Paris

Bonjour!

This will be a quick entry as I do not have much time left and typing is a pain cause all the keys are in different spots here. I am having a great time in Paris. I was a bit blah about it before but now I absolutely love it here. I have got a chance to see everything I missed previously, so I have just been up the Arc de Triomphe and spent sometime at the Musee d'Osay as well as going to Notre Dame, Latin Quarter, hanging out on the rue du Rivoli.

Tomorrow its off to Biarritz. I'm really not looking forward to hopping back on the metro here. Especially with my backpack as it's a total nightmare!!!

Au revoir, I think it's time I went to a cafe and did some people watching!

Yay, I am so technical. Here are more photos

It was actually sunny in Aberdeen - once and I have a photo to prove it!! hehe
Oban sunset
Me in Oban at the pier
Edinburgh Castle - NOTE, DO NOT PAY £13 TO GO INSIDE!
Me in London with the bridge that isn't London Bridge, the other one...

Bye London, Bonjour Paris (again)

Hi all

For some reason I can't upload my photos so fortunately/unfortunately you will not be graced with my forced photo smile until I come back. Then, I will be most happy to bore you with 500 000 photos of places I can't remember the names of!

Just letting you know my itinerary has slightly changed and I am heading off to Paris tomorrow for 3 days then it will go:

Biarritz (don't ask me why, I just liked the name)
San Sebastian
Cordoba
Seville
Granada
Madrid
Barcelona
Lyon
Lake Como (think George CLooneys real house in Oceans 12)
Rome and then onto Athens/Greek Islands as planned.

Next trip I am going to concentrate on Eastern Europe, although I really want to go to Morocco as well. So much to see, so little time. I know, poor me.

Yay, back to the Euro, the pounds are killing me. You do not want to know how much money I have been spending on the tube. Speaking of the tube I was sitting next to a guy who was wearing his business suit with vomit all down the leg and onto his shoes. It was 930pm on a Wednesday night. The Poms are sooooo classy.

Whoops, this was going to be a short one!

I am a bad Australian, or maybe just a typical one

It seems that it's only when you leave your country that you realise how little you actually know about it. When I was in Scotland I was asked a lot of questions about Australia. What's the population, what time does the post come, famous Australian fish, flora and fauna, average temperatures etc, all of which I really should know the answers to (= bad Australian). However, in the true Aussie way I gave all the answers a go, even if I was making them up (= typical Australian). So, Australia according to Vanessa has a population of 20 million (I think that's about right), the postie comes at 11, River Murray Cod is a famous Australian fish (hmm, don't know where I pulled that one from), wattle (couldn't think of anything else) and Adelaide has a average summer temperature of 27 and winter 15 (I think I should have been more generous with our summer average).

Hmm, so what else have I been doing? Well, after I ate my way through Oban (my cousin's grandparents stuffed us with cake, tea and then more tea!) my cousin and I headed back for Abers (as the locals call it) and then made our way to Edinburgh the next day. To my delight when collecting my bag from the bus, I realised that the toilet on the bus had indeed been dripping onto my (Kerry's) bag and my (Kerry's) bag was wet with urine. Charming. Then I had to hike around Edinburgh trying to find the hostel which no locals seemed to have heard of the suburb it was in. As a result I stank (note to Kerry, the bag has now been dysinfected - btw I know that's not a word but it works ok). Apart from initially smelling like a toilet, Edinburgh was fantastic. We went on a ghost tour which was cool, until they did the total unexpected and had someone run past a doorway wearing a cape.....ooooer.

Glasgow was next and was not one of my favourite places at all. It was kind of depressing. There were so many destitute looking people about and one day there was enough for me. Next was Manchester which I really really liked. It had a really cool vibe. There are so many shops and little cafes floating around the place, the only thing which sucked was my bus there was delayed on the highway for 2.5 hours in the heat (yes, it really was hot), so a journey that should have taken 4 hours took 6.5 hours and there was no toilet on board and I had no food or water.

You would think my bus adventures couldn't get any worse, but they did! I missed my bus from Manchester to London which was massively annoying but what was worse was getting on the next bus to London which was unairconditioned and got stuck in traffic again, so a 4 hour journey turned into 6.5 hours. Luckily I brought food and water, but didn't want to drink much because the toilet on the bus was set to spill over the edge with everyone's contributions as the flush didn't work. Arghh, no more buses!

This has been an mammouth update, hopefully it doesn't sound too whingy. Looking back it's funny, but at the time there were just too many wee related things in one week!!

Bye

So many cups of tea

I am currently finding my roots and am having a great time doing so despite it being freezing. I am drinking lots of cups of tea (when in Rome..) despite the fact that I don't really like the stuff. Honestly, the Scottish 'summer' is like an Adelaide winter. I have also run into a little problem. Because I carried too many socks around Europe I decided to cull the numbers of socks I was carrying around. BIG MISTAKE TO MAKE THIS DECISION BEFORE SCOTLAND. I now have run out of socks to wear and if I wash them they won't dry in time for me to wear them cause it's so cold. Anyway, enough about my sock dilemma.

I am in Oban at the moment which is in the west of Scotland. It is a nice little town on the sea - which makes it even colder!!! We are here for another day and then heading back to Aberdeen. It is nice to see where my mum grew up and I had a carvery lunch at Bucky's Farm which used to be the farm next door to mum's childhood home.

Gotta go, the Scottish charge an arm and a leg for internet!

Yes, I am going crazy with this extended use of internet time

Hey all

Just a quick note to let you know what I have been doing over the last couple of days.

Amsterdam was awesome. It was one of my favourite places I visited. It was just so chilled out and the people were really nice, the nicest in Europe I think. We went to a 'show' on our first night there, however I will not go into too many details as there are people over the age of 65 reading this blog. I will say it was quite entertaining as some of the people on my tour got pulled up on stage. If I had not been with people on the tour it would have just been seedy and a bit boring as there were no ping pong balls or anything of the like..heheh

I also went to Anne Franks house which was really interesting. Having read the book when I was 13 it was great to go and visit the house which put things into perspective even more.

On the way back from Amsterdam to London we stopped in Brugges in Belgium which was really pretty. I managed to eat large chips with mayonaise, tomato sauce and onions as well as a waffle with strawberry ice cream and chocolate sauce all in the space of 20 minutes as well as buying a block of chocolate which I thought was a good effort!!

Yesterday I had an awesome day at the Portabello Markets at Notting Hill (didn't see the door though..) and then went to see a NZ band called Fat Freddys Drop at Summerset House with some of the girls from the tour. It was one of the best concerts I have ever been to!!

In a couple of hours I am flying to Aberdeen to catch up with Rebecca which will be great, I am actually hoping it is going to be cold there as I bought way too many cold clothes over here so I want to be able to wear them!!

Ok, well I better go pack now as I need to leave for the airport soon...

Bye!

Part 432 of my photo upload

And finally we have:
Rooftop view of the Czech Republic
My BEST MEAL EVER in the Czech Republic - I konw I have already written about it but I wanted you all to see photographic evidence
Kate (my roomie for the trip) at the Berlin wall, well, what's left of it anyway
Me being really tricky with my camera at the Reichstag (by the way I know my photos look crap with the date on)

Yes, more photos

Now we have me from the Palace lookout in Nice
Me in Venice
Sunset from where we ate dinner at our hotel in Pag, Croatia - you can see how sucky my holiday is, can't you..

Duh, just worked out how to upload more than 1 image at a time

So we have...sorry, I can't remember what order I put them up so maybe just use your imagination..

Me eating my Sex and the City cupcake - sooooo good
My really dirty feet from walking around in Paris
Me in London at a palace I can't remember the name of at this present moment, oh, Kensington Palace I think it was..
Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland (one of me in the Trummelbach falls and one of just near where we were staying) - so, so, so beautiful

Times Square

Hawaii

How beautiful is Waikiki?

Whoops, I forgot Austria

Just realised last night that I forgot to update zou all on Austria. Guess what! I went canyoning and it was so much fun! It was a pretty crappy daz there so it was perfect for abseiling down waterfalls, sliding down waterfalls and jumping off waterfalls. Mum, I am telling you this now so you know that I came out of it in one piece!! hehe

After we finished going down the canyon I wanted to go again. Look out adventure sports, here I come! Although I will have to perfect my jumping technique as I totally bombed into the water from my ledge jump! Apparently I made the biggest splash out of everyone in the group!

Gotta go, time is running out!!

Berlin

Hi all

Finallz out of the Eastern European countries and have found it much much easier to find the internet. Sorrz for the mix in z and y thez are the wrong waz around and its too hard to correct each time I tzpe.

Since mz last update I have been to Slovenia and Czech Republic. Both countries were fantastic. I'm pretty sure I have mentioned this in other posts but no words or photos can describe what I have seen and every time I try it just seems so inadequate.

Czech Republic was reallz reallz cool. The view over the river was absolutely enchanting. The red rooftops mixed with church steeples was so beautiful.

Today we arrived in Berlin. From what I have seen it is a very very cool place. It has a really arty feel to it, verz much like Melbourne. I am looking forward to going on a 3rd Reich tour tomorrow morning follwed by a bit of exploring of the city.

As I keep on saying I am having the most amazing time over here. My trip so far has been everything I expected and then some. It's going way too quickly!!!

Ohh, just to get away from my touchy feely I love the world mode, I have been eating so well. I can't remember if I mentioned this in my Croatia post, but I ate roasted pig off the side of the road, followed by the best stew in Slovenia, follwed by the BEST MEAL EVER in Czech!!! I had chicken with peaches, cheese and roast potatoes as well as deep fried camembert. Plus I had beef goulash for lunch that day too. Zes, my pants are getting tighter. I can officially say I am eating my way through Europe.

Better go as I really need to go to bed. I haven't been eating till 1030 every night as I have no concept of time, nor do I need to which is great. In the czech republic we stazed in an old mental hospital (well that was the rumour anzway) which was 1. creepy and 2. noisy so the whole sleeping thing wasn't that great.

I probably wont post again until my tour is over which will be in a couple of days time. Last stop is Amsterdam which I am sure will be fun.

Hope you are all well and send me some news!!

Bye xx