Travel

Asia Photos

We know it’s been 6 months!! But we’ve finally uploaded our Asia Photos.

Beijing to Bangkok was a 21 day GAP tour called “Asia Backroads – Beijing to Bangkok“.

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Updated Europe photos

Hi Everyone

We have been quite slack updating the blog (not that anyone probably reads it) BUT we have updated the rest of our Europe Photos.

We will try to upload Asia photos soon (and the blog…..)

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New Photos – Berlin & Poland

Hi All

We just added some photos of Berlin and Poland.

Hopefully we will update the blog soon.

Take care

Hamish

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Added Video & Photos

Hellooooooooooo

We’ve added some video‘s onto the blog, just navigate via the menu on the left.

We have also updated our photos.

Enjoy… and don’t forget to leave us a comment or even better donate some money to our travel fund! :p

Take Care

Hamish & Violeta

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Bremen – Germany (3-6 September 2009)

We arrived in Bremen (northern Germany) around 5pm on Thursday and found Reinhard’s house (a family friend).

After a catch up over a few beers we headed down to the “local” for dinner and more beer. Gotta love Bremen, land of Beck’s beer!!

Reinhard had organized an itinerary for the next few days and personally showed us around Bremen.

A visit to Bremen isn’t complete without:

A tour of the Beck’s Brewery!! The tour lasted 2 hours, well the tour lasted 1 hour and the drinking (I mean tasting) lasted 1 hour!!

Seeing/Hearing the Glockenspiel: A set of thirty Meissen porcelain bells that play a tune while painted wooden panels of well-known conquerors of the ocean rotate on the centre tower.

Visiting the centre of Bremen where the old Church and town hall stand.

Dropping a coin into the Bremer Loch and listening to the animal noises (check out the photo’s and video).

A visit to Bremen’s old City: narrow streets with lots of tourist shop fronts.

A visit to Burgerpark: The largest park in Bremen which includes a lake where Reinhard windsurfs.

Visiting “Waterfront”, Bremen’s newest largest shopping attraction.

A visit to the local market’s both produce and flee markets.

Visiting the Science Express Expedition (a 300m train travelling city to city showcasing “How will we live in 20 years”).

And finally…….. Drinking Beck’s in many of Bremen’s cheap eateries (authentic Pub meal, “authentic” kebab shop, Chinese Buffet).

Actually, finally…… buying Beck’s beer to take on the next part of the road trip!!

Tomorrow we head for Berlin. A big thank you to Reinhard for his hospitality and for being our tour guide.

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Paris – France (26 August – 2 September 2009)

We arrived in Paris at about 5pm and settled into our campground, definitely not as nice as Switzerland but very close to the centre of Paris, about 4.5km.

Day 1 (Thursday 27th August): We decided to walk into the centre, this took about 1hr and had some interesting scenery…. a lot of working girls in the parkland area about 1km from our campground. We walked to the Eiffel tower but decided not to climb it as it was a slightly overcast day, we decided to check out the bicycle hire we had seen on a pamphlet (close to the Eiffel tower). We ended up renting bicycles for the week.

Day 2 (Friday 28th August): The weather had cleared up today so we moseyed into Paris on our bikes and decided to climb the Eiffel Tower. There are 2 options to arrive at the 2nd level, 1: take the elevator or 2: walk the steps, we took the latter.

Once reaching the 2nd level you can walk all around the edge of the tower. From the 2nd level you have to take the elevator to the top. From the top was a spectacular view of Paris.

Day 3 (Saturday 29th August): Today we decided to visit the Louvre; this place is huge!! Knowing how big the Louvre is we headed straight for the Mona Lisa. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a close up view as they had a rope about 3m back to prevent everyone crowding the painting. We spent a few hours walking the hall of this enormous (ex) palace.

Next we were off to the see the Arc de Triomphe; we arrived just in time to see the “lighting” of the flame. Following this we climbed the steps to the top of the Arc with provided an amazing view of Paris and Eiffel Tower.

Day 4 (Sunday 30th August): Today we boarded the regional train (RER) with our bikes and headed to Versailles. Versailles is a royal chateau about 20km south west of Paris. Violeta was interested as Marie Antoinette use to live there. After spending hours walking around this huge chateau we rode our bikes to the enormous garden and had sat down for a picnic lunch. After lunch we headed to the 2nd estate where Marie Antoinette used to live.

Day 5 (Monday 31st August): Today we visited the Conciergerie, the former royal palace and prison. Hundreds of prisoners were held at the prison before being executed by the guillotine, most famously Queen Marie Antoinette. She spent her last 75 days in there and was constantly watched by guards.

Following the Conciergerie we visited Sainte-Chapelle Chapel, this was well worth the visit just to see the stained glass windows.
Next on our list was the Notre Dame; a quick look inside the church before jumping on the back of the queue to climb the steps of the church. After a 30min wait we were on our way to the top. Once reaching the top we were able to catch our breath and take in the spectacular view. Since there is only 1 set up steps to the top we had to wait 20min before we could venture down.

By the time we reached the bottom it was close to 5pm and Kevin and Sonia were waiting for us. Our Paris night bike ride was starting at 7pm so we headed to the nearby supermarket to buy some food for our picnic dinner. The only way we were going to get back to the Eiffel Tower (where the bike group meets) was to double on mine and Violeta’s bikes. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of this but I’m sure one will turn up somewhere on the web (we did have a lot of people staring!!). And also no photo of our dinner, we were all so hungry it was gone before the camera’s could come out.

The bike tour was for about 4 hours and included a scenic boat ride along the river.

Day 6 (Tuesday 1st September): Today the weather was upon us again, lightly raining. We headed into town early to visit the Marine Museum but for some unknown reason it was closed. We returned our rented bikes and jumped on a train for the Catacombs, where we were meeting Kevin and Sonia.

Luckily Kevin and Sonia arrived before us and were already queuing up. We jump in line with them and again waited.
The wait was definitely worth it, it’s hard to explain in words the feeling of walking around the catacombs. For those who don’t know, the catacombs are a famous underground ossuary (rooms/passageways of human bones).

Make sure you check out our photos and if you’re ever in Paris make sure you visit this place.
After the Catacombs we headed back to camp for a rest as we were meeting up with Kevin and Sonia for dinner followed by Moulin Rouge.
Dinner was at a small French restaurant near where Kevin and Sonia were staying. We all enjoyed our meal before heading off to see Moulin Rouge, unfortunately no photos where allowed, we even had our cameras taken from us before entering the venue. The show was good, helped along by the 2 bottles of French champagne. The in-between acts were amazing, the Guinness record holder for fastest juggler, a venquilitrist and a couple performing a rag doll dancing act.

Day 7 (Wednesday 2nd September): Today we packed up our van including the 2 bikes we just bought for 10 euro each from a neighbouring aussie camper (who was heading home) and headed for Bremen Germany.

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Beaune – France (Wednesday 26 August 2009)

We arrived in Beaune and drove through the town to find the winery (actually, wine tasting building) we parked closed by and decided to check out the local market. There were roast chickens and they smelt sooooooo good!! We decided that we should do the wine tasting before buying the chicken so we headed back to the building. The wine tasting was self paced without a guide, we got to try about 15 wines (3 white & 12 red). The wines varied from 1999 to 2008 and also in price from 15 euro to 50 euro. Overall it was quite a good tasting, only 10 euro! The cellar was beautiful, built under an old chapel 10 years go.

After the tasting we went back and the chicken stand was almost packed up, the guy allowed us to buy a roast chicken and even threw in some roast potatoes…yum!!

After a delicious lunch we decided there wasn’t much point in spending the night in Beaune and decided to head off to Paris.

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Switzerland… the most beautiful place so far!!

The drive to Switzerland took a lot longer than expected. We came to a standstill on the motorway; not knowing the reason, we sat, we waited, we moved a few metres, we sat, we waited. Anyway after at least an hour of this we finally reached the bottleneck, a set of traffic lights used to separate the 2 lanes of traffic for the 16km long tunnel ahead, that’s right a 16km tunnel!!! The tunnel “St. Gotthard Tunnel” is only 1 lane in each direction with a speed limit of 80km/hr (just googled it and it’s the 3^rd longest tunnel in the world at 16.4km)

In the back of our minds was “you wouldn’t want to break down in here” but neither of us said this out aloud, as we didn’t want to jinx it.

The rest of the drive was beautiful, winding roads through the mountains. At one point we were driving through the clouds!! The temperature had dropped to about 15 degrees, it was nice to feel cold.

We arrived at the campsite (about 2km from Interlaken) just after 8pm and were amazed at the cleanliness of the amenities, the best so far.

Day 1 (cloudy & raining), saw us take a leisurely stroll through Interlaken.

Day 2, a well deserved sleep in; more window shopping in Interlaken and to finish off the day; a 3 course meal: 1. Cheese fondue, 2. Meat fondue, 3. Chocolate fondue. The Chocolate fondue was by far the best!!

Day 3, the bad weather had cleared as expected so we took the opportunity to travel to the “Top of Europe”, Jungfraujoch (3454m) by train. The train(s) took about 2 hours and included a 7.3km long cog railway and gee it was worth it!!

We first checked out the Sphinx, a peck with an observation deck 108m above the train station. Next was the Ice Palace, this was cool (in both sense) and neither of us managed to slip on our butts. We then took a walk out onto the snow to check out the view from the top. We then headed back down to the base of the Jungfraujoch where again we walked out onto the snow. Violeta nearly killed herself on the toboggan/snow disc (check out the photos). Violeta had to make a snowman before leaving, it was enormous and named “Carlton”, after this we jumped on the last train at 5:50pm for the 2 hour ride back to Interlaken.

Today we head off to France again.

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Verona – Italy

Leaving Venice we headed for Bardolino on Lake Garda just west of Verona. Logan and Michelle recommended this place and even gave us directions for free parking (camping).

We arrived in the afternoon and found a carpark by the lake, the weather still being very hot we took a walk around. That evening we walked into the centre of town which was full of tourists and locals. Shops were open until 10:30pm and a live band was playing.

The next day we headed off early (with lack of sleep due to the how hot it was) to find the campsite in Verona. The little campsite was situated on the top of the hill next to the Castle. We couldn’t check in as it was only 9am so we parked on the street and slept 2 hours.

Woken by the unbearable heat we walked into Verona about 15min. We walked the streets visiting, The Arena, Juliet’s house, Romeo’s house and a few other attractions.

We headed back to the campsite for to relax and had another uncomfortable sleep due to the heat.

The next day we hit the road again for Interlaken, Switzerland, hoping that the Swiss Alps would bring some much needed cooler weather.

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Venice

We arrived in Venice on Friday 14 after some interesting GPS directions (We think our GPS may need to be updated with the latest maps!)

We met up with our Vantour friends Logan and Michelle near Bologna (about 2hrs south of Venice) and we arrived at our camp site, Fusina (on the mainland) around 1pm. We decided to take it easy and spent the rest of the day catching up on our travel stories.

We spent the next 3 days walking the streets of Venice and the island, Murano. We spent way too much time in jewelry shops and eating gelato. As for Venice itself; very touristy, very pricey, very hot (38), quite clean (contradictory to what we have heard).

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