hey! we are in marseille now, and spain is long gone.
on our last day in spain, we went to sagrada familia and went inside and it was marvellous! it is so tall and the tallest parts arent even finished yet. there is a museum about the construction underneath the church and its cool to see the 1/10 models of everything and follow the progress. again the towers were closed but thats not such a big deal. we attempted to go to the picasso museum but the lineup was way too long for the desire that we had to visit it so we left and instead went to the barcelona aquarium! their big thing is that they have 3 pretty big sharks floating around in an enormous tank with a bunch of fish that i dont know why they dont eat. but the coolest things, for us, were their THREE octopuses! they also had a fish that crawled around the bottom on legs and ther crazy looking animals! it was fun. we had an easy night of chinese food followed by a light and music show at the fountains in front of the art gallery that shot water jets up to 45 feet high!
the next day we had a long travel day, taking 3 separate trains from barcelona to arles. it was pretty uneventful but we were very happy to finally arrive. arles is a pretty small town in the south of france that has some old roman stuff. apparently when the romans owned gaul (francem spain & britain) arles was the capital of gaul. they have a 2 story coliseum that is over 100m in diameter and is still used for bullfights, very cool.
on our first day in arles, we left arles to go to pont du gard via avignon. pont du gard is a 2000 year old aqueduct that is 48 meters tall and is pretty spectacular! it took us over 2 hours to get there and get back via train and bu, but i think it was worth it. we were so so tired after that and totally crashed for a nap before dinner. we ate at a nice looking cafe that night, and things were lovely until they brought lisa's shrimps out with heads still on and in a really gross sauce. oops. we forgot that here you have to order shrimps without heads if you dont want the heads to still be on.
the next day we wandered around arles and went into the coliseum and then spent the rest of the day finding me new sunglasses because mine broke. we left arles for marseille by train and spent last night exploring the beautiful boaty old port. today i got my hair cut, and soon we will be taking a ferry to some of the islands in the harbour.
its kind of a relief to be back in a country where we can communicate. when we were planning the trip i underestimated how much more comfortable it is when you can speak the language.
bye for now!
simon
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
second stint in barcelona
today marks a week since we have been in spain. coincidentally it has not rained during the last week... hmmm... it seems like a very long time ago that lisa and i were moaning and groaning about cold and rain and never getting any sunshine. right now there are no clouds and it would be really weird if it was less than 25 during the day. so nice!
we flew back to barcelona from mallorca yesterday on our first delayed flight of the trip - good thing we didnt have anything to do except be on vacation. it was an hour or so late, funny because the flight is only 30 mins or so.
we found our new hostel and they were expecting us as usual. we are staying in a 3 bed room this time with an american guy named john who is nice. (liz, he does not seem like a psycho killer, dont worry). once we had checked in we went out in search of chinese food and sagrada familia. the first was hard to find, the second is huge, so not so much. once we found a place to eat asian food we had our first point-at-the-menu-and-hope-for-the-best experience. the meal turned out pretty good but not what we expected. it was fun.
http://titan.iwu.edu/~business/iwubts/barcelona.html - if you have not seen pics of sagrada familia take a quick look. its not like any church you have seen. its unreal! it is still under construction and expected to be completed in around 2020. unfortunately when we got there the tower was closed due to high winds (weird) and so we decided to leave it for later. instead, we went to parc guell, another gaudi creation. by the way, if i havent mentioned it so far, antoni gaudi is a barcelonan architect who created all sorts of cool 'modernista' type stuff all over barcelona. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudà i stole a pic from the internet of the view from the terrace in the park. we had to take escalators to get there! ive seen stairways that counted as roads, but never escalator roads. cool!
when we got home from the park we hung out for a while before going out again in search of something asian. we wandered and wandered and finally found some indian food, so we ate that alongside a pitcher of sangria! lisa decided to go slow on the sangria which means that i drank most of it, to her amusement. she had her fun and we got to bed early because we had big plans for today.
lisa has been dying to go to a waterpark, so last night she looked it up, found the biggest one in europe near barcelona, and figured out how to get there. we set our alarm clock for 8:30 today, woke up at 11:45 and went on our way lol. i dunno how we missed the alarm. oh well.
we took their go-train equivalent out of the city for about half an hour, got off at the stop they said to get off at, and didnt see the waterpark anywhere. just then, an accordian bus came up with an ad for it on the side, so we got on and to our utmost pleasure it took us right there! we got to the waterpark at 1:45 and waited until 2:00 to save 6 euros on admission. and we werent the only ones doing that, it was kind of funny.
the waterpark was so much fun! we spent all day going up stairs and down slides! unfortunately they did not have a lazy river, but that is a small deal! so much fun!! http://www.illafantasia.com/eng/index.htm
and it was nice change to be in chlorine water instead of salt water.
tonight we are going to go out for dinner and drinks with some people from the hostel. hopefully it will be fun! lisa is having a nap, she is all tuckered out from a big day of sliding and being silly!
tomorrow we are going to try the church again, and then go to the beach or to the picaso museum, depending on how hungover lis... i mean 'we' are.
adios!
simon
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
mallorca
on saturday night, lisa and i flew to mallorca and quickly found our hotel and got settled in and everything. the next day, we slept in and spent all day on the beach and swimming in the ocean. we had 3 days in mallorca and that more or less sums up all of them.
see, we thought that 9 weeks of travelling would be tiring and draining so we went on a vacation from our vacation halfway through. smart move! we are now recharged and ready to go back to barcelona tomorrow. after being sun-starved in the north of europe for a month we are loving roasting our bodies in the sun.
mallorca is an island off the coast of spain, one of the baleric islands (ibiza is our neighbour). i think its about 200 km from barcelona. we are staying about a 5 minute drive outside of the main city, Palma.
mallorca is famous for partying, so its too bad that we didnt come for a friday or saturday night. having said that, lisa and i went out last night and partied and it was still pretty busy and a lot of fun. we went to a place called Tito's which was way too cool for us, but i guess since it was a monday night it didnt matter too much. There is a main street that has bars for blocks, its wild! they don't really get going until about 1 or 1:30 and the party goes until 5 or 6 (for some people). i managed to not metronome, but we didnt make it to the sunrise or anything.
we went out for dinner before partying and had some tapas and light meals. tapas are like appetizers and people here will supposedly go out for a dinner of just a variety of tapas. one of our tapas was OCTOPUS! oooh... it was tasty!
more to come later. we didnt really explore much of mallorca, but that was the goal, and we had an awesome time just hanging out!
ttyl
simon
see, we thought that 9 weeks of travelling would be tiring and draining so we went on a vacation from our vacation halfway through. smart move! we are now recharged and ready to go back to barcelona tomorrow. after being sun-starved in the north of europe for a month we are loving roasting our bodies in the sun.
mallorca is an island off the coast of spain, one of the baleric islands (ibiza is our neighbour). i think its about 200 km from barcelona. we are staying about a 5 minute drive outside of the main city, Palma.
mallorca is famous for partying, so its too bad that we didnt come for a friday or saturday night. having said that, lisa and i went out last night and partied and it was still pretty busy and a lot of fun. we went to a place called Tito's which was way too cool for us, but i guess since it was a monday night it didnt matter too much. There is a main street that has bars for blocks, its wild! they don't really get going until about 1 or 1:30 and the party goes until 5 or 6 (for some people). i managed to not metronome, but we didnt make it to the sunrise or anything.
we went out for dinner before partying and had some tapas and light meals. tapas are like appetizers and people here will supposedly go out for a dinner of just a variety of tapas. one of our tapas was OCTOPUS! oooh... it was tasty!
more to come later. we didnt really explore much of mallorca, but that was the goal, and we had an awesome time just hanging out!
ttyl
simon
harry potter
lisa and i have been counting down to july 21 for weeks and weeks, because we are that nerdy and that obsessed. finally, the day was here! we woke up early and took the subway to the bookstore, and got there right as it opened. we picked up our harry potters and metroed back to the beach, where we set up our towels and went to work. i will overlook the minor details about eating and getting ourselves to the airport but 13 hours later we were both finished, minds blown. well done JK. and that was what we did on july 21. there are no pictures, we were far too busy.
hehe
simon
hehe
simon
Friday, July 20, 2007
and now for a quick actual post
i'm not sure where i left off but i know that i havent talked about the last bit of paris or of barcelona yet. lisa and i had a busy last couple of days in paris and saw musee de louvre and d'orsay, and spoke canadian french to some skeptical parisians. all in all it was a fun time. And, more importantly, we bought mini speakers for the ipod so we now have music!!
one of the last nights in paris we went out with dave to a very random and rogue little bar and drank til it closed and then took a taxi home. it was fun, but then we slept in the next day, because thats what we do.
we managed to get ourselves to the airport the day after and took off to barcelona on vueling airlines, which were very impressive. we are flying to mallorca and back with them too, leaving tomorrow.
barcelona is awesome. if stockholm was warm it might be better than barcelona... but its not. there is city and beach and palm trees and wonderful things everywhere! i think that spain was designed for adolescents from around the world. everything is closed until like 10 in the morning, lunch is late and long, dinner is not until 9 or 10 and everyone stays up late because theres nothing to do the next morning until 10. its great!
today we strolled around at a leisurely pace and did some shopping and lisa got her hair done, in spanish, which was a fun adventure for her. she looks great though, dont worry anyone. although, if she didnt theres not much we could do. this is the first place where most people dont speak english and we dont speak their language, so we are in prety deep. but as long as we stick to fairly touristly places, my 'resort spanish' (quattro cervezas senor, por favor!!) and lisa's one term of spanish should get us by.
we also saw some of gaudi's crazy architecture today which was pretty cool to stare at in real life. this evening we might go to the beach before dinner. i am excited to swim and can't believe i havent gone yet.
tomorrow we are going to get up early and go to the bookstore and get harry potter and the deathly hallows and we are going to read it until we are done! we are way too obsessed...
bye bye!
simon
one of the last nights in paris we went out with dave to a very random and rogue little bar and drank til it closed and then took a taxi home. it was fun, but then we slept in the next day, because thats what we do.
we managed to get ourselves to the airport the day after and took off to barcelona on vueling airlines, which were very impressive. we are flying to mallorca and back with them too, leaving tomorrow.
barcelona is awesome. if stockholm was warm it might be better than barcelona... but its not. there is city and beach and palm trees and wonderful things everywhere! i think that spain was designed for adolescents from around the world. everything is closed until like 10 in the morning, lunch is late and long, dinner is not until 9 or 10 and everyone stays up late because theres nothing to do the next morning until 10. its great!
today we strolled around at a leisurely pace and did some shopping and lisa got her hair done, in spanish, which was a fun adventure for her. she looks great though, dont worry anyone. although, if she didnt theres not much we could do. this is the first place where most people dont speak english and we dont speak their language, so we are in prety deep. but as long as we stick to fairly touristly places, my 'resort spanish' (quattro cervezas senor, por favor!!) and lisa's one term of spanish should get us by.
we also saw some of gaudi's crazy architecture today which was pretty cool to stare at in real life. this evening we might go to the beach before dinner. i am excited to swim and can't believe i havent gone yet.
tomorrow we are going to get up early and go to the bookstore and get harry potter and the deathly hallows and we are going to read it until we are done! we are way too obsessed...
bye bye!
simon
les photos!! (3)
Lisa in one of the tubes of the Atomium in Brussels. All of our good pics from brussels are sideways, so this is all you get. but its nice anyways because it has lisa in it. awww ;)
Lisa and I outside of the Tower of London. It's too bad that our random photographer put her finger in the corner. oops!
Lisa on the Millenium Bridge in London. The little white building behind her and to the right is Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We were on our way there to see a play!
Lisa at Windsor Castle, just outside of London. This is where the Queen likes to spend some of her weekends. This is where Lisa likes to spend some of her vacations.
Me with Sarah & Julien in front of the Eiffel Tower on the night that we got to Paris.
Lisa and I on the hill in front of Scare-Coeur in Montmartre in Paris (that city behind us)
Bastille day! What a party! L-R: Lisa, Me, Julien's sister (I'm so good with names), Jason, Behrang. Here we are outside the carousel. Behind the photographer is the eiffel tower! Wine did mean things to us.
les photos!! (2)
This is me and lisa overlooking a canal in Amsterdam. After being in stockholm, amsterdam seemed like a bit of a dump. but you would never know that from this picture.
this is me outside of the sweet castle in Gent!
this is lisa with perry (far right) and his two friends that we met up with on Canada Day in Amsterdam.
i am leaning on an old bridge that crosses a canal in Gent. Gent is about 30 mins from Brussels, in Belgium.
this is me outside of the sweet castle in Gent!
les photos!! (1)
Lisa and her friend Alison in a 'Late Night Pub' in Dublin. I think that Alison is keeping a close eye on the PDA couple on the couch beside us. Seriously, they were gross! There are no pics of actual Dublin because Nicole has these on a CD for us; we deleted them to make room for new pics so we don't have them with us anymore.
Me in one of the many random beautiful parks in Copenhagen. This one had a bridge! oooh!
Here is lisa drinking a 1L carlsberg in copenhagen haha
This is what stockholm looked like at 11:30 at night, after we got home from seeing the Arctic Monkeys at the Globen! I couldn't believe how light it was!!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
petit aside
hey
this has to be short, i have 4 mins of internet left! so sunday lisa and i went to a park to relax after sleeping the day half-away after an awesome time at bastille day at the eiffel tower. i got out the camera to take her picture, and... it said 'memory card cannot be read'. so for the rest of the day we tried not to think about the possibility that pics from half our trip could be gone, but we couldn't help it.
the good news is that they are not gone - i don't know what is up with the memory card. we found out that they are alive and well when we got them put onto CDs. so, the even better news is that if i can remember the CDs the next time i post, then there will be pictures of our trip that should brighten up this monochrome blog a little bit!
ttyl
simon
this has to be short, i have 4 mins of internet left! so sunday lisa and i went to a park to relax after sleeping the day half-away after an awesome time at bastille day at the eiffel tower. i got out the camera to take her picture, and... it said 'memory card cannot be read'. so for the rest of the day we tried not to think about the possibility that pics from half our trip could be gone, but we couldn't help it.
the good news is that they are not gone - i don't know what is up with the memory card. we found out that they are alive and well when we got them put onto CDs. so, the even better news is that if i can remember the CDs the next time i post, then there will be pictures of our trip that should brighten up this monochrome blog a little bit!
ttyl
simon
Sunday, July 15, 2007
bastille day!
good afternoon everyone
lisa and i are in paris now. we are staying in a little hotel that is good so far. it's cozy and it's nice to have our own washroom complete with shower once again! and, we are there for - nights so its very nice not to have to pack for almost a week.
we arrived on the eurostar high speed train from london that goes through the chunnel on friday afternoon. going through the chunnel is dark and boring but its cool to think that you are under ocean. there was zero difficulty getting into france which was quite welcome. we arrived at our hotel and bumped into sarah and julien (lisa's friend sarah from high school & her boyfriend) a couple of hours later in our hotel lobby as they were staying at the same place. they left this morning, too bad, but it was fun to have some friends around for a couple days.
on friday night we had dinner and then took the metro to the eiffel tower and sat on the lawn in front of it and freaked out a little because its a pretty awesome thing to be doing at night! i was concerned that the ,etro would stop running but it didnt. we got back on at around 1 and took it all the way... to the wrong end of the city, finally realizing our error just before we hit the end of the line. thankfully there were still trains running so we jumped on going the other way and went 27 stops back to our hotel. oops! my first big navigational mistake!
yesterday we slept in a bit and went to pere lachaise cemetery where famous people are buried. then we took a train to monmartre and climbed up the billion steps to the sacre-coeur church on top of a big hill that gives a monumental view of the city of paris. OH!!!! i almost forgot the most exciting part! paris is HOT! like 30 degrees hot! after ".( weeks of hoping for something over 20 the sun and the hot is most welcome, even though i feel like i am melting.
anyways, we hung out for a while on top of the hill before descending and going back to our hotel to relax before going out at night. july 14 is bastille day so there were fireworks planned at the eiffel tower at 10:30 (which were awesome).
i found out on thursday that jason was in paris and on friday i got a message from dave that he and behrang were here too. yay! we tried to figure out a way to meet up by only using internet which was slow and painful but then, walking to pere lachaise cemetery we bumped into them in the street! random!
i will post now because i'm not sure when my time will expire. more to follow later if my time is up.
cheers! simon
lisa and i are in paris now. we are staying in a little hotel that is good so far. it's cozy and it's nice to have our own washroom complete with shower once again! and, we are there for - nights so its very nice not to have to pack for almost a week.
we arrived on the eurostar high speed train from london that goes through the chunnel on friday afternoon. going through the chunnel is dark and boring but its cool to think that you are under ocean. there was zero difficulty getting into france which was quite welcome. we arrived at our hotel and bumped into sarah and julien (lisa's friend sarah from high school & her boyfriend) a couple of hours later in our hotel lobby as they were staying at the same place. they left this morning, too bad, but it was fun to have some friends around for a couple days.
on friday night we had dinner and then took the metro to the eiffel tower and sat on the lawn in front of it and freaked out a little because its a pretty awesome thing to be doing at night! i was concerned that the ,etro would stop running but it didnt. we got back on at around 1 and took it all the way... to the wrong end of the city, finally realizing our error just before we hit the end of the line. thankfully there were still trains running so we jumped on going the other way and went 27 stops back to our hotel. oops! my first big navigational mistake!
yesterday we slept in a bit and went to pere lachaise cemetery where famous people are buried. then we took a train to monmartre and climbed up the billion steps to the sacre-coeur church on top of a big hill that gives a monumental view of the city of paris. OH!!!! i almost forgot the most exciting part! paris is HOT! like 30 degrees hot! after ".( weeks of hoping for something over 20 the sun and the hot is most welcome, even though i feel like i am melting.
anyways, we hung out for a while on top of the hill before descending and going back to our hotel to relax before going out at night. july 14 is bastille day so there were fireworks planned at the eiffel tower at 10:30 (which were awesome).
i found out on thursday that jason was in paris and on friday i got a message from dave that he and behrang were here too. yay! we tried to figure out a way to meet up by only using internet which was slow and painful but then, walking to pere lachaise cemetery we bumped into them in the street! random!
i will post now because i'm not sure when my time will expire. more to follow later if my time is up.
cheers! simon
Thursday, July 12, 2007
london is big
hey
lisa and i have been busy tourists in london, trying to see all that there is to see in 4 days. 4 days later, we are pretty wiped out and tired. wow. this place is big! the other cities that we have been have had city centres that we could walk all around and get to know, but the city centre here is so vast that we quickly figured out that its impossible to learn it all. we are a long way from ghent!
we met the first mean person of our trip in london: the customs agent that yelled at us for 10 minutes for... well, we're not exactly sure why. but he was pissed! in any case, he got distracted by something else and let us in. phew.
on tuesday we met the first person that would not give lisa a student price, at westminister abbey, because she forgot her card in canada. oh well, i guess the gravy train had to end sometime.
on monday we went to the tower of london. we thought that the other castles that we had seen were big and imposing, but this thing was ridiculous. its not so much a tower as it is 20 towers, connected by walls and dungeons and fortress and jewels. the crown jewels are so garish and crazy that its pretty funny. and there was no lineup so that was nice. lisa wants me to mention that there is a 530 carat diamond on one of the royal sceptres. crazy!
we went to the british museum in the afternoon and saw the rosetta stone (the thing they used to translate egyptian heiroglyphics into actual language) and some other nice old art. they had a preserved man that was like 5000 years old or something. wild! we went out afterwards for some london curry and ate too much and then couldnt move anymore. oops!
on tuesday we went to westminister abbey, which is a glorious church but also a weird graveyard building full of tombs of famous people and kings and queens and stuff. we tapped our iron rings on the gravestone of one rudyard kipling! woo!! (the guy who wrote the iron ring ceremony) next we went by trafalgar square and picadilly circus and buckingham palace. at the palace we think that the queen was having a party because there was a huge lineup of distinguished looking gentlemen and society ladies in funny hats of all sorts. we took pictures of them and laughed at their silly looking hats. but at the end of the day the joke was on us because they got to go in and we did not. boo!
lisa and i continued on and had our own tea party at Harrod's. it was quite lovely! we had scones and sandwiches and delicious desserts, and a qhole heap of nice tea. we pretended we were fancy! no wait, we ARE fancy. since i don't need nice pants anymore i ditched them after tea! anything to lighten the load!
that night we met up with dimoe in east london. he is there for 2 months doing some training for work. right before he met us at the tube stop he said there was a ridiculous street fight right outside his apartment! wrenches and baseball bats and everything! when we got there it was mostly cleared up but there was a car that was all smashed up. don't worry, london is safe if you are not in a gang that is fighting another gang with bats. we went out for drinks at an english pub and i tried the most awful beer i have ever tasted. it was served warm and gross and so i drank it as fast as i could to get it off the table. oh man. it made me miss ireland. and belgium.
yesterday we had a huge day. we visited kensington palace in hyde park in the morning and then went on a rowboat in hyde park in the afternoon. i REALLY wish that we could be uploading things, because we have an awesome video of a swan attacking another swan that we will have to youtube when we get back!
in the afternoon we went to visit covent gardens and watched some street buskers. we had fish and chips in an english pub (with some imported beers) and then went to shakespeare's globe theatre for a presentation of love's labours lost. it was really good! our tickets were 5 pounds because we were sitting in the rabble (we were "groundlings"), the people that stand in front of the stage while the play was going on. at the end of 3.5 hours our feet were dying, but it was a good play when we could figure out what the heck was going on. my feet still hurt today and so do lisa's.
but, we played through the pain anyways. today we went to windsor castle in the countryside, which is huge and is medieval like the tower of london but also impossibly decorated like versailles in paris. it looks just like you would expect and want a castle to look like.
we are all done our sightseeing now, and we can now relax. we're going to take it easy for a couple of hours, have some dinner, and then go out and see harry potter here on opening night! is it weird that we were more excited by this than by almost anything else in london? (yes) we went to a toy store to look for magic wands and capes to wear tonight but decided not to for 2 reasons: 1. it would have been 20£ each and 2. the capes were kids sizes... why can't we find an adult sized cape in this city?
tomorrow we are going to be taking a train through the chunnel into paris. we will eat baguettes, drink coffee and ride our bicycles, all at the same time!
some comments about london:
- the tube is vast and complicated but its not all that fast. there are often slow downs and with so many different trains using the same tracks they often have to wait for each other. its busy and hot. but its also impossible to live without, and with a city this big and this dense is an absolute must.
- our hostel was okay but we had to move around a couple of times in order to get the rooms that we wanted. it will be nice to stay in the same room for 6 days in paris!
- london is uber expensive but thats not a surprise to us, we had heard all about it. still, it hurts.
- bye bye english... this is our last day in an english speaking country. lisa will be my personal translator from now on. its so nice to have a linguist as a travelling companion! okay this wasnt really about london.
sorry it was long but there was a lot to say. london is a busy place!
au revoir!
simon
lisa and i have been busy tourists in london, trying to see all that there is to see in 4 days. 4 days later, we are pretty wiped out and tired. wow. this place is big! the other cities that we have been have had city centres that we could walk all around and get to know, but the city centre here is so vast that we quickly figured out that its impossible to learn it all. we are a long way from ghent!
we met the first mean person of our trip in london: the customs agent that yelled at us for 10 minutes for... well, we're not exactly sure why. but he was pissed! in any case, he got distracted by something else and let us in. phew.
on tuesday we met the first person that would not give lisa a student price, at westminister abbey, because she forgot her card in canada. oh well, i guess the gravy train had to end sometime.
on monday we went to the tower of london. we thought that the other castles that we had seen were big and imposing, but this thing was ridiculous. its not so much a tower as it is 20 towers, connected by walls and dungeons and fortress and jewels. the crown jewels are so garish and crazy that its pretty funny. and there was no lineup so that was nice. lisa wants me to mention that there is a 530 carat diamond on one of the royal sceptres. crazy!
we went to the british museum in the afternoon and saw the rosetta stone (the thing they used to translate egyptian heiroglyphics into actual language) and some other nice old art. they had a preserved man that was like 5000 years old or something. wild! we went out afterwards for some london curry and ate too much and then couldnt move anymore. oops!
on tuesday we went to westminister abbey, which is a glorious church but also a weird graveyard building full of tombs of famous people and kings and queens and stuff. we tapped our iron rings on the gravestone of one rudyard kipling! woo!! (the guy who wrote the iron ring ceremony) next we went by trafalgar square and picadilly circus and buckingham palace. at the palace we think that the queen was having a party because there was a huge lineup of distinguished looking gentlemen and society ladies in funny hats of all sorts. we took pictures of them and laughed at their silly looking hats. but at the end of the day the joke was on us because they got to go in and we did not. boo!
lisa and i continued on and had our own tea party at Harrod's. it was quite lovely! we had scones and sandwiches and delicious desserts, and a qhole heap of nice tea. we pretended we were fancy! no wait, we ARE fancy. since i don't need nice pants anymore i ditched them after tea! anything to lighten the load!
that night we met up with dimoe in east london. he is there for 2 months doing some training for work. right before he met us at the tube stop he said there was a ridiculous street fight right outside his apartment! wrenches and baseball bats and everything! when we got there it was mostly cleared up but there was a car that was all smashed up. don't worry, london is safe if you are not in a gang that is fighting another gang with bats. we went out for drinks at an english pub and i tried the most awful beer i have ever tasted. it was served warm and gross and so i drank it as fast as i could to get it off the table. oh man. it made me miss ireland. and belgium.
yesterday we had a huge day. we visited kensington palace in hyde park in the morning and then went on a rowboat in hyde park in the afternoon. i REALLY wish that we could be uploading things, because we have an awesome video of a swan attacking another swan that we will have to youtube when we get back!
in the afternoon we went to visit covent gardens and watched some street buskers. we had fish and chips in an english pub (with some imported beers) and then went to shakespeare's globe theatre for a presentation of love's labours lost. it was really good! our tickets were 5 pounds because we were sitting in the rabble (we were "groundlings"), the people that stand in front of the stage while the play was going on. at the end of 3.5 hours our feet were dying, but it was a good play when we could figure out what the heck was going on. my feet still hurt today and so do lisa's.
but, we played through the pain anyways. today we went to windsor castle in the countryside, which is huge and is medieval like the tower of london but also impossibly decorated like versailles in paris. it looks just like you would expect and want a castle to look like.
we are all done our sightseeing now, and we can now relax. we're going to take it easy for a couple of hours, have some dinner, and then go out and see harry potter here on opening night! is it weird that we were more excited by this than by almost anything else in london? (yes) we went to a toy store to look for magic wands and capes to wear tonight but decided not to for 2 reasons: 1. it would have been 20£ each and 2. the capes were kids sizes... why can't we find an adult sized cape in this city?
tomorrow we are going to be taking a train through the chunnel into paris. we will eat baguettes, drink coffee and ride our bicycles, all at the same time!
some comments about london:
- the tube is vast and complicated but its not all that fast. there are often slow downs and with so many different trains using the same tracks they often have to wait for each other. its busy and hot. but its also impossible to live without, and with a city this big and this dense is an absolute must.
- our hostel was okay but we had to move around a couple of times in order to get the rooms that we wanted. it will be nice to stay in the same room for 6 days in paris!
- london is uber expensive but thats not a surprise to us, we had heard all about it. still, it hurts.
- bye bye english... this is our last day in an english speaking country. lisa will be my personal translator from now on. its so nice to have a linguist as a travelling companion! okay this wasnt really about london.
sorry it was long but there was a lot to say. london is a busy place!
au revoir!
simon
Friday, July 6, 2007
belgian beers... and other belgian things
the first belgian beer that i tried was 11% and was served at 12°C. it was called kasteel. i chose it randomly. it was comme ci comme ca.
but to back things up
we got to belgium 2 days ago. we stayed in Gent on juliusz's recommendation, which was spot on. Gent is such a cool place, it's all medieval and stuff. as soon as we checked into our bed and breakfast we went straight to the castle there and explored around. it was awesome, i wish i could upload pics of it. then for the rest of the day we just explored and sat on patios when it wasn't raining and enjoyed delicious belgian beers like the one i wrote about already.
we were only in Gent for one night. yesterday we took the train to Brussels, which i keep on calling belgium. ohhh yeah. we are staying in a decent hostel a little ways away but close enough. qfter checking in yesterday we came downtown and got belgian waffles for a snack. i wish that they had those in canada on the street. but then again i wish that they had all of these crazy rando, street foods in canada also, like the french hot dogs in scandinavia. mmmm!
we couldn't go to the ,qin square, the grand place, last night because there was so,e kind of ,edieval fair going on last night there, with horses and people in medieval costumes and stuff. they had a little parade of the, and we danced around with the silly jesters in the street! silly us! we tried watching for a bit but it was a little boring so we left qnd strolled around a little more before retiring for the evening.
today we visited the atomium and stopped off at our favourite belgian vietthai restqurqnt for lunch. lekkar!!
brussels is fun but its a weird mix of international people and tourists and languages. it is the most bilingual (french and dutch) city i have been to. the 2 languages are on everything and no one really see,s to prefer or push one over the other.
i don't know what we are going to do for the rest of the day but i'm sure something fun will co,e along! we are going to london on sunday, and are going to try to see the new harry potter movie there!
that is all for today. hopefully we will be able to post ,ore often so that it doesn't take forever to do an update. sorry for being so verbose everyone.
adios!
simon
but to back things up
we got to belgium 2 days ago. we stayed in Gent on juliusz's recommendation, which was spot on. Gent is such a cool place, it's all medieval and stuff. as soon as we checked into our bed and breakfast we went straight to the castle there and explored around. it was awesome, i wish i could upload pics of it. then for the rest of the day we just explored and sat on patios when it wasn't raining and enjoyed delicious belgian beers like the one i wrote about already.
we were only in Gent for one night. yesterday we took the train to Brussels, which i keep on calling belgium. ohhh yeah. we are staying in a decent hostel a little ways away but close enough. qfter checking in yesterday we came downtown and got belgian waffles for a snack. i wish that they had those in canada on the street. but then again i wish that they had all of these crazy rando, street foods in canada also, like the french hot dogs in scandinavia. mmmm!
we couldn't go to the ,qin square, the grand place, last night because there was so,e kind of ,edieval fair going on last night there, with horses and people in medieval costumes and stuff. they had a little parade of the, and we danced around with the silly jesters in the street! silly us! we tried watching for a bit but it was a little boring so we left qnd strolled around a little more before retiring for the evening.
today we visited the atomium and stopped off at our favourite belgian vietthai restqurqnt for lunch. lekkar!!
brussels is fun but its a weird mix of international people and tourists and languages. it is the most bilingual (french and dutch) city i have been to. the 2 languages are on everything and no one really see,s to prefer or push one over the other.
i don't know what we are going to do for the rest of the day but i'm sure something fun will co,e along! we are going to london on sunday, and are going to try to see the new harry potter movie there!
that is all for today. hopefully we will be able to post ,ore often so that it doesn't take forever to do an update. sorry for being so verbose everyone.
adios!
simon
our huis in amsterdam
we landed in amsterdam's schipol airport on sunday and immediately our plane drove on a plane bridge over a highway. so right away, holland is more than okay in our books! we took a cheap nice and easy (and slow compared to the stockhol, airport train that had a spedo,eter on it and went to the airport at 204 kph!) train to downtown from the airport. we couldnt figure out how to use the tra,s right away so we walked the 20 minutes to our hostel and found it right away. lisa's friend perry and 2 of his friends were there waiting for us so that was nice. we threw our stuff in our room and went out for canada day!!
now, we had hoped to find a cool canadian bar full of canadians doing canadian things, but, well, we couldn't. so we just went to random places and told random people that our country turned 140 today. and then they suppressed a giggle. lol.
compared to stockholm and copenhagen, amsterdam is a bit of a dump. the water in the canals is dirty and there is actual garbage on the ground sometimes. once we got used to it though, we had a blast! there is so much to do in a,sterdam, more than lisa especially expected.
we wandered around for a while, tried fries with ,ayonnaise (way too much mayonnaise to be awesome, and ketchup is better), and explored the canals and the red light district. lisa at first thought it was everywhere but really its just a few blocks. however they are right downtown so a lot of the time you end up walking through it to go fro, place to place.
on monday night we caught a train to Utrecht to visit my cousin maggie, who is in school in the netherlands. Utrecht is about a half hour fro, a,sterdam. maggie treated us to dinner qnd drinks and showed us around a nice city with canals that is a lot more "dutch" than crazy amsterdam. i liked Utrecht and so did lisa. and it was a lot of fun to see my cousin! thanks maggie!
on tuesday we had what might have been our biggest day yet! we got up early, went to the van gogh museum, visited the heineken experience which is a pretty cool brewery tour, went on a boat cruise of amsterda*m's canals, and finished up at the anne frank huis. oh, and we ate fries for dinner :)
a,sterdam felt rushed because we arrived at night and left in the morning on wednesday for Gent, so even though we stayed 3 nights we weren't there for 3 days.
so far, this preplanning stuff is working out great! everything is going very s,oothly.
bye
bye
simon
now, we had hoped to find a cool canadian bar full of canadians doing canadian things, but, well, we couldn't. so we just went to random places and told random people that our country turned 140 today. and then they suppressed a giggle. lol.
compared to stockholm and copenhagen, amsterdam is a bit of a dump. the water in the canals is dirty and there is actual garbage on the ground sometimes. once we got used to it though, we had a blast! there is so much to do in a,sterdam, more than lisa especially expected.
we wandered around for a while, tried fries with ,ayonnaise (way too much mayonnaise to be awesome, and ketchup is better), and explored the canals and the red light district. lisa at first thought it was everywhere but really its just a few blocks. however they are right downtown so a lot of the time you end up walking through it to go fro, place to place.
on monday night we caught a train to Utrecht to visit my cousin maggie, who is in school in the netherlands. Utrecht is about a half hour fro, a,sterdam. maggie treated us to dinner qnd drinks and showed us around a nice city with canals that is a lot more "dutch" than crazy amsterdam. i liked Utrecht and so did lisa. and it was a lot of fun to see my cousin! thanks maggie!
on tuesday we had what might have been our biggest day yet! we got up early, went to the van gogh museum, visited the heineken experience which is a pretty cool brewery tour, went on a boat cruise of amsterda*m's canals, and finished up at the anne frank huis. oh, and we ate fries for dinner :)
a,sterdam felt rushed because we arrived at night and left in the morning on wednesday for Gent, so even though we stayed 3 nights we weren't there for 3 days.
so far, this preplanning stuff is working out great! everything is going very s,oothly.
bye
bye
simon
about stockholm...
it has been a while since i last blogged, and that is because i haven't had a big enough chunk of time. until now. i apologize ahead of time for any bizarre typos resulting from this belgian keyboard, most notably , instead of m and q instead of a.
so anyways, the day after i wrote the last blog was june 29 and that was the first, and to this date the only day sans rain for our whole trip. we went to stockholm's architectural museum for a little while and skansen, their outdoor park thing, in the afternoon. skansen is part pioneer village, part zoo and part the two of us being silly on a big hill in downtown stockholm. we especially liked the gooses. lisa fed them candy and touched a few of them! gross! i made her wash her hands before she touched ,e again.
that night we went out for a swedish dinner at a place called something like "zum frankenstein". it said it was stockholm's oldest restaurant, from 1421, but that's a maybe.
on saturday we saw ocean's 13 because it was raining. in sweden (and holland for that matter) movie theatres have assigned seats. crazy!
on sunday we went out and got some fruit for breakfast and ate it in the rain overlooking the city as our farewell. that afternoon we left and flew from stockholm to amsterdam!!
stockholm was pretty awesome overall. oh yeah, on saturday we went to a little beach in downtown stockholm and atte,pted to swim but it was WAY too cold! oops!
cheers! we hope it's raining in canada!
simon
so anyways, the day after i wrote the last blog was june 29 and that was the first, and to this date the only day sans rain for our whole trip. we went to stockholm's architectural museum for a little while and skansen, their outdoor park thing, in the afternoon. skansen is part pioneer village, part zoo and part the two of us being silly on a big hill in downtown stockholm. we especially liked the gooses. lisa fed them candy and touched a few of them! gross! i made her wash her hands before she touched ,e again.
that night we went out for a swedish dinner at a place called something like "zum frankenstein". it said it was stockholm's oldest restaurant, from 1421, but that's a maybe.
on saturday we saw ocean's 13 because it was raining. in sweden (and holland for that matter) movie theatres have assigned seats. crazy!
on sunday we went out and got some fruit for breakfast and ate it in the rain overlooking the city as our farewell. that afternoon we left and flew from stockholm to amsterdam!!
stockholm was pretty awesome overall. oh yeah, on saturday we went to a little beach in downtown stockholm and atte,pted to swim but it was WAY too cold! oops!
cheers! we hope it's raining in canada!
simon
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