Barthelona! Yes... BarTHelona... Very lispy.

So here we were in Barcelona, Spain on the 1st of January 2010. The home of paella, great red wine, flamenco dancing and tapas. What a way to begin the new year! We arrived very tired in the early evening and went out for our very first real Spanish paella. It was yummy, but still not quite as good as the one at Bar Bosh. Ridiculous but true!

We met up with Cam that night and the next day the three of us went to see La Sagrada Familia... Gaudi's very famous and very UN-finished church. It was beautiful and ugly at the same time. On one side it looked as if it was melting and on the other looked like the base of a massive tree. Very odd but interesting.

This is the side that is a little more 'finished' if being finished can actually be measured.












And this is the other side... I don't really know how to explain it. It's very strange.

















Next we met up with Meg and Andrew at the apartment close to La Ramblas, Barcelona's very busy and highly touristed main street. We had tapas for lunch and wandered around the area for the afternoon. We saw another one of Gaudi's weird works of art, this time as an apartment. The plan was to go inside but 5 euro was 5 euro too much for us financially 'savvy' budget travellers.

That night Meg, Andrew and Cam went to the soccer whilst Pru and I cooked ourselves some dinner. It was nice to cook as we hadn't had the opportunity to do so for quite some time. We had a very relaxing night in.

The following day we hired bikes. We rode along the water and then underneath Barcelona's very own Arc De Triumph. We rode up, and by up I mean almost completely vertical, a hill to see one of Gaudi's parks named Park Guell. The house he'd lived in for a time was also in this park.














Another strange creation by a very strange man who, by the way Dad, kind of looks like you. He is pictured below.



We spent a bit of time wandering around this odd museum-like park then rode back down the humongous hill to our apartment.

We had a lovely dinner that night which was pretty pricey but definitely well worth it. I tried carpaccio for the first time and loved it.

The following day Pru and I shopped a little and enjoyed our time in one of the greatest stores on the face of the earth; Zara.

After that, on the 5th of January, Pru and I left for Zaragoza.

Ich ein Berliner! Or something along those lines...

We arrived in Berlin on a snowy, wintry night with no accommodation booked. The plan had been to stay in Berlin until the 2nd of January but as we'd had to change that due to the ridiculous cost of the flights I'd forgotten to take into account our accommodation situation. About half an hour before we were due to arrive it suddenly dawned on me. Uh-oh. Two nights before NYE, the biggest night of the year in Berlin and we wanted a room? What a joke! But after much perseverance (and dragging our cases through snow) we made it a hostel. Freezing cold and covered in snow we entered the hostel that was to be our shining light at the end of a very crappy tunnel. Yes, we got accommodation and yes, it was cheap BUT, and there's always a but with these types of situations, it was terrible. Our room smelled like stinky binge-drinking boys and the corridor smelled the same as the toilet.

The next morning we were out of there quick smart and checked into Pfefferbett hostel which was fantastic. Very clean, great showers and bathrooms and very comfortable and massive beds. Yay! We went on a walking tour of Berlin that day with a fantastic guide who was not only extremely knowledgeable but was a bit of an entertainer too. He kept us riveted with stories of Berlin right up to the very end where he delivered the awesome story of the fall of the Berlin wall. We went all over Berlin on this tour, starting at the Brandenburg Gate. We then made our way through the Holocaust Memorial and stood over the top of Hitler's bunker which, funnily enough, is now just a car park. The bunker has been flooded and there isn't a single sign or mark to let you know that it's there.

After this we went to Checkpoint Charlie which is basically just a massive tourist gimmick and saw some of the remaining part of the Berlin Wall. The area behind it used to be a main operations centre for the SS and as a sign of the respect the German government had vowed never to build on that site again. Not likely. An ice-rink was erected right behind the wall. Nice one, Germany.

We eventually ended up going past a whole lot of museums and his finale was delivered on the steps of the almighty Berliner Dom, a very large basilica in the centre of Berlin, pictured below. This was actually what it looked like when we were there because it was snowing heavily.


After the tour Pru and I hurried back to our hostel because we were pretty much both frozen through and needed time to thaw out. We had some amazing Vietnamese food for dinner and then called it a night.

The following day was NYE and we had a pretty low-key day trying to save our energy for that night. We decided to go on a pub crawl. Basically we had no idea where to go and this seemed like the easy option. It was a lot of fun until Pru decided she was busting to go to the toilet and we lost the crawl sometime after midnight. We'd gotten free shots and fireworks so it wasn't a complete waste! We also had our flight to Barcelona the next day on our minds and didn't particularly feel like a hugely late night anyway - so we went back to the hostel at around 3am.

The next morning we woke up, not feeling too crash-hot and made our way to Berlin airport. Everything was going well, we were rushing slightly as a lot of the public transport had slowed right down for New Year's Day, but things weren't too bad. Until that horrible moment. The moment Pru walked straight into a pole, split her eyebrow open on it and spurted blood all over the ground Kill Bill style. It was like a fountain. Anyway, in the end all was good and we boarded our flight to Barcelona.

For the next few days Pru would be ever so slightly concussed.

Dresden

We decided to go to Dresden, although we hadn't really planned on it, and it was lucky we did. Dresden was fantastic. We arrived late at night after a long, cramped and boring 7-hour train trip from Munich. Off we went for a snack and ended up eating some really fantastic Chinese food cooked by Vietnamese people in a Hong Kong restaurant - interesting.

It was an early night for us as the night before had been quite a late one. We got up bright and early, feeling very refreshed and began exploring what we soon discovered to be an amazing city with a very rich history. We were staying on 'the other side of the river' which meant we had a short walk to head over to the old city centre. Map in hand we began our journey. We walked over a bridge and in front of us, to our delight, was a fantastic silhouette of the city which looked something like this.














But in 1945 actually looked something like this.





















Dresden was pretty much completely destroyed right near the end of World War II and the city is still in the process of rebuilding itself after the devastation it endured.
Luckily for us a lot of the restoration had already been done and we were able to see some magnificent buildings that look today just as they did before the terrible bombings of 1945.
We spent a few hours wandering through the town and saw the Frauenkirche, the Semperoper (the opera house or theatre), the Kreuzkirche and countless other world heritage listed sights, many which had been completely bombed/burnt to the ground. For lunch we had a bratwurst and an eierpunsch, the Christmas markets were still going in Dresden! Yay!

After a very busy day we left early that evening for Germany's capital city, Berlin.

'Munchen' on pork at the Hofbrauhaus

Next stop: Munich.

The beer capital of the world and capital of the great region of Bavaria.

We arrived here on Christmas eve expecting the streets to be full of people, gluwein (hot wine) and Christmas cheer.

WRONG.

Everything was packed up and over; no more Christmas markets, no more eierpunsch and definitely no streets full of people. In fact, it was pretty much a ghost town. What we hadn't learnt prior to this was that Christmas eve is the day that most Europeans really celebrate Christmas so everything is closed up and quiet.

We wandered through the town anyway, keen to see a bit of this famous city. Luckily for us we came across one of the only establishments open for Christmas Eve dinner - the Hofbrauhaus! Yay! We walked inside and it was absolutely chock-a-block with people and giant one litre beer glasses. Thank you Santa.

We ate a meal made up of about 85% lard and 15% misc ingredients. It was yummy and disgusting at the same time but what made the entire experience even more memorable was our first taste of what Munchen is most famous for, its beer! We downed those baby's then headed back to our hostel for a few drinks with all the other lonely souls who were missing their families at Christmas.

The following day we'd planned to either got to Neuschwanstein castle or the Dachau concentration camp memorial. This was not to be. Everything was shut. So we did a bit of laundry and had a Croatian Christmas lunch at a really cheap, amazing restaurant.

That night we drank in the bar again and went out for a while but didn't really enjoy ourselves all that much due to missing home.

Either the next day or the one after (I can't remember exactly because all our days in Munich have kind of blurred into one) we went to Dachau concentration camp. It was a very sobering experience but one that we enjoyed nevertheless. We walked through the gas chambers, wandered through barracks where the prisoners were kept and watched a half hour documentary of footage from Holocaust. Very depressing.

The next day we planned to go to Neuschwanstein but due to us being 'forced' to 'taste-test' a lot of Munich's fine beer we were unable to get out of bed the next morning. Another day wasted unfortunately.

We lazed around for part of the day then made our way to the magnificent and awe-inspiring town of Dresden.

Eau de... Cologne!

We arrived in Cologne, or Koln, after a near fatal train trip for both Pru and I.

The train was absolutely packed full of people so we had to stand in the area between carriages, it was fairly cold and uncomfortable but we weren´t too fussed.

The mayhem began when Pru was quietly listening to her iPod while perched on the edge of her suitcase. Without warning, she slid off the side onto the floor of the train thrashing out at a lady next to her to try and get balanced. I was also listening to my iPod at the time and didn´t hear her fall. I turned around and there she was, like a pile of filth on the floor. Not long after this we thought we were at the right stop. We weren´t, and only realised this after exiting the train. By exit I mean I almost plummeted two metres to my death off the step (it was icy!) and managed to end up with one leg wedged between the train and the platform and my suitcase weighing down on the other half of me. People stopped and stared and it wasn´t until Pru screamed for help and waved her arms that somebody came to my aid. I was left with a nasty scrape and bruise on my left leg that is still healing after four weeks.

We arrived quite late in Cologne and decided to go and grab something to eat. After the hype of Amsterdam it was nice to have somewhere a little quieter to spend some time. We found a fantastic Lebanese take-away place where we had huge plates full of meat, tabbouleh, four different dips and haloumi cheese - YUM! After the crappy Dutch food in Amsterdam this was a nice change.

The following day we headed to the Dom of Cologne, the biggest cathedral in all of Germany. It was stunning! Again, I´ll be uploading photos to facebook soon for those of you who want to see it. After this we headed to the Lindt chocolate museum. It taught us all about the history, manufacturing and trade of chocolate. It was really interesting and we ended with a liiiittle bit of free choc which didn´t hurt one bit. They had a really cool chocolate fountain and machines set up actually making the chocolate so we could see the whole process. That day we´d also visited the Roman-Germanic museum which housed a lot of artifacts from the Roman occupation of Cologne.

The next day we headed to Bonn which was a short twenty minute trip away from Cologne. Bonn is famous for being the birthplace of Mozart. It was a beautiful, quaint and cheap university town. We went to Beethoven´s house and found out a lot of trivia about the great maestro! After this we wandered around some MORE Christmas markets, which we really couldn´t get enough of in Germany. We tried eierpunsch, an egg and alcohol mix that looks kind of like egg nog but tastes a whole lot better.

Next, we were off to Munich. With only a few days left until Christmas!

Amster-da-a-amn!

Next was Amsterdam.

If Amsterdam were a person it'd be a beautiful but very scummy woman.

We really enjoyed our four nights there. We had snow, beer, fatty Dutch food and a power outage in our dorm room.

On first appearances Amsterdam was shocking. We arrived at our street, which happened to be dead centre of the red light district, and there were a few hundred people in the streets all yelling and chanting. What we later realised was that there'd been a huge soccer match on and everyobody was drunk. Police were swarming all over the place and we were slightly worried by this.

We checked in to our hostel and ate a fairly crappy, bur cheap, meal then went directly to bed. We were lucky enough to be in the same dorm as a few other Australians and spent quite a bit of time with them over the next few days. We drank, we ate. That was about it.

Pru and I did a free walking tour but unfortunately it was bitterly cold and I almost froze to death. It was really interesting and we definitely learnt a few new things. The main thing about it was that it was free so we were very grateful.

The next day we headed to the hemp museum and the sex museum, typical Amsterdam attractions. Both were amusing and entertaining - and that's just about all anyone needs to hear.

To be quite honest, our time in the dame of the Amstel wasn't all that well spent but we had some great experiences and really enjoyed ourselves.

Where we going next? Oh yes, that's right. I need some perfume, or if I was a man - Eau de COLOGNE! By that I mean we were off to Cologne and the near fatal train journey where I almost lost my left leg.

Belgium - The Home of Tin Tin

After leaving Paris about three weeks ago, we headed to Brussels, Belgium. It's taken me a ridiculously long time to update my blog but I've been so busy and I'm kind of lazy.

ANYWAY, we hadn't definitely planned to go to Belgium but decided we'd give it a go and see what it was like. The minute we got to Brussels we loved it. The streets there are very beautiful and the architecture very similar to France, in that traditional European style. We checked in to our hostel then went for a walk to explore the city a little bit.

The main square was stunning. On one side was the town hall, the other a huge church and on the two remaining sides were shops and restaurants that had been decorated for Christmas and looked really lovely. We wandered through the streets until it got dark. For all you lucky daylight savings Melbournians this was at about 4:30pm. Terrible! And it took us a while to get used to it too.

We decided to stop by an Irish pub that had been recommended to us by a guy staying at our hostel and ended up staying there for most of the night. It was the last day of year 12 exams for the Belgians so there many 18 year olds out drinking which actually wasn't so bad. It was nice to speak to some people that actually lived in Belgium for advice on what to eat, where to go, etc. We lived on cherry beer that night and have both vowed never to drink it again.

The following day we explored Brussels a little more in depth and further out from the central area. We visited a few churches, had the greatest fries (or frites as the Belgians call them) in the world and wandered through the Christmas markets. Because we liked Brussels so much we decided it best to visit another Belgian city and the next day we caught a train to medieval Bruges, needles to say it was stunning!

Not a lot happened in Bruges as we only had one night to spend there. We walked around the town for the majority of the day and had a really cheap and yummy spaghetti bolognaise for lunch. There are some beautiful photos we took which I really do PROMISE will be making their way onto facebook as soon as possible. Not of the spag bol, just Bruges! Sorry to disappoint.

That night we went out with some people from our hostel for a few drinks to the most crowded bar on the face of the earth. Basically, the entire town was dead apart from this one pub so you can imagine just how full it was.

This brings me to the end of my time in Belgium.

Onwards - to Amsterdam!

One night (left) in Paris

I last left off on my lazy day in Paris where I'd bought a camera and basically sat around doing nothing but writing this blog.

That day was, as you can probably tell, pretty uneventful. The following day I headed off by myself to see Sacre Couer, the surrounding area of Montmarte and Notre Dame.

I started the day off bright and early, my first stop was Sacre Couer. As I emerged from the underground metro stop at the base of the steps that led up to the basilica I was absolutely shocked at the sheer size of it. For some reason I hadn't expected it to be such a huge building. The entire area was crowded with people but this didn't detract from the majesty of Sacre Couer at all.

I'd planned on going in but a service had just finished and the area was packed, so instead I walked around it and wound my way down the hill towards the Moulin Rouge. Along the way I stopped off at a square named after Salvador Dali that had all sorts of artists sketching and painting. I ended up getting a drawing done which actually doesn't look a whole lot like me but is nice anyway.

The Moulin Rouge was well, how can I say this? A massive let down! It sucked. I took a few photos but it was hardly worth it. Quite quickly I left and headed for Notre Dame. No let down here! It was amazing. The detail around the doorways was phenomenal and I couldn't believe the sheer size of it. I went inside and felt a little religious for about 10 minutes... Then I left. But it was beautiful inside, very awe-inspiring.

That night Pru and I cooked a great carbonara with plenty of garlic in it. We had our last meal with Jayne and Bunny before they headed off the next day back to Melbourne and we to Brussels.

Hoi An to Paris and everything in between

Having not added anything to my blog in quite some time is going to make this very lengthy and difficult. I created a whole new blog post the other day and my mobile phone completely stuffed up and I lost all of it.

So here goes...

The rest of our time in Hoi An was fantastic. We cycled down to the boulangerie and got some great tiramisu and ice cold Vietnamese coffee. Cam and I spent the morning cycling around Hoi An then went for lunch at a restaurant called Sunshine across the road from our hotel. Lunch was awesome! That night we did a private cooking course for USD$8 each, and we got to eat everything we made; spring rolls, pho bo (Vietnamese beef noodle soup) and marinated pork cooked in banana leaf. Very yummy. The cooking course was a lot of fun. We went down to the market with Hoi, the lady who ran the restaurant - which also happened to be on her front porch, and wandered through that crazy place with her. The smells made our tummy's rumble and by the time we returned to the restaurant we were definitely ready to start cooking. And for those of you that are interested, I have all three of those recipes written down and ready to go for when I get back to Melbourne.

The following day we left for Nha Trang, which turned out to be quite a disappointment. The bus ride to our hostel from the airport was very scenic and comprised of beautiful coastline reminiscent of our very own Great Ocean road. The hostel, however, was an entirely different story. It was a hostel designed for backpackers that wanted to sleep all day and party all night - nothing like us. We'd planned to stay there for 2 nights but left the next morning for Mui Ne, Vietnam's prime beach destination.

Mui Ne was gorgeous, the beach was nowhere near as good as any Australian beaches but if anyone can find me a beach anywhere in the world that IS, I'd like to know about it. There was a main street that was a few kilometres long and we spent most of our time by the pool while at night we'd walk along the road until we found somewhere nice to eat or drink, which wasn't hard.

Mui Ne's claim to fame are the famous white and red sand dunes that create a very unique micro-climate in the area. We visited these on a motorbike tour (we didn't drive obviously, passengers all the way). It was like being in the desert with the ocean on one side, a lake on another and shrubbery the rest of the way round. Very bizarre. Cam thought it was a great idea to hire a plastic slidy thing, as a way of sliding down the sand dunes. Bad idea. It broke pretty much straight away and he bunny hopped down the dune. Not very impressive. We watched the sun set over the red sand dunes and then made our way back. Photos of all of these will be published on facebook VERY soon.

We left for Saigon the next day. Crazy, crazy, Saigon.

With the amount of motorbikes we'd seen in Hanoi there was no way we believed people when they told us that Saigon was far worse. Well, they were right and it was. I had a great video of the traffic which is on my lovely long lost camera so you'll just have to You Tube it to find out just how hectic it really is.

We arrived late at night after a 6 hour bus ride and had a pretty crappy street meal for dinner then went off to bed, the following day was going to be a busy one.

We started it off by walking to the Reunification Palace, where the big bosses surrendered at the end of the Vietnam War. It wasn't a particularly beautiful building - very sixties with far too much mission brown - but it was interesting to wander around. After that we headed to the War Remnants Museum. It was very informative, perhaps too informative, and quite depressing. It basically chronicled all the horrible things that happened during the war and had a lot of photos which were pretty confronting. Outside they had a collection of tanks, guns and artillery left behind by the Americans.

That night we made our way over to Ben Thanh marketplace. During the day it's a huge enclosed market, much like some of the ones we saw in Thailand and by night the inside area shuts and everything is set up outside. There were great seafood restaurants set up everywhere making it very difficult to choose somewhere to eat. But we did, and it was delicious.

The next day we didn't plan to do a lot, mainly because the heat was suffocating and we just couldn't be bothered. We had a little wander through the market and then ended up deciding to go to the Saigon Zoo. It was great and was very reminiscent of our own Melbourne Zoo. We saw rhinos, a few hippo's, lots of monkeys, elephants and plenty of big cats. The most exciting thing about this zoo was that the animals were right up close, possibly too close, meaning we could almost touch them. Obviously we didn't but it would've been nice to have a cuddle with a tiger.

Finally, it was our last night in Vietnam. We went to the market for dinner again because there was just so much fantastic food on offer. We had barbecued squid, pork, beef and meatballs, the amazing spinach with garlic and oyster sauce and some DIY rice paper rolls. Very yummmmmyyy!!!

It was a sad goodbye the next day because Cam and I wouldn't be seeing each other until after Xmas. I had a pretty uneventful flight to Hong Kong and there it was that I lost my camera, but, I've just returned from buying a new one! Anyway, Hong Kong wasn't too exciting. I did a bit of retail therapy and that was about it, mostly due to the terrible weather there and I was just getting too excited about getting to Paris.

I've been in Paris for almost 5 days now and I'm absolutely loving it. My flight and arrival was nice and easy and the minute I dumped my things at the hostel I headed off to meet up with Pru. It was night time by this stage so we had a little wine and some tapas and then I returned to the hostel.

The next day we went to the Louvre. Luckily for us there had been strikes on all over Paris in the museums and tourist sites but on that particular day they decided to let people into the Louvre... For free! We also did a FREE guided tour of just a very small part of the museum then had a wander around ourselves, of course seeing the Mona Lisa (majorly overrated), Le Libertine and a whole bunch of other great artworks. Our lunch was fantastic as we ate in the Louvre restaurant. I had cooked tomato on brioche with goats cheese and a garlic crouton stick thingy - for entree. Then for the main had a braised pork (crackling and all) with some lovely chicory and a really rich plum sauce. Mmmmmm.

The following day was the day for Versailles (and yes, I have heaps of photos) which, luckily for us, we got in to for free as well. It was absolutely stunning. The Hall of Mirrors was especially beautiful. We saw an exhibition they had on the Sun king, Lous XIV, which was very informative and impressive. The portraits and sculptures were great and the history of it all was really interesting. We wandered around outside a little and saw the gardens and some of the 'mini' palaces they had around the grounds.

By this stage I was just aching to get to the Eiffel tower, which I'd seen from afar but hadn't officially visited yet. We decided to go there the next day. When we emerged from the metro there was a huge building to the left and I knew that when we walked around the corner of that building the Eiffel Tower would be in front of us. It was breathtaking! I couldn't stop taking photos as it was pretty much the most photogenic structure I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe the size of it - it was HUGE! We made our way down and stopped off at an artificial ice rink that had been set up and Jayne and Pru had a bit of a go on that. We walked through the Xmas markets down towards the tower and the closer we got the more excited I became. When we got there a sign said that the top level was closed, this was very disappointing, so we bought tickets to go to the second level and headed up. After about half an hour just looking out at the amazing city of Paris we were told the top level had been opened, so up we went. It was spectacular, you could see all the way to the outskirts of Paris, the Arc De Triomphe (which we visited later that day), Les Invalides, Sacre Couer and more.

This pretty much brings me up to date as that all took place yesterday. Today I was planning on visiting Notre Dame, Sacre Couer and the surrounding area of Montmarte but I may leave that for tomorrow. I bought a camera and have to wait for it to charge.

In a couple of days Pru and I will be leaving Paris for Belgium, which is exciting and a little sad at the same time because Paris really is such a lovely place. Well, except for all the snobby French people!

Ha Long Bay to Hoi An

I'm currently sitting in the lobby of our lovely hotel called Phuoc An in Hoi An, but before I write about Hoi An I should probably fill you in on everything we've done up until now starting with Ha Long Bay.

The tour we took wasn't great, probably because it only cost us $35 US, but Ha Long Bay itself was pretty amazing. It took about three hours to get there. In a minibus. With no air-con. And a mental driver! Mum and Dad can probably relate to this as it was very much like our transportation in Thailand in terms of craaazy driving.

So we finally arrived at Ha Long Bay and set sail out to the central part of it. The huge limestone carsts were similar to what I saw in Thailand, but this time there were far more of them and they weren't quite as large. Once we finally got out there we did a bit of kayaking as the sun set which was really great.

The following day we returned to Hanoi for another treacherous 3 hour minibus ride. That night we ate Fanny's. Yes, that's right. Fanny's is a French-style ice-cream restaurant in Hanoi by the way. In case you didn't know!

We explored Hanoi a little more that night and the following day and then left in the afternoon for Hoi An, which is an anagram of Hanoi but couldn't be more different.

WE LOVE HOI AN!

Basically the entire old town of Hoi An is a UNESCO world heritage site and has a big ol' river running through it. The central area is completely pedestrianized and is filled with cobblestone walkways and beautifully maintained old buildings. There are restaurants galore and the food here is sensational. We've been eating things like fried wontons, cao lau (a traditional Vietnamese dish made up of noodles, greens, herbs and spices and pork - with crackling on top!), squid with garlic and onion and all sorts of other really yummy things! The food here is even better than Thailand. There's much more variety and it's actually a lot tastier, which might be because we're eating a lot of street food rather than eating in restaurants.

Our first night in Hoi An we decided to go and have a few drinks and met an Irish couple and a British couple who we hung out with for most of the night. Needless to say we didn't feel too crash hot the next day, but despite this we did our fair amount of walking around and seeing sights.

This brings us up to date with yesterday when we went to the ancient Hindu temple complex of My Son. It out dates Angkor Wat but isn't anywhere near it in size. It was located in amongst thick tropical jungle and the monuments themselves are another UNESCO world heritage site. They were beautiful, and I plan to post photos up as soon as we find a computer with a memory card slot. We took a boat back to Hoi An from My Son along the river which was quite beautiful. In the afternoon we decided to hire a couple of bicycles and rode down to Cua Dai beach, about 5km outside of Hoi An. It was very similar to the beaches we saw in Thailand but probably cleaner and more scenic.

Cam and I are off to get some bikes now so that we can ride down to a boulangerie near the water - yum! Tonight we're probably going to do a cooking class and tomorrow we head off for Nha Trang.