as we crawled our way through the urban jungle of Hong Kong and its massive amounts of traffic. Andrew and I had never seen so many high rise buildings in such a small area and gazed in wonder throughout the whole trip. We managed to find our correct bus stop on the very long Nathan Road, Kowloon Island and stumbled onto a busy street. At this point, unsure of where exactly our hostel was located as there were over 20 different hostels/ hotels/ guesthouses in each large apartment block in the area. Seeing our confusion the hawkers began their advance… we were offered rooms every-which where, we were pointed in many different directions (all wrong) and even at one point sent away from the building we needed to be in by another hawker wanting our business. After much deliberation, searching and hair tearing we finally found our building and floor number (a very big miracle) and headed up to check in and have a much needed nap, this was not to be the case… We arrived at our hostel only to find that we had arrived two hours too early and that we were only allowed to check in at 12pm. So leaving our luggage, the two tired and forlorn travellers were once again out on the street. This time we were bombarded with hawkers selling us fake bags, watches and wallets, tailor made suits and blouses, drugs, massages and everything in-between…. this would continue on for the rest of our trip…
To escape the crazy street we found a park close-by and sat on a bench watching passers by before walking around the park to look at all the crazy birds, turtles and other animals that were caged for park goers to enjoy. Still having time to kill we checked out a few shops before heading to our room. After seeing myself in the mirror I was very surprised that the shop assistants even served me, I looked like a crack addicted hobo after 24hrs of no sleep and a plane trip to boot!!
After a long and much needed sleep we headed out had a traditional Chinese meal before embarking the first of our many late night shopping expedition in the city that never sleeps… honestly we were up pretty late some nights and we still did not find out when most of the shops closed!

The next day consisted of us sleeping as I (Sharon) woke the two of us up at 2am in the morning (having gone to sleep around 12pm), wide awake and coughing up a storm… fun, fun (Andrew was not impressed). So not sleeping during the night we finally fell asleep again at about 8am and then did not wake again until 2pm! When Andrew told me what time it was I thought it must be a joke, but no it was the afternoon… good old jet lag… So we headed out to check out the sights and try to tire ourselves out so that we could sleep that night. We looked around Kowloon Island for awhile, stumbling upon the very cheap ferry over to Hong Kong Island and decided to see the main city. We crossed on the ferry, were sold a cheap bus tour package for the next day and then went up the mountain on a funicular to see the city at night. The skyline at night has been rated the third most impressive city view in the world, so what a sight it was, buildings touched the sky and the whole city was illuminated with thousands of signs, windows, beams and coloured lights… stunning… Not wanting to wait in line (huge lines for everything in Hong Kong) Andrew and I decided to not worry about the $2.50 we had paid to catch the funicular down and use the trusty waiwai express instead… it was a lovely walk, except if you account for the fact that the track was horrendously steep and actually turned out to be a very long walk so to this day I still have sore bottom muscles… but like I say lovely, with pretty views and the feeling of walking in a jungle. We took our ferry back home and had dinner at our local restaurant before another late night shopping and bed… Yes sleep did come however once again Sharon woke up coughing and spluttering at 2am only to get back to sleep about three-four hours later after much trying and some ‘I give up’ you-tube watching.

We did not sleep so long this day as we set our alarm in expectation for a whole days sightseeing on our ‘hop-on, hop-off’ bus tour. We spent the day trekking around the city, shopping at markets, sadly looking at the huge amounts of shark fins, dried lizards, sea horses and other poor things that we felt should not be killed, dried and put out for sale. We gagged as we walked along the smelly ‘dried meat lane,’ shopped and got lost in ‘the shopping district’, and were suitably unimpressed by the ‘historical’ sights, that after Europe were not very old at all! Our tour finished about 8pm then we headed back to freshen up before heading out to the late night market on Kowloon Island. Both Andrew and I really enjoyed this market; it had everything one could wish for on sale. We both found items that we wanted and made a great team haggling with the store owners over what we would in New Zealand consider already very low prices. We spent a good long time enjoying the atmosphere and craziness of the night market before eating dinner at a cute little Indian restaurant that one of the many hawkers had recommended to us. After a very late night shopping we got to bed and Sharon once again woke up coughing in the night… argh… sleep was slightly easier to get back to this time and this was lucky as we had to check out the next day.

We checked out and left our bags at the hostel for us to pick up later that day (flight only leaves Hong Kong at 9pm). We navigated our way through Hong Kong city for the last time to find a little stall that we had seen the previous day and that we wanted to buy some presents from, brought these and then wandered around shopping and looking and taking everything in until it was time to once again depart on the last leg of our trip…

And so 24 bus trips, 7 plane trips, 6 train trips and 1 boat trip (excluding local transport) we have one plane trip to go until we are back home… It’s been one long and crazy and fun adventure, hope that you have enjoyed reading all about our travels we sure have enjoyed having them!

Paris - The city of light....

2009-10-31T02:28:00.000-07:00

Just another nice building in Paris

St Michael s Notre Dame

big copper carved pillar thing

The Louvre Museum

Kids playing with boats in the park

The church on top of the hill

carachature artist at work, after his hard work the couple rejected it, poor guy

one of the entertaining buskers

Mmm... smog

Ah Paris....
On returning from Taize we were very blessed to have a place to stay for the last of our days in Europe. We were staying in a wee apartment off to the side of Alex's (who we stayed with in Barcelona) parents house. It was a tricky place to get into though and when we arrived we had to call Alexs sister Emilie when we were outside and she would let us in, this was what we had done the last two times we stayed in Paris. This time however our cell phone was out of money and not worth topping up, so I left the sick Sharon siting outside all forlorn in search of a phone box. I found one but our two phone cards were out of credit or expired (we hadnt really used them so i dont know how they were out of credit).... So, i returned to Sharon and got us through the first gate because we had remembered the pin but then we were stopped by a gate with spikes that we needed a key for... Our only options were to sit outside the gate till somone left or I could try and climb in and knock on the door. It seemed easy enough so I hopped over the gate and wandered down and knocked on the door... Emilies mother was watching television downstairs and looked very alarmed to see a strange man knocking on the door, she opened up and seeing the look on her face I stammered out who I was and asked if Emily was there (untill now we hadnt realised that the whole family lived there as Alex had only mentioned Emilie), she yelled upstairs for Emilie and then asked how I got in... I avoided saying I climbed in and just said that I had the pin already so could get in the outside gate, but then I had to explain that I had climbed in...awkward!!! I could see that she was not impressed! Luckily Emilie came down and seeing the prdicament I was in whisked me away to go and get Sharon and then we could retreat to our little apartment.
Sharon was feeling very ill with fevers, body aches and sweats, along with clogged sinuses and a sore chesty cough and I wasnt too flash either (thanks Taize). We decided to take it easy and try to recover before our long haul flights at the end of the week. That night Emlie along with her younger sister and brother brought us down some blackcurrant pie as a gift from their mother who said she was sorry for the way she was to me, mmm it was really good and made things a bit less awkward.
We didnt venture out at all the first day and then tried a 2 hour excursion on the Tuesday to see the famous Notre Dame, it was good to get out but very tiring for both of us. The next day Sharon was finally showing some improvement so we went out again this time for 3 and 1/2 hours, (phew that one was hard!) to see the outside of the Louvre art gallery.
On our last day after we finished packing we went to watch the sunset from a big beautiful church on a hill overlooking Paris with some olives and brie and crakers to finish our Eurotrip :-( Crowded on the steps going up to the church were a bunch of men holding bracelets in their hands, luckily we had been prewarned to watchout as these guys would act all nice and try to tie the bracelet around your wrist but so tight you cant get it off and then you have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for it. The first guy we had to walk past wanted me to bonk my knuckles against his and was being all chummy about it, I said no thankyou and carried on walking, seeing that it wasnt working he got stroppy and forceful and was shouldering me trying to not let me past, hehehe, he didnt expect a sick and therfore stroppy Sharon to come in with the shoulder from the side so we got past... there was a throng of them but they saw the pissed-off look in our eyes and no one else bothered us.
The view from the top was great, you could really see how smoggy a big city gets but it made for great colours with the sun. There were also big crowds of people and lots of buskers which made for a neat atmosphere and we sat down watched the sun set listening to music and watching the buskers entertaining, a nice way to finish our trip. Once the sun dropped below the horizon it cooled down very quick and we headed home for our last dinner and bed.

Thanks Europe you have been great! We have had the best time going everywhere, visiting friends and meeting new ones... We will be back!

A week at Taize

2009-10-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

Prayer and worship service

cute wee church in a nearby village

The Taize church, the monks sit on the wee stools up the middle

that will do for breakfast thanks... very healthy and nutritious

We decided to take the advice of a couple of friends and spend our second to last week in the Taize community. The community is a monastery that was started in the Second World War by Bother Rodger (a Swiss protestant monk) as a place of refuge for political prisoners, especially Jews. Taize is the village where it is located. Bother Rodger strongly believed in inter-denominational relationships between Christians and so gathered around him like-minded brothers from different denominations to live in an ecumenical community with him. Brother Rodger had a passion for young people and wanting them to also value inter-denominational relationships he began to invite youth from all over the world to share a week with them in Taize. Now the community has around 100,000 visitors a year to share a week with the 100 brothers reflecting on life and discussing life’s issues with other young people from all over the world…. Pretty amazing!!!

A typical day at Taize consists of morning prayer then breakfast (one dry 6” baguette a block of butter and two sticks of dark chocolate, and bowl of cocoa or a tea-ish like drink). After breakfast you either have a session with a brother or you do work duties, then there is a mid day prayer followed by lunch(one slice of baguette some bland pasta or rice dish flavoured with bay leaves and overcooked and a piece of fruit) then a session in the afternoon for those who did duties and then a workshop in the evening if your lucky, followed by dinner (similar to lunch, however pasta is sometimes substituted by mushy, previously frozen or from a powder vegetables) then evening prayer and bed…

Our days at Taize however were comprised a little differently… I, Sharon was lucky enough to be in the same dorm room as a German girl who liked to set her alarm an hour and a half earlier than one needed to just roll out of bed to get to morning prayer, and then she would keep pressing snooze for the next hour until she finally decided to get up and do goodness knows what, and still get to prayer meeting later than me who got up 10mins before… So begins our day, we have prayer, which consists of chanting in different languages and hearing scriptures from the brothers, and then breakfast (see above). Andrew and I were unfortunate enough to get a job that only needed to be done at night and so after breakfast we had nothing to do except for mid-day prayer and lunch until 3pm. This would have been fine if the weather had been good, but being not so good we ended up being holed up in Andrews dorm room in our sleeping bags going stir crazy with nothing to do, this by the way makes Andrew a very grumpy person!… At 3pm we finally have our meeting with one of the brothers who would talk about a topic for a while and then we would go off in groups of our own age and discuss the topic further, my group would then have a session with ‘brother click’ the coffee machine while Andrews group (who’s leader was slightly more serious about life) talked on and on. Andrew and I went to all the workshops in the afternoons and then there was dinner…yummy… And after dinner we were responsible to change toilet rolls, yay! Actually much better than cleaning the toilet and it gave us something to do between dinner and evening prayer. Next was evening prayer and then one could go and buy a beer at a wee shop over the road until 11pm then head off to bed to begin another very similar day…

Our experience of Taize was sadly tainted by the fact that one week before we were due to arive the weather turned bad and the temperature dropped well below what our meagre belongings allowed. So when we got to Taize it was at about 0 degrees, with a cold northerly wind blowing and misty rain (even with all our clothes on, it still did not cut it)… this weather continued for the next couple of days and since there was not many places one could shelter, Andrew became unwell and was not a happy camper… Things did improve (apart from the food) as the weather got better and we met some good people to hang out with and chat to… I must mention that we also arrived at a time when there were not many other travellers like ourselves, due to it no longer being summer in Europe. So therefore the camp comprised mostly of German and Dutch school children, so it took a bit of work and some poor English to find friends who spoke English well and also were our own age… We did however enjoy the brother’s insights into life and our discussion groups even if at times our view on things was quite different from our very conservative Catholic group members (my group comprised of 9 Dutch, 1 American and myself (Sharon) and Andrews was similar)! And with prayer and singing services 3 times a day we left feeling very holy and sadly ‘unfortunately unwell’ once again. I myself seem to have managed to catch the dreaded ‘swine flu’ whilst Andrew has gotten off more lightly with a dry cough and being a bit clogged up…

So advise on Taize…. Even though in this post I may sound a bit bitter and twisted (due to ill health), I do recommend it…. However it is not worth getting sick for, and would be much better with more people from all over the world… I mean there were only a hand full of people from outside of Europe and WE were the interesting ones “Oh so you’re the Kiwis!...Yes have heard about you!...wow your from sooo long away”.... So if you want to go, go in summer, and I think anyone would enjoy it . Oh on that note there are also adults who go (anyone over 30) and they too enjoy it too with their own special rooms, toilets and even food, jealous much?!

Beauvais

2009-10-28T02:21:00.000-07:00

The sinking Cathedral

The countryside in the north of France on a miserable day

The Eiffel Tower light show

From Tours we headed to Paris for one night then carried on north to visit a friend who worked out at the caves in NZ ‘Maxime the French’. We arrived at 11am, but he was studying so couldn’t pick us up till 5pm so we had a lot of time to explore the really small town of Beauvais. Beauvais has a huge Cathedral that is sinking, a neat tapestry exhibition and a Mc Donalds with free WiFi. Seeing as summer had fled the north of France after a brief visit of the cathedral and tapestries we retreated to the warmth of Mc Donalds and had coffee and a hot chocolate with our free internet.

Maxime lived a bit further north in a tiny village with his parents on their dairy farm. His parents were lovely and really looked after us, after having a tour of the farm we had the first of a few feasts, mmm that French cuisine is really hard going sometimes.
The next day the weather really crapped out, but we braved the icy cold rain and went for a 2 hour bike ride in the country side, the landscape is really flat and all cultivated land with tiny tiny villages dotted around. We attempted a loop but after getting lost a few times had to double back the way we came, it was nice to get out but not much more as it was very cold and dreary.
The next day was a Saturday and Maxime had to organise a little soccer tournament for the local teams of 7-9 yr olds, Maxime’s girlfriend Lisa gave a us a wee tour of their campus and then we headed to watch the little ones brave the foul weather, Maximes team he coaches came a valiant second, losing only one of their five matches. That evening we headed back to Paris, we arrived at just before 8pm and were dropped off near the Eiffel Tower.

We had heard about a light show that happens on the hour every hour so rushed off to the bottom of the tower to watch. The tower was deceptively further than it looked but we arrived just in time to see it. It was neat but we expected a bit more, all that happened was the tower was covered in hundreds of tiny lights that flashed really fast and made the tower sparkle. We ticked it off the list and headed back to the apartment where we were staying.

Tours

2009-10-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

Old town and its old houses

Cathedral

Autumn light

11th century church

The old brown bear

Flamingos!

Nice garden to sit in the sun and eat...

CAKE!!!!

Ultimate cheese!

From Bordeaux we headed further inland toward Paris to Tours. Pronounced ‘Tour’, the French seem to have a thing about not saying the last letters so Paris is said ‘Pari’ and Tours ‘Tour’. Tours is said to be the place where the purest French in the world is spoken, they say that because it is in the middle of France so doesn’t have a north accent or a south one… so it must be the purest! Besides that it is a town that is used as a base to explore the Loire Valley which is full of stunning Chateaus, but unfortunately of which we didn’t see any.
To keep up the good form Andrew wandered for over an hour to find the hostel, although this time it was not a problem of street signs just an issue of left and rights and written instructions, oops. The hostel when we did find it was pretty crud and is a part of Youth Hostelling International, and as we weren’t a member we had to sign up for an extra fee to be allowed to stay. So in the last hostel we stay in we become year long members to be able to reap the benefits of discounted accommodation around the world… sweet deal! Only a little too late to be of any use.
We had just two nights so spent our time exploring the town which was actually really pretty, with a nice river running through and some really old houses and big cathedrals. The hostel we stayed in housed a bunch of international students studying French at the local University (being the best place for French), after playing a crazy version of snap with them they told us a few things to check out around town, namely the Botanic Gardens where they said there was a bear and flamingos!? I was a little dubious as to what would really be there.

That morning we woke up to a chill in the air, the beginning of the end of the nice warm summer, or actually more like the end. We rugged up and headed out, we found some neat little shops and scoped out some presents, and found one of the cathedrals with a nice garden which we frequented in our short stay. Wandering a back street after lunch we found a little cake shop with the most amazing cakes and goodies really reasonably priced so we justified a treat and took a rich chocolate mousse cake back to the garden we found, mmm it was too good!
After a cup of tea in the hostel we headed off to find the Botanic garden. Wow it really did have a bear and flamingos! The garden itself was not anything special but it was more like a zoo. It had an old arthritic brown bear in a sunken concrete compound, he didn’t look too excited about life and it was a bit sad to see. There were also wallabies, emus, the biggest variety of ducks we had seen, turtles and tortoises, goats and a donkey and flamingos! It really was true.

The next day we had a bit of time before our bus came so we managed to go out and buy the presents, visit our garden and also sneak in a bit more cake, this time with photo evidence.

Bordeaux.... once again in the beautiful land of France

2009-10-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

Mysterious Sharon

Oh no, two of him.... how will we cope?

Pretty fountain

Fun in the fountain

Huge ferris wheel in the carnival

The biggest candy floss ever.... and we had even picked the smallest size!

Fun fair!

People on the bridge looking down on a huge screen showing a video montage that was a part of the art festival.

Our first stop back in France was Bordeaux. As we drove into town on our bus we had to stop for a troop of musicians sitting in baskets on the front of bicycles who were crossing the road and we thought 'where exactly have we found ourselves?' .... As it happened they were a part of an art exhibition that invloved the whole town of Bordeaux and was starting the day we arrived! There was also a huge carnival on at the same time to add to the fun and excitement of this crazy exhibition.

We had arrived at mid day and so after a wee rest (due to Sharons terrible habit of feeling sick when travelling) Sharon headed off to a laundry mat to do some much needed washing while Andrew paid for the accomadation. Luckily for Sharon a kind French man (who happened to speak no English) helped her work the mashines which had instructions that were very helpfully only written in French and which on her own she actually would have got all wrong due to an inexplanibly complicated set up for payments.... maybe it was good that Andrew was not there....

After paying Andrew picked Sharon up and headed into town and a very pretty town it was. We did a bit of window shopping and then worked our way back to the laundry mat picked up our washing and hung it up in our room (yes we are too cheap to pay the four Euro drying cost)! Once again we headed out this time in search of a supermarket and we were soon to find the supermarket that beats all others.... This supermarket had everything one could desire, on three huge levels of a massive building. Over the next couple of days a few hours happened to be wasted here! After a bit of exploring we bought our dinner and headed home for a night in watching BBC, (the first TV we had watched in months) as this was the only English channel.

The next day we further explored the town and stumbled upon the most chaotic, crazy and roughest market one could find. The stall holders where all of Arabic and African origin who yelled at the top of there voices things that I swear even if one spoke French you would not understand and the buyers flocked to these different stalls in stampeding rhino style... goodness forbid anyone fall over, as they would surley be trampeled! Andrew and I braved this market for a while enjoying the sheer scale and crazyness of it all, brought a huge bunch of silver beet and lunch then breathed a sigh of relief as we both made it out the other side alive! We ate our lunch in a garden beside the incredibly brown river and were joined by another couple who thought it was ok to eat each other alive in public, I might add this is not uncommon in Europe :/. After lunch we had a little seista (something one gets easily used to when in Italy and Spain) before heading out for an evening stroll through the carnival before a late dinner and bed.

Our last day in Bordeaux was reserved for checking out the main shopping street and local art festival. Much to my disapointment and Andrews glee the shops were all shut (I still maintain he planned this) as it was a Sunday in Europe! So we headed further afeild to explore the art around town. The art included a huge bridge built accross two roads and half way over the water, some tin shapes that made screeching noises (Andrew especially enjoyed this one), wrecked cars, light shows, trees made into crazy shapes and other oddities, most of which we were at a loss to understand... maybe its a French thing? We also discovered a fountain that was designed to reflect anything that faced it or was on top of it (see above photos) and also let out mist intermittently. We spent a long time watching people from all walks of life play together, young, old, hippy, metro, city, rural, local, tourist and all nationalities enjoyed this fountain!

Next we walked along the river boardwalk and came accross a very popular, and much more civilized market. It seems on Sunday the whole of Bordeaux buys their lunch from this market. Lunches mostly consisted of a bottle of rosè and freshly shucked oysters for the whole family to sit around on the ground and enjoy. Andrew and I both do not like oysters but felt the need to join in all the same! We carried on along the walk stopping for a whlie to watch some very young and talented roller bladers at a skate park, and then further along to watch some street preformers....

After a very plesent day we headed back to our favourite supermarket for some more dinner before heading out on our last night to check out the night life. Firstly we went through the carnival watching all the crazy rides and getting in the spirit by buying some huge and yummy passion fruit flavoured candy floss. We then watched an outdoor concert with African preformers before finishing the night with a drink in one of the many cute little pubs.

San Sebastian

2009-10-16T06:29:00.000-07:00

Beautiful San Sebastian
The far end of the bay where the surf was before it died

Jesus on top of the hill

Fishing boats at night

a forgotten monument to English soldiers who helped fight Napoleon

After a whole days bus trip we arrived into San Sebastian.
This was to be our last stop in Spain and one i had been eagerly anticipating as i had heard mention of a surf beach.
Once again we were thwarted by the street signs when it came to finding our hostel. The signs here were written in Basque but the directions i had written down from google maps was in spanish! After an hour wandering round and round the very small old town we finally found our hostel on the street we first thought it was on! We had been looking for a sign outside (as you would expect) but they only had a small 15cm x 4cm sticker! Despite this bad start the hostel was really cool, we were in a 6 bed dorm but the owner let us have it to ourselves for the first two nights. The hostel also had 2 surfboards for hire :-)
That evening we had a wander to the beach to check the surf, it was 2-3ft with a nice righthand point break at the far end of the beach and a nasty beach break along the rest. It looked good but a rough count gave over 50 surfers out. I decided to try it early in the morning. We went back and cooked some amazing brie and chorizo omlettes mmmm, a nice change to our one pot wonder pasta, rice and cous cous dishes.
I got up at sunrise the next morning and jogged barefoot across town with a pink miny mal in my boardies and a polyprop top. As i got into the not so balmy water i counted 26 surfers already out and the waves were smaller and less frequent. I stayed away from the crowded point break and got a few small rides and in the long wait between sets nearly froze! after 30 mins in the water i hobled back to warm up. it was nice to be in the water with waves again but not the best spanish surfing experience, after this the waves completely died away so i was glad i got out when i could. I managed to get the board back before anyone official turned up to the hostel and they never charged me for using it even though i told them later.
San Sebastian was a very nice really relaxed small city. It had great shopping and Sharon once again scored a few bargains! and my grip on the wallet tightened. We spent our 2 days on the beach and wandering around town and up a hill to see Jesus (a huge statue looking over town).
Our last night we went out for some famous Spanish Tapas (or pinxtos in basque) with some canadians we met in the hostel. They were really tasty and a great social meal but could make for an expensive meal as they are just bite sized morsels and to be full you need to have a few. The deal is you buy a drink and get a plate and then all along the bar they have plates of tapas which are like orderves, you go along and grab as many as you want and they just write it down somewhere, there are no prices so you have no idea how much you are raking up.

All in all Spain was a great trip, we loved the relaxed atmosphere and nice parks and hope to return someday.

Valencia and Madrid

2009-10-16T05:39:00.000-07:00

Bull Fighting Arena
Interesting architecture

This was a playground for kids, i think?... its huge, thats 3 photos right there!

Valencia is the most lighted up city in the world

The post office and our bus

Valencia at night

Sharon in the park

This wee girl had a random mother who talked to us in spanish and motioned for us to take a photo of her... so i did poor girl some stranger poking a camera in her face... but she was cute.

After running through the dark early morning streetsof Barcelona in the rain with our heavy packs, we arrived at the meeting point and waited a half hour for the bus which of course was running late! We were amazing though, we were told to catch a taxi as it would take 40 mins but we did it in 20!
We then drove for half the day in pouring rain to arrive in Valencia just as the rain subsided, perfect! Having only two nights here we dropped our stuff in the hostel room (a sweet one with like 12 beds, hurrah!) and headed out to explore a bit of town. Valencia is slightly confusing for navigation as the maps are written in Spanish and the signs in Catelan... go figure! Despite this we found our way to a bull fighting arena where we were told there was a free museum. We are not so sure about the whole bull fighting thing but as it is a big part of the Spanish culture we thought we would learn a bit more.
The museum was very small and empty, so we walked in to two very bored looking receptionists, one gave us our own guided tour of the arena which was cool, especially as it was free. Then we were left to browse the museum ourselves. It was really interesting, it is a very brutal sport and not really the nicest way for a bull to go. They know this as they are always trying to brush it over by saying that the bull has 2-6 years of cushy life on nice farmland beforehand and then they donate the meat to orphanages (i can only imagine how tender it must be!). The fights are now being met most of the time by anti-bull-fighting demonstrations and the stadiums have red paint splashed all around the outside.
The next day we did a free tour (they are called free tours but you kinda have to pay a tip so its not really free!) It was okaybut not the best we have done but it did show us some things we could go and look at afterwards like the old silk market, a beautiful building with an amazing wooden roof that has been designated a UNESCO world heritage sight. Like Barcelona it has some crazy architecture that is very post modern looking, inpressive but different. Near any historical building they have made little bronze replicas that have a brail description so that blind people can feel the shape of the buildings. A really neat idea but our guide told us that in mid summer when its over 40 degrees these little models made out of dark bronze get ridiculously hot and burn your hands!
The city used to have a river running right through it but after a massive flood they diverted the river around the outside of town and planned to turn the old river bed into a motorway, the citizens didnt agree and protested by planting thousands of trees. The council gave up and now the city has a really nice park running right through.

After 2 nights of little sleep in our 12 bed dorm we headed for Madrid.
The trip took us through some amazing and beautiful desolate landscapes that looked hot dry and dusty with very sparse vegetation and as it got a bit greener we arrived in Madrid.
Madrid was a bustling city with some great art galleries and a lot of nice cheap shops for Sharon to get her shopping on! The art galleries were free after 6pm so we did two rushed visits seeing some of Picaso`s major works and many more amazing pieces by artist whose names i cant remember.
Like the other Spanish cities Madrid had a bunch of really nice and spacious parks. We were there over a weekend so the parks were full of families and buskers and had a really neat atmosphere, so when not shopping or looking at art we were chilling in the parks people watching.

Barcelona

2009-10-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

Parc Guell (the Gaudi park)

some of the crazy architecture

Human towers

cute little Mathius with our rock collection

fountain in the central park

Bug band in the park

Gaudis unfinished Sagrada Familia

The biggest port i have ever seen, 7 ships waiting outside

Tower in the Olympic Park

We were very keen to get into Barcelona and meet the very famed `Alex and Olivia,' family friends of Andrews parents who we had not met, but heard loads about... We arrived at our drop off point and Alex was there to pick us up. He instantly recognised Andrew as `he looks so much like Anne' and met a cute shy little 2 and a half year old boy named Damien who, when he was a baby had been dedicated by Philip in NZ. We squished our excessive amount of baggage into a small car and headed off to meet the rest of the famous family. After some speedy driving and a few wrong turns we arrived at the apartment building. We hopped out of the car and Damien, no longer shy ran around the car and attached himself around Andrews leg and did not let go of his hand before arriving at the apartment 8 floors up! They say he had never done this before and thought that maybe he remembered something of NZ?!

We then met Olivia and Mathias (the cutest 1 yr old with the biggest smile), and we begun to realise why they were so highly spoken of. Every night we enjoyed our eating and drinking till late into the evening with great company, conversation and food and french wine.

We were lucky enough to arrive in Barcelona on a festival weekend for their patron saint. There was a brilliant atmosphere and lots to see and do. We spent our days wandering the streets, seeing street artists, clowns, parades, crazy floats, fireworks, and everything from live lizards to tacky souvenirs for sale... Andrew was upset that we did not meet the famous so called `elephant man' who wears nothing accept a tattoo of leopard print underwear on his behind and elephant ears on each thighat the front... hmmm...

We walked around the crazy Gaudi Park, which the famous Gaudi architect designed with loads of weird and wonderful designs, he also designed many other buildings around Barcelona and is one of their biggest icons. We marveled at many buildings including the massive Olympic stadium and its impressive fountains and weird tower.

One of the days we were able to watch Olivia swim in an ocean race (none of this way too easy pool racing for her!) and then headed off to see the human pyramid competition famous for this festival... This was one of the most crazy and scary things we had seen. All the regions from around Barcelona enter a team of human pyramids. These teams compete by trying to make the most complicated as well as tallest pyramids. On the bottom are the strongest and biggest people and this progresses upwards with the top only having a small child... brave (or crazy) mothers! Mostly these towers are successful but we saw one which fell down at its highest point(we saw it go 8 high but it does get up to 10!!!) and the small child went flying, to be saved by the crowd below... so safe (ish) for the child...

We really enjoyed or stay in Barcelona and were sad to leave, we enjoyed the wee family who happily took us in, the great atmosphere, and all the amazing and different sights to be seen, along with some more great markets.

Aix-en-Provence and Avignon

2009-09-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

Walking with Tricia - seed pod full of bugs ew!
Red dirt pine trees and rocks - Provence

Mount Sainte-Victoire

Low reservoir

Dam

Priory atop Mount Sainte-Victoire

Hazy view from the top

Scary fish at market in Marsielle

Paintings in the church

Model ships and airplanes used in rescues or sunk at sea

Golden mosaics

Early morning flight

Avignon airport and Ralph our pilot

another one pot wonder!

Avignon and is famous half bridge (dont quite know why they like this bridge so much when half floated away)

Because our bus only stops at a few destinations and no where in between we had to make our own way to our next destination Aix-en-Provence. We caught a local bus for 21 euros each and arrived in Aix (x) just after midday. There we were met by Ralph who is my second cousin twice removed... or my grandads cousin with a generational gap (its complicated i know, lets just say he is whanau).

We drove back to Ralphs house to meet his lovely wife Tricia and have a beer and some lunch, this was just the beggining of a great five days. The weather was not its best but we decided to chance it and ventured out for a walk with our jackets. The rain cleared and we walked through some forestry land where everyone can go walking in any season except for summer due to a very high fire risk. Feeling comforted by the recent rain we through a landscape that is a rich red colour with lots of bluffs and cliffs, olive trees and wild thyme rosemary and lavender. It was the first of many nice walks.

We filled our time with visiting a few local markets and trying all their olives mmm so good! And a few more walks around the bottom of a mountain one day and up it the next. The mountain (Mount Sante Victoire) is named after a battle fought on it in 1st century BC where they say the river ran with blood and the valley running down from the mountain is named after the stench of the rotting bodies, yet another roman victory over the celts. The mountain is mostly all bare rock so it made for a very hot hike but great views of a very hazy landscape, maybe due to the huge refinery just over another range. At the top there was a little Priory from the 1500 century where a bunch of people were doing an archiology dig, and a huge cross at the summit where we were rewarded with a great view and a cool breeze.

The following day we took it easy and visited Marseilles a huge city on the coast. About half of the population of Marseilles are migrants so the city has a very different culture along with a huge crime rate. On a hill overlooking the city we checked out a church that was dedicated to the seafarers, it was really different to any other church we had been into, it was still ornate and stunning but was covered with model ships and small paintings people had given when a family member had been saved from a tragedy at sea, it was nice to see one of these churchesa bit more connected to the people than the rest we have seen. The markets were amazing with a lot of arab and african influence so a huge variety of food. Our gudie Tricia treated us to a few things we had never seen or tasted before.

That evening Ralph and Tricia treated us to a ´congratulations on getting engaged´ dinner which was really nice as we had not really had one yet. We tried globe artichokes which as interesting, its a bit of work to eat your meal but they are really tasty! The next morning we had to rise early to catch a plane to Avignon. Ralph who has been learning to fly decided to try to couple a lesson with flying us to Avignon in a little Cessna, many people were dubious that our oversized packs would fit in the plane but luckily the instuctor was not. Ralph was supposed to fly as if he were flying in cloud so he could not look up and had to fly only by instruments. It made for a bumpy flight but he flew well so we made it in one piece. The flight was beautiful as we were in the air as the sun rose through the smog and flying only about 900m above the ground so we could see everything. We landed in Avignons small airport where no buses go so we had to catch a taxi, not too big a deal as it saved us a big walk with our heavy packs. After settling in we checked out Avignon which is an walled in town that used to house the Pope in the one of the biggest palaces in Europe. It was a nice town with a lot of character but we were a little too tired to really appreciate it and soon headed back for an afternoon snooze crashing for over 2 hours!

Cinque Terre and Nice

2009-09-29T02:30:00.001-07:00

Pisa and a righted tower thanks to the hulk
Deiva Marina on a stormy day

Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre

Fishing boats in the street Cinque Terre

Cingue Terre

Nice at night

From Florence we headed to Pisa to see its famous leaning tower, we had about and hour here and it really was enough, we found ourselves in little awe of the slightly leaning tower but all the same we ticked it off the list with one of the classic photos holding it up which by the way is not so easy to work out how to take, especially with hundreds of others trying to do the same!

From Pisa we headed to the coast getting off the bus in La Spezia. From here on in the travel was not so easy it took Andrew and I a good couple of hours to work out where exactly where needed to go! As it turned out the camp ground we had booked was not actually in the Cinque Terre where we wanted to be but about 20 Min's further away! All the train timetables were only of the Cinque Terre so we had no idea of how to get to where we needed to be... finally after a lot of harassment one of the information ladies sold us a ticket and pointed to a train stating "I think this train goes to where you need to be" a very promising statement indeed! Not knowing when our stop would arrive we looked out the window at each stop, of which there seemed to be many especially as we where heading further and further away from where we had planned to be (we had been looking eagerly forward to this part of our trip for a long time now!). At one point our train (being an ever reliable form of Italian public transport) stopped in a tunnel and would not start again for a further 20minutes and all we knew was that there was a problem which we heard muttered by a passing attendant to another, yay! We travelled on and on (time seems to take slow when you don't want it to) and Sharon became more and more annoyed at the camp ground and its description of being `within the Cinque Terre.´ When we finally got to the station and were lucky enough to catch the free shuttle to our campground just in time (other wise we would have had to wait three hours), with something going finally right for us! We checked in, sorted out or stuff, cooked yet another `one pot wonder´and settled down for an early night to the sound of some young Americans who not being able to drink back at home made up for it that night... nice, thank God for ear plugs! The next day we decided to just relax and headed to the local beach, (it turned out that our camp ground was were the Italians came for their holidays away from the busy tourist area but still by a beautiful beach) and soak up the rays. It was a beautiful day we lazed around, swam in clear water in which one could see fish swimming under you, and ate ice cream. That night the heavens opened and we experienced the thunder storm of a lifetime with thunder rolling constantly around the hills on which our camp was located and every 20seconds the sky lighting up in a blaze. This continued for not most of the night and therefore was another difficult night to sleep especially since my side of the bed being wet due to Andrew despite my warnings leaving the windows of the tent unzipped and the wind blowing my side....Now I know that at times I have been known to exaggerate, however you can ask Andrew it was honestly a crazy huge storm and the biggest storm either of us had ever seen! By mid morning the storm had passed and we packed our day bag keen to head out on the famous Cinque Terre walking paths and to see the 5 cute towns that are now UNESCO world heritage sights. We hopped eagerly into a full shuttle and were dropped off at the local train station to catch a train 20Min's to begin our walk.... however this was not to be the case as the before mentioned Italian public transport once again lived up to its name and had decided that today they would be on strike and no one was going anywhere.... so instead of seeing beautiful sights we spent the day doing washing and walking along the now very empty sea front to watch the storm out at sea.

The next day we crossed our fingers and toes and headed out again for the destination that we had come to see, today we where lucky and the trains were running, hooray! However we were told that we could not walk between the towns on the well know tracks due to the weather making the tracks unstable... with our spirits slightly dampened we headed out to what turned out to be an amazing day exploring the old towns (which we travelled between by train) and swimming and eating the local produce and taking excessive amounts of pictures all of which were justified due to the beauty of the place... definitely recommend!!

That night we finally had an uninterrupted sleep and with trains actually working (thank goodness) we headed back to La Spezia to catch our bus and once again travel onwards, out of Italy and up into France, more specifically Nice.

The trip to Nice was pretty neat with our bus winding its way along the coast line at some points on the edge of high cliffs, we were able to look down upon the richness of Monaco (this is the second smallest country in the world and to be a resident one must put down 1k and then also be one of the 30 accepted that year, failing to be accepted the 1k is not returned and one must put down another 1k and try again), and tried to spot the houses of famous stars such as Elton John, Bono and Tina Turner. We arrived at our destination, tracked down our hostel and then some food and chatted to our room mates, one of which turned out to be incredibly self absorbed and incredibly annoying... and also loved to talk.... only the best combination! The next day was beautiful and sunny so Andrew and I spent the day chilling on the beach, wandering through the old town, checking out little local markets and going for a wee walk up a hill for the view. Luckily we had used this day well and to its full as the next day turned out to be miserable as it poured down with rain, and not wanting to return to our room (due to the self absorbed and annoying girl lying in bed waiting until someone would come in so she could once again complain about her terrible life and her recent break up from her `soul mate´and the nose that needs plastic surgery and how tarot readers told her that she would have health problems and so now she believes she does due to a one months stint in which she took up smoking.... and yes this does go on for another couple of hours or so) we spent the day trying to keep dry and window shopping. We spent our last night in Nice with another Kiwi couple in our room. We ate a nice dinner with them and chatted over a few drinks into the early hours of the next morning.

Venice - Rome - Florence

2009-09-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

The narrow streets of Venice!

St Peters Basillica, Rome. some extra holy pope!
A Raphael Room in the Vatican museum
Vatican museum
Coloseum
Gothic church in Orvieto Rome
Sweet ride!!
Grape thief!!!Caught in the act!
Wine in Tuscany
Florence
Florence
Florence

Venice, a city that is sinking lower while the sea is rising, a really unique city that is totally packed with mosquito’s, people and ridiculously over priced Gondole’s.
We were staying at a camp ground 30minutes out of the city that was situated right beside the airport, like if you climbed the fence out of camp you were on the runway. But we had a tent to ourselves and the camp had a swimming pool and two Jacuzzis, very nice when it is so hot!
We spent two days here wandering around the narrow streets and along the many canals doing what all the tourists do; that is getting hopelessly lost. We invested 2.50 on a map but it was of little use due to the fact that when a street is only just over a metre wide they don’t bother putting its name on the map, and these streets comprise 50% of Venice! The first day we wandered around a part that seemed to be a haven for local artist and we checked out some amazing little galleries where you can see the artist working away in the corner, it was really neat and after being through so many markets where vendors are selling the same pieces of copied art it was refreshing to see so much genuine stuff. To combat getting lost we decided just to walk and head for nowhere in particular but end up everywhere. It worked fairly well till we tried to get back to the Piazza that the bus dropped us off at. The second day we wandered around the rest of Venice, avoiding the masses of tourists who seemed to be condensed all into a few main streets and one square. Oh yes and we must mention that we also had a few gelatos, mmmm the Italians really know how to make ice cream!

On a side note, before Venice we spent the night in Munich and as most hostels in Italy France and Spain don’t seem to have kitchens we bought a gas cooker and a saucepan. I can tell you now that after 12 meals cooked we are amazing at one-pot-wonders!!! (If your lucky we will cook some for ya when we come back). Once the meal is cooked we eat it out of the pot with for the first week our one fork and now with our one fork and one spoon. Breakfast in the first week was cornflakes in our tupperware container eaten with a fork… all good fun!

After three nights in Venice we got back on the bus and travelled all day to Rome, watching the movie Gladiator along the way, a very good movie to amp you up for Rome.
Because Rome is Rome and it has an amazing history we decided to spend some money on a walking tour. So the first day we followed a passionate Canadian Roman history graduate around the ruinous part of the city for four hours. The tour was well worth the 18 euro ticket and taught us a lot about the city and Roman history. They were some pretty crazy people, our guide stressed that Romans didn’t do anything unless it was way over the top and totally unnecessary (and also that Margarita Pizza is the best Pizza)! But they did build a huge empire that lasted a thousand years and buildings that have lasted two. Rome sits over a huge aquifer and so as you go around the city there are clean drinking fountains every second corner, great as it is prone to being a little warm. Mussolini did a lot of work in excavating the ruins of Rome and trying to get back a piece of what Rome used to be, he also passed legislation that made all cats of Rome Roman citizens, this means that they are even allowed to vote!?! Rome is the centre of Catholicism and has 900 churches with most of them being ornate marble master pieces, but the Pope went a bit crazy consecrating things so now apparently the Coliseum is consecrated as a catholic church!?!
The third day we made our way to Vatican city the smallest sovereign country in the world about 1 square km. We finally relented to standing in a queue and waited to get in to the Vatican Museums that hold a lot of pillaged Egyptian art pieces and the paintings of Raphael and many other significant Renaissance artists. The art works were amazing and the museum had a great progression leading finally to the grand finale, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It is definitely a must see! The pieces from it that we see all the time are actually really small and look very different amongst all of the other works, it was amazing and really indescribable. Leaving the chapel and the museum we were a bit numb and brain tired from all the art but still had to go and visit St Peters Basilica. This is the church that has been built over the tomb of the Apostle Peter “You are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18) It has the largest interior of any church in the world and also was amazing!

After Rome we headed off to Florence, stopping along the way to visit a little township called Orvieto situated on top of a sheer cliff face only accessible by a cable car. This cute little village along with its good views, cute local art and cobbled streets also had the most impressive Gothic style church we had seen to date, a very nice stop!
We were told that after the busyness of Rome it was nice to be in Florence for a slower pace of life, appealing to hear but as we were soon to find out this was not the case….
To describe Florence I would like to quote Lonely Planet which we found very truthful of our experience; ‘Florence has a strange effect on visitors. Travellers who normally loathe art galleries queue for hours to get into them, and people with no interest in Renaissance architecture start raving about tiered facades and frescoed apses. But break the spell and you’ll find that Florence can be disheartening. Much of the centre has been surrendered to tourism and in the summer heat, pollution and crowds can be stifling’… That said, looking at all the old buildings whilst trying to forget the rest you could see that it was a very pretty city. Another saving grace of Florence ended up being our little hostel, and by little I mean only 20 beds in the whole place! The girls who worked there were so lovely you felt that you wanted to do something for them and all the other guests were helpful and loved to chat…sometimes a little too much, but mostly this was nice. Only having two days in Florence we spent our first checking out the city and the second we splashed out for a wine tour in the surrounding Tuscany area. The wine tour was great we first went to a little farm and the owners brought us out all homemade food and wine for a huge brunch (reminded me a little of Nikau cave before the café) then we walked a little way to look at their goats (cheese) olives (oil) and grapes (wine). We headed off very, very full further into the country side with our bus driver having the tricky task of navigating a huge bus full of people up little country roads, we were all very impressed! We arrived at a very expensive winery and were guided through the wine making process and at the end we were able to drink three different kinds of their wine, one of which was called ‘holy wine’ as this is what the priests drink at Christmas, WOW ha! Very sleepy we all headed off to our last stop which was an old fortress to wander through the little town and eat Gelato Ice Cream, and then back home… a very good day with good company and good food and wine! Andrew and I finished off our day with a trip up a hill over looking the city to watch the beautiful sunset and a stroll back to the hostel for a light dinner as still full from the brunch!

Police baffled as dozens of 'suicidal' cows throw themselves off cliff in the Alps

2009-09-03T12:47:00.001-07:00

This happened while we were in Lauterbrunnen, amusing but very unfortunate for the farmer . Read on... (article taken from the internet)

Police baffled as dozens of 'suicidal' cows throw themselves off cliff in the Alps

In the picturesque Swiss village of Lauterbrunnen the locals are worried.
Dozens of alpine cows appear to be committing suicide by throwing themselves off a cliff near the small village in the Alps.
In the space of just three days 28 cows and bulls have mysteriously died after they plunged hundreds of metres to rocks below where they were killed instantly.
In each case local mountain rescue services using a helicopter had to be called in to remove the bodies because of the danger to the local groundwater of pollution.
A police spokesman said: 'There are no large carnivores living in the Alps anymore who would once have disposed of the bodies so they have to be moved.
'We are investigating because cows growing up in the mountains normally can estimate dangers and do not plunge down cliffs.'

According to local reports there had been violent thunderstorms in the area which may well have have spooked the animals.
Cows wandering at high altitude are a common sight across much of the Alps, where farmers let them loose to graze on the green plateaus above the villages.
Often carrying large bells around their necks, most are dairy cows as the mix of vegetation and grasses at that high altitude are particularly good for milk and for making cheese.
Cows do occasionally fall to their deaths in these Alpine regions although it is rare for so many to fall in one particular place.
There has been speculation in the past that when this does happen it is because a tightly-grouped number of cows have followed each other as they search for more grass.

Most scientists generally believe that animals are incapable of committing suicide.

Switzerland, the other stuff, nice but not nearly as exciting!

2009-09-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

The beautiful town of Thun

Freestyle Kayaking world champs

Swimming in Lake at Meilen

Rauckelete

Dama and Thomas and us after yet another swim... the storm was brewing

Dama, Sharon and Thomas at the Castle

Trummelbach waterfalls

Jungfrau Mountain

English church in Werfen

Evening stroll

We spent our first few days visiting Dama who lived with her husband Thomas in a wee town called Meilen about 20km from Zurich. They lived in a very nice apartment right on the lake. That night Dama cooked us a traditional Swiss meal of Rauckelete. For this you have a wee bbq/grill oven kinda thing on the table with meat cooking on the top and then in a little personal dish you melt a slice of cheese 10cm x 10cm square and 1cm thick which once grilled you pour over a boiled potato and eat with the meat cooking in front of you (there’s a photo don’t worry), very nice.
The first day we borrowed their bikes and rode along the lake stopping and swimming and sun bathing at the parks along the way. The water was really clean and a perfect temperature, very nice. The ride took us to a cute old little town Raperswill. Here we did a little bit of shopping as Andrew had broken his second pair of sunglasses (damn things)! And we needed to find some more. Then in the evening we headed back the 12km we had ridden to Meilen, worn out from a day in the sun and with sore bums unaccustomed to bicycle seats.
The next day we took it easy sorting our life out on the net and going for more swims. We had decided to cook dinner for our hosts, who insisted we not spend a cent of our own and had given us 100 Francs to buy food, so on the way back from our swim we stopped by the supermarket. When we had finished our shopping we went to get our bikes and I realised with a sinking feeling that I had taken the keys for the locks out of my bag. We were stuck in the underground parking lot with locked bikes and no key. And about this time the heavens opened and it rained horses and elephants with thunder and lightning every 20 seconds…. Bummer. As it was my (Andrew) mistake I decided to run back to the apartment which was a long way up a steep hill and get the spare keys and as it was pouring I decided to strip down to board shorts and bare feet and go for it! When I reached the apartment I tried to explain myself to Dama through puffs and went and looked for the keys… hmmm… oh no! I realised that I must have packed them after all and they were in the bag with Sharon sitting beside the locked bikes in the underground car park! So I grabbed a jacket and ran back down in bare feet to Sharon and there they were!!! It was only raining cats and dogs now so we decided to ride home me with our bag and the jacket over top and Sharon in her bikini (sorry I missed the photo opportunity, very amusing for all the people we passed though!), and we finally made it back and cooked a delicious meal which was finished off with chocolate fondue.

On Wednesday we had to meet up with our bus in Bern about an hour and a half away by train, Swiss trains are really expensive and this short trip cost us about $140 kiwi, ouch! But we made it to Bern and I was able to sneak off and make Sharon a ring right under her nose (you watch our bags I am just gonna go and find a supermarket and get some food for dinner) ;-). The bus arrived at 5:30pm and took us to Lauterbrunnen where we were lucky enough to get a whole cabin to ourselves… poof! Its amazing how fast you can make a mess with a couple of packs!
The following day I proposed which you can read about below. And the next day we left our camp to go back the way we had come to Thun were we had been invited to stay with Damas parents. Our train left at 4.30pm but we had to check out at 10am, luckily we were able to leave our packs at the camp so we only took our day bags and a load of washing. We stashed all this in a locker at the train station and wandered around the town. In the quest for a nice quiet shady spot we found a trail heading up the mountain to another village so decided to head up. It was a very steep track and a very hot day but the village was very pretty and I got a sweet engraved Swiss Army knife (they are way cheaper here! Who would have thought) (and we needed a corkscrew) (and a saw) (and tweezers and a toothpick, a can opener…. You get it) and Sharon got a little cow bell.

We arrived in Thun at 6:30pm and were picked up by one of Damas brothers who took us to his parents house where we were looked after by a very bewildered younger brother who had no idea what was going on and thought for some reason that we were competitors in the freestyle kayaking world champs which was about to start in the middle of town. But we finally corrected him and it was all worked out when Dama arrived too. Dama and Thomas showed us around Thun the next day and we saw a castle, watched the kayaking which wasn’t really started yet so people were just practising and also a demonstration by a group of anti-fascists, a bunch of about 200 rugged men dressed all in black some in masks yelling that they wanted a revolution etc etc, they looked pretty angry so we stayed out of their way. That night we were treated to a Swiss desert made from some nutty thing only found in Switzerland that they never told us the name of but which tasted awful, I ate mine and felt ill and Sharon gave up after a few bites. On the Sunday we went back to Lauterbrunnen and headed to the Trummelbach waterfalls consisting of 10 falls which are the only waterfalls in Europe inside a cave that are still accessible. It was so amazing and we were stunned anew at each different turn. After heading back to the camp and organising our stuff again we headed into town and took a train up to Wengen for the church service. It was a traditional Anglican service with about 10 people in the church including the minister so the hymns sounded great, even if a little off key ;-p but it was a really nice service all the same and a beautiful evening stroll back to Lauterbrunnen for our last night.

Love in Switzerland... Ohhhh...

2009-08-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

Sharon.... Will you marry me?...

The hand weaved ring (Andy made this himself)

The happy couple

Porst (or Cheers in English)!!

The backdrop...

The signs were all there!

And so were the bells...

Our little red train

This is a Marmot.... kinda cute!

So here it is for all you who have been waiting eagerly for the story…

Once upon a time there was a girl called Sharon and a guy called Andrew they fell in love, went over seas together and found themselves in Switzerland which is where this story takes place… more specifically in the little township of Lauterbrunnen.

The day began with a sleep in for Sharon (which I should have been a bit suspicious about as sleep-in’s are not high on Andrews agenda and so I am usually rudely harassed into waking up) very nice, and a busy time for Andrew in preparation for the big event Sharon was blissfully unaware of. Andrew sneaked to the shop and packed a very heavy bag filled with goodies and then finally awoke the sleeping beauty, who woke very happy… always a good start to the day! We headed off after breakfast into a beautiful sun-shining, not a cloud in the sky day and headed for one of the surrounding mountain ranges. This time Andrew invested some money into a gondola ride that took us up 500meters (as opposed to walking). At the top we were greeted by a cute little red train (I, Sharon felt like Heidi) that took us further along and up the mountain with amazing views the whole way to a quaint village called Murren. In Murren we looked around a little and found a nice walking track that would take us a bit further up and around the mountain. We walked for awhile and I (Sharon) got hungry and angry (hangry) so we stopped for a quick bite to eat to appease the monster that I become when hangry and headed on further up the mountain trail. The path snaked its way past the cute chalets of Murren, past flowers only seen in the Alps, past bushes full of fresh mountain blueberries (I had stained fingers by the end of the trip) and up to a bubbling mountain stream with butterflies fluttering by and the sound of cow bells ringing further up the mountain (no exaggeration, it was an amazing day)! There Andy found a nice spot in the shade of a rock and we had a wee picnic to finish our lunch with a few surprise goodies from Andys morning escapades, including Swiss chocolate… yummy… he sure knows how to please a girl ha!
After lunch and a few casual ramblings and the sighting of a furry animal called a Marmot Andy stood up and blindfolded me with his jersey claiming to have a surprise for me…. After about 10minutes sitting lonely in the shade he came back and stood me up, he then proceeded to lead me blindfolded out of a dry riverbed across unstable ground and up a bank… by this stage I had finally worked out that something was going on as I could feel the poor boys hands shaking (mum says he has to be a brave man to ask me… not sure that was much of a compliment to me, thanks Mum)! Once we had navigated our way for a minute or so Andrew tells me that I can now take off my blind fold. I do, and there he is kneeling on the ground looking very cute wearing a crinkled shirt, vest and tie on the top half and shorts on the bottom (true Andy style). After speaking some profound words, and with a backdrop of the beautiful Swiss Alps and tears in his eyes (he claims only due to the fact that I was crying) he asked to marry me…. Through further tears I managed to agree, yay and he handed me a hand woven ring, that he had even made himself (the day before)!! As a further surprise he brought out a bottle of bubbly and we shared the bottle on-top of a large rock in the sun to celebrate :) The rest of the day was spent continuing on our hike, past farmers making hay in traditional ways and gazing at all the wonderful views. Very tired we headed down the mountain on another Gondola, this one going over a huge cliff that made you feel like you where on a theme park ride, fun for us but not for the older lady beside me! We then caught a bus back to the campground and had a little snooze.

When we awoke Andrew extended the celebration to dinner, where he took me out to the local restaurant and we shared a very Swiss, cheese fondue…very yummy and very filling!

And so there you have it, the love story between an Andrew Woodward and Sharon Snell…. To live happily ever after…

Esslingen and Lake Constance

2009-08-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Pretty girl in the flowers

Esslingen old town

Public profanity!!!

Christian the fireman.. and Andrew

Lake of Constance

Andy, Sharon, Christian, Nicole and Robert enjoying a wine or two

Local Rose

Sunset and wine.... only the best!!

Leaving Salzburg we bussed to Munich and spent our first night couch surfing! We had been accepted by a Hungarian computer programmer who worked for Google and was new to Munich so his social life consisted of random foreigners he let sleep on his couch. Staying with him at the time was an Italian girl who cooked us an authentic Italian gnocchi dish for dinner. The meal was stodgy homemade gnocchi in a blue cheese and almond sauce… mmm! Well it would have been had I liked blue cheese and almonds, but not wanting to offend I forced it down feeling quite ill by the end of the meal, I think Sharon liked it.
We talked late into the night and got up early to catch our bus to Stuttgart, there we were staying with a friend Nadine who lived in a pretty little village called Esslingen. We arrived at lunch time and met Nadine at the café where she worked and were treated to a massive lunch free of charge, it was great and for the first time we felt like rich tourists eating out. As we were really tired from a few days of being on the move with early starts and late nights our days in Esslingen consisted of sleeping in and wandering around the village chatting to the locals.
Nadine and her fiancé Dominik decided to drive us to our next destination the Lake of Constance and tie it in with a weekend away camping. This meant free travel for us in an 2008 3.2 L Audi A6 that Dominik borrowed from work. It was a very nice ride and we really got to experience the ‘autobahn’ with a top speed of 230km/h, sweet!!!
At the Lake of Constance we were staying with another friend Christian who worked at home for a few months. Christian and his family were really generous and treated us like royalty!. His father gave us an annotated map of Switzerland showing us where to go (which we forgot to take with us) and his grandmother gave Sharon two pairs of knitted socks and promised to make me some my size and post them home for me and also gave us a 750ml bottle of 42% pear and apple schnapps that her late husband home brewed, a little heavy but a very generous gift that we will try to save for home to share with all. 
And Christian treated us to a ferry trip and a Bavarian breakfast of Weisswurst (White sausage eaten a very specific way, you have to peel the sausage out of the skin and not eat the skin), pretzel and beer if we wanted.
The Lake of Constance is the biggest lake in Europe and is shared by Germany, Austria and Switzerland. From our house in the German town of Wasserburg we looked across the lake to the Alps, the view was nice but the weather not so with the temperature 18 degrees less than that of a few days previous. But the weather cleared for us to enjoy a bottle of red at a local wine festival sitting on the shore of the lake watching the sun go down.
To continue with the theme of generous Germans and free travel Christian drove us 2 ½ hours to our next destination near Zurich Switzerland to stay with my friend Dama from YWAM.

Austria - Vienna and Salzburg

2009-08-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

Town Hall Vienna

Film Festival Vienna

Sharon relishing some cool mist

Feeding time in the park

St Peters Church Vienna

Roman ruins beneath the pavement Vienna

Mozart???? (artists impression) Salzburg

Salzburg

Monk monastery carved into the cliff Salzburg

Salzburg

Ice Cave (photo stolen off the net) Salzburg

View out of Ice Cave

Austrian Alps

Mountain climb to Ice Cave

Ice Cave Entrance 1700m above sea level 1200m above valley floor

Our host in Vienna was a girl I took caving in February, probably our most random of contacts. But we were welcomed into her apartment and made to feel at home, she even fed us! We were really thankful that we had a few nights here to recover and have some good old quality R & R in a nice place  We spent our time relaxing and mooching around the city, seeing the sights, walking in parks, having picnic’s, walking around the Vienna hills and around amazing Castle gardens. We also went out one night and watched the Berlin Philharmonics on a big screen outside the town hall which was a part of Vienna’s open air music festival month. On the last night we had a nice quiet dinner out at the local Italian restaurant which was just lovely. Not too much to report on this city but it was such a good break from the crazy travel schedule we usually follow!

After our relaxing time in Vienna we where ready once again for onward travel and some joy filled singing of ‘the hills are alive’ in the village of Salzburg where coincidently the sound of music was filmed.
We arrived mid day and after a blisteringly hot and sweaty walk across town with our packs and some dripping meat we had brought with us frozen from Vienna we found our hostel. From the outside and looking in the foyer it appeared to be quite plush…. However it was not all as it seemed. It was nice downstairs and the rooms were not too bad, but there was no kitchen or fridge or anywhere to store food, so the dripping meat which had made a mess had to be discarded. This left us with a dilemma as to what to do about dinner, we didn’t really have enough money to eat out every night and we didn’t feel like bread and tomato for lunch and dinner everyday! We decided after having a wee nap to head out to find a supermarket for some inspiration, of course they were way across the other side of town again and with no directions we gradually circled in on them, three big ones with in 200m of each other! Why don’t they spread them out a bit!?!
Anyway we had found some inspiration and bought a single use disposable coal bbq, some vegetables and sausages and some couscous…. Perfect! A bbq every night and some red wine drunk from the bottle… Classy! We divided the coal into 3rds and I (Andy) cooked on a surface of 10cm by 10cm the meat and the vegetables while Sharon fluttering her eyelashes procured some hot water in our little Tupperware container (thanks Roxy! Has been really handy) from the barman to cook the couscous. We enjoyed these bbq’s for 3 nights and rewarded ourselves on the 4th with some pizza!!

Salzburg is a small town but the second most visited place in Austria so very busy, the main sightseeing areas around town had throngs of people. The town holds very closely to the fact that Mozart was born there so everything is about him, where he was born where he lived, breathed, and sat and so on, they don’t mention however that Mozart disliked Salzburg and thought the people there were ignorant twats (not his actual words but to the same effect)! We explored a neat monastery that was carved out of the cliff right in town and looked in some more stunning churches.

On our last day we did an excursion out of town to the largest ice cave in the world called Eisriesenwelt. This was a limestone cave 1600 metres up a mountain 42km long that is so cold inside that when all the water seeping through the rock enters the cave it turns into ice formations that look similar to stalactites and mites. There was a gondola that carried you up the entrance from a parking lot halfway up the mountain, but as we are el-cheapos we decided to hike it! The day was beautiful, not a cloud in sight and barely a breath of wind, the effect of this making it ridiculously hot!!! The walk climbed over 600m and was a very steep gradient the whole way across loose scree slopes and rocky cliffs with a great view from your feet straight to the valley floor! (Andy- cool! Sharon- eeek!) Once we reached the cave we joined a group of maybe 70 people to be guided on a 1 hour round trip 1km into the cave. Because we were the only people who spoke English as a first language we were put up the front which gave us the best views. The cave is below freezing and the whole time you are walking on stairs constructed above the ice, it is really steep (up to a 70° incline and climbing 700 stairs we reached the highest point of 1800m, the guide carried with him a coil of magnesium which he burned to light the cave, the effect was amazing! The cave was stunning and well worth the expense of getting there and the hike in blistering heat to reach it, we returned to Salzburg late, starving and exhausted, definitely the night to reward ourselves with pizza and beer!

Prague, oh Prague...

2009-08-14T01:53:00.000-07:00

Hostel Royale!!!

Old Town Square

Old Town, these neat buildings are everywhere

Eccentric canadian guide

Interesting sculpture... one for the ladies.

The Gothic chapel in Prague Castle

Prague Castle

Prague is one of those places that everyone seems to just love and so with great expectations we left little Dresden and headed on to see the wonders of the oldest still standing city in Europe…

We arrived and boldly headed off in what we believed to be the correct direction to our prior booked hostel, directions I might add that we had acquired from the above mentioned hostels website… So we found a large bus station and I sat down to guard our packs whilst Andrew walked around the station about 5 times looking in vein for bus number 115 or 26. Finally he ended up finding an information centre and luckily the lady spoke English (we have found this not to be the case in some other bus/ train station info centres) and informed Andrew kindly that these two busses did not actually go from this station. So Andrew headed back to me after about half an hour and we tried to find a map of the local bus system to work out where to go, these maps we were soon to discover were all gone… lucky us!! Did I add that it was a really hot day?! So once again Andrew headed off, talked to some people, searched around some more, ran around 3 blocks to find an ATM machine as we only had Euros and needed Czech money to pay for the public transport we at some point would travel on, and then went back to the information centre which proved a good move as the lady helped Andrew find us another route, this time one that actually existed!! So after a substantial time had passed we finally had a way of getting to the hostel…. What a relief…. But wait there were more surprises in store for us yet!!! We took around three different trams (yes we needed to go on TRAMS not BUSES!) and headed further and further away from the main city and civilisation to end up being dropped off outside a graveyard in an industrial work area. A kind man pointed us in the direction of our hostel and our hearts dropped seeing a run down old warehouse with signs like ‘cash and carry’ painted on the flaky yellow walls of what was to be our hostel! We hoped that the inside would be better then the out but this too proved to be false hope. Inside was a dirty hallway with a crudely written sign informing us that to the left was the hostels reception. Further down the hall were a couple of curious Czech men smoking and running around was a child dressed only in her underwear. We were soon to discover that this hostel mainly contained poor Czech and Slovakian families who lived there on a permanent basis… nice!!! After waiting for awhile the lady who owned the hostel arrived and in broken English informed us that the 3 bed room we had booked was actually not available (we could now see why the directions weren’t so helpful) but that she had a five bed room with two spare beds we could stay in. We agreed to this thinking that it wouldn’t matter too much as it was a cheaper room and our last hostel had 10 beds so would be better then that, you may ask yourself how by now could we still believe that it was going to be ok, but by then we just wanted to put our packs down and rest so would have almost agreed to anything… We had to wait another length of time while the owner sorted out our room (she seemed to have no order to anything) and Andrew had a look around. He came back to inform me that there was no communal area and the kitchen had nothing to cook with, or eat out of, or drink from as everyone had their own stuff because they lived there… wonderful! Finally we were led upstairs to our room to find that it was already occupied by 3 Czech girls who, you won’t guess, yes lived there! They were not too pleased to have ‘their’ room invaded by two other people and so were not too happy with us at first… At this point I cried (yes feel sorry for me) and then fell asleep. Did I also mention that by this time it was late evening and we had only eaten breakfast?!
So when I awoke Andrew and I decided we needed something good to feel a bit better so went for a walk to find a place to eat out. This in itself was an experience as we were to find that we actually were located in the ghetto with our closest neighbors some Czech people who actually live in little tin shacks beside some old abandoned train tracks… We walked for a while to find a nicer neighborhood, had a GREAT meal and a drink at a pub and headed back to our room to be lulled to sleep from the smell of cigarette smoke, oh yes the girls smoked in our room…

Luckily for us the next day we found a better way into town that only took us around 15mins. So for the rest of the time at our hostel we headed into town early and came back late, only to sleep… or more like try to sleep…

Apart from sub standard sleeping conditions Prague actually did turn out to be a lovely city to visit and wander around. We enjoyed a half a day free walking tour with a really eccentric Canadian. The history was amazing and the guide did really well at engaging us for a whole 3 hours. The way it works is that you go on this tour with no obligation to pay anything but at the end you can give them a tip if you think the tour was worthwhile.
A funny story he shared was when the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia to bring their in communist reign. Czech radios went off at midnight so the Soviets thought that they would sneak in after 12 and take the whole country by the next morning with out the Czech even realising. However they forgot that Czechoslovakia had daylight savings and so they crossed the border at 11pm… oops! So it was broadcast all over the radio that they were being invaded, the prime minister at the time informed everyone not to resist as there was nothing they could do, and it would only cause a blood bath. So the Czech being very innovative people took down all the road signs except the ones pointing back to Moscow, and not only this they renamed all the towns and cities under the name of the Prime minister. This caused a lot of confused Soviets and it took them a week to get to Prague and arrest the prime minister!

This tour as well as giving us a good historical overview orientated us for walking around ourselves and so we went back and had a look at the sites that really interested us. One being a church that has a real mummified arm hanging above the door when you come in, its called the ‘church of the shriveled arm’. It turned out to be the most beautiful church we have seen thus far with ornate marble and big artworks everywhere, hard to describe and no photos either, but it was amazing! Go there!

The rest of our stay consisted of us wandering around looking at all the old buildings as every second building in Prague is a work of art!

Dresden

2009-08-11T00:08:00.001-07:00

Crazy old bridge at Kurot-Rathen

Ferry across the Elbe - it is anchored by the cable upstream and just uses the rudder against the current to go from bank to bank.

The National Park

Steep rocky gorge less trodden but amazing

The steep stairs turned into steep rocky incline - a great wander.

Third and final gate into the castle

Castle walls rising up from the already high cliff

They had a war museum at the top with this sucker a 1.3 tonne bomb!

Palace gardens in Dresden

All Baroque style

Ohhhh...

This is a tobacco factory built to look like a mosque?!Dresden at night.

So we left the craziness of big city Berlin and headed into rural Germany to stay in a little village called Dresden (they called it little but it had 600,000 people), which just turned out to be the cutest little village ever!! This was also the first time that we had to stay in a hostel after three months of travel! Our first Europe hostel experience turned out to be great except for the first night we had to sleep in different rooms before there was room enough for us in a 10 bed mixed dorm. The hostel had travellers from all over the world and we enjoyed having a drink with friendly Americans and a Kiwi guy from Christchurch.

Dresden is infamous for being firebombed by the Allies at the end of WWII. It was a very controversial attack as they totally bombed out the centre of town and missed all of the military buildings on the outskirts, they dropped 1500 tonnes of bombs and killed close to 30,000 in one night of bombing. All the old buildings you see in the photos are as they were before the bombing but have been re built since, on some of the buildings you can see darker stones and these were original ones but most buildings pretty much were built again from the ground and many are still being fixed.

Being a small town we were able to walk everywhere we wanted to go which was great because although public transport is good over here it is still expensive. We spent the first two days wandering around looking at the architecture which we found out is best viewed at night when it is cooler, there are fewer people and the lighting makes them even more impressive. At night (early night from dusk + a few hours) everyone is out and walking around with ice creams or sitting in a park with a beer relaxing, it’s a nice atmosphere.
We also checked out what was called the Princes Armoury Collection which is a bunch of royal weapons from the last 500 years. They were amazingly ornate intricate works of art, swords, axes, guns and armour for knights and horses studded with precious stones and inlaid with intricate ivory carvings. The amount of wealth that went into them was a little bit disturbing when you know the peasants who paid for it all would have been hungry and poor.

The last day we went 40kms out of town on a train at Julie’s mum’s recommendation to a fortress called Konigstien Castle. We arrived in a sleepy wee village and went to the information centre to find out where the castle was and how to get there, there was no English and no map or anything so we left and decided to walk around the town and see if that gave us any luck. Finally we looked up above the village and saw that the castle was actually towering over us, we didn’t need a map duh, and lucky we didn’t ask anyone where this stupid castle was!!! Konigstien is a huge castle fortress with the high walls built from the sheer cliffs that surround it. We hiked up the steep hill and once up the top discovered we had to pay to get in to see it all. But it was well worth the 6 euros to get in as the panoramic view from the top of the walls was amazing, it was high enough to keep Sharon 1m away from the wall whenever she could.

Leaving the castle we took a ferry across the river Elbe a few kilometres down stream to walk around some amazing cliffs near a wee village called Kurot-Rathen. From the village we walked into the National Park which has amazing rock pillar formations. However we arrived at 4pm and the last ferry was at 6pm and the shortest track to where we wanted to go was 2 ½ hours long. This part of Germany seemed to be reserved for mainly Germans as we could not find a scrap of English anywhere not even at the information centre. So without really knowing where we were going and having not quite enough time I decided to run ahead and scout the best route for us to take, I found some steep stairs that headed straight up the hill and ran up (the very steep stairs) to see where they went, it looked like a good way so I decided to run back to get Sharon who had been walking as fast as she could to semi keep up with me. When I got to the bottom I headed back the way I had come but Sharon was not there, so I had to run back the other way for a good while till I finally found her by which time I was very sweaty and hot. Once finding her I took her back and once again headed up the steep track that went straight to the top.
The track which was not often trodden had ripe blue berries to eat along the way (mmm! Just like your ones in Norway Catherine & Frode) and took us climbing through a very steep rocky and beautiful gorge and put us up the top much faster than any other way would have. At the top we still had no idea where to go to find what we were looking for so headed off down another trail, we finally found a map that helped us little so we carried on an soon after found a Hotel… Yeah turns out we weren’t that far out after all. Anyway near this hotel was a stone arched bridge that was built up high amongst the natural rock pillars, it’s kinda hard to describe but it is old and looks really cool in an impressive area, just look at the photos! :-p

In a nutshell we loved Dresden and its surrounds. It is a really picturesque town/city with friendly people and a really relaxed feel about it and we would have liked a few more days there to check out more of the surrounding area…. Next time!

Berlin

2009-08-09T02:04:00.001-07:00

East Side Gallery mural

Berlin Wall

Shell of a bombed out church left standing as a reminder of the war, they still held services inside during the war even after it was bombed out.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews

Sharon showing Bearlin her affection for it - these guys were everywhere

Kai, Andy and Julie on a train track going nowhere

Andrews dash for freedom

Memorial in "Book Burners Square" - if you cant tell its an empty library underneath the Square. The SS stormed the University and burned 20,000 books that were deemed anti political or pro jewish or lots of stupid ideas they had in one night .

We spent the next ten days taking in Berlin. Germany’s capital city was amazing; it has so much interesting history and amazing architecture to go with it. We stayed with friends we met in NZ, Julie and Kai in Julies little flat in her parents basement. They showed us around for the first two days till we were orientated and then left us to explore ourselves which was great.

In the centre of town we saw different remains of the Berlin wall and read all about its messed up history outside in the blistering sun, it is crazy to think that it was only twenty years ago! It was good to read about and really made everything we had learned in history at school all so real. We spent a good couple of hours poring through the Jewish memorial museum reading about Jewish life and death in the Second World War which was very moving. It had some post cards thrown out of the trains by Jewish people on their way to the concentration camps one of which really moved me. This one was a little boy writing to his father who was not going with him and his mother to the camp. He wrote along the lines of, “I don’t want to die daddy but they won’t let us live. I don’t know why but we have got to die.” We all had a very heavy feeling after leaving the memorial.

Another day we headed off to an open air museum (once again in the intense heat of the day) and spent a good three hours reading ‘the topography of terror.’ This museum is located on the sight where the old SS offices used to stand and where they made all the decisions concerning the murdering of the different ethnic groups for ‘Ethnic cleansing.’ This sight had also contained the jail where political prisoners where kept and tortured, so once again a very moving memorial. It is hard to comprehend all that went on and how these men could make these decisions over a cup of tea.

On our last day in Berlin we headed out for another historical experience, visiting the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This was the most horrific place I have ever seen in my life. They had thousands of stories on different aspects of life in the camp and personal accounts of the terror that the prisoners lived under. The camp also contained the ashes of the thousands of cremated prisoners, the old sight of the crematorium, gallows, gas chamber and shooting pit, body dissection rooms, ‘hospital’ where the doctors conducted experiments on prisoners, old kitchen, work buildings where prisoners where forced to labour for long hours, guard towers, camp prison, and two remaining dorm rooms. All of which had their own stories. This camp was hard to explain it brought up so many emotions; anger, sadness, tears, and lastly relief that this was over. It was so hard for one to comprehend and even more so that people actually survived these camps to tell their story. Death was even wished for by many prisoners as an escape from the terror, horror and brokenness they faced each living day.

The German history is on display all around the city and they have such a good attitude. They are ashamed of parts of their history but they put it out there and don’t hide or deny it. They show you all that happened to remember those that where lost and to make us question what we are being told and what is going on around us so that something like this will not happen again.

On a lighter note we really enjoyed spending time with our friends and their families just spoiled us. We were invited out to dinner four different nights and fed up on good German cuisine, including sauerkraut, strange sticky mashed potatoes, different types of worst (sausages), purple cabbage with apple, cucumber served in many different ways, roast pork, schnitzel, and different creamy deserts all very yummy! Many German people have little garden plots within the city with a little bach on where they go and live for the summer. It’s a little kinda 600m² plot jam packed with colourful flowers and vege gardens with a tiny house with a bed in the loft. They are really cute and nice retreats from the city right within the city.

Julie’s mother really looked after us and many mornings we woke up to find that he had sneaked in early with a cooked packed lunch. We also enjoyed visiting antique markets, Andrew loved the beer (thanks to an old King and a still existing beer purity law!), seeing the sights, people watching, walking in parks, meeting new people (was really cool to meet Francine May James wife’s sister), trying new things and also having some time to just chill out.
Berlin is a fun and varied city with a lot of history!

Impressions of the Netherlands

2009-08-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

Biking in the rural south - the way to get around.

Fishing for carp with all the gears

Some crazy buskerKeen surfers... if you can even call it that

Sharon in three countries at once!

American war graveyard

Canal paddle boating

yeh i guess... haha

Sharon in a shoe... well thats their kinda shoe... each to their own!

bbq in the park

For those of you who are uneducated I will give you a quick heads up…Holland is NOT ‘the Netherlands’ it is only a small part. Holland was the richest part of The Netherlands and so in the earlier days those who visited the Netherlands generally only went to Holland hence why to this day we mistake ‘the Netherlands’ with ‘Holland’!

We spent just over a week in The Netherlands and went almost everywhere! It’s not a very big country with only around 1 third of the land mass of New Zealand and most of the population centred in the three largest city’s.
We however where lucky enough to stay in a smaller town (around 800 people in total) in the southern countryside out of the business we had just experienced staying in central London!

The first day was nice and relaxing as we were tired from starting at 4:30am the previous morning to leave London so Gijs and Lois just took us for a scenic drive around their local area. We visited a German war graveyard with 31,000 rough stone crosses; it was amazing to see that many spread out before you.
Thursday to Friday we checked out Amsterdam! Just out of Amsterdam we went to a beach as it was a scorching day, the beach was really busy and the water kind of brown so lots of people sunbathing, a few topless!! :-p but not many swimming. We should have taken this as a queue not to go in but since it was so hot we inexperienced Kiwi’s dived right in! I must say it was nice in the water but think that our togs will never again be the same colour, lucky I like the colour brown!
There was about a half a foot swell so not really any surf but we saw a guy try to teach a lesson to some eager-to-surf Dutch, the poor people had no chance. They did there stretches on the shore practised standing up then paddled out in their huge boards just to sit and bob and look back at the beach for a few hours without the hope of catching anything… But I guess they can say they have tried surfing?!?

We then progressed into the city sunburnt and bathed in the muddy water to meet up with Gijs friend Petra who we were staying with and had organised a bbq in the park. It seemed that this was what the majority of the city had decided to do because it was such a beaut day so the park was packed! We once again enjoyed charcoal flavoured food cooked on a disposable bbq, drank some beer, enjoyed good company, got in trouble with a hobo who told us we where scaring off his birds and breathed in the fresh (or not so fresh…) air of Amsterdam.

The next day was spent in a whirl wind tour of Amsterdam’s best including Anne Frank’s house (though only from the outside as the line was three blocks long!), marvelling at old architecture, looking at street performers, looking at old churches, a fun paddle boat experience on the canals, checking out the notorious ‘red light district’ which includes the girls in the windows and ‘special café’s’ (don’t worry we only looked…honest!), and Van Goh’s gallery (though that too had a long line and who we were with didn’t want to go in so sadly only looked at the building… another time maybe?). We headed home that afternoon, and with traffic jams the whole way it took double the time we took getting there… argh! We had a little nap and then headed out to a ‘beach’ party which had bad beer but good company and we enjoyed hanging out with the crazy Dutch boys in a party much like we have back at home, I say only boys as the girls where all too scared to speak English!

The next day was quiet due to our host being extremely hung over and the weather being wet so we spent the day organising our further travel plans and biking around the local countryside… very pretty. Though we did notice an odd spectacle of the Dutch and their love of miniature animals as decoration outside their houses… Every house seemed to have at least 3-6 miniature horses, miniature goats, expensive (and miniature) ducks, and little fish ponds filled with little gold fish? We asked our friends why this was but no one could explain ha!

Sunday was spent touring the far (or not so far) south as our Dutch friends wanted to prove to us that they actually did have hills! We climbed the largest hill all of 300meters and at the top were able to stand on Dutch, German and Belgium soil all at the same time which made us laugh as the Dutch had to share their tallest hill with two other countries! Next we headed to the American grave yard for the Second World War and were amazed at the pure size of it! Each grave had its own marble grave stone; Jewish graves had the Star of David and all others a cross. There were walls of marble with all the names of the missing, a wall that showed where American troops fought and the story along with it. Along with this was a memorial church and a visitors building which contained stories of men who had died to save others and received the US Medal of Honor. One story explained that a man had seen two grenades land in a building that his platoon was occupying, with no time to throw them away he jumped on these two grenades covering them with his own body to save all the other men! The grave yard was very elaborate and moving for everyone.
We moved on from there to check out a quaint little town with an old castle and loads of mines under the hills. We headed home after a lovely trip and just chilled out that night.

Monday was spent visiting local farms. All the local farmers hearing Andy was from a farm in NZ wanted to show him their farms! And at night we went fishing for Carp, and even with the flashest fishing gear including a gadget to tell you when a fish was nibling the line, bait that smelt like strawberry, sling shot to shoot in fish attracting pellets, hundreds of different fly’s, a mat for the fish to sit on so it wont get hurt and very expensive line and rods with a holder we were once again unsuccessful!

London

2009-07-23T01:47:00.000-07:00

'Millennium Bridge'

Big Ben

Marching Band at Buckingham Palace

Changing of the guards

The testicle march!?!

Cute Cupcake Kiosk

The tower Bridge

Buckingham PalaceThe military museum with London eye in the background

I (Sharon) arrived in London Wednesday lunch time following another 8 hour bus trip and a very early start, yay for cheap travel! I was picked up by Luke and had my first experience on the London underground, very hot and muggy down there! He took me back to his and his wife Sarah’s apartment where Andrew and I were to stay for a few nights. For the rest of the day I read my book, drank tea and watched all the dodgy people coming and going from a pawn shop across the road… very interesting and can absorb hours of ones time. I will explain their apartment’s neighbourhood as a cultural experience where someone who is white sticks out like a sore thumb. The area has police cars that zoom past every 20mins or so with sirens that keep you awake until late at night. They have a local market a few doors down run everyday with yelling store owners, large throngs of people, rotten meat and vegetable smells, stray dogs and all. Andrew says that at times it smells a lot like Africa here! But all in all a very fun place to hang around and experience new things!
The following day I decided to brave the underground alone and headed for Oxford Circus the shopping area of town. The trip was good and I managed to find my way no problem though did have one incident where I learned that when a young Greek guy asks you for directions he is not actually lost he just wants your phone number, but that one was very easily diverted as I did not even have a phone, haha 1 Sharon, 0 Strange Greek guy! In the city I window shopped, people watched and walked around a huge local park and generally enjoyed a sunny day until it hit four and I finally experienced the ‘little New Zealand vs big London feeling’ and headed back to the safety of the flat, phew. That night I learned how to play Mexican train dominos and found that though it sounds geeky it’s actually fantastic and every one should play!!
The next day, actually early morning I, being a now very experienced underground traveller headed out to pick up Andrew from the bus station. I will admit I did get a little lost, but only when I started walking down London streets. To this day I am proud to say I have never been lost on any London public transport… mainly due to great hosts! We headed back to the apartment with a jet lagged Andrew in rush hour, fun, fun and had another quiet day.
Saturday started our three day walking tour of London, kindly explained by Luke. We hit all the tourist attractions with great vigour and had loads of fun in the city of London. We spent Saturday exploring the London wall, castle and bridge. We tasted many free food tasters at the Borough market and brought ourselves a yummy cheese cake treat. We looked at old pubs under the London bridge, gazed at the amazing works of art in the Tate modern art gallery, walked around the St Pauls cathedral and finished it off with a book market in Waterloo.
Sunday was spent marketing. We looked around Brick lane market, everything that is stolen in London during the week gets sold here, Spitalfields market, more upper class where up and coming designers sell their wares, and other random no named but very interesting markets. We ate some yummy Moroccan food (there was food from all over the world) and wished we were rich as there where so many great things to spend your money on. This was probably our most enjoyable day with loads of people and things to see and do. That night we went to Church with Sarah and Luke a lovely little church which we also very much enjoyed.
On our last day in London (Monday) we finished the last leg of our walking tour. We headed out to Buckingham Palace, saw the end of the changing of the guard (very proper and formal) and where lucky (or not so lucky as there were tonnes of people about) enough to see the royal marching band play. We walked through the royal park reaching Trafalgar square which was overrun by people and as we were soon to discover so was the whole of London! In the square we watched a man conducting some random people all playing their own tune on different instruments which was a part of some art month and then looked around the British art gallery. We also went to see the London eye, parliament buildings, the big Ben and Westminster Chapel. The rest of the day was spent looking at buskers and random stalls.
London in a nut shell was a great city to explore with different sights, smells and experiences around every corner. We enjoyed our hosts Sarah and Luke and our only complaint would be that we wished the police would turn off their sirens earlier so we could sleep!

Sharons trip to Cornwall

2009-07-20T03:12:00.000-07:00

Rachel, Beth and Sharon going out dancing in Cornwall

So as Andrew flew off into another country I headed down the south of England to a little town called Falmouth in the province of Cornwall. It took me a whole 8 hours and 4 different busses to get all the way there with most of the way being too foggy to see anything! I was however lucky enough to find friendly old ladies on two of the four busses who took me under their wing and made sure that I was fed thinking I was a 'poor starving and lonely girl, travelling all alone'... Great for me!
Cornwall turned out to be in a world of its own, which by the way is not an insult as they like to think of themselves as a separate identity. This includes having their own flag and particular way of speaking among other things. I was lucky enough to be housed by three fantastic Girls (none of which originated in Cornwall) and was shown the true Cornish experience. I was taken to the beach a few times, was cold but pretty. While at the beach I experienced a Cornish Ice Cream. Firstly I must explain to you that Cornish people love ‘clotted cream’ this cream is best described as the consistency of mayonnaise and a stronger ‘fatty’ taste then other creams. Now picture a nice vanilla Ice Cream, good yes? Now cover the Ice Cream in clotted cream as you would chocolate dip but much thinker. As you munch your way through the fat sticks to the top of your mouth and as you cannot eat it fast it then drips all down your clothes. All the while Cornish people look on and laugh. Ice Cream anyone? I was also able to eat a Cornish pasty (said in an English accent otherwise no one understands exactly what you are after) which is like a pie but using only one piece of pastry rather then two. Traditionally this dish was used for the miners and had half sweet and half meat so it was a whole meal in one, though now they separate the two thank goodness! This was a much more pleasant experience as was Cream tea. Cream tea is another Cornish tradition which consists of tea, scone, jam and of coarse clotted cream! I was a little worried but found that the scone’s dryness actually worked well with this cream, a very nice surprise. I was also warned that you must put cream on the scone first and then the jam prior to doing so. Doing it the other way apparently offends the Cornish people as their rivalry neighbours do it the opposite way…ooooo.
I also had some fun ‘none traditional’ Cornish times including Dancing the night away, helping out at a local school, seeing a Castle (this was traditional I guess), shopping, visiting friends, playing games, going to church, having a bbq, all done with wonderful hosts so all in all a great Cornwall experience!

How do you spell Canada?...

2009-07-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

Leaving Sharon behind in England Philip and I flew to Halifax in Canada for a week for brother James' wedding. We broke out of the low cloud above Halifax and as far as the eye could see it was trees and lakes and more trees.

This white tail had twin fawns and made short work of James' germinating sweet corn. James and Robin just out of a small town called Antigonish about 2 1/2 hour drive north west of Halifax. They have a small 12acre block mostly of scrubby elders and a few maple and conifer trees and a wee 2 bedroom house.

Wood peckers

James and Robbins house.

A good kiwi bbq... ...we dont think the rocks will explode....
After the wedding a few people were coming back to the house for dinner and a party. Dad and i constructed this bbq from rocks pulled up from around the house and in the stream. It ended up pouring with rain so the bbq wasnt used till the following day, but it was a dam fine bbq.
The very happy couple.
The wedding was at 4pm on saturday the 4th of July at the local Presbytarian church. About 50 people attended and it was in James' words "a perfect day". The sevice was great and the church lovely.
We found this little guy on a walk to th etop of their property and beyond he had behavioral problems and bit James a few times, lucky he wasn't poisonous but he sure did stink!
Mahone Bay with its three churches side by side. Dad and i passed through this town on our way to our fishing charter out of Lunenburg with Bill Flowers, a very comical guy. The fishing trip was great and we caught a few cod and mackeral. The cod put up little fight and were full of worms so not altogether satisying to catch. I did at one stage get 1 cod and two mackeral on the same line but the mackeral were too small to put up much of a fight.

I saw quite a few bald eagles, this photo doesnt show it but they are a huge bird with a "body length of 70–102 centimeters, and a wingspan of 180–234 centimeters" (Wikipedia, 2009). They were really neat to see soaring around.

I spent my last day in Halifax and checked out a museum and had a locally guided tour of the supermarket... my highlight by far... hahaha. Well it was interesting, Kate Broadbent a great family friend was my guide and we checked how dificult it was to avoid high-fructose corn syrup. The museum was about Pier 21, a Pier where 1 million migrants arrived in Canada from 1930 to 1970, it was well laid out and really interesting, i would recomend if you are ever in Halifax. Halifax was also the place that the survivors of the Titanic disaster came back to, and it also had huge explosion in 1917 from the collision of two ships one loaded with amunition.
The following is from Wikipedia.
At 9:04:35 AM, the cargo of Mont-Blanc exploded with more force than any man-made explosion before it, equivalent to roughly 3 kilotons of TNT. (Compare to atomic bomb Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima, which had an estimated power of 15 kilotons TNT equivalent.).^[8] The ship was instantly destroyed in the giant fireball that rose over 1.9 kilometres (1.2 mi) into the air, forming a large mushroom cloud. Shards of hot metal rained down across Halifax and Dartmouth. The force of the blast triggered a tsunami, which rose up as high as 18 metres (60 ft) above the harbour's high-water mark on the Halifax side. It destroyed an area of about 350 acres and killed roughly 2000 people.

well i found it intersting anyway.

Oh and you spell Canada: c A n A d A

The beginners guide to shearing in England and Wales……

2009-06-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

A happy shearer.......A happy wool roller :-)...

The leader sheep looking over the flock... a pivotal roll.Just a wee one...

A two lane road... yeah right!!!

1. Tell all the locals that you are from New Zealand and they will give you shearing work assuming that all New Zealander's know how to work in the shearing shed whether this be the case or not (not in my case).
2. Tell all the locals that you are related to the ‘old kiwi guy and his daughter’ (Phillip and Emily) and they will be impressed (locals have a long memory).
Note: Telling even one local something means that it will spread through England like wild fire so be wary of what you tell them!
3. The night before the shearing job you will get a call from a mystery person at the other end of the phone telling you a specific time that they will come around to pick you up in the morning.
Note: If someone informs you of the farm that you will be shearing on please don’t take this as fact… by the next morning the job will have changed about three times…its an intricate and mysterious set up for arranging work.
4. Wake up the next morning and get ready for the prior arranged pick up time…wait…wait…wait and between half an hour and 4 hours later that someone will arrive.
5. Now you must drive up, down, through, across, over, under and along hundreds of country lanes with no sign posting and little to no view of where you are due to the tall thick hedging (called hedge rows) one either side of all lanes…. And finally (somehow) arrive at the farm where you are supposed to be.
Note: These lanes are very deceiving to the eye. What a regular kiwi would consider to be a one lane driveway is actually a two way road! When a car comes from the other direction both party’s simply drive into the thick hedges on either side of the lane… all very simple really!
Note No2: The drivers, knowing you are kiwis are very willing to point out local attractions by simply stating “back there was a castle, but you can’t see it because of that hedge.”
6. When you arrive at the farm the farmers will come up to you and introduce themselves and then state that “I guess I had better get in my sheep then.”
Note: Sheep are NEVER to be rounded up before the shearing gang arrives (God only knows why).
7. Farmers then proceed to try to convince their (lazy and useless) farm dogs (who don’t know a sheep from a lump of coal) to round up the sheep (and lambs and what ever else happens to be in the paddock) into to an orderly cue for them to be brought into the make shift pens. Eventually the farmer must give up on the dog and try to round them in himself, also with little success and so the shearing gang, farmer’s wife, child, cat, rat, and every other able (and not able) body alike must join in the chase. Finlay after a few hairy moments (when one or two of the sheep break rank and someone must spear tackle them into order) the sheep are contained!!!
8. Now is the time for everyone to set up. The shearers dump their shearing trailer down while the farmer uses old fences, plastic, tractors, children, and anything else that they see fit to create a race for the sheep to get from the pen into the shearing trailer.
Note: Do not at any stage suggest or even think of suggesting a ‘new and improved’ way of doing this. This technique has been perfected for over 100 years and is not about to be changed any time soon, just like the trailer tyres (on the trailer used at Dunkirk) that have not had new air in them since the early 1950’s.
9. The shearing is now ready to happen and so after all that strenuous work everyone sits down for a well deserved cup of tea.
Note: NEVER get between a shearer and tea, this would result in some pretty dire consequences for both parties involved.
10a. The shearers begin their work with wool flying, machines rattling, sheep baaing, dogs barking, farmers yelling... ahhh the serenity.
10b. At the same time the wool rollers consisting of either old men or farmers wives (and Sharon) start the most thrilling job in all the world. I would recommend anyone leave their own well paid job just to do because of the sheer joy one gets from a hard days work and little pay… Ok so I don’t really enjoy this job so much. However it is made bearable by the fact that the other workers are usually very good to chat to, even if coming from NZ one finds it very hard to understand what exactly they are telling you due to a rather thick accent. But if you nod and smile (especially if you are a young girl and they are old men) and feign understanding they may slip you 20quid for the pleasure of your company ;).
11. Stop for a cup of tea.
Note: Shearers never just have one cup, only allowing one cup would be an insult.
12. Shearing and wool rolling.
13. Stop for a cup of tea and lunch.
14. Shearing and wool rolling.
15. Stop for a cup of tea.
16. Last session of searing and wool rolling.
Note: If shearers hit the 99 sheep mark at the end of shearing they must be the one to buy drinks at the pub afterwards. So the cunning old hands keep an eye out and try to play the whole last session so some poor shearer must spend all his hard earned cash on the others!
17. End of shearing and the farmer brings out beers and local cider, both of which are consumed whilst talking about all and nothing for a long period of time.
18. The whole set up must now be packed down, but can be done whilst polishing off another beer.
19. The farmer pays the troop, if you have a good farmer, if not then the next few months the main shearer must try to almost trick he farmer into paying.
Note: In this part of the world they say that the second type of farmer is typical of a Scotsman (I will leave you to be the judge as I have never worked for a Scotsman).
20. This could go one of two ways the first being the main shearer decides to head on to shear another farm.
Note: When considering this they don’t seem to account for time (one night we started shearing a second lot at 7pm!).
The second being that the shearers decide to head home and ‘accidentally’ pull into a pub on the way home deciding to forget the fact they have a wife and children at home. A few beers and a lot of chatting later one finally heads home.
21. Eat the dinner left in the oven (if your lucky) as by now it is around 10pm.
22. Have a shower.
23. Fall to sleep watching sport (or some other ‘manly’ thing) on the television.
24. Last cup of tea for the day.
25. Head to bed.
26. Begin the process all over again.

Last days in Denmark - sorry its late, have been working arses off in UK.

2009-06-13T02:02:00.000-07:00

The wee bathroom in Heidi's apartment (Sharon for scale) :-) cosy

We are currently sitting on a bus travelling through the English country side to our next destination, Ross-on-Wye. We enjoyed Denmark and are a bit sad to leave but feel ready for our next adventure.

We have been a bit slack with our blogging but have been busy since our last. We forked out some money and went on a canal tour, which is good for the fact that you know what they are telling you is true… Our dear friend and guide Heidi at times proved to change Denmark’s history but we forgave her for that as she truly believed the stories herself!
We visited the National museum and walked through Danish history from the Stone Age through to the year 2000. It was amazing to see how many relics the Danish have especially form the Viking times…all thanks to sacrifices to their God in bogs around Denmark! We also visited their art museum which took us two days to navigate as it was so huge and we both found very enjoyable.
The sight’s that Andy and I both enjoyed the most were to be found down the main street of the town on the weekend. This street is huge and only for pedestrians and so buskers with all types of talents gather to entertain shoppers. Buskers included Indian music, bag pipes, boy’s playing bottles, soccer skills, portrait sketches, singers, dancers, spray painters and many others in between. One of our favourite things we stumbled across was a ‘sign spotters’ display which consisted of funny signs from all around the world. That street could entertain one for hours.

On the Saturday night we decided to ‘hit the town’ and were lucky enough to find some friendly Nepalese people at the local bus stop who invited us to join them in going to the pub they frequent due to the great live music and for the one who decides a pretty singer he quite fancies. They proceeded to dance with great vigour stating that ‘western’ dancing was too boring and slow… so we joined in, fun, fun  True to the Nepalese tradition of dancing, friends and food, they brought with them large amounts of Asian food in boxes and where not at all perturbed by the fact they had forgotten forks… It was the first time we had really felt ‘at home’ in Denmark and would now love to visit Nepal!

The next day we rested as we did not manage to get home until the wee hours and then headed to an English speaking church situated in ‘the hood’ and enjoyed that very much. While we were at church the weather packed it in much to our disappointment as we had planned a bbq at the beach with the two girls we were staying with and their friends. Luckily we made good of a bad thing and still went along with the bbq even though most Danes piked out… to be honest some of them need a bit of toughening up! So we sat out in the rain and cooked the bbq (which took awhile as they seem to all only have tiny coal grills) and when it was done we ate the (coal flavoured) food on the floor of the apartment on rugs and chatted until quite late once again, very hugilite (translation: atmospherically pleasant, cosy and homely)!
Our last day in Copenhagen consisted of a trip into the greater Copenhagen area where we had been invited to visit a homeless shelter that Heidi had worked in four years ago. The staff were wonderful and we learned about their services and ate lunch with the homeless people, some of them being quite characters and at one point one of them rushing in to be looked after with blood pouring out of his hand… they say no day is ever the same in that place!

We then headed off to visit the castle on which Shakespeare based his play Hamlet… oooo… This was the first time we had been prepared to fork out some money to see the inside of a ‘real’ Danish castle however were unfortunately stopped due to the ‘privilege’ of having the Queen visit the castle. So instead of seeing the castle we got to see the Queen for a few precious seconds… wow… Luckily the old case mates below the castle and the chapel where still able to be looked at as the Queen was not going to grace those areas with her presence! We blindly (due to the fact we had no torch and did not want to buy one) searched around the dark, cold, and damp maze below the castle, looked around the chapel and then headed back to town for an ice cream and dinner thanks to Heidi’s lovely mother who sadly we were unable to meet.
And now here you find me…in England travelling on the bus with Andrew asleep beside me… here we go again.

The old streets in Elsinor, the oldest building we saw was built in 1592
Hamlets Castle
The Queen who turned up late and stopped us seeing most of the castle... bless the royals.
The Case mate, dungeon/cellar/cold damp place
The guns pointing to Sweden just a few miles across the water

Fun in the sun!!!

2009-06-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Denmark on Thursday morning and since then we have walked, walked and walked some more. This seems to be our common theme, mainly due to the fact walking and looking is free (well mostly anyway)!

The Marble Church started 1750 finished 1894

Bottle buskers, these guys were amazing! (were playing little mermaid when we arrived though)

Copenhagen is a beautiful city (though a little flat) there are lots of really old buildings statues and castles everywhere. Because it is so flat and public transport stupidly expensive everyone has a bike and no one wears helmets. The girls are well dressed and most riding in heels (very interesting to watch). Our host Heidi who stayed with Sharon in Auckland met us off the ferry and cooked us the biggest healthiest brunch ever, mmm it was soo good.
We spent the first 3 days walking around Copenhagen (Kobenhavn). We played street ball (a game like basketball but played on only half a court with 3 players on each team and as far as we could tell little to no rules) with some 'marginalised kids' that Heidi works with and got well and truly walloped, sorry New Zealand we let you down big time! However we do have the excuse that we hadn’t played this game before and I (Andy) was in bare feet on concrete (ouch!!). We walked along canals, around the palace and into the Marble church which was beautiful, down bustling street of shops and buskers and checked out a Brazilian festival which didn’t seem all that Brazilian, just a whole heap of people (including us) enjoying the sun mmmm. We also had a quick glimpse of Christiania which is an old area of Copenhagen that is run by hippy’s left over from the 60s, unfortunately no photos allowed (due to some questionable practices) but very interesting to see as it is just like being transported back in time to that era including barrels of fire to warm yourself and freedom of expression, expressed in all sorts of crazy art forms, music, housing and theatre.Frederiksborg Castle

Saturday evening we hopped on a train heading to north Zealand to someone’s bbq, we arrived really late but had a lot of fun! There were jut a few people there but they were really into singstar which made for quite a few laughs. At one point in the night all the Danish people decided the two Kiwis should sing a Danish song… They found this hilarious and we were to find out later that this song was all about a man who wanted to sleep with lots of different things (a warning to other don’t trust the Danish ha!)
Sunday morning we wandered around a Frederiksborg castle with a huge Baroque style garden.

The Chaple.
A small part of the Baroque stlye garden (Les they may have positions vacant...)

The Danish love building with wonky wood this is farm house from 1700The best tree ever!!!

Daisy girl.

It was Sunday morning and the day of Pentecost so they had a special service in the chapel, the only original part of the castle built in 1560 that survived a fire. The Chapel was stunning and gave a glimpse of what the whole castle would have looked like. The service had a choir and a conductor and the singing was amazing, it was a Lutheran service so very conservative but it was amazing to sit there and listen and gaze, the only thing we could do as we where unable to understand what was going on. After the service I got a few photos before being told off and ushered to the back of the church (darn tourists). We then wandered around the big park around the castle and its amazing gardens that are meticulously cared for. The weather was amazing we are finally getting our European tan on.
That evening we went to stay with Heidi’s grandmother who is the sweetest most generous grandmother ever and who loved having new people to talk to. She fed us up and set us off in the morning on another big walk around the lakes and parks of the area. We visited a Danish graveyard which was done in a different but really beautiful way and we ended up at a museum of historic buildings recovered from different ages around Denmark, you can see in the photos that there was rarely a straight piece of timber used, I think they found it easier to shape the rocks and bricks around the timber, go figure!?!
Heidi’s grandma gave us a bike to use around town and another bed to sleep on in Heidi’s small apartment, she drove us back to Copenhagen giving us a history tour at the same time which at the age of 84 in a manual with no power steering was a nerve racking experience, but we made it back safe none-the-less.
So here you find us on Tuesday having a relaxing day, very tired but full of good experiences!!!

Norway to Denmark

2009-06-02T05:19:00.000-07:00

Norway in a nutshell
Musk Ox behind glass

We woke up at 5:30am (not a pleasant hour I might add - Sharon) to catch the bus from Kristiansund to Oppdal from where we would catch the train to Oslo. It was a cold rainy morning and the bus swayed like a boat as it navigated the winding road around a few of Norway’s many fiords making me feel rather queasy. It was a beautiful drive though with steep mountains and cascading waterfalls the whole way. We where most surprised to see that people actually lived in the mountains on the edge of massive cliffs in the freezing cold and where most of the year they only have dark. Beautiful to pass through, yes, good to live in hmmm very questionable?
We arrived in Oppdal where I was more than happy to get off the bus. Waiting at the train station we saw the only musk ox we would see and found a stunning postcard which pretty much summed up Norway in a nut shell, all business in the front and party in the back :-p. One of you lucky readers will be receiving it in the post. The Train took us high into the mountains where there was still a lot of snow. It was a really scenic trip and well recommended. Though if one wants to buy a simple cup of tea you may get abused for being foreign and being hard to please (apparently even though they did have tea one should only buy black coffee)!
With only an hour in Oslo we didn’t have time to look around but it looked like a nice city scattered around the hills. We did have our fist experience of seeing junkies taking hits in the open park though… very odd!
Our ferry sailed overnight to Denmark and as everything was rather pricey so we brought what we like to call a ‘bucket of fun’ (a massive tub of candy) for Heidi, some of which was eaten (for her own good of course) before it got to Denmark. We sailed into a stiff wind (apparently this is uncommon, lucky us!) and soon the boat was creaking, groaning and swaying as it ploughed through the swells, this made sleeping a challenge. But it was nice to wake up in a new country and a fun experience all the same.

A Cabin in Silset

2009-05-26T01:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend we spent up in the mountains at Frodes mothers cabin. It is an amazingly beautiful and peacefull spot, and our favourite of Norway. We drove up friday afternoon and relaxed for the afternoon taking in the scenery while drinking cups of tea and continued to do so for the rest of the weekend. In between our gazing and drinking we went for walks.

This time I did not brave the mountian and left the boys to that task, both of which enjoyed it and judging by the sore muscles the next day I may not have! Cathrine, Mattis and I walked (well the baby was carried) some of the way up the path with the boys, and turned back when we felt ready for another cup of tea. We ended up walking to where the summer houses where located. These houses are built in the old days to have animals live below them and girls from the ages of 16-20 live above them. These girls where brought up to live in the mountains in the summer to milk the cattle and goats to make cheeses and milk. I would say the men who owned the cattle would not have had any trouble getting thier sons to help with the cattle hearding!

That night the boys went fishing they fished for hours and hours to little avail but did manage to build a fire to roast marshmellows . Us girls stayed home to "look after the baby" which included the very hard task of eating chocolate and once again drinking tea!

The neaxt day was.... My BIRTHDAY! I enjoyed spending the day eating good food going for a walk and heading home after a lovely weekend to eat pizza and cake with a glass or two of red wine mmmm

This sunset lasted for close to two hours, the sun finaly dropped behind the mountain at around 10:30pm. It didnt matter we werent catching anything

Andy fishing... Cathrine and Frode saw a fox swimming across the lake but when it saw Andy turned back. Mmmm. Rainbow trout from a clean mountain lake tastes so sweet.

One of the many walks

This is the cabin.

Frode Tafto, the man of the house and model for Swazi Norway Ltd.

Up the top of the mountain Nebba

Walking in Norway

2009-05-21T02:02:00.000-07:00

Coal Fish

Summit of Freikoll ('Frei' being name of island 'koll' meaning not hill, not mountain)

Grousse

Sweet Revenge!

So for the last three days we have been putting our poor little legs through the ringer by walking, walking and more walking....

Our first trip was to a 'good' fishing spot just out of town close to an old german fort, which at that stage we where not allowed to inspect as it was just the two boys and myself and Cathrine wanted to share that trip with us at a later date... Sooo the walk and location was very nice... as for the fishing I will just say the boys caught one fish each and will leave it to your imagination as to what size the fish were, all I will say is it was not worth carring them home! I did not fish so much but tried to hunt the fox's that live around those parts and try to steal fish sitting on the rocks... I had about as much success at that as the boys did fishing!

The next day Andy decided it would be a fun idea for us to climb a mountain. So we packed a picnic lunch and headed out into the unknown of Norway. Our instructions as to where exactly the path was were quite outdated and so we didnt quite find it. This excited Andy as he likes to 'forge his own path.' This may sound simple but let me tell you its not so much! First we had to walk through a tick infested swamp land at the bottom of the mountain with moss that sunk every step you took making hard progress. We finally found a resonable location (one that was not a sheer rock face) to start the climb, and climb we did. It was almost vertical, and you hand to use all four limbs at all times to scramble up the mountain. This was hard work but turned out to be lots of fun, however a word of warning when Andy tells you that "it's not too much further", well IT IS! We stopped somewhere up the mountain to have a nice lunch of risotto (which by the way we forgot forks for) and sweet melon to a beautiful view. We headed off again and came across more rock face. This time we were too far up and decided to navigate the rocks! Andy tells me that he now has a new way of thinking, he does not think of the way he would go but of the way Sharon would like to go... Im a bit stubborn when it comes to scary rock face climbing..which is quite resonable (I think) considering the high risk of death and/or disfigurement! So we managed to ascend this part without incident thinking that the top was near but mountains when climbing them seem to just get higher and higher argh... We did however get to see a cute bird and found snow where I was finally able to get my revenge (see the pictures attached)! Up and Up and Up and Up and then finally when my legs where going to dropp off we where at the top to find an awesome view yay!!! It was great up there and I could sit down too ahhhh.

But as I was soon to find out, there is no rest for the wicked or those with the wicked (Andy being my wicked) and when up a mountain one must also climb down. Which by the way is in itself was another huge event! We decided to walk along the 'small' ridge, (which is me being sarcastic as that ridge was huge) and climb down the other side. All I can say is by the end I found it hard to stop myself from falling over as my legs had turned to jelly and by that stage I had lost all care for by wellbeing!! Sooo you would think that was the end right, well wrong! We got on the bus to get home and the stupid button for stopping did not work so we ended up miles from home and had to walk (again) all the way back... lets just say I was not a happy tramper at that stage!

As for the next day we went fishing again, which turned out to be more successful then the other time but still the fish where not worth the carrying, so happily returned to the sea to be caught by another annoyed fisherman. The walk was nice (even though I was tired) as nothing could be as bad as the day before!

Oh yes and that night we got to eat whale meat, mmmmm yummy!

Now after reading this I suggest you all go and experience the fun of 'forging your own path' up a mountain... oh go on just do it!

Sharon

17 Mai - National Day... a big thing!!!

2009-05-17T05:15:00.000-07:00

So today is national day. No one celebrates this day like Norwegians, it is a big thing. The day starts at 7am with a cannon blast and everyone puts up their flags, this is about 95% of the houses.

At 9am we left for town dressed in our best, which for us wasnt much. Every county in Norway has a special dress, its kinda like the scottish and tartans. These outfits cost about 20,000 kroner (over 5ooo NZD) for the women and more for the men. Most of the women wear them but only a few of the men. The kids have them also but theirs are a bit different, more of a standard thing called a party dress this is as they are cheaper and kids grow fast.

You walk around and to any one you know you say "congratulations for the day" but in norwegian of course. The main features of the day are three parades. the first is for all the schools of the town starting with the kindergardens, which there are a suprisingly large amount of... there must be something in the water here. This parade is huge and must be kilometers long. This is followed by the "Russ" these are students who are finishing school, a long tradition where they wear funky pants and get up to mischief around town for a month ending today with them all well and truly hungover! The last is a parade for every club and organisation in town... and so most of the town ends up in at least one parade and so not too many people actually watching them parade! It is a very loud event where people call out slogans, blow whistles and wave more flags then we have ever seen in our lives! Next you all eat ice cream and spring rolls.

After all the excitement we went home for a nice nap (yay for sweet holiday naps) to prepair ourselves for the second part of the day which involves (as far as we can gather) large amounts of food and family.

So to all of you GRATULERE MED DAGEN!

Catherine and Mattias

Atlantic Rd

2009-05-17T04:49:00.001-07:00

The best bridge

The fort and a monument.

A sod roof

Frode took us on a drive down the Atlantic Rd which goes south from Kristiansund to Molde. We left at 10am to catch a car ferry which took us across to another Island, about a 10min trip. The back of the boat opens up, you drive on, then the front opens up like a jaw and you drive off. we were treated to cold pancakes made with horn salt, aparently the process stinks but once the pancakes are cool they are fluffy and sweet and taste dam good!

It was a stunning day with barley a cloud in sight and calm clear water... i took my togs. Most of the roads in Norway are too narrow for a center line... i dont know why, there is plenty of space. The Atlantic Rd takes you right out by the ocean and over these amazing bridges that hop from island to island. After the islands we check out an old German fort with a great outlook over the ocean.

Swinging in land we went into the mountains, past lots of buildings with sod roofs up to a pass with a cafe where we stoped for tea. Sharon and i didnt realse that this stop was the lunch stop and since the guide (Frode) didnt eat anything we thought that we must be stopping somewhere else... this proved fatal after leaving at 10am we didnt get to eat till 4pm... did i mention HANGRY!!! we werent too badbut it did get a little quiet towards the end. Moral of the story, dont make asssumptions. But we all knew that didnt we.

The drive was a great one and the scenery amazing, but there was a crisp breeze so i opted out for the swim maybe next time... must be getting soft?

Thanks Frode we wont hold a grudge.

relaxing in Norway

2009-05-15T23:59:00.001-07:00

This is a floating oil rig that floated past the window, it has come in for repairs.

There are lots of old wooden boats in the harbour.

It has been really nice to just be able to relax and have a bit of a holiday. Our days ar dominated by sleeping in and mild walks around town. Sharon is sarting to get better now after being knocked around by a particularly nast dose of the flu.

The weather has vastly improved and now feels like we have come to a summer. We went for a walk up a hill in town and both got burned to a crisp... nice. The northern hemisphere sun is far more forgiving than the southern one. We got ourselves a treat the other day, a bag of lollies and a bar of chocolate, this cost a mere 70 kroner, about $18 kiwi dollars! flip!!!

A crisp morning walk

2009-05-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

These are some photos from my wanders around Kristiansund. The deer are roe deer and were in the neighbors garden.
Kristiansund is a town of 26,000 it is made up of islands connected by tunnels and cool bridges.
This time of year there are vibrant tulips everywhere.

Andy.

Long haul flights BITE!!!!

2009-05-08T00:57:00.000-07:00

Andrew and Sharon going for a walk in Norway:

Well we are finally here in Norway and in an 'OK' state of mind to actually write coherently... well of that you may be the judge! Norway is fantastic... long haul flights to get there however are NOT. Especially when one was not feeling the best to begin with! All I can say is it was an interesting experience coughing up a storm when the whole world is on high alert for the suspected 'swine flue'. Especially when arriving into Hong Kong airport to find that they where screening for temperatures... I was fortunate to scrape through but felt sorry for those who did not and where put into quarantine just for passing through a country!
We are just getting over our jet lag though in saying that my whole world still feels as though it is moving, as is this computer. But are now able to go for a few walks through Kristiansund (the town we are staying in) and I have to say I would describe pretty much the whole of Norway as 'cute'... I mean they still have houses with grass growing on their roofs, and I people have been known to trim them by putting goats up onto the roof... as I say 'cute'! It is great being able to stay with Andrew’s family and meeting their wee baby and we are excited to spend more time with them doing new and exciting things! That is all I have to say and will let you know more about Norway when we are feeling more up to being adventurous.

By the way there are no photos of us whilst travelling... that would have been bad!