The Chance of a Lifetime...

Carriage ride on our last night..

2010-07-31T21:17:00.000-07:00

With a big pink gorilla..
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Heading back to Denver..

2010-07-31T05:22:00.000-07:00

Got up at 4.15am for a 6 hour drive back to Denver.. Have to return the RV by nooooonnn...
Sunrise-
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Santa Fe

2010-07-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

So we're in Santa Fe, which was not planned but we found an awesome KOA and we're wandering through the city..
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Coyotes!!

2010-07-30T08:05:00.001-07:00

Last night we were watching a movie, I forget what it was but anyways we had all the windows open in the RV b/c it was like 60* out (hooray!) and we heard Coyotes howling!!! Idk if it was a full moon last night or the night before but it was cool!! :)
We're at the Petrified Forest!!
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Ha!

2010-07-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

I think I forgot to mention that our campground at the Grand Canyon charged $1.50 for a 6 minute shower. I showered in the RV.
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RAARR

2010-07-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

I stepped on the side of my Nook by accident the other day.. Just looked at it and it's broken. RARRR. Not a happy camper.

On another note we're rolling out of the Grand Canyon soon, on to the Petrified Forest.
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More Canyon

2010-07-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

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Stunning!

2010-07-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Today we wandered around the Grand Canyon.. There's a free shuttle that goes to each look out which we utilized for sure! No major hiking for us, but lots of great views.
The weather has been a little rainy which has certainly cooled it off a lot- very welcome. Although the views in the morning were not so great bc of the fog... But it burnt off when the sun came out between showers. We made it all the way out to Hermit's Rest which I guess is the end of the canyon kind of..
We saw a crazy cute squirrel, a spiny back lizard. And lots of tourists...
Came back, took a nap. Got up, JT cooked some chicken on the grill and we ate.. Yummy.
JT says hi.

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Grand canyon

2010-07-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

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!!

2010-07-27T18:18:00.001-07:00

We just saw a coyote running down the path on our way through the Grand Canyon, super cute!!
Then like 5 miles down we saw a herd of Elk!!!!
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We made it!

2010-07-27T17:43:00.001-07:00

To the Grand Canyon but it's about to rain so its misty..
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By 4 corners.

2010-07-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

I like this thing, makes me feel like it said "I don't have to be some huge mountain, I'll be fine right here as I am, thanks"
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We're in Navajo nation

2010-07-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

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Not so green anymore, I guess we're getting to the desert

2010-07-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

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Pretty mountains

2010-07-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

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On the road again

2010-07-27T11:17:00.001-07:00

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Durango..

2010-07-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

We finally made it to Durango at about 11pm... After we figured out the time was wrong on the navigation, time flew by. We met up w/ JT's friend Adam for a quick second then headed to the camp site. Had a drink and crawled into bed.
Sunday I woke up and stepped out of the RV, its was absolutely beautiful!!! We got up and went and ate breakfast- pancakes, eggs, sausage.. Made by the campsite, yummy!! Adam came up to see us.. We ate some lunch and then headed out for a hike. We went to the Cascades I think, and hiked down to a waterfall, jumped in and froze our butts off! Haha! Maybe 45* or so in the water!! Eeek!! Lots of fun, and photos to follow but they're on my real camera so you'll have to wait til I get back to sea level at home. Umm we hung out for a little then hiked back up to the car. Lots of fun, a great workout and Marley was very brave. We told him to think he was a mountain goat..
Ummm after that we went back to town and picked up a rental car, wandered around town bought a couple touristy t-shirts.. Went back to the RV.. Showered etc and went back to town a little later and met Adam for dinner. On the way from the car to dinner Jt managed to trip on a manhole thing in the sidewalk and he sprained his ankle. Not a happy camper. Literally. Dinner was good and we went back to the RV..played cards and scrabble.
Monday we got up early and went into town for the river rafting trip we had booked. We had tons of fun, the water was chilly for sure but we didn't get too wet. Another lady who was with us totally fell in though so she was soaked...we bought the pics from this but you'll have to wait.
Umm we met Adam for lunch then went to Walmart for some stuff.. Then back to the RV for a nap. Marley met some friends and played in the pool for a while. We all took a dip but uhh didn't survive long, it was a little cool. Soo we showered and drove into town again. Met Adam and went out to this delicious restaurant with ridiculously poor service.. Then wandered around down town, lots of awesome photography stores/studios.. Went back to the RV, had a drink and gossiped then Adam left and took the rental car back for us.
I slept through a movie and woke up this morning! We slept in until 8.40!! Record sleep in!!
Marley went and played with his friends while JT cooked breakfast and I cleaned up and made the RV ready to drive again.
We headed out around 10.30, went to walmart for some towels and some other last minute things before we head to the Grand Canyon... Not sure what kind of stores and stuff we'll find there...
Now we're on the road and heading towards the 4 corners (utah, az, co, nm) then on to GrandCanyon!
Sorry for no updates sooner but I didn't have service..
Hope all is well with you wherever you are!
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I sent JT to make a drink...

2010-07-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

Wearing his head lamp.
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Not the Land of the Long White Cloud (New Zealand) , we're in Colorado! Pretty.

2010-07-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

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We're funny.. Or deliriously tired of traveling... Its your call.

2010-07-24T22:16:00.001-07:00

So uh I punched JT in the stomach (he's claiming it was his solar plex) and he was bent over saying he was going to puke and Marley had some input: "Dad, at least drink some water, it makes it smell not as bad!!"
Ahaha
Don't feel bad, he's fine.

Next funny thing:
Everyone said it would take about 8 hours from Denver to Durango.
We put it in the Magellan/TomTom thing and it had us arriving at 12.30am. Which, after a stop for dinner, changed to 1.30am.
So we were kinda shitty because that's ridiculous. I was just messing around w/ the TomTom thing and handed it back to JT and he hit something and it changed the screen to say "time remaining" and it said an hour!!!!! Yeahhh!! That puts us there at 11.30pm!!
I purposely didn't mention that we left Denver at about 3, because that would make us look stupid- that we couldn't do 3pm+8hours= 11pm. But let's be honest, who thinks of that kind of stuff? Its 2010, I believed the TomTom.

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Funniest quote yet

2010-07-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

On the plane to Denver Marley asked us "how is Sunny (the VW van) gonna get to Denver to meet us?" Soo funny. Maybe you had to be there for it but we laughed pretty hard.
Anyways we're on the long winding roads through the mountains on the way to Durango.
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Colorado...

2010-07-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

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Anddddd we're off!! Yeahhhh!!! :)

2010-07-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

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Cool sculpture/statue in Denver

2010-07-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

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Day 1

2010-07-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

Sooooooo Friday I went to work for a couple of hours, then home to finish packing and chill w/ RooRoo before we left for the trip..
We hit the road around 1 with a few things to do along the way.
Arrived at Fort Myers airport, checked in, grabbed some lunch and waited for out flight. We took off without any issues but once we got to Midway there were storms and they diverted us to Indianapolis.. Booooooo. We flew Southwest, they rock!! Literally, the cabin crew were awesome. Were sitting in the back row, this dude got up to go to the bathroom when he wasn't allowed to, he kinda just told the lady he was going anyway; when he came out she just looked at himm and said "so do you think you could flush the toilet or what?!" I laughed.. He hadn't flushed and she knew it, he was mortified. Sooo funny. Anyways, we sat on the ground in Indy for like half hour or something, refueled and flew back out to Midway. This time we landed and while we should have missed our connection, we didn't bc Midway was a mess. Sooo we sat on the floor and waited for the flight... Finally arrived in Denver at midnight, 2 1/2 hours later than expected.. Called the hotel and took the shuttle over there.. And here we are!!
Now we have to wait to hear from the RV company- they're going to let us know when an RV comes in for us. Its supposed to be at noon but I guess maybe not... Who knows.
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LOVE living here!!

2010-07-21T15:05:00.001-07:00

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JT and I watching the sunset after dinner... Awww ;)

2010-07-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

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If I rollover and meow, will you rub my belly?

2010-07-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

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Big RooRoo w/ Big Trophy for being the Women's Florida State Champions... we also won Southeast Regionals, 2 weeks later :)

2010-07-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

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Baby RooRoo

2010-07-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

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New hobby (photo test)

2010-07-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

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Let's try this again

2010-07-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

Just wanna check that I can still post via e-mail...
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It's been 3 YEARS!!!

2010-07-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe that it's been 3 years (almost to the day) since I last wrote on this thing!! CRAZY!!!

Since then I've uhhh done A LOT. In no order whatsoever I have:
-Bought a house!
-Got a cat, my darling little RooRoo!
-Worked at a restaurant for 2 of those years, and have since quit.
-I started coaching my old high school rowing team, and this year- 2 and a half years later- my lightweight women's 4 won a bronze medal at US Youth Nationals... the FIRST EVER medal from Nationals in the history of rowing in Sarasota- since 1991!!
-I started a new hobby- Stand up Paddle boarding, which is really frikkin awesome, except it's turning out to be expensive since my 12ft long board wont fit on top of my MINI COOPER, therefore: I need a new car (because of my new hobby).
-umm my Mum turned 50 last September.
- and my Dad turned 60 TODAY! Happy Birthday Dad!!
-Since my extravagant traveling to outrageous places I actually haven't done much traveling at all, which isn't really ok with me. I went on a cruise last August for my b'day.. by myself... and had an awesome time... then when my girls, Dolly and Talulah, and Allison (yes, they exist, but not by those names) came to visit us in November we went on a cruise too, and had a blast!!
Next trip: leaving Friday w/ my boys JT and Marley to fly to Denver, pick up an RV, drive to Durango, then to the Grand Canyon, then the Petrified Forest, thennnnnn back up to Denver, hopefully through Albuquerque (only b/c that seems like too cool of a name to not be a cool place)

So anyways, I'm hoping to keep up on this blog, at least on this trip and any other exciting things I do... you know like uhhh when I see dolphins and stuff at practice? ha. whatever.

Keep up with me, leave me messages and other such encouragement!!

ENJOY!!

its been a while

2007-07-11T02:21:00.000-07:00

so it's been a while since I last posted on here and I doubt anyone still pays attention... but I thought I might make an effort to start writing again...

i'm still in Christchurch, New Zealand, living with my aunt and uncle. they were on holiday for the past 2 months to Europe and to visit my parents in Florida!! so I had the house to myself! it was awesome!! although i had some responsibilities like Finn the dog and Murphy the cat!! we had a great late summer and an amazing autumn! it was absolutely beautiful and really warm! but june rolled around and it got cold. we had a couple of thick frosts last week which made it look like it snowed but it was just frost.

I'm still working at Caffe Roma (www.caffe-roma.co.nz) and its getting a little old but I still like it. Tomorrow is my last day there for a couple of weeks because i'm flying home to Wisco on Sunday and then to England!! crazy I know but someone's gotta do it :) so if you don't know already, i'll be in Madison Monday 16th-26th then London until Aug 5th!!

Tomorrow night there is a mid-winter xmas party at my fav. pub so i'm definitely attending, and will most definitely be dressed up ;) neither Heather nor I have to work Friday so we will be wasted. Friday we will recover. Friday night we are going on a 'bus trip' which is a bar-crawl but by bus and all alcohol on the bus is included in the awesome $25 cost! sooooo i'm psyched!! Heather and I are getting shirts made, well we're supposed to be but it hasnt happened yet! Saturday we will recover and Saturday night i'm hoping to go to the All Blacks vs. South Africa rugby game! then sunday i'll fly out! busy busy!
ok off to bed
p.s. i'm stealing wireless from a neighbour! hooray!!

Back in the wonderful NZ

2007-02-28T05:37:00.000-08:00

I arrived "home" in Christchurch this morning (monday) at 10.30am which means I was travelling for 34 hours door to door. I'm now in bed for the first time since I got up at 6.45am on saturday, now its 11.10pm here and 5.10am monday in Florida...meaning I've been up for a mere 47ish hours. And I skipped Sunday. Sweet.
Job interview at a fancy restaraunt tomorrow-my tuesday- fingers crossed.
Happy Monday, Americans!

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Time travelling again

2007-02-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

My time in Florida flew by rapidly and I'm once again sitting in 1 of several airports for the day.
On Monday I drove up to Orlando (in record time b/c Jack-my car, duh- was super excited to go on a road trip) anyways, Culp/Taz was there on a business trip so we hung out and went out, had some fun, and crashed in her super sweet hotel. Tuesday Taz had to work soooo I left and drove up to Tallahassee to see Anneka. We hung out, then partied with her friends/team mates atttt umm I forget what it was called, but it was fun! Saw a couple of people who I haven't seen since high school which was kind of weird but cool. Wednesday we slept late and went for lunch, hung out for a while, then Anneka had to work (all my friends have jobs, I need one) sooooo I left and drove home.
I ran errands, went shopping, hung out w/ my parents and that filled up the rest of my time at home.
This morning I flew out of Tampa at about 11. I'm currently sitting in Denver waiting for my very delayed flight to San Francisco. I was hoping to meet up w/ Cotter while I was there but now I don't have enough time. Butttt this flight was supposed to be leaving in 4mins, and I'm still sitting in the terminal so that's not likely. If it gets much more delayed I may well be spending the night in San Francisco and partying w/ Cotter! Fingers crossed. I'm pretty much counting on that now, that's bad I know, but its Cotter!!
Ok well I'm gonna sit here and eagerly await an announcement. Ha. Right.

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Famous dude?

2007-02-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

I'm STILL sitting in LAX and now the FSU golf team are here..
Anyways, some famous dude walked by and I'd love to tell you who it was but I have no idea. The FSU girls started freaking out but I'm pretty comatose and had headphones in so I have no idea. I'll try use my sweet detective skills to find out.
I've been in transit for almost 24 hours now...and its great but really getting old. I can't wait to get home.
The FSU girls got his autograph I guess. Hmmm.
Alright well I'm getting on the plane in half an hour, I should prepare myself. HA!
Peace out

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I'm in CA!!

2007-02-14T17:40:00.000-08:00

After a 12 hour flight, I made it to LAX and here I am, sitting, waiting for my 8 hour layover to pass...sweet. I got here so long before my flight that they couldn't even give me a boarding pass! Ha. I stood in line for ages with THE Ohio State womens golf team....apparently they just played horribly at a tournament they hosted here. Ummm so far, it has been valentines day for me for 38 hours, 1 guy has said happy valentines day to me, I only have 6 1/2 more hours to go, the odds aren't good! Ha not that I care, its just crazy that's it can be one day for so long when you time travel. So its 5.35pm pacific, 8.35pm eastern and 2.35pm on thursday in NZ. Crazy.
Anyways the flight was good, I watched "A Good Year" which was really good, then I started to watch "The Black Dahlia" but didn't like it so turned it off and went to sleep. Woke up just as they served breakfast (at 1pm pacific!) And watched "The Queen" as I ate and we landed! It was ok, not great but not bad. Soooo that's it, I'm in the states, you should call me! And if you don't have my number you should ask me for it!! I don't have my old phone so I don't have many numbers...
Talk to you sooooooon
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AUK-LAX

2007-02-14T01:17:00.000-08:00

Made it to Auckland, a mere 746km and in a second I'll be hopping on the next plane to go a further 10,488km to LA...about 12 hours. Then I'm supposed to have an 8 hour layover but I'm going to try and get out of that and get to FL sooner!! A lot sooner!!
Alright well here's hoping my flight is pretty empty so I can sprawl accross a couple of seats.
Talk to y'all state side!!

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Flying!!

2007-02-13T23:33:00.000-08:00

I'm currently sitting in my plane at Christchurch Airport waiting for my flight to Auckland for the first leg of my trip home. I'm going to document it to show how long it takes- people keep asking me!! Its 8.30pm here on wednesday, which is 2.30am wednesday in Florida.
...Next input from Auckland.
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Coming home!!

2007-02-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

Hey guys!! Sorry I haven't really been keeping this up to date lately but I've been pretty busy working *gasp* yes, working.
Butttttt I am coming home (to Florida) next week- flying on Valentines day (ha?) And arriving in LA late that night, and Florida early on Wed soooooooo if you want to catch up you should give me a call!! Or flick me an email w/ your number and I'll call you when I'm there!! If you're in Florida, let's get together!
I'll only be home about 10 days, so don't hang about!!
Have a great weekend, see/talk to you sooon!!
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GO BADGERS!!!

2007-01-09T20:28:00.000-08:00

I was just channel-surfing tv and I found the Badger game on ESPN!! I got to watch the end of it and it was sooo great!!! Gooo Badgers!!!
Now I can't get a job b/c I need to be around in the afternoons to watch my boys!! (Its 5.30pm Wednesday here)

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Sooo Goood!!

2007-01-06T03:20:00.000-08:00

I just got back from seeing "The Prestige" and it was absolutely amazingly awesome!! Everyone should go see it, its sooo clever!!
No joke, go see it!! Let me know what you think.
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3rd and final part of s. Island

2007-01-01T16:11:00.002-08:00

This is the 3rd part, up until today, so start reading from a couple of entires ago...hopefully this will work like that...

The next day we hopped on the bus again and headed to Queenstown- adventure capital of NZ. Apparently if you did EVERY adventure activity it would take 35 8hr days and NZ$6,000!! Crazy!! I wasn't feeling good at all for most of the bus ride, and when we got to a bridge to bunjy jump I was 1 of the only people on the bus not to do it. Dave did it tandem w/ Baggins, Dirk did it, and so it Cara and Will aswell as a few others. Eventually we left the bridge and made our way into Queenstown. By the time we got into town I thought I was going to be sick, and I NEVER puke!! We stopped to pick someone up and I had to beg Baggins to open the door so I could get out- he thought I was joking around- sweet (later he felt really bad!). Anyways I didn't puke, and got back on the bus, we got to our hostel, I checked in, dumped my bags and was going to go to bed...buttt we needed to book our activity for the next day..Dave and I went and booked Mad Dog River Boarding, well I let Dave do everything and I just handed over the money, then went to bed!! About an hour later I felt fine and got up, showered etc. A group of us from the bus went to dinner at Fergburger- Amazingly delicious burgers, and they're massive!! From there we went to the bars!! We started in the bar attached to the hostel...Dirk and I had tequila sunrise's hahah (remember?? The sunrise??) Haha. Uh and a few other drinks, later on we went to the Worl Bar where they're famous for Teapots (fish bowls but they poor it into shot glasses- weird). We hung out for a while, there was a fight and uh I dunno, it was pretty fun. We left there around 1.30 and went home. although Will went for another Fergburger- crazy! The next morning Dirk left on the bus to Christchurch and Will and Cara went to another hostel. Dave and I slept late, wandered around town and then went River Boarding!! Basically you get a wetsuit, fins, a helmet and a boogie/body-board then you jump into a grade 3 white river and try and hang on to your board and survive to the end!! It was tons of fun, Dave and I did the 5km stretch of river twice, then got dragged along behind the jet ski and thrown off, then jumped off some rocks...its was tons of fun!! We got dropped back in town in the early evening, we showered etc and hung out. I was exhausted so just had a juice in the bar (I'm cool, I know) Nads was there and got Dave drinking, Sebastian was there too (met him in Franz J) but I was tired and called it a night pretty early.
The next day (xmas eve) we hopped on the bus back to Christchurch. We passd through Cromwell which is the furthest inland town on s. Island. Stopped a few times and made it into Ch.Ch. Around 3.30pm. Milt picked us up from town center and we went home!
I should give you all a family tree so you know who I'm talking about from now on...ready? Its complicated.
Lynny (dad's sis); milt- lynnys husband, my uncle; craig- cousin; jane- other cousins (mike) wife, Will- mike and jane's 3 year old. (Mike jane and will live in England, mike is there at the moment, jane and will are visiting). Then there's Grandad- dad's dad, and Joy- grandad's wife, Lynny's mum. Got it?? Ok good! :)
Xmas day-
We got up around 8.30, showered and got ready. Grandad and Joy came over and we opened presents. Then we ate a brunch and hung out for a while- mainly watching Will parade about with his gifts- super cute! Grandad and Joy left and we all went over to Jane's dad's house for xmas dinner. There were about 18 in total so I won't name people haha. We hung out, opened more gifts and ate a MASSIVE xmas dinner comprising of: venison steak, bbq'ed sausages, ham, chicken, salad, asparagus, carrots, beans, brussel sprouts and maybe more! Crazy amount of food, but delicious! Then for desert we had Pavlova and fresh boysenberries, and xmas pudding!! Amazing!! We hung out with everyone for a while, I watched Ice Age 2 with the kids! :) and eventually we went home to bed!
Boxing day- we took Dave on a tour of Ch.Ch. And the surrounding area, including the beaches- v. Pretty but the weather was (and still is) rubbish! Came home, dave made some calls to find a place to stay in Sydney and I walked Finn. Oh I forgot Finn and Murphy in the family tree!! Finn is a chocolate labrador and Murphy is a black cat, both belong to Lynny and Milt.
On the 27th Lynny and I drove Dave to the airport at some ridiculous hour of the morning. This is where Dave and my trip ends! Sad :( Dave flew off to Sydney and I went back to bed! Eventually I got up and Lynny and I just hung around for the day.
The next day (28th) lynny and I went shopping in the sales but didn't really find anything. I phoned a few places for jobs and volunteer opp's but almost everything is closed until the 8th! We went to Grandad and Joy's for dinner and hung out with them for a while. Then we came home and went for a family walk with Finn :)
On the 29th Lynny and I went shopping somewhere else, and in the car park we bumped into Greg Sommerville. Who's that? He's and All Black (NZ national rugby team)! How cool is that!! My cousin Mike used to be the fitness trainer for the All Blacks so he knows them all, and so do Lynny and Milt! Sweet! And pretty much everyone in NZ is familiar w/ the All Blacks, they're amazing! So yeah that was cool- my first famous kiwi! Hooray!! Not much else happened this day...and I can't remember what we did on the 30th, probably not much.
On the 31st we didn't do much either, although I did go for a run! then I got ready and lynny and milt dropped me at Craigs place for new years eve. his roomie Dave was there, and a couple of their friends- Jo and Ollie, Andrew, and Randall. We had a few beers and then went out. We went to a new club called Boogie Nights. Its a 60's-70's themed place that played oldies! It was tons of fun! Jo and I split from the guys and went dancing on the light-up dance floor haha, it was great! Oh and the DJ's booth is an old VW van haha. We counted down to midnight- although I think it was a bit late- and we kept dancing. I met some new people pretty randomly- a set of twins Mike and Todd, Mike's g/f and another dude, Dave (another Dave!) They came and danced with our group and it was tons of fun! Eventually left there at about 2.30 and went to Shooters bar next door which was just a regular bar with a dance floor but it was huge!! Hung out there for a while, talked to the twins more- Todd is a rower, ha. Can't get away from rowers!! Ch.Ch. Has 3 club teams so its a pretty big, and apparently pretty good rowing city...I'll have to check it out. So new year was tons of fun and I met quite a few people so that's cool :)
On the 1st we had a nice brunch and then I slept pretty much all day! Jane's sister, Sarah and her 7 year old Harriett came over and went to see "Happy Feet" with Will but I was too tired so stayed home. After dinner we watched Forest Gump (Milt's fav) and went to bed!
Today is the 2nd and I'm finally up to date!! Hooray!! Leave some love, this too FOREVER!
Hope everyone had a great new years eve!! Happy New Year!!
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S.island 2nd part

2007-01-01T16:11:00.001-08:00

The next day we got up and Dave and I went accross the road to a guy's Bone carving workshop. We designed what we wanted to carve, transferred it to a piece of cow bone and started carving by machine...a couple of hours and a lot of sanding later, we had a sweet bone necklace each. Mine is a kiwi bird with a koru carved out of it, its super cool! And Dave's is a hook- traditional Maori, of her own design. We ran back to the pub and jumped on the bus to leave but 2 asians decided to be an hour late- Nads almost left them but we saw them walking up from the beach and picked them up. Once we got on the road we made our way towards Franz Josef...we stopped along the way at this crazily hillarious place- Pete's possums- where possum pie was highly reccommended!! No thanks. We eventually made it to Franz Josef which is the location of a glacier...I ate dinner and Dave went to the internet...this hostel was more like a resot, it was great!! A bar, hot tub, sweet spacious rooms etc etc. I met up w/ Dirk in the kitchen- he'd spent the day on the glacier, in the rain, and was less than impressed haha then I was happy that we spent the day in Abel and not Franz...good choice on our part!! Poor Dirk. Haha. We were going to shower etc and then go our but instead we played table football- dirk and I against dave and dirk's new friend Sebastian... I think dirk and I lost, several times! But it was fun. From there we went straight to the bar and proceeded to drink...lots. We had tons of fun, Nads came out too and so did Baggins- another driver. We ended up going to the ice bar ha. It was pretty lame, and a local dressed as santa started giving me a hard time for being English...his ancestors were more than likely English but I let him ramble on. Then we left and headed home. I wanted to go in the hot tub, in fact I wanted to go in it before we went out but that didn't happen, and when we got home it was locked up....booooo.
In the morning we got on the bus with a new driver- Baggins- and headed to Makarora. On the way we saw tons of beautiful waterfalls. And we were in the dead center of the southern alps, which needless to say was stunning. We stopped at a really blue river, crossed the rope bridg- made an old lady mad b/c she thought we were rocking the bridge and she was petrified but we weren't, we were just walking accross it too!! We spent ages there skipping rocks haha- easily amused! When we arrived in Makarora we checked into our place, not really a hostel, kind of a camping ground with huts...dave and I shared w/ dirk, along with a crazy israeli girl, 4 germans who didn't talk to us the whole trip, and a Swiss dude. Not so fun but it was ok for a night. Dirk, Dave and I walked over to the river and trew rocks around again, then a crazy jet boat flew past us and its a good thing we moved otherwise we would have been soaked!! We went back and went into the cafe/pub attached to our place...I sat reading the newspaper and this old guy came over w/ 2 young guys and asked if they could join me...sure. The old guy started asking me all kinds of questions and at somepoint I said I needed a job, so he offered me a job as a shepherd. No joke. "You can come be a shepherd like these 2 young lads, oh! Do you need a husband? You could have either one of these!!" Thanks buddy, let me get back to you. We ate dinner, then the fun started...the locals were crazy!! My 2 "future husbands" got ridiculously drunk and were running and diving onto a boogie board accross the pub!! I had a couple of beers but went to bed kind of early.

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S. Island- beginning part

2007-01-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

Ok so its about time I posted about our trip on the south island...
I already said that we spent the night at Lynny's (my aunt)in Christchurch, then hopped on the bus to Kaikora. From Kaikora we headed to Picton- which is the port where you get the ferry to/from the north island. On the way there we stopped at a little Crayfish hut thing and Dirk (a German guy on our bus) bought a crayfish to try later. We saw tons of seals, and stopped to see if there would be any pups at a waterfall where Spanky had seen them before. There weren't any pups but it was still pretty cool. Back on the road we saw the solar salt works- which is the only 1 in NZ. We saw tons of Vineyards too, but no wine tasting. We arrived in Picton, dropped some people off (to go to the north island) and picked up some very obnoxious English people to go south with us. We got on the road with another driver- Nads, super crazy, tons of fun! Drove through Havelock which is world famous for green-lipped mussels haha. We arrived in Abel Tasman National Park early evening, it was absolutley beautiful!! After we checked in to Old MacDonalds Farm, Dave, Dirk and I went for a walk on beach, the tide was out and we could walk out really far, but it soon turned and came in surprisingly fast! The farm we were staying on had sheep, and shamels haha Sheep-Camels aka Lamaa's, they were pretty amusing. Dirk decided to eat his crayfish for dinner, and I tried some but it was disgusting!! Soo gross! Dirk didn't enjoy it either and ended up feeding it to the ducks haha they liked it, as did the peacocks and the Dicken (duck/chicken haha). I also fed them some pasta, and then a spider crawled accross my table, I flicked it on the floor and the duck ate it!!! Hhaha too funny. Dirk called me a spider killer!! But I argued that its just nature ha. Oh and then I tried to rescue a crab from a bucket of some kind of shell-fish but it fell down the drain, so then I was a crab killer according to Dirk, butttttt I said that all drains lead to the ocean (finding nemo of course) and that the crab would for sure survive!! A friend from our north island bus was there- Neif, a Welsh guy, so that evening, Dave, Dirk, Neif and I went to the local bar/cafe and had a couple of beers...pretty much got kicked out at 11 even though it said "open til ....late" soo we went back in the dark and found some beers on the "free food" shelves in the fridges!! I dunno who would leave beer when they're just getting on a bus! But anyways we weren't complaining!! Neif and Dave called it a night around 1 but Dirk and I stayed up talking for a while and then decided that it was close enough to sunrise and we should just stay up! Haha, so we did. And the sunrise was crappy!! It was soo cloudy we couldn't even tell the sun was up!! Haha, so I went to bed for about 2 hours and slept perfectl)! Dirk and I made up a story about how great the sunrise was and that there were dolphins and penguins and we swam with the whales etc. We told Neif and Dave the next morning but were laughing and they didn't believe us....oh well. Neif and Dirk hopped on the bus and went on to the next stop and Dave and I stayed. We went sailing on a sweet catamaran! They took us to Split Apple Rock to take pics but Dave and I dove in and climbed into it and had others take pics of us! The water was absolutely freezing!! I cut my arm climbing into this thing, battle wound! Ha it was funny, I'll post pics soon so you can see what this rock is- or look it up online! We sailed some more, saw blue penguins, a seal colony and stopped for lunch on a beach (still in the national park), we explored some caves w/ Kerri (the sailing dude) who told us about flying spiders that lived in the caves!! We got out ASAP!! We set off from there and started to sail back when they heard on the radio that someone had spotted a pod of orcas/ killer whales!! So we went looking for them and found them! It was amazing!! They're massively huge but soo graceful!! And we didn't even pay for a whale-watching trip haha. When we got back to the farm Dave and I went horse riding on the beach...my horse was called Mac and was pretty hyper- we had some fun galloping along the beach, and walking through the water- we even saw sting rays, it was super cool! We helped the dude turn the horses out, then went back and showered and ate dinner. Then we went up the road to meet the sailing guys, and Nads. We had a few beers with them, I went to bed around 11, exhausted from the "amazing" sunrise! Haha.
The next day we hopped on the bus with Nads and headed to Barrytown...we drove through/past the Bulla River and gorge which goes from east coast to west. We stopped at Taurunga Bay to see some seals. And then Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks and blow holes. Eventually we arrived in "don't blink or you'll miss it": Barrytown. The 1 pub, and a few houses town. Sweet. We checked in to our rooms at the pub, ate dinner and started drinking- it was 1 of the girls b'day and leaving party- 80's themed. There was a massive table full of fancy dress clothes so everyone took part. It was fun but pretty small-town local type thing. I went to bed around midnight. Oh, haha earlier in the week Spanky had told us that the pub in Barrytown were hiring, I considered it and decided I'd see what it was like when we got there... NO CHANCE. Ha.
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S. Island- beginning part

2007-01-01T16:05:00.000-08:00

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3hrs 45 to go

2006-12-30T23:22:00.000-08:00

Until its 2007 for me here in New Zealand...how sweet is that, I'm 18hrs ahead of EST. Currently hanging out w/ my cousin Craig and some of his friends...

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year!! 2007 is going to be sweet!!

Hope you all had a great xmas, have a fun, safe new years celebration!

P.s Ny- sorry, happy hannukah!! :) and I need your email!! Email me or leave it on here! Thanks buddy!!
P.p.s I am writing my south island blog, its really long and taking forever!!
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Merry Christmas!!

2006-12-25T22:27:00.000-08:00

Hi guys, sorry this is a bit late but I hope y'all had a great christmas!!
Dave and I spent the morning w/ my aunt, uncle, cousin, other cousin's wife and son, and grandparents. Then in the afternoon we went to my other cousins wifes dads house hahah got that?? :) Good times.
Today- boxing day, we slept late and then went on a tour around Christchurch to show Dave around. Then I took Finn for a walk while Dave tried to find accomodation in Sydney- she's leaving tomorrow, and that marks the end of our trip!! How crazy is that?!

Don't panic, I've started to write about our south island trip and I will finish it up and post it soon!!
Stay tuned!
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Hooray!!

2006-12-16T01:14:00.000-08:00

Heeeellloooooo friends!! My new blackberry is up and running and ithe internet is back at my fingertips once again after a very long 3(ish) weeks!!
I'm not going to sit here and type everything that has happened but I'll summarize it :)
Since I last wrote we...
Went to Tongarira National Park which has a 8 hour walk which is ridiculously crazy and a couple of people died up there this year b/c the weather changes quicker than you can blink. When we were there the weather was not good so they closed the crossing. Sooo instead the group did some different walks- at the base of the mountains, not on top of them. I booked to go horse riding pretty last minute but it worked out and it was grea. That area is absolutley beautiful. My horse's name was Shady haha, he was kind of Shady, but we had fun- even though my reins broke! Thelady who owned the horses offered to drive me back to the hotel a bit later, so I got to hanmg around with the horses for a while which was great. Back at the hotel I hung out by the fire and waited for everyone else to get back. Then I helped Ali (our driver) make Apple Crumble and Custard- 2 huge pans of it!! Ate dinner, ate amazing apple crumble, hung out for a while and went to bed. The next day we drove to Wellington- the capital. We got there pretty late in the day so there wasn't much time to do anything...we went to Te Papa which is the national museum...I only made it around the Maori part b/c I wanted to wander around the city before everything closed... Tha evening we went to dinner with Ali and some of the group from the bus, hung out for a while and then watched The Ringer which wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.
The next day we drove the looongggg drive up to Auckland, and had to change buses 3 times along the way which was pretty ridiculous but we finally made it to Auckland. Bought some groceries and pretty much just went to bed. The next day we got on another bus, well more like a van, with our driver Rob- a crazy dude!! He talked the whoooleee time, he was hilarious. We stopped several times along the way to the Bay of Islands... We stopped at a famous toilet that I can't remember the name of, then we stopped to visit a bird sanctuary and touch kiwi birds, but it was closed... Oh, haha, Rob turned me into his PA and had me phoning to book the hostels, and texting other drivers etc, it was funny, I'd rather do it for him than have him try to do it while driving us... We finally made it to Paihia, checked into our hostel and just hung out, I met some Aussies and walked around with them for a while. The next day we checked out but left our luggage at the hostel then laid on the beach all day and did nothing, oh wait, we bought new puzzle books haha and did those. Rob picked us back up early evening, this time he had another driver w/ him- Scoobs, he was hilarious and the 2 of them together were out of control, it was a very amusing drive back to Auckland. We made it back around 9pm, changed and went to the hoistel bar down the road, had a couple of beers, met some people but went home pretty early. Although we had some room mates who couldn't be quiet when they came home at 3.30am- haha but this was funny, 1 was a loud mouth stereotypical American girl, and she apparently got punched in the face by a local guy for being American, I asked if she called the cops and she said they showed up and told her to shut up b/c she was being annoying- not surprising. So that was kind of amusing, I mean, not good, but if you met her you'd be amused.
Friday we checked out and took the shuttle to the airport. Hopped on a plane, and flew to Christchurch! My aunt Lynny picked us up, with my little 2nd cousin, 3 year old William who is visiting from England! We went back to Lynny's and hung out, talked about the trip, caught up etc. My Grandad and step-gran came over for dinner, we caught up and hung out. Oh!! I forgot to mention Finn (a chocolate labrador) and Murph (a koool cat!) So now I have pets again!! Yay!! We did some laundry (hooray clean clothes), hung out, re-packed and went to bed.
Sat. Morning we ate leftover pavlova for breakfast (yummy!) And Lynny dropped us in town. We hopped on another Stray bus, w/ another driver, Spanky! We drove about 3 hours to Kaikora. We didn't book any activities so we walked to find a seal colony- unsuccesfully, sat on the pebble beach for a while and read, I spent a while on the phone to Blackberry b/c this new one wasn't working, we wandered around the shops, cooked some dinner (very domestic!), met an Irish guy, talked to him for a while, then watched about 1/2 of 7 Years in Tibet and now we're just chilling, watching England get killed by Australia in crickett...sweet.

Woah, I'm caught up!! Amazing!! Maybe one day I'll get ambitious and to y'all about Australia...maybe not.

Ok, leave some love, this took a lot to get figured out!
Hope all is well at home, good luck with finals, and don't get frostbite muhahahaha!!
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update

2006-12-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

so its been a while since i've put anyting of any interest on here...and i'm probably not going to add tons right now but i thought i'd give an update...
First off, my blackberry is still dead.
Next- We're in New Zealand (yes i skipped most of OZ on here, sorry), we started in Auckland, got on a Stray bus (www.straytravel.com i think) and have since been to Hahei- where I went sea kayaking in a marine reserve with massive waves!! we went to cathedral cove beach which was really pretty; from there we went to Raglan, then Rotorua which smells like rotten eggs= sulphur, today we went to a Maori village which was super cool, and now we're in Taupo which is home to the largest lake in NZ, it could fit Singapore in it!! tomorrow we're going to a national park, which i cant remember the name of :) then down to Wellington and back up to Auckland. From Auckland we're getting on a different bus and going to the Bay of Islands and spending a night in Paihia, then back to Auckland. Then we'll fly to Christchurch, spend a night with my aunt and uncle and then pick upo another stray bus and do the south island before xmas! craziness!! but the cool thing is that these bus passes are valid for multiple use over the next year which means i can go back and do it all over, or only parts of it etc! cool huh?
ok Australia....the outback was super cool, really different from the coast...we saw hundreds of kangaroos, we went through Carnavaron national park/gorge, porcupine gorge, we saw aboriginal art on cave walls, we went swimming in water holes, ummm went to "towns" that only had one building but were on the map! ummm Cairns was fun the 2nd time around, we had a couple of good nights out, tons of fun!

so its christmas soon, and its nice to be in a country that actually refers to it as christmas, and people say merry christmas, instead of happy holidays- sorry to those of you who don't celebrate xmas and would rather it be happy holidays etc, but i just like this better and i'm not even christian or any kind of religious. but on a different, similar note, it doesnt even feel like xmas, and i certainly havent done any xmas shopping, nor am i ready to even think about it being xmas. although it is colder here than it was in OZ so its easier to think of it being xmas time.

its supposed to be summer but the maori lady at the village today said the seasons are 6 weeks behind b/c of global warming...good to know, but that doesnt help much...
oh man, we keep staying in hostels that dont provide bedding, but charge alot, and then charge for bedding, and its soo frikkin cold at night... last night i was going to pay for bedding and the office closed at 8pm before i could get there! what the hell?!
tonight's place has bedding!
and theres a pub down the road which has a $20 (nz) thing= 3 beers (which cost $6 each) plus bangers and mash or fish and chips or spaghetti bolognaise!! how sweet is that!! so no microwave rice for me tonight!
oooook
well i think thats enough
leave some love, i'll try and update this a bit more, but paying for internet is not appealing!

SHIT!

2006-11-29T20:26:00.000-08:00

my Blackberry died a horrible death, dunno why, but it did, and so updates on this will be less frequent until i can figure it out... sorry guys
email me!

Itchy!

2006-11-24T15:07:00.000-08:00

We've been on this trip for 11 weeks and have been in countless hostels...last night I got my first case of bed bugs! Grr!!
Now we're in a car on the way to the outback!! I'm super excited!!
I know I have some to catch up on and tell you about but my battery is dying so it'll have to wait... Stay tuned...
P.s happy turkey day- a couple days late
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Roadkill

2006-11-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

So we're on our way South from Airlie Beach to Hervey Bay- maybe 10 hours, and the other car just hit a 6ft kangaroo!! I haven't even seen a kangaroo yet and they just hit one!! Jeeez!!
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Animals in OZ

2006-11-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

I can't remember if I already said this but Dave and I booked a sweet tour- Brown Dog Tours www.browndogtours.com and we booked both parts- the beef and the beach!! It usually starts in Brisbane but we couldn't wait that long so we're doing the trip backwards...
Friday night we met up with everyone on the tour with us- Chris from LA, Jo and Mitch from Maryland but are all friends, go to UCLA but are studying abroad here; Mirriam from Germany and 4 from Taiwan. Tim and Shanna are the owners of the company and lead the tours... We ate dinner and hung out for a while before calling it a night.
Saturday we got up early, met up with everyone and started driving south. After about 2 hours we were in Mission Beach where we stopped and Tim cracked a couple of fresh coconuts which were yummy!! We continued driving and stopped at Jourama Falls where we had a picnic, did a bush walk and found a place to swim, it was beautiful and pretty amusing. We kept driving, Dave and I were in Tim's car and we lost the other car so we stopped for a beer in a tiny little town before finish up the drive to Airlie Beach. We arrived at Beaches hostel, ate dinner, drank and eventually headed out to some of the bars. We had tons of fun and were all prety drunk..good times...Dave made a new friend and got to ride in a ute (an al camino).
Sunday we reluctantly got up pretty early, ate breakfast and made our way to the dock to go ocean rafting- www.oceanrafting.com this was tons of fun... A decent sized boat with 2 massive engines, it weas rough out and we were taking these massive waves and flying all over the place it was great!! Check out the website for a better idea, its kind of hard to explain. However, within 10mins one of the other dude was puking over the back of the boat- GROSS!! Most of you should know that I can't deal with pukers so needless to say I wasn't impressed and I gave him a prety hard time later on! Lane was our driver and he and his buddy (can't remember his name) thought it was hillarious but I'm sure they deal with it all the time. Anyways we made our way to Daydream Island which is one of the Whitsunday Islands and we picked up a few more people. The weather wasn't great so Lane decided to reverse the trip and we went snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef first. When we stopped the puker said he felt sick again! I looked at him and told him he had to wait b/c we were going snorkellong in the water he wanted to puke in. He wasn't too impressed with my lack of care but that's too bad. Anyways, the snorkelling was amazing!! There were 100s of fish and tons of coral!!! Lane threw some fish food in and they were jumping around everywhere, it was great!! We snorkeled the reef for ages then set off again and went to Whitehaven Beach which has sand a lot like Siesta Key at home, it was beautiful! The water is crystal clear and there were a ton of fish swimming around there too. We ate lunch on the boat and hung out on the beach for a couple of hours before heading home. It was a pretty amusing ride home, 1/2 of the boat got soaked, and we just laughed at them the puker was one of them so that was even better! :).
We went home, showered, napped, ate dinner, Lane was at the bar where we ate- which was also our hostel so he came and hung out with us, the puker was also there but took ages to recognize me- then we laughed about the day and his puking... We had a few rounds there before heading to Morocco's- another bar- where they asked me for ID! Do I look 17?! (That's what I said to the bouncer) haha. Chris sang "Cold Hearted Bitch" on Karaoke, it was pretty good and really funny. We left there and went to Paddy's- an Irish bar, go figure! We ordered this Nashes drink, and used Lane's sweet 40% discount! This drink is 3 shots of vodka, 1/3 can of redbull and fill the rest of the pint glass with cider- YUMMY!! It was soooo good!! We partied there for a long time, I met the owner but no free drinks unfortunately! Ha. We stayed out for a while had a few more Nashes :)
Monday Dave and I slept late, Chris, Jo and Mitch went sailing. Dave and I went and laid out by the freshwater lagoon and pretty much didn't do anything all day, it was great!! We wandered around and looked in the shops etc before going back. I was sitting on our balcony and a Rainbow Lorikeet (parrot type thing) flew over and landed on the edge of the balcony, scared the crap out of me when it screeched, b/c I didn't see it land!! Too funny. The others came home, we hung out, showered etc and went off to eat. We met up later and just hung out- quiet night, no grog! Ha. I don't even remember falling asleep, the lights were still on and everyone was still up...nice.

Here's a list of the animals we've seen so far!
Magpie geese, red and green parrots- rainbow lorakeets, goanna, great egret, black kite, brahman bull cows, lizards/skinks, bush turkey, white breasted sea eagle, jabbaroo! And a couple of kookaburra's!
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I found Nemo!!

2006-11-16T20:37:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Sydney, cleared customs, and I got a stamp in my passport!! I think, wait, maybe not...dunno, will check later...if I did its only the 2nd one in 10 countries!! Anyways, we checked into our hostel, it was a little sketchy but we were so tired it didn't really matter. We walked around Kings Cross, the whole area was a little sketchy but we survived. Found a backpacker travel agent place to figure something out for our time here but they were about to close sooo we grabbed food instead, then went back to the hostel and pretty much just passed out.
Thursday we woke up realllly early- like 4am but didn't really get up until about 8. We got ready and went to the travel place, talked to the girl for a while and considered a bunch of different options that would allow us to see a prety decent amount in 18 days. We eventualy decided on a Brown Dog tour which usually starts in Brisbane, goes through the outback up to Cairns and then from Cairns down the east coast to Brisbane. Butttt the next trip leaving from Brisbane wasn't until the 25th soooo we called and found out that we could fly up to Cairns and do the trip backwards and end back in Cairns! Sweet! So we booked flights to and from Cairns and then booked the Brown Dog trip. Its all inclusive- food, accomodation, travel, scuba, sailing, cattle farms, sheep sheering, EVERYTHING you can imagine! How sweet is that?! None of the other options covered as much ground or were as cool, they also weren't all inclusive and when we worked it out, this one was the best! I'm super excited!!
So, we left there and decided to walk into Sydney...that's when the heavens opened and we got absolutely soaked! Oh, I forgot to mention that this was also the coldest day in Sydney in Nov. Since 1905!! Rediculous!! 15degrees C. Sick. But we made it into Sydney, visited the Sydney Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, Circular Quay etc, the observatory, and I saw Nemo swimming around in the harbour!! :). We wandered around for a while before heading back to Kings Cross. When we got back we got a coffee and tried to start figuring out a plan of attack for New Zealand- hopefully something similar to this Brown Dog tour...not sure yet. Last night we just hung out, our hostel sucked as far as social people go and we started falling asleep pretty early so we weren't exactly social either...jetlag sucks. We went to bed somewhat early.
This morning (Fri) we got up, grabbed a shuttle and headed to the airport...this is where the confusion for today began. The shuttle dude asked where we were going so I told him Cairns (in Australia), he said, "oh internttional" so I said no, Cairns, but he insisted it was an international flight, so I let him. We arrived at the international terminal with an hour to spare but a line about 2 hours long, sooo we skipped the line and sweet-talked my way into getting us checked in ASAP. The dude at the desk made some smart-ass comment about how we should have been there earlier b/c it was international, so I impolitely informed him that I was pretty sure Cairns was in Australia, and yes a different state but not international. He said the plane was going to Japan and I should have been there earlier. Well, shit, how was I supposed to know?! Ugh. So he wrote in on my boarding pass (which was stupid since we give those to staf) that any flight number below a 400 was international and any flight number above was internal. Well ours was 167 and I guess we were supposed to be psychic to know that it was international. Whatever. The other lady at the counter was saying how there are always empty seats on this flight b/c people go to the internal terminal (a whole train station away, Sydney is not a small airport!) So clearly there's a flaw in there system and maybe Qantas should inform people of this!!
Anyways, we made our flight, others didn't. We arrived in Cairns 2 1/2 hours later and an hour behind- Cairns thinks daylight savings is stupid- smart people!! We called the hostel to be picked up, they asked what terminal we were in so I said international, she asked where we flew from, so I said Sydney and we stood outside to wait. We waited and waited, eventually the shuttle showed up, she had been at the internal terminal!! No shit!! That's what we thought too!! Damn Qantas!! Although the food they served was amazing!! So we finally made it to the hostel and its amazing!! We're currently sitting by the pool!!! A pool at a hostel?! Sweet!! Its 28degrees C and beautiful!!
So there ya go!! I'm all caught up and we're ready to embark on a whirlwind tour of Queensland, OZ. :)
...Makesure you read below b/c I posted all of Prague earlier today!
P.S. I'm 15 hours ahead of FL, and 10hours ahead of England :) its going to be xmas and new year for me before allll of you!! Muhahahaha :)
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Prague!

2006-11-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

Where to start?
Our last day in England was spent doing random last minute things, and then we took the train around 3 to go to the airport. The flight took about an hour and a half.
We arrived at our hostel in Prague around 10-11pm and since it was Dave's bday we though we'd find at least 1 beer. We checked into the hostel- www..hostelelf.com and went to go get a beer when we were stoped by Frazer, a Canadian. He said he wanted to go out so we just tagged along with him. We got to the bar he had friends at and they were leaving...Will and Niko- From Perth, Danny- from Tasmania, Paulo- from Brazil, a guy from Scotland and a guy from LA, and I think that's it...I could be forgetting someone. We wandered around for ages trying to find a bar we wanted to go to and eventyally found one we liked...an Irish bar of course, would you expect anything else is Prague?! So we had a beer there but then they closed so we went hunting for somewhere else. The next bar was almost double the price so we gave up on that. We walked home but got lost haha and took a long way home, got back and hung out for a little before going to bed.
Friday Dave and I slept kind of late before wandering around the city for a while. We went accross the famous Charles Bridge, went to the old Town Square, saw the crazy clock, and a ton of cool architecture. The weather was pretty good, somewhat sunny and kind of warm. We went to the grocery store on the way home to get some food to keep at the hostel and went home. We bought beers from the 24hr place accross the street and hung out in the common room with everyone. Eventually we headed out and went to a couple of different bars with the gang and Abbey- from Arizona but ha lived in Prague before so knew where to go, and 3 girls from Australia- Chelsea and I can't remember the other 2. Oh and Roger came out with us too! He's an older dude also from Tasmania, super interesting- is a famous sculpter, works with the goverment, has traveled to over 100 countries, all kinds of cool stories. We went to Blind Eye which is where we started the night before. It was pretty cool but we only had 1 beer before moving on. I can't remember the name of the next place we went to but it was great! It was a ton of underground rooms with a bar in almost every one. We had a couple of beers there before moving on to a club called 'U Sudu' which was pretty fun, we had a few more beers there before the group kind of split up a bit. Roger and some others went home, then I grabbed a cab with Danny...too cold to walk and drunk enough to not want to navigate, Dave and Abbey stayed a while longer. It was a fun night.
Saturday dave and I slept late and then got up and wandered around again but were too tired and were only out for a couple of hours haha. Its ok though, Prague is one of those cities that you can do that in, plus we still had a lot of days left! We came home and napped for a bit before buying beers and hanging out on the couch again. A bunch of people went out and Dave went with them but I was too tired and hung out at the hostel for the night which was a lot of fun too. Dave and I made plans with Roger to go to Karlstejn Castle early Sunday morning so I got some sleep for that adventure.
Sunday morning we got up at like 9- ouch!! Showered quickly and met with Roger. Dave had bee out until like 5am so she was in a little worse shape than me haha. Roger found it amusing. We took the train about 45mins out of town to the castle. Its known as a fairytale castle and it was pretty on the outside. Its up in some hills in a littlw village so it was great to get out of the city. Especially since the leave have changed colors but haven't fallen yet, for the most part so it was beautiful out there. The price included a tour and our guide was pretty funny, but there was nothing in the castle!! Apparently an Austrian King had stolen it all back in the day so uh yeah it was an empty castle...sweet..someone should include that in the tourist travel books. But we had fun, we were all pretty stupid...Roger had bought a big bag of peanut M&Ms and in the middle of the dudes speech he droped one and it bounced and rolled accross the concrete floor hahah it was pretty funny but you might have had to have been there. We made our way back from the castle, Roger decided to do some more sight seeing but Dave and I thought a nap might be more suitable...I slept for about and hour, Dave slept for about 4! Got up, hung out, grabbed some food for dinner- a bag of crisps, a magnum ice cream, a mars bar, and this wafer thing that I had choked on the day before- I thought I'd give it a second try! Oh ans some beers of course. Sat on the couch and everyone got into a debate about which order I should eat my dinner in, and they concluded that I should have eaten the crisps, then the ice cream, the mars bar and the wafer. This did not happen as I ate the ice cream first so that it wouldn't melt, then the crisps. I didn't eat the mars until way later and shared it with the boys...shockingly generous since Mars' are my fav! Haha. And I didn't get round to eating the wafer- others did.
Monday the boys woke us up and we went to Bohemian Bagel for breakfast/lunch...we sat there for ages staring at maps and planing future trips :) Danny changed his ticket to stay an extra week instead of heading home. We left there and went to the John Lennon Peace wall which, to be quite honest is just a ton of grafitti. There we split from the boys and Dave and I went to Prague Castle. The Cathedral was pretty cool but other than that it wasn't too impressive. Dave and I split up and both wandered around seperately...I didn't really do much and it was raining so I headed back to the hostel. Hung out there for a while, then decided we should probably shower and make an effort, the boys managed to grab showers first and by the time Dave got in there all of the hot water was gone..sweet. I went to a local Czech restaurant w/ Danny and Mark and had an amazing salad ha, it was really great! We headed back and everyone else had already started drinking, I hopped in the shower thinking it would be warm by then but I couldn't have been more wrong! It was absolutey freezing, but I had t shower then b/c we were leaving realy early in the a.m to fly to Sydney. Brrr.
Hung out upstairs for the evening, we'd colectively decided that it would be an Absynth night since it was so many of our last nights there. Gross, Absynth is gross. We had fun though, tons of fun. Went to bed really late, only about an hour of sleep before we got up at 5am! Dave and I somehow made it to the airport, and onto our flight. We flew 2 hours from Prague to Vienna, switched planes, flew 12 hours to Kuala Lumpur, got off the plane, went through security, waited half an hour, got back on the same plane, flew 7 1/2 hours to Sydney. I slept the ENTIRE time, I didn't even watch a movie, I somehow managed to eat all of the meals (free food can't be turned down) but yeah, slept the whole time!! Clearly it pays off to stay up all night before flying 20 hours. So yeah, we left Tues a.m and arrived Wed. Night!
And that's Prague!! Good times, great new friends!! Can't ask for much more than that!!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

I'm caught up!! Leave some love!!

2006-11-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

Saturday night we all went out and met up in town for some drinks…went to The Slug and Lettuce, then O’neils for a little before going to H&H for a yummy chicken wrap.
Sunday we went into Welwyn to go shopping again, I didn’t buy clothes and split from Sara and Dave…I bought 2 books instead haha go figure. **I’ve since read 1 1/2 of these- “My Best Friend’s Girl” by Dorothy Koomson was a great chick-book! Totally recommend it to the girls!! And now I’m reading “The Island” and I can’t remember who its by, its not amazing but its good.**
Monday we went Edinburgh! Caught a flight, which was late- 1 of the 4 EasyJet flights we’ve been on has been on time, but they’re cheap so can’t ask for too much. We arrived, checked into our hostel, which was great!! Then went to wander around and explore. Its beautiful up there, one day I’ll back and explore Scotland further. Soooo yeah we just looked around. Tuesday=Halloween: we got up and went for an adventure up to Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat. We hiked up to the top, it was soooo tall, we got a great view of the city but it was soooo cold!! The wind was gusting like crazy. We met to Australians at the top, they took our pics and vice versa and we made our way down. But of course Dave wanted to go further sooo we climbed some other thing before going home about 3 hours later! But it was fun! We took some pics, they’re pretty amusing…we saw the queen’s palace for when she is there. Then I think we found a coffee shop and sat for a while before heading home. We showered etc, and got dressed in non-halloween costumes…no room in our backpacks and certainly no room in the budget for costumes! We went on the free bar-crawl that the hostel put on and it was kind of fun. We met a guy from WI, he was with 2 others, and they all go to the Air Force Academy and are studying abroad in S. France. We actually only went to 2 bars on the bar crawl before we split from the group. Went to another bar and ran into the guys from Australia who we met when we were hiking! One of them is a race car driver! How cool is that?! Haha. At bar time we headed back to the hostel and ended up watching some of “Scar Face” before giving up on it and going to bed. Wednesday we went to Edinburgh Castle and it was actually really cool. It’s huge!! We walked around for hours, literally like 3 hours, and saw the Scottish Crown Jewels so that was cool too. Then we walked up to some Column at the top of a hill, and a Roman ruin of some sort, and then we were tired so found a coffee shop and chilled for a while. Went back to the hostel, grabbed our packs and went to the airport. When we arrived the flight was 2 hours delayed!! Soooo annoying!! We flew into Luton, had to take the train to St. Albans and a taxi to Welwyn, it took soo long, we didn’t get into bed until about midnight- long day!
Thursday- Sara, Laura and I spent some time together, Laura decided not to go to Uni. and we all went shopping- AGAIN! I bought an outfit for my brand-new baby cousin, Michaela! She was born on Monday the 30th in Adelaide, Australia! And I bought her big brother, Ethan, a stuff-lion toy that I wanted to buy myself, but used him as an excuse :) haha and I don’t have their address so until someone sends it to me, the lion (and an outfit for a newborn) will be in my backpack haha. Thursday night we went out for Chinese and celebrated Dave and Katie D’s birthday’s a little in advance.
Friday Dave and I went for a run. Hahahaha and that’s all we did hahaha. Friday night we went to Katie D’s and had a few drinks, well more than a few. Then we went out in St. Albans, apparently to 4 bars, and then to a club. It was fun, I have some pretty amusing pictures, if you’re lucky I might find time to put them before we leave tomorrow. Anyways, Friday night we stayed at Katie D’s instead of paying for a taxi home. Saturday morning we woke up at like 8.00 freeeezing, jumped in the car and went home and straight back to bed, until noon! We all got up around the same time, I ate a sandwich and was back in bed by 12:30! I slept until 3:30 and by the time I showered it was dark again haha, productive day! Saturday night we semi-repeated the night before but with a lot less alcohol and a lot less bars! Everyone went home around midnight but I stayed out and met up with Ceri, a friend from school who now lives in Cardiff. Hadn’t seen him for about 3 years so it was good to catch up for a while.
Sunday I went to lunch with Katie S and her b/f Matt, then I hung out in St. Albans for a little. I visited my granddad and hung out with him for a while before taking the bus back to Welwyn. Dave and Sara went with the gang to see “Borat” but I really don’t want to see that so I stayed home and watched a movie here with Ralfie the hamster!
Monday Dave and I took the train down to Brighton on the south coast. We went to the pier and the Royal Palace. We met up with my dad’s best friend from school and his family. I haven’t seen them since ummm 2001 and their kids are 16, 18 and 20 now, which is a lot different to 11, 13 and 15! We had Thai and it was delicious! Dave and I hopped back on another million trains and finally made it home late that night. Tuesday Dave and I walked to the station and got back on the train and headed south again, just not quite as far…this time it was to Epsom which is close to where I was born! We met up with my uncle Clive, aunt Janet, cousin Faye, and my other cousin’s wife Fliss who is ready to have a baby any day now- literally, like now! We had lunch and caught up for a while before Dave and I jumped on another 85 trains but this time to St. Albans. We met up with Sarah W for a drink and watched Man. U lose to Southend- pitiful! We attempted the pub quiz but it was really hard and the dude was really loud so we left.
Wednesday- today!! Hooray!! I’m up to date!!
Today was great!! Yesterday Paul invited Dave and I to watch one of his dad’s horses race, so of course we said yes! However, this meant that we had to take another 900 trains, but its ok! It was totally worth it. When we got there, Paul had been able to get us on the list, kind of, so we got “owner” badges! Paul, his dad and his little bro Robbie showed up a little after we got there. Their horse- Mina- was in the 3rd race…b/c we were with the owners we got to go in the owners circle in the middle where they parade the horses around in front of the crowd, we listened to Mina’s jockey’s race plan (it was like being back at crew…kind of! Haha) anddd we got to watch from the “owners and trainers” portion of the stands. Mina’s race took off and she wasn’t looking like she was going to do well, but all of a sudden she took off and won by a length and a ½!! How cool is that?! Our little Mina won!! It was soo exciting! Then b/c we were with the owner we got to stand with Mina when she came in, Paul and I had our picture taken with her, and then Paul went up to receive the cup that they won. Then they took us through to the winner’s room where they served us champagne and played the race back for us to watch. Then they gave Paul’s dad a DVD of the race (how cool is that? That would be sweet for crew!) We watched the next race come around and then came home. Paul gave us a lift home (hooray for no more trains today!! The train there took 2 hours, and the drive home should have taken 30mins but we got stuck in traffic and it took about an hour and some). Paul’s little bro is going out to somewhere in CA to train race horses and be a day to day jockey- he was a professional jockey until about a month ago. Anyways, we came home and Sara, Dave and I went out for an Indian. Now we’re just hanging out, doing laundry and trying to catch up on this blog before we leave tomorrow for Prague!! And now I’m caught up!! Hooray!!
You’d all better leave some comments b/c I don’t think anyone’s been reading this lately and I’ve been working hard to catch up!! :)

catching up slowly...

2006-11-08T02:03:00.000-08:00

When I got back from Amsterdam I just hung out on my own on Friday b/c Sara was working and Laura was at uni. I did actually go for a run though haha my first workout since uhhh August! Friday night Sara and I went to Katie D's, hung out for a little while Katie got ready. She had been to Ikea and bought some sets of drawers so I sat and started to put together some of the stuff...while drinking haha. It was pretty amusing and the nails didn't go in all that straight but it’s somewhat together. Darren- Katie's neighbor stopped by which was pretty amusing, and eventually Paul (Katies b/f) showed up with Mark and drove us into St. Albans to go out. My friends Sarah W, her b/f Rich, James T and his friend Johnny met up with us so we sat and talked...I haven't seen them for over 2 years before this trip so we had lots to talk about...It was fun. We went to a couple of different bars...at bar time we went to H&H Chicken for kebabs- hooray!! On the way Sara managed to trip and fall over and Katie landed on top of her. Naturally I just stood there and laughed at them both, it was hilarious! We eventually ate kebabs and got a cab home...good night. We went to bed and it was the first time in 6-7 weeks that I'd actually slept in a room on my own, Crazy!Saturday I hung out at home for a while, then Kate B and her sister Sarah- who I haven’t seen in about 5 years I think! Came and picked me up. We went to my old school’s pool where Kate’s other sister Jane was teaching lessons. I hadn’t been in the pool since uh ’99 so it was kind of crazy, I swear it used to be sooo much bigger!! We went back to Jane’s house- Kate lives in Norfolk now and Sarah is in the Royal Navy so doesn’t live here either…Jane is the only one still in town soooo we all stayed there! Jane’s b/f Collin and his friend were busy trying to make a Halloween costume- Wizzet the Wizard (I think? Or something like that)…it was pretty amusing, he bought a child’s pink castle play tent, cut out the bottom, arm holes, and eyes, covered it in yellow felt and was going to still moons and stars on it…it was really funny, I should have taken pics. Kate and I talked and hung out, then when Jane came home we went to dinner at a great Italian place that has AMAZING profiteroles!! It was soooo good! After dinner we went across the road to a pub and had a drink. I stayed the night, Kate and I ended up staying up really late talking, was good to catch up.
Sunday Kate dropped me back at the house and I can’t remember what I did all day. Sunday night I went to a pub quiz with Sara, Paul, Furry, Mark and a couple of others and our team won!! I really didn’t have much in-put butttt it was fun. Some of the questions were pretty ridiculous!
Monday I hung out and did some laundry etc. Laura, Sara and I went to Chinese- Sara let me drive her car!! I’ve never driven in England before, it was kind of crazy to have the traffic passing on my right, other than that it was fine, oh and changing gear with the wrong hand haha. Then Sara and I went to pick Dave up from the airport…got there and found out her plane was an hour late so we took off b/c parking is ridiculously expensive- first 10mins are free so when we left we didn’t think we’d have to pay, but apparently we’d been there 11mins and they wanted to charge us £2.50 for that 1 minute, so I yelled at the dude and told him that was ridiculous, and he let us off haha. We parked in a bus stop haha and just waited for a while. Went back an hour or so later and Dave’s plane had landed but she was like the last person through customs or something...definitely had to pay for parking this time! Haha.
Tuesday Dave and I went into London, we went to London Bridge, tower Bridge, the Tower of London, and St. Paul’s Cathedral…we climbed the stairs to the top for some amazing views of London- the weather was surprisingly great so we could see everything. So now Dave and I have climbed to the top of 3 major cathedrals- St. Pauls, St. Peters and Gioraldo.
Wednesday the weather was crap and we stayed home, cleaned the house and did random stuff…nothing exciting…then went to a social club to do another pub quiz with the guys, I think we lowered the average age by about 45years. We didn’t win this time but it was fun. Except when we left I drove on the wrong side of the road haha it was pretty funny. Oh and I stole a sweet Carlsberg-England football pint glass to add to my collection.
Thursday Dave, Sara and I went to a huge shopping mall- Bluewater- for the day, didn’t really buy much…got stuck in traffic on the way home but made it eventually. Got changed and went into town to meet the gang at a bar…hung out there for a while, got H&H Kebab’s on the way home, hooray!!
Friday, Dave and I went back into London to get our hair cut by- that one that we got talked into in Covent Garden. I went first, didn’t do much different but I like it. We wandered around for a little because Dave’s appointment was in the afternoon. Went back and Dave got hers cut pretty short, it looks good.Friday night Dave and I met up with Sarah W at her house, had a couple of drinks there with her parents and cats!! I got to hang out with cats! Haha Pebbles and Tigger, we’re old friends! I talked to another friend- Little Dan, on the phone, was good to catch up with him. Then we took a cab to a cocktail bar called Mokoko’s which is pretty new, and kind of expensive but the drinks are hugeeee. From there we went to O’neils where they were playing great music so we stayed there for the rest of the night. Except bar time was at 12:30 which sucked so we went back to Sarah W’s and stayed there for the night. Saturday morning we got up, Dave and I got some breakfast in town and then took the bus back to Sara and Laura’s where we just kind of hung out for the day...I think.

more pics

2006-11-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

some more pics, but you should really read the post below this one b/c its very educational!

on the Roman wall in my home town...I have a pic of me here when I was a kid so I thought it was only right to get a more up to date one!

I was so good at tracking from my seat in the car that Barney let me sit in his seat for a bit, sooo I jumped at the chance along with my lucky bamboo and guess what?! I found a leopard!!

look at these crazy trees!!! ...on the coast in Capetown.

me on the top of Table Mountain, with Cooks Island where Nelson Mandella was imprisoned.

the whole gang: Barney our tracker, Andre our ranger, me, Sara, Laura, Mum, Dave and Dad

a tiny little tortoise that Andre somehow spotted in the road!

a mummy elephant and her baby who tried to show off and squeal at us...he was cute.

I was acting like the seal :) ...Capetown.

Guy Fawkes...

2006-11-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd take a moment to educate those of you who are not English...
Today is the 5th of November which means it Guy Fawkes Day. For those of you who have seen "V for Vendetta" this is that...kind of. So there are fireworks and bonfires everywhere! Quite festive.
For more info please see:
http://www.internet-at-work.com/hos_mcgrane/holidays/gregory.html

"Remember remember the 5th of November,
Gunpowder Treason and Plot.
We see no reason why
Gunpowder treason should ever be forgot!"

haha. Enjoy.

p.s. I'm working on catching up, don't panic! stay tuned!

Amsterdam

2006-11-02T15:48:00.000-08:00

Ok so I've gotten horribly behind and have been to 2 more countries since I last wrote anything!! So this is going to be semi-brief so that I can catch up.
Dave and I flew out to Amsterdam, our flight took off like an hour late..sweet. Daves uncle, Marco, picked us up from the airport which was great, its always nice to be met. We went to their home by the Hague...when Kristy got home we went to a Thai place for dinner and it was really good but kind of strange- you don't order, they just bring a selection of what they're serving, and that's all. But it was really good because we got to try 4 different dishes all at once. The next day we went to the Anne Frank house/museum which was interesting, we wandered around a little before Kristy met us with Daves 2 cousins Jonah and Luca and we went to the Van Gogh museum which was fun ( and didn't take too long since the boys are 5 and 7 :) ) it was cute. We went back to the house and hung out for a while. Jonah bought himnelf a puzzle of a lion at the museum s I sat with him and we did the puzzle...soo cute! Then Luca came over and he asked me what my bblackberry was and so I showed him and he sat there typing on it to practise his English..and Dutch. We had dinner and then we booked our flights to Edinburgh.
The next day the boys decided to wake us up around 7am so that was fun... Jonah likes to make animal noises- like me!! Sooo they came in as lions. Once they had to go downstairs to get ready to go to school Dave and I went back to sleep and slept late. Once we eventually ventured out we went to the Heineken brewery where we received 3 beers included in our admission! Sweet!! After that we went to the Hard Rock cafe so I could get a pin. Went to a coffeeshop for Dave, wandered through the red light district, which was uhh interesting...left and got mildly lost on the way home, eventually got home and pretty much just went to bed.
I left the next morning (Friday) to go back to England but Dave stayed until Monday.
Ok I'm sending this before you all give up on my blog!!
Please stay tuned, England has been really fun and I promise I'll tell you about it all!!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

food for thought

2006-10-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

"Writing cannot say all that is in a person's mind, thus I give you only the rough account of my thoughts."

Si-ma Qian, China ca.145 - ca.85 BC

...I stole this from Michael.

some pics

2006-10-25T03:44:00.000-07:00

we cause trouble in England too...w/ Katie
on the rocks in Capetown

we rode elephants!! (not in Kruger obviously)

We're trouble for sure, and Andre (our ranger)

Elephant! he got grumpy with us.

the 4 trouble makers! me Sara, Laura and Dave

Rhino!!!

a mummy leopard chilling out before finding breakfast for her cub:

a young lion sniffing us...Laura thinks its saying "look at me, i'm hot"

Erin and I enjoying the full bar that was kept in the truck on safari!

Erin and I learning salsa etc in Madrid

in Gaudi's park, Barcelona:

Sagrada Familia church, Barcelona:

Duomo in Florence:
Colliseum in Rome:

pic from Santorini

2006-10-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Jeff was kind enough to email me a pic of "the Family" from Santorini, so here it is.
Erin, Aiden, Amanda, my left eye, Jeff, Christina, Matt, Sarah, Carter
good times :)

Heineken

2006-10-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

Erin and I have done kind of alot in Amsterdam and I will fill you all in on that tomorrow, but for now, heres a picture to amuse you ...
http://heinekenfm.bitmove.tv/bitmove/cgi/receive.jsp?uid=9FD974B3A35AEDDD003B902A7BA3B02E

I actually dont know if that will work...try it, let me know

Heading back to London tomorrow..

I got behind!!

2006-10-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

My hair straightener blowing up completely threw me off track and I'm really behind in my blogging!! Or at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!!
Wednesday night we went to the best pizza place ever- Pizza Express!! Soo yummy!! Then to a pub where we met some of Sara's friends. We missed the England v Croatia game but apparently we didn't miss much b/c it sucked and England lost!! We hung out for a while and came home relatively early.
Thursday we went into St. Albans and did some shopping- all of us bought new shirts to wear out Sat. Night (more about that later), other than that we didn't do much. On the way home we picked up some yummy fish and chips from the chippy that we used to go to. Ate that and just hung out for the evening.
Friday Erin and I took the train into London to see some sights, soooooooo we saw Trafalgar Square, Nelson's Column (not to be confused with Christopher Columbus in Barcelona!!) Haha, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Leicester Square, we had tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace- where we did not see the changing of the gaurd b/c the gaurds had been bad and weren't allowed to change!! (Just kidding)Covent Garden- my favorite!!! Some dude approached us and asked about our hair ha, turned out he was trying to sell this package- hair cut etc at a 5 star salon, day getting beautified at a studio and then a photo shoot, and then a years worth of free entry into the London Nightclubs! Apparently its all worth £500 and he was selling it for £50. We told him we don't have that kind of money and wouldn't even be able to utilize the free nightclubs, we bartered with him a little and got it all for £25 each. I still didn't quite trust him so I borrowed his phone called the salon...the dude who answered wasn't too impressed w/ my question, but we booked appointments on the 27th...we'll see how that goes!! After wandering around Covent Garden for a while we decided to go to St. Pauls Cathedral and climb to the top of the bell tower- just to makesure that we go up the 3 tallest in the world!! (Already did the other 2). Well it was 3.50pm and it closed at 4. Note to self- check times before doing stuff. so we went home. We hung out at home and watched some movies- in preparation for a wild night Sat!!
Saturday- Erin and I went into St Albans to go to the market...mooched around there for a while, walked around the St. Albans Abbey/Cathedral and then took the bus to visit my Grandad. Hung out with him for a while then walked back past my old house and Laura and Saras old house to meet Laura at her aunts. We went home and made a stir fry- Sara was supposed to be cooking it but screamed and ran away as soon as the veggies hit the pan! Had a drink with dinner, turned out to be the begining of a rediculously alcoholic night!! After dinner we all got ready- I borrowed Laura's straighteners ha... We headed out around 7.30, picked up Laura's b/f Dru on the way and went to Katie's house warming party. It was BYOB so the girls took a bottle of vodka and I took a small coca cola bottle of rum :). We didn't know anyone there so we were pretty anti-social and very drunk very fast! At about 10.30 we climbed into taxis and went to St Albans...I ended up in a taxi full of strangers, one of which was from Wisconsin- how crazy is that?! So we arrived at The Peahen and I had conveniently taken what was left of my rum with me hahaha so I got a coke and made my own drink :) I'm thrifty...or broke. Paul M said he would meet me out and said he was at a different pub so I went to find him. For some reason I thought he said he was at O'Neils so I begged the bouncer to let me in w/out waiting in line haha, a few people weren't too happy about that! When I got inside I realized that he was at Lloyds haha so I left ASAP and the bouncer shook his head at me and was like "where now?!" So I told him and he pointed me in the right direction....my good charm didn't work for me at Lloyds, they wouldn't let me in. So I headed back to The Peahen. Eventually Paul met me there and we all headed out to a club. We had a pretty crazy fun night and stayed until they turned on all the lights at 3.30am! Good times!! We took a cab home and when we got there I decided I wanted to sleep on the couch, wait, more like a love seat...pretty small haha. The girls thought I'd go to bed pretty soon but uhm I woke up on the couch at 9am hahaha. Then I went to bed until noon! We got up and sat around for a while re-capping the night before venturing out to a sunday pub roast lunch. Yummy!! Katie, her friend Dan and another guy Darren met us there and we hung out for a while. Afterwards we decided to go home and be hungover on the couch for the rest of the day. And that's what we did. The next time we were brave enough to leave the house was at night to go to Dru's pub for "take-out night" where you can order whatever delivery food you want and eat it there with everyone. Soo I ordered a spring roll from the Chinese- this thing was massive!! Like the size of 5 american chinese spring rolls!!- and I ordered a na'an bread and sauce from the Indian. Yummy!! Then we went home and put in another movie but I went to bed.
Monday we eventually decided that we didn't really want to do anything so Sara dropped Dave and I off in St. Albans and we sat in Verulamium Park and hung out haha. We saw the Roman ruins and I fed some geese grass!! Ha!! I love ducks!! We watched a school of little kids play, they were chasing eachother around the bench we were sitting on- soo cute! Sara picked us up about 5 hours later...I can't believe we sat there that long!! Went home, cooked some dinner, got ready and went to a pub in Hemel Hempstead to meet up w/ Sarah W, Katie S and Dan T from school. Hadn't seen them in about 2 1/2 years so it was good to catch up.
Tuesday/today, Dave and I got up, packed our packs and Sara drove us to Luton airport. We flew on a really quick flight- like 40mins, to Amsterdam! Dave's uncle, Marco, picked us up from the airport- its always great to be met at the airport!! And he drove us to their house before going back to work. Dave's aunt, Kristy came home after a while and we sat and talked with her about our trip- she travelled when she was our age too, and travels a lot for business. Marco came home w/ their eldest son, Luca, 7. We hung out for a while before going to dinner at a great Thai place in Delft. I've never eaten Thai before and this place was perfecrt b/c you don't order, they just bring you what they are serving!! So we had a soup and then a plate w/ 4 different types of dishes on it- all very good. Then they bring grapes for dessert...very good. Now we're home and I'm going to read before bed.
This took forever to type...you'd better leave some comments!!
G'night from Amsterdam!
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Tragedy!!

2006-10-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

So I didn't bring hair straighteners on this trip b/c I didn't want to carry them. Big mistake. Had my mum bring them to SA so I could keep them for the rest of the way...used them once there at Singita...started to straighten my hair tonight ready to go out and they blew up!!!!!! Crazy black smoke everywhere!!! I kind of hung them out the window!! Now what do I do?!?!
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Capetown adventures

2006-10-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday night was pretty uneventful, we had Indian for dinner- not my fav. But it was ok. Dave Sara and I went out after to find a pub or something fun, we ended up at an Irish pub (go figure! The irish are everywhere) there was live music but it was pretty empty- sunday nights aren't all that popular for getting wasted I guess. Monday we bought a ticket for the hop on hop off bus around Capetown. The first stop we chose to see was a local market- I think everyone except me bought something crafty-esque. We got back on the bus and I got off at the SA Museum, arranged to meet back on the bus at whatever time. The other 3 kids went to the District 6 museum and my parents went to something to do with jewellery. At the museum I ran into 3 women who were at Singita (in Kruger) with us!! Crazy small world we live in!! The museum was ok, nothing exciting. I got back on the bus and picked the others up along the way. Next stop: Table Mountain. The weather had cleared up- it was still windy and kind of cold but it was semi-sunny. We took the cable car to the top and it was sooo much colder up there haha. We took pics and then took cover in the coffee shop!! After Table Mountain we drove aroiund the coast to Camps Bay where it was rumored that there would be hot surfers but I didn't see any. It was beautiful though!!!! Mountains and beach and huuugeee waves, beautiful. I climbed some rocks and dodged the water, Dave clampered up after me and we posed for some great pics! We grabbed some lunch there before heading back to the hotel area. There we wandered around the craft markets and made random purchases. I bought a little hippo head necklace like my fish one from Barcelona...I think I'm going to collect random pieces of jewellery like this as we go- I have the sea turtle anklet from Santorini too. Anyways, the hippo's name is Wyclef after the guy who sold him to me haha. Ummm after that we didn't really do anything, then met up for dinner.
Tuesday I stayed in bed for a long time, we didn't have to check out until 11am so I took advantage and lazed around for a while. The girls wandered around I think, and then all of us met up, got some lunch/bfast and wandered around some more. The weather was beautiful, we sat outside and read for a while and got a tan :) hooray for sunshine!! Didn't realy do much, then packed up and headed to the airport. Mum and dad dropped us off as if they live there ha it was kind of funny. B/c of what happened at the begining of the SA trip Dave, me and the girls came to England about 4 days early, but my parents are in SA until Saturday. Soooo we went through, Dave and I looked at buying liquor in duty free but eventually decided against 2 litres!! got on the plane surrounded by old people and little kids! The kids were cutu, the old people were not, and they were crabby. The flight was about 12 hours, overnight, so it wasn't too bad. We watched "The Lakehouse" which I enjoyed. Then we passed out. I woke up at about 4am with 3 hours to go...couldn't sleep so I dunno what I did but the time went by haha maybe I fell asleep again.
Arrived in London this morning- Dave had some issues getting through customs but it wasn't too bad. The 3 of us with British passports breezed through customs haha, Dave got 20questions, but she also got a stamp!! I didn't :( this is country #6 and I only have 1 stamp!!
Jamie (Sara and Lauras cousin) who I grew up with too, picked us up from the airport bright and early this morning. Although it wasn't bright, it was dark and raining! We came back to Sara and Laura's house, changed and ambitiously took off to London on the train. We hit Oxford street for some quality shopping, only to find after the first couple of shops that it was pouring with rain! We dodged it for a while but eventually got soaked!! We called it quits and came home, peeled off our soaked clothes, made piles of laundry EVERYWHERE! Started some washing, showered etd and now we're just hanging out. Tonight we're going to a pub in St.Albans, where we grew up, to watch the England v. Croatia friendly, hooray England!!
Cheerio!
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4 legs or 4 wheels

2006-10-08T06:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning we got up, I grabbed some breakfast and went over to the stables. Mum and dad had booked me an hour ride! Hooray!! I haven't ridden a horse in about 5 years but I guess its something you don't forget. My horse's name was Pepsi, she was pretty cool, a polo horse; and the guy who took me out was called Lucky. We went out and walked around the perimeter of the hotel grounds which border the Tsitsikamma national park so its realllly pretty- very green and lush. Lucky asked me if I knew how to ride so we could go a little faster haha I told him ithat was fine, haha he said that people say that then they trot and can't get the horses to stop haha...Pepsi trotted, Pepsi stopped, we survived haha. We rode accross a couple of the polo fields- there are 5 there in total...we galloped accross a couple of pieces of open ground, (and Pepsi slowed down and stopped at the end...survival!) It was great! At one point Lucky told me not to loosen the reins b/c there were babboons around and Pepsi doesn't like babboons haha I've never had to worry about babboons when riding a horse before- it was pretty funny.
After the ride I went back, showered, packed and met up with everyone else...we left pretty quickly to head to Capetown. I started the drive and drove the first 250km- about 2 1/2 hours, we stopped for some fooooood and dad took over and finished the trip- about another 350km. We went to the airport first and sorted out mine, Dave's, Sara and Laura's tickets home to London...so we're heading to Hertfordshore on Tueday the 10th- for those of you who are reading this in England- be ready to hang out and party!! From there we drove to the waterfront area and found a hotel which is prety much in the middle of a huge shopping area. We walked around a little and found something to eat. Its cold down here!! And raining!! Its supposed to clear up tomorrow- let's hope so.
Today we just wandered around some shops, then I got some food from the supermarket and split from the group for a while...now I'm watching Misty May and Kerri Walsh play beach volleyball! ...they're winning of course :)
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Canopy tops and elephants

2006-10-06T13:04:00.000-07:00

This morning we got up early-ish but late compared to safari... 7.30 today. Dave Laura and I jumped on Sara b/c its her B'Day today- she's old now, 24! Haha. She didn't get out of bed since only mum Laura Dave and I were going to the tree top canopy slide thing...I can't think what its called...I drove us about 20mins east to the office of this thing- stone river adventurest (I think...too tired tonight)we put on harnesses and then got driven to the Tsitsikamma (try saying that drunk) Indigenous Forest where we got hooked up to wires and we flew through the canopy...it was fun, not quite as fun/cool as I thought it was going to be, but it was good. We drove back to the hotel, ate lunch and sat by the pool for about an hour. Then we went to an elephant sanctuary, we learned a lot of cool facts- all of the elephants there have been rescued, 1 of them was a house pet, no joke!! Who does that?! A couple of them were caught wreaking havoc in a village in Kruger, and I can't remember the others' stories... We were shown the grounds and then introduced to 3 of the 6 elephants. 3 of us went over to them with their handlers and we said hi and pet them hahaha I pet an elephant. Then they told uys to stand in front of them with our hand behind us and fingers turned up, the elephants placed the end of their trunks are our fingers!! It was a really strange feeling when they breathed in/out, super cool!! We walked for a while like this, then we stopped and learned the stories of the elephants and they showed us some tricks...nothing crazy. Then they had the elephants open their mouths, they're crazy cool!! They have 4 huge molar-type teeth and they get 5 sets of these over their lifetime, when 1 falls out it is replace from the back and they're all pushed forward, kind of like an escalator...super cool...I have a picture, its crazy!! After this we walked them around a little more, then we got to ride them...this was kind of crazy but they're kind of comfortable ha, although if you're going to ride an elephant then I reccomend wearing long pants b/c their hair is very rough! The whole trip was very interesting although kind of sad after seeing the elephants in Kruger in the wild. But it was good. We came back and since we were pretty gross we figured we'd take out the quads again, the 1 Sara and I took yesterday wouldn't start so only Laura and Dave went out. Sara and I hung out for a while, then I took a shower for an hour! Ha j/k but it was long, and great! After hanging out with elephants you're pretty gross! Thennnn we got ready and went to dinner! The food was yummy again but none of us really ate much, we're all pretty tired. Another early night... Tomorrow we're moving on to Capetown...
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Alcoholics!!

2006-10-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night after dinner we retired to the bar and had a lot of fun! Difference- our butler- poured us more rediculously strong drinks, doubles all round- sweet!! Haha we were the only people drinking, all other guests went to bed- booooring!! Eventually the secretary type lady came over and told Andre she was leaving ha. Laura took Difference's name tag and pretended to be the butler/bar tender and Dave stole Andre's name tag and also made drinks...eventually Difference came back from clearing the dinner table and we told him that it was going to be a long night and that he didn't have to stay, he could go home to his kids...he did- after he got his name tag back from Laura..and my parents went to bed too. 2 weird guys showed up and sat with us as if they wanted to be included in the party, they weren't that lucky, they could only watch, although I think Dave got them some drinks...with Andre's name tag on. So we drank, drank, and drank some more...Sara revealed some things about her that we didn't know haha and stories which were pretty amusing, and she doesn't remember telling them to us so its even better! We finidhed 2 bottles of vodka, I finished a bottle of Captain and started on Malibu which was eventually finished in shots taken in wine glasses by Dave and Andre, then we found cider haha..mall the while we have to keep an inventory of what we're drinking so we added a lot to other peoples rooms haha we don't get charged for them, its all incusive so it was fine and hilarious- I have a picture of the inventory, its pretty amusing. We eventually went back to mine and Dave's room where we caused more trouble and a lot of mess! We also brought 1/4 of a bottle of vodka with us haha and we had the free mini bar...it was trouble. Dave liked another guide- paul- and we tried to call him to get him to come join the party haha soo funny...Andre was in charge of this and he called the other lodge but that got us nowhere and we couldn't find Paul. Good times had by all...although it didn't quite feel as good in the morning when we had to go out on drive at 5.30am. Although I think we were all still drunk, the hangovers didn't set in until we'd been out and about for a while. We explained to Barney that we'd had a rough night and he just laughed at us, no sympathy there, not even for Andre. Dave asked Andre what we were looking for, he replied something to the effect of "anything, bark, lizards, trees, flowers, birds, anything that moves, find something so that we can just sit there and look at it" haha hung over safari drives are rough. We did find a Cheetah though and there are only between 150 and 350 left in Kruger National Park which is massively humungous! The Cheetah was just laying around hanging out so we sat there in a hungover stupor for a while looking at it...and Paul hahah he was there with his group too, Andre had previously radio'ed him and told him that Dave liked him haha so everytime we saw him he was looking at us trying to figure out which one of us liked him. Barney also told Paul's tracker the same thing so we were the subject of conversation. After the Cheetah we went to see a pride of 8 young-ish lions wandering down a road, we followed them for a while, and ran into Paul again haha good times. We stopped for a "comfort stop" and when we asked Barney if he had packed us any food he said yes, muffins, we all got excitedn thinking huge muffins for our hungover bodies but he pulled out a pan with muffins about and inch in diameter haha it was soo funny, we all looked in the pan and then at Barney and we all just laughed- Barney too. It didn't take long to devour those!! While we were there Sara made a comment about how we could hear a lot of birds but couldn't see them, Andre responded "yes we'll we've heard a lot of stories about you but we wouldn't want to see them" haha too funny, we all cracked up, even Barney and he hadn't heard many stories. Good times... This drive was the same as a morning after recap with all of your friends, we all just started laughing at random times. Andre made another comment after randomly laughing "you look at Sara and she looks inocent, and then you hear the stories and she clearly isn't at all" haha so true!
Anyways, we kept going looking foir basically anything that moved...Barney spotted a giraffe up ahead, kind of up a hill in the brush so we were all looking for it, some said they could see it too, but when we got closer it was just part of the road!!! It was soo funny, Barney was kind of embarrassed but it was soo funny especially considering we were all hung over and some said they saw it aswell...soo funny! We did find a couple of elephants, and even though we'd seen plenty, they're still amazing animals and their size is just unbelievable. This one was fine while we sat and watched him but when we drove away he got grumpy and was flailing his head around and running, Andre stopped the car and then so did the elephant, but he did it again when we tried to leave again...perhaps he had a rough night too!
We eventually headed back to the lodge, it was pretty sad, I didn't want to leave the animals!! And definitely didn't want this part of the trip to end :( We ate a fried breakfast in the hope of killing the hangovers, then went back to the rooms. We had to pack and be out in an hour and a half so Dave and I opted for a nap and then shower before packing...well even though we slept on the floor, we overslept and ended up with 10 mins to pack. Needless to say we had 2 rediculously badly packed packs which felt heavier than they really should have. We took our stuff out and checked out, then hung around in the lobby area for a while. I lost my checklist of animals we had seen so I started to fill out another. After a while we ate another amazing lunch before Andre and Barney came back to take us to the airport :(
Barney took our luggage ahead of us and then Andre drove us. Dave sat on Barney's seat and spotted the airport ha. It was a prety quiet ride, no one wanted to leave Singita. Once we were at the airport...which isn't what you might think of as an airport- more like a hut on a runway, though fully stocked with alcohol ha we bypassed that! We had to wait a while for our plane so Andre helped me fill out the checklist, so now its definitely right!! One of the other guide's, Derek, showed up to collect new people...he was the guy that everyone thought was cute on the first day or something- before Paul- so Andre strategically tried to get him in a picture with Dave, it was pretty funny b9/c Derek kept walking away...eventually Andre told him he wanted a picture...so now Dave has a pic of Derek but not Paul...perhaps one will arrive in an email from Andre.
Our plane showed up eventually and it was pretty hard to say goodbye to Barney and Andre, we had soo much fun there and we definitely haven't stopped talking about it since! Andre and Barney stayed by the runway and waved to us as we took off...cute, we're going to miss those guys...good times.
I forgot another quote- Andre stopped and turned off the truck to point out an animal, Sara looked at the petrol/gas gauge and it was on "E" b/c the engine was off and Sara freaked out "we ran out of petrol!!!!" Haha we all laughed, Andre said "in this vehicle F means empty, E means full!!" Haha.
We flew into JoBerg and then connected to Port Elizabeth, I slept the entire time, landed there and it was sooo cold!! We hired a car, well more like a van, and drove to a hotel...it was pretty nice but I passed out w/out even eating dinner.
Today we left Port Eliazabeth and drove towards Capetown (west), about 2 1/2 hours and found our hotel...except we passed it and hit a roadblock...it was Animal Disease Control, and they were checking for pigs or something b/c of a disease outbreak?? I can't remember exactly.
This hotel isn't really a hotel at all, more like a home, and that's what they said when we got here...its a huge ranch with polo grounds, about 100 horses, a couple of pools, a library :) quads/4 wheelers- for free!! Its cool. We took full advantage of the quads and went out on our "Self South African Safari" it was going pretty well until Dave drove her and Laura through a bog and got their quad stuck! So we had to pull it out haha it was really funny..shin deep in mud!! We even spotted tons of animals!! A frog, a shetland pony, egrets, butterflies, dalmation, ducks with red heads, some kind of stork or heron with huge beaks, horses, cows, we heard an owl haha, donkeys, people, mud, a cat...it was great!! We went through a fence that said "Alsation on guard, enter at own risk" but it didn't say no trespassing or anything so we went through hahaha next thing we know, 2 dogs came running at us barking hahaha so Sara and I spun around hit a tree and kept going hahah soo funny!! Dave and Laura couldn't reverse and were freaking out haha Sara and I just took off out of the fenced area!! Laura and Dave followed soon after, Sara and I were practically peeing our pants, the looks on their faces were hilarious...priceless.
We came back and hosed of our feet and legs and now we're just chillin by a fire on the veranda.
Tomorrow is going to be a hectic day...lots planned!!
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A kill! A kill!!

2006-10-05T02:44:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we just kind of hung out until afternoon drive at 4. This was soooooo good!! we saw tons of cool things and had alot of fun...we went down to where we saw the 3 male lions earlier and actually drove out on to the peninsula type thing that they were on. It was tough getting in, through all of the bamboo and brush but we made it eventually and it was great. At first we only saw 2 lions- older ones with manes, they are part of a group of 6 males who have been travelling together, nomads...we drove around to the other side of them, killed a few more trees along the way, Andre says that the trees will just pop back up, some do, some don't. Once we got to the other side we saw that there was a third male there...we hung out with them for a while before making the treck back up the embankment...this was the exciting part. When we drove in we pushed all the trees in one direction which made things a little difficult to get back out, it was also a little slick because of the rain in the morning. After several tries, many trees which didn't pop back up, and alot of laughing we finally made it up the embankment. Mum took a video of it on her camera, its pretty hilarious. That was definitely a highlight haha. We stopped along the way somewhere to have a Poop Spitting Contest, yes, poop spitting. Barney picked up some Impala poop- pellets- and Andre drew a line in the dirt...we couldn't go over the line and I forget what the winner/loser was supposed to do but it involved alcohol. After 4 attempts Dave finally made it more than a couple of feet, Barney's went pretty far, as did Andre's, and I can't remember if one of them won or if it was my dad, but it was pretty amusing and now I can say that I've spat poop. Nice, I'll tack that onto the bottom of my resume. After this little escapade Barney offered to let me sit on his tracking seat on the hood/bonnet of the truck, so of course, I did :)
It wasn't long before I spotted a Leopard! haha!! no joke!! So I climbed back into the truck and we went to go see it. It was a large male and he had his eyes fixed on some Impala that we couldn't see. We watched him for a while and then he stalked off towards the Impala so Andre positioned us so that we could see if the leopard decided he wanted to eat one :) We sat for a while but the Impala must have heard him or seen him because one of them snorted (their warning that something is going to eat them) and they took off. So no chase and no eating but it was still pretty cool to see. After this we went to go see the 3 lions who had moved to the side of a road and were just chillin, grooming, yawning and getting ready to go hunting. They were wrestling around and grooming eachother, it was cute. From there I think we headed home, and we weren't far from the lodge when Barney pointed his flashlight at a Jackal in the road, it looked at us, almost as if it was just going to sit there- deer in headlights style- but then it took off, Barney followed it with the flashlight and it caught a Hare!! "A Kill!! A Kill!! We just whitnessed a kill!!" haha it was pretty exciting and kind of strange that the Jackal was in the road one second and eating a Hare the next! We went home, decided on a time for dinner and then went and showered etc, Laura and Sara came over to our room and we started drinking before dinner...we warned Andre that it was going to be a big night, and that it was! Dinner was amazing once again, the food here is unbelievable!! I ate Eland which is a large ummm thing, like a Buffalo or something like that. It was realllllly good! Oh I think I forgot to say that I ate Ostrich steak at lunch and that was delicious too! Anyways, so after dinner and alot we migrated to the bar and thats where the real festivities began!
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S. African craziness

2006-10-03T02:22:00.000-07:00

This place is really just stunningly beautiful- the landscape, the animals, the resort, the people...everything.
Yesterday during the time between morning and afternoon drives we hung out on the deck and in our private pool!! Sooo nice, and the sun is rediculously hot!! While we were out there a herd of elephants walked by on the other side of the river!! And a giraffe was hanging out there too!! Soo cool!! When do you ever see elephants and giraffes from your pool?! Great!! Before we went out again at 4 for the afternoon/evening drive we were grabbing water etc and heard someone talking about being chased in the morning drive ha, turns out they had stopped to pee and grab a drink and a lizard ran into a nest of killer bees and disturbed them!! So the group had to run for about 200m before the bees left them alone but they each got somewhere around 10 stings! Crazy! Barney usually asks us what animals we want to find so I told him I wanted to see a kangaroo (and before you say anything, yes I know there are no kangaroos in S.Africa) so he laughed but went along with it and we went looking for kangaroos! No such luck but we did find 7 young lions hanging out, waiting for their mums to come back and get them for lunch! They were all pretty skinny, Andre didn't think they had eaten in a while and that they possibly even were suffering from a diease such as tuberculosis from Wildebeast that they eat. So that was kind of sad but they were still cute, one of them was trying to catch a fly buzzing around his head and another rolled over and stretched her arms over her head, super cute!! (Pics of all of this to come later of course). After we left the kids Barney spotted the mums not far away laying in the shade of a tree. 1 of them didn't look so great, she was really skinny, the other looked better but kind of mangey. I guess when you see this stuff on TV the animals all seem to be in good condition, even if they're being eaten!! But in reality these animals get sick just the same as any other and there aren't vets here, just nature. After this we found a couple of rhinos which were only the beginning of the amount we saw on that drive, we probably saw 10 in total. We stopped for a quick pee stop in "a semi safe area" as Andre said...sweet now I feel safe!! But I had to pee soo bad it didn't matter, I hopped out and wandered over to a termite mound haha probably not the best idea but that's where I was sent and I survived!! There was a Praying Mantis of the car when I got back so Andre picked it up and showed it to us, it was kind of cool. We kept going but didn't really see much else and it got dark but Barney did spot another White Faced Owl and that's only the 2nd Andre has seen in a year and a half! And the 1st was with us too :).
We got home and decided a time for dinner, got changed etc and met back then. Andre joined us for dinner too and heard more stories he probably didn't really care to hear but they're funny. Dinner was outside aeround a fire pit with lanterns and candles everywhere, it was really nice. As usual we drank our fair share of alcohol before dinner even started!! Dinner was delicious as usual and consisted of several different meats, so I tried Ostrich sausage and Wildebeast! I felt bad about the wildebeast but it wasntmuch,!! Andre tried some of mine too so I had even less!! Haha and that was the first time he had tried it too. Firsts all round! After everyone had eaten locals who are also staff came out and brought Sara a birthday cake!! They ang her happy birthday and then did some traditional songs and dances around the fire, it was beautiful and really fun!! They dragged Sara up to dance so that was pretty amusing and my mum joined in, of course!! After eating the cake we called it a night..man early one for this family!! We went back to our cabins with a storm rolling in. As our cabins, which really aren't cabins at all but I don't know what else to call them... Anywyas they're pretty much made of glass so you can see out into the wilderness but you can't be seen by others, so the lightning was amazing it was lighting up the whole area and the thunder was crazy loud b/c there is nothing here like building etc to buffer it!! But I was so tired I passed out ASAP.
This morning I woke up to the sound of the dude banging the cowbell on the door, but I think he was doing it for a while before I heard it ha, I was out! The weather today is kind of dull and it rained, well, misted while we were out on the drive- the day I wear a skirt, go figure. But there are blankets and rain jackets in the car so its fine :). Andre and Barney take good care of us. Today the car was facing a different direction when it picked us up, Barney said this is the direction that the kangaroos are!! Haha it was pretty funny. We didn't see many animals out today, we went looking for a leopard but couldn't find her, on the way we saw 2 seperate hyenas...I still think they're creepy. We saw a couple of male elephants, one was digging up a tree b/c they like to eat the roots- I took video of this on my camera and its siuper cool, you can hear some crazy birds in the background too! Another elephant was picking up sticks and stripping the bark off in his mouth and eating that only. We went back to where the hippos were (and the croc), the hippos were still there and there was a baby too!! Only a couple of months old, super cute! The croc wasn't there though. We went to a place close by where another group had spotted 3 grown male lions- with manesu hanging out on the edge of tjhe river but we couldn't get very close b/c of the terrain and the weather. Other than this we saw and named a lot of birds- Andre seems to know the name of EVERYTHING which is cool but I guess he could be lying since we wouldn't know the difference, but I trust him :). I spotted a golden tailed woodpecker ha. Andre pointed out a Goliath Heron which is the largest heron in the world, and he said their legs are steel and would break a crocs teeth, you can believe that if you want. Andre had us adventurous ones (Dave and I) pick a leaf off of some tree/bush- a Red Spikethorn- and chew it, it tasted like the peel of a Granny Smith Apple and it made our tongues and lips go numb! it was crazy! Aparently its good to chew and eat if you have an upset stomach...good to know?
We headed home and all ate a hot breakfast or at least a hot drink...its about 60degrees but wet and a little windy so it makes it kind of cold. So now I'm hanging out in bed haha. I think I'm going to nap and we're going to play Scrabble or something at some point before afternoon drive...hopefully we'll see more new animals...
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Hippos crocs and elephants...

2006-10-02T02:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoon the shit hit the fan within our group and there was a lot going on which disrupted the trip. We decided to stay an extra night in JoBerg and find a new safari to go on. Went out to a pretty quiet dinner accross from the hotel and had an early night. Sunday dad phoned and woke me up at 9.30 to figure out what we were going to do...I made a lot of phone calls and at 10.30 woke Sara Laura and Dave up, told them to be dressed, packed and in the lobby in 15mins. We piled into 2 cabs and drove 35mins to the private part of the airport. From there we caught our original 11.50 flight to Singita Game Reserve in Kruger National Park. The plane was tiny, maybe 20 seats!! The flight only took about 25mins and we landed on this tiny airstrip in the middler of nowhere. There our guide, Andre picked the 6 of us up and drove us to Boulders Lodge where we were greeted and introduced to Differnce who is our butler :). This place is absolutely unbelievable, check it out www.singita.co.za each 'cabin' is ridiculously nice!! And has its own pool, huge shower surrounded by sliding glass doors to the outside deck and surrounding African wilderness!! There's and outdoor shower which can't be seen by anyone else but it feels like you're in the wilderness. Looking from the deck there is a river where animals drink and hang out. The babboons run around everywhere- even drink out of our pool!! The only aninals that cannot come near the lodge are elephants and giraffes, as it is surruounded by an electric fence which is about 10ft off the ground- allowing lions leopards etc to come in. This means that at night and in the mornings we are escorted to and from our cabins in case of animals!
Yesterday at 4pm we went out on our first drive, just the 6 of us, Andre the driver/guide/sarcastic joker, and Barney the tracker...he seems to have a 6th sense of where animals are! So we went out and saw lots of Impala everywhere!! And a Klipspringer which is like a little deer. But our first cool animal was a giraffe!! 2 females just chillin eatin some leaves :). Then we saw 3 hippos chillin in a stream, we didn't really see much b/c they were submerged but they were cute.. Next we found a herd of elephants with some babies, soooo cute. Its really surprising how quietly they walk!! One of the babys tried to show off, he lifted his headn stuck out his trunk and his tail and pranced past us, then got scared and started yelling haha, he was cute. We were on our way back through the stream and I spotted a crocodile tanning on the bank in some reeds, Andre and Barney didn't believe me, we reversed, it was there and I subsequently won a shot at dinner later :). We stopped to look at tracks and stretch our legs, next thing we knew Andre was pulling coolers out and a ledge-like table on the front of the Land Rover, there were sodas waters beer alcohol, meat balls, olives billbong (like jerky) pretzels....crazy!! Haha it was pretty amusing and delicious. We also got into a poop war with elephant poop hahaha gross. Then Andre offered us 'berries' which only the gullable ones took- Laura, Sara, Mum- b/c they were actually giraffe poop pellets. As it got dark we started to head in and on the way Barney spotted a white faced owl in a tree, it was super cute!!
We arrived back at the lodge and decided a time to eat dinner, went back to our cabins and got changed...no showering outside b/c it was dark and we might get eaten!!
Andre joined us for dinner which started with a shot of something minty and Amarula Cream which is like Baileys...yummy. Dinner was delicious and all inclusive!! I tried crocdile meat, it was pretty good but I stuck with lamb and chicken. We were given a mint melon pallate cleansor and Laura took it like a shot and soon regretted it! Hahah too funny. We were at dinner the longest and stuck around for drinks after...good times and Andre is super cool. On the way back to our cabin we saw a little frog!
This morning we got woken up at 5am (ouch) but none of us really slept last night- not sure why, possibly the sliding glass doors that are the wall to the ouitside...the moon was really bright and the wild is right on the other side!!
We ate a snack and some fresh juice and went on our way. First animal today was lions!! 2 2 year olds, a male and female! Very cute and cuddly haha right. There was also a hyena hanging around, he was creepy and definitely ugly!! Then we went looking for a female leopard but found her cub first sitting on a rock waiting for mum to bring breakfast back. Then we found mum after plowing through trees and bushes! She was beautiful!! Then we saw more giraffes a mum dad and 3 babies (frm different mums). Then we saw a group of zebras which were crazy cool, the stripes on their faces are amazing!! Next we found some big deeer type things, maybe Caracal? I can't remember their names but they had huge curly horns. Barney then spotted an elephant and some rhinos so we went to find them... There were 2 mums and 2 babies one about 3months and one 2 years old. These were White Rhinos but not whjite in colour, just b/c of thelir wide mouths (different language translation or something). On the road back Andre dodged a tiny tortoise, maybe and inach and a half accross, super cute, so we moved it out of the road so it wouldn't get run over! We then saw a couple of Warthogs which are pretty ugly. There were some eagles flying around and some other birds- yellow billed hornbill like Zazu from the Lion King (but he was orange billed). Oh, we saw mongoose too and Squirrels!! :)
Came back for breakfast and there were tons of babboons hanging around wanting food, they're pretty crazy and not cute! When I came back to tjh cabin there were 2 on our deck by the pool!! Crazy little buggers!!
So now we are just chillin before lunch and another drive. I coukd live here, this place is unbelievable!! Check it out online for real!!

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W/ my girls :)

2006-09-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

Dave and I finally arrived in Johannesburg at about 9.30am Friday...went through customs and I finally got a stamp in my passport!! We've been to 4 different countries in 3 1/2 weeks and this is my first stamp!! Hooray!! We got our bags and made our way out, a porter asked where we were going and grabbed some random guy who was apparently a cab driver...perhaps not the safest idea. But he took us to the hotel and Chris and the girls. (Who I grew up with since forever!) met us there. The hotel is unbelievably amazing!! Its a 10000 star hotel with a pool, library, computers....its great! Dave and I have a twin room which is also luxurious, the shower is massive and soooo good, I showered for like 30mins last night! The beds are super soft, there are robes, the towels are as big as blankets, there's a TV, DVD player and free DVD's to watch!! What more can you ask for?! We arranged to meet back with everyone around 2pm once my parent had arrived. Dave and I unpacked and then went to sit at a table in the pool haha and we read for a while. Everyone came down around 2, mum and dad arrived...we had a couple of drinks, then wandered around the plaza that our hotel is in and grabbed a snack. Hung out for a while, went back to the hotel. At 6.30 we met up again and Ilene -a friend of Chris' who booked this trip for us- came and met up with us to give us the maps. We went to dinner at a restaraunt called Moyo which had some delicious food, I had a great steak stuffed with mozzarella and spinach with a delicious sauce, couscous and some veggies...everyone enjoyed the food. A group of guys came around singing and another group with drums, then there was a woman who was painting flowers and patterns on peoples faces..it was fun and the food was good. There was some pretty funny conversation such as Sara saying that she would only eat the dark spots of a giraffe...you can't eat giraffe...and we talked a lot about stuff that happened when we were growing up. We're getting old! Went back to the hotel and pretty much just crawled into the amazing beds and passed out!!
Today Dave and I slept until 10.15 then met mum dad laura and sara downstairs at 10.30, got a cab and the 6 of us went to the Apartheid museum, its new and really good, there's a lot of photography, videos and audio clips. It was interesting to learn about and shocking to think that the Apartheid only ended 15 years ago. From there we went to a mall which was kind of fancy...ate some lunch and wandered around for a little before heading back to the hotel.
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Forgot...

2006-09-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

Forgot to say that in the Matta-Clark exhibit there were free pieces of his art, one of his pieces was a wall of individual prints on newspaper and there were stacks of them for us!! Sweet!!
Also this day 9/28 is world tourism day and people were handing out free flowers!! So of course I got some :). Good day for free stuff!
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Madrid

2006-09-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

Dave and I are currently sitting in the airport in Athens waiting for our flight to Johannesburg (after a brief escapade downton) and there is a group of African women singing and its beeeaauuutifullll!
Last time I wrote in here properly was in Sevilla- that was our last day there, we wandered around that night, went to bed and took a train the next morning to Madrid. It took about 2 1/2 hours so it wasn't bad at all. Madrid was cool...another big city though. We got there, checked into our hostel- Cat's www.catshostel.com , it was pretty sweet, its new and the architecture is super cool. Its a remodelled 18th century palace!!
We went out to the Prado Museum- Goya, Boticelli... which was good but still not as enjoyable as Picasso! After that we went to Retiro Park which was pretty, we sat and read in the sun for a while before walking back through Plaza Mayora and Puerto del Sol but there's a lot of construction so it maybe was as great as it should be. At the hostel we met a father and son Cleatus and Nathaniel from M.N. Nathaniel graduated from Madison this spring also- small world. We drank in the bar downstairs for a while 3euros for a litre of beer!!! Ridiculous!!! Cleatus and Nathaniel joined us and we met some English girls who were planning to go out so we asked them to tell us when thhey were leaving so we could go to. We went to El Son, an awesome local bar where EVERYONE was dancing, Salsa etc, it was sooo much fun, locals were grabbing us and dancing with us/teaching us to dance but they didn't like that we were wearing Reefs/flip flops so we explained that carrying heals around for 4 months in a backpack isn't really something we're willing to do! haha. Soo much fun, we danced from about 1am to 5am!! Crazy!! Met a couple of locals, talked to them for a while but they didn't speak English and I don't speak Spanish so yeah that was fun...met a guy from NY, Patrick...an artist...talked to him for a while. A band showed up at 3.30am haha clearly the party was only just begining then!! It was great, definitely one of my favorite nights out on this trip, possibly ever! Soo much fun!!
We arranged with Nathaniel and his dad to meet them at 9.30am to go to a temple built by the Egyptians (we didn't even know it existed!) Getting up 4 hours after going to bed was a little rough haha but we made it. Went to the Temple of Debob which was originally built in S. Egypt, it was rescued from the dam in 1968 and moved to Madrid as a token of gratitude for aiding in saving Abu Simbel (I'm copying this out of the little guide, but it doesn't tell me who he was..google him?! Haha) it was kind of cool, and we wouldn't have known about it if Cleatus hadn't have told us... After that we wandered over to the Palace which is huuuugeeee, we were going to go in but decided against it due to lack of sleep, need to see the Modern Art museum - Reina Sofia, and lack of 100% interest in the palace. Sooooo we took the metro to the Reina Sofia, split from the guys and went in. There is a temporary photography exhibition- Gordon Matta-Clark which was really good. He buys houses or buildings and basically cuts shapes out of floors and walls etc and photographs them...kind of sounds weird but its really cool. He took 1 house, put it up on jacks, sliced it down the middle, then took the jacks out from under 1 side so it was split at an angle...who thinks of this stuff?! And there was video to show it- which he includes as art. "He showed how politics and criticism are inseparable from art even redefined modernity, a redefinition that implied evaluating architecture, cities and urban development as aesthetic experiences that are flexible and shared but in no way controlled"- from the leaflet. That took a while then we had 2 more floors to walk aound....ouch...but it was modern art so it was more fun? Ha, it wasn't bad at all. But after that we went home to take a nap haha...went out later and bought dinner...a yogurt and some candy- healthy!! Met up with Patrick from the night before, had a couple of drinks and hung out with him for a while. Passed out until our idiot room mate turned on the light at like 4am becuase he needed to see...lame excuse ha. But he was pretty ignorant, we already didn't like him, and this didn't help.
This morning we got up and checked out of the hostel, took the train to the airport, a plane to Athens!! Again! Went downtown and got gyros and frape's (as predicted), got on the metro back to the airport after paying 10euros, but 3 stops away from the airport the train stopped..."End of the line". Shit!! Why does that keep happening?! It doesn't close until midnight!! It was 9.30!!! So we went to find the bus, were told that the bus to the airport doesn't stop at this station so we had to get back on the metro in the direction we came from and get a bus from another station...more money...sweet!
Finally made it back to the airport, checked in- without luggage since its already checked, so that was weird but nice! Now we're waiting to board the plane!
This concludes the first portion of our trip- the Mediterranean in 25 days: some great new friends, some shady hostels, some great hostels, and a lot of Euro's poorer! Overall a great time! My city ranking is 1.Athens tied w/ Santorini- the whole Island and experience 2. Florence, 3. Nice 4. Madrid, 5. Barcelona, 6. Sevilla, 7. Rome. (Monaco and the Vatican City not included).
Tune in for news from S.Africa....
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Athens part 3!!

2006-09-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

Ok I know I haven't blogged Madrid yet but I thought I'd take a minute to inform you that Erin and I are back in Athens...for the third time. Hahaha. Our flight from Madrid to Johannesburg connects through Athens and we have a frikkin 7 hour layover!! Since we are experts at the metro system and the city we decided to flee the confines of the smokey airport- which I appreciate perhaps more than Dave because I sat there for 6 hours waiting for her to arrive...(see blog from day 1 of our trip). So we're heading into Plaka for a Frape with Baileys haha hooray! And perhaps gyros!
I'll blog Madrid soon...stay tuned, definitely had one of the best nights out on this trip so far!
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Sevilla

2006-09-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

The overnight train was pretty sweet, someone even came in and woke us up!! Haha.
We got lost looking for our hostel- go figure...that seems to be standard. We eventually found it and were locked out behind a gate which has subsequently locked us in and out every time since. None of the staff speak English and require you to fill out a form which is in Spanish so yeah that was a pretty sweet start to Sevilla, and It gets better- she showed us to our room and there's 1 double bed, we definitely booked 2 twins but she doesn't understand us so we're sleeping together which is fine.
After all of this we went out to explore...found downtown but bc it was Sunday everything was closed. We went to Alcazar which is a palace of sorts and I guess is still functional...got in free thanks to our student cards- hooray! It was pretty cool, it has Muslim influenece so the architecture and art work is amazing. In the middle there is a commom courtyard which has access to all parts of the palace, it has a long pool down the middle and it took me a while to figure out if it was a pond or a dirty lap pool. Pond it was. After this we went to the cathedral of Sevilla, they're pretty much next to each other. This was free too- cheap day so far :). This place was beautiful too, the gothic center altar is all gold, its amazing!! It is also home to Christopher Columbus' ashes (or remains?) In a small box in a tomb caried by 4 soldiers. After this we wandered around some more and went back to our fort knox hostel...waited to be let in again and proceded to take a 3 hour nap haha. Woke up and went to a local coffee shop, drank coffee and people watched for a while. Went home and back to sleep!! Travelling is tiring!! We slept late this morning- until about 11!! Unheard of on this trip! Got up, showered in the shower that only has 1/2 a door- sweet! And ventured out for the day... I bought a pair of jeans and a shirt from Mango, so those will be helpful as the weather cools off..although the past 2 days have been warm and sunny.
We went to the bull fighting arena and took a tour and went through the museum...it was pretty cool, its 240 years old and only 3 fighters (I can't think of their real name) have been killed there...there are fights every sunday from april until october. Dave and I were going to go to one last night but I don't think I would have been able to watch it.
We grabbed some lunch at a little local place and then we split up for the afternoon to do whatever we want. Sooooo I'm sitting in a plaza by the cathedral writing this and watching some crazy lady scream at tourists in Spanish....smart. There are also a lot of horse and carts here and the horses are in a lot betteer shape than they were in the last few cities so that's good to see.
Ok well I'm gonna go find some gelato or something :)

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I fed onion to the pigeons

2006-09-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

Haha, its true...I got a donner kebab and forgot to ask for no onions so then I was just throwing them on the ground and pigeons were eating them hahaha that must have sucked but they didn't stop...
Last night we went to go out to dinner with our new room mates but 2 of them- from Florida- were soooo obnoxious and annoying that Dave and I split from the group and went to a little local place and ate for 4euros! Sweet! Wandered around, I bought a cute ceramic fish necklace, then we headed back. Hung out for a while and started drinking then went to meet up with the boys we keep seeing everywhere. Went to one of the 10 stages for the music festival, it was really fun, everyone was dancing and having a great time. We left there and went to a couple of the other stages but they weren't as cool. Stopped by the Australian pub we seem to be regulars at, got a cider- also a regular thing now I guess :). Met 3 Aussies and hung out with them for a while, they were pretty funny...went to a club but the line was really long and the cover charge was 10euros so we left there and wandered around...nothing very exciting, didn't find anywhere else to hang out, they went to the clubs but Dave and I went home.
Today we checked out of our shady hostel and put our stuff in a locker at the train station. Frikkin rained all day!! I guess when I think of a holidy I always assume warm weather, clearly that isn't the case...its late September in Europe...
So anyways today we went to the Picasso museum and I really enjoyed it, it was great. Picasso enoyed pigeons too, he even painted them!
After that we went to the chocolate museum which was kind of cool, lots of big chocolate figures etc, even a Finding Nemo one!!! :)
We got some lunch and were pretty much homeless for the rest of the day. Now we're on an overnight train in a tiny little 4 bed cabin...Dave and I have the top 2 bunks...there are straps so you don't fall out of bed hahaha I hope the driver isn't too crazy. We arrive in Seville at 8.40 tomorrow morning- pretty sweet!
Ooook goodnight.
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Small world

2006-09-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

I think I wrote it on here but I'm going to repeat and then add to the story...in Athens we met guys on the bus to the airport, flew with them to Rome, then ran into them randomly in Florence, then tonight- in Barcelona- we ran into them again!! How crazy is that?! We didn't even know they were coming to Spain. Sooo we're finally going to hang out with them, it seems like its meant to be.
Ok well I'm going to go get ready and make an effort to remember tonight.
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Barcelonaaaaaa

2006-09-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we ventured out into Barcelona...bought a train ticket that lets
us take 10 trips and we can both use it...worked out alot cheaper. We went
to the Sagrada Familia Temple which is a work in process, started by Gaudi.
It was amazing, the architecture and design is unbelievable, its based on a
forest so the pllars are like trees and the canopy and decorated etc. It
was great, i loved it!! then we went Park Guell which is also crazy cool!!
After that we went back downtown and wandered around for a while, went to
the Block of Discord which has Gaudi's house , also unbelievably crazy
looking! We decided that we should maybe do some shopping haha its been 3 weeks since we were home and shopping so it was time ha. I really splurged and bought a pair of capris on sale for 8euros. Big deal.
We came home via a grocery store where we bought a bottle of vodka and some coke...bring on the good times :). We stopped on the way back and got a cider at a little Irish pub along the way, watched England lose to France and then went home.
Hung out in the hostel, our room mate had her laptop stolen so we basically made sure everything was locked up...whoever stole it broke the locker so if they wanted to do it again they could I guess. Don't know who it was obviously but we have a sketchy room mate...who knows.
Anyways, we drank in the hostel for a while with people who came here with us from Nice, then we went out to the bars. Met some people, a couple of guys from Sweden, and to be completely honest I don't remember the night and I didn't take pictures which is weird.
Today we got up and took the train the the olympic stadium ('92) which was almost as empty as Athens but it was kind of cool. From there we walked around, towards the port, saw Chris'/XL Video's stage crew for George Michael's opening concert of his new tour, went to the train station and booked beds on the overnight train to Seville tomorrow night. Wandered around some more, went to an internet place and booked Hostel Florida (ha) in Seville, came back to our hostel, we have new room mates- obnoxious Americans from Florida.
This city is soooo frickin loud its unbelievable, there's tons of construction all over the place and its just sooo loud.
I need a nap.
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Our bus driver ...

2006-09-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

Thought he was Jacques Villneuve...flew around ther bends, over the edge of cliffs as if he were driving a race car!! Psycho!! People were flying everywhere, no joke!...This was on the way home from Monaco, once we finally found the stupid bus.
New friends at The Zoo- Nicole and Dani from Oregon, Adam and Prince- I dunno his real name, from Australia, Alex and Mike from Canada- Alex is on the Canadian National Squash team ha, I thought that's pretty cool.
We had tons of fun, we played drinking games all night and got pretty wasted. Except 1 guy ruined it- Chuck from New Foundland, decided to play drinking games with red wine and chugged 3 bottles. Sick. He was yelling soo loud and not only were we technically in a chapel but the bed rooms aren't far away and we kept getting told to be quiet. Dave told him to use his "indoor voice, the 12 inch voice" and then she promplty translated that into metric and said "well, your 10cm voice" Haha so that was pretty amusing. This dude was sooo obnoxious he ruined my night. Then he disappeared and everything was good again. Went back to the Zoo to go to bed but alex mike and 3 other guys were goofing off quoting Ali G and his Kazakstan thing which was frikkin hilarious mainly b.c that's what Andish and Jeff were quoting/talking about in Santorini. So we pretty much woke up the non-cool people in the zoo but since we out numbered them and we of course were way cooler we didn't care. Eventually we shut up and passed out.
Monaco was cool, I guess I didn't really know what to expect, its pretty, there are some fancy cars- mainly Ferraris and I saw 1 Bentley but really not as mainy as I would have thought. There's a huge yacht show over the weekend so they were setting up for that- these yachts were like 1/2 a mile long, 1 of them had 2 jet skis, 2 little speed boats and a HELICOPTER on the back!!! What the hell?! So we drooled over those for a while and then started to wander in the direction of the bus. This turned into quite an adventure...in the morning we paid 4euro for an all day unlimited bus pass, but when we got on the 2nd bus to go to Monaco the stupid driver made us pay another 1,30 for another ticket, apparently the pass doesn't work to go to Monaco!! Clearly the rich people need to rob me of my 1,30 so I can walk on their sidewalks or something?! Monaco is 2 bus stops from the beach we went to the day before and the pass works to go to the beach, so yeah if you figure that one out let me know. Sooo we started to walk towards Cap D'Ail which is the beach we were at- we figured we'd save the 1,30 from the stupid Monaco part of the ride and then we'd useour pass on the 2 buses home. Big mistake. We walked for ages -without a map- and asked countless cops and guards etc where to go. We ended up walking around this path right on the edge of the land so we had amazing views. However this landed us in a massive multi story parking lot, it was really strange. There we found a map, asked for help- good job I paid attention in my 6 years of French class, I can say 3 things, ok maybe more than that but not a lot. Anyways after walking in circles in this random building we figure out that its the Oceanographic Museum haha, we ask for an exit and get sent to an elevator, walk in and the only but is "start" hahahaha start what?! Is this up or down?! Haha we were cracking up it was.so funny!! We pushed start and went up...to...? The museum. We got out of there and ended up in front of some Prince's palace!! Ha! Who knows?! We asked a guard for directions and he sent us down a path that pretty much took us back to where we started. Yes, that's right, we walked in a circle. But now we were armed with maps! They didn't get ud very far either, but 2 cops later we found a bus stop and just paid the frikkin 1,30euros. At one of the stops along the way we ran into New York- I dunno his name, he's in the zoo with us, and we also ran into Adam and Mike. Took the bus to the transfer, stopped at a market to get some food for cheap and then went home.
This hostel is super cool because the bar is downstairs and its far from town to everyone hangs out down there...soo that's what we did, again. We played drinking games, hung out, talked, messed around etc. Then this duder walked in- black hair, tattoos, and I dunno but he looked famous...Dave said no but others agreed with me. Eventually Adam started talking to him and he came and joined our group, his name is Joseph and he's in the band Lady Sinatra, they're based in LA, he's the singer...I told you he was famous!! Haha ok so maybe not famous yet but soon? The band is on myspace for those of you who have that. Anyways, we partied and it was another long night of fun :)
Wednesday we got up, ate another of the 11 kinds of cereal, got a ride to the bus stop during which we got a lecture about the pick pockets in Barcelona...if I come accross one I'm going to punch him.
Umm got on a train, passed out, woke up and the seat numbers had switched- no joke, they were electronic on little screens!! We sat in 82 and 88 and then it was 12 and 18...what the hell!! So we kept sitting there then other people got on and we were aparently in their seats...French people are not the most polite so we moved and I was psyched because our new seats were facing the direction we were going, then after this stop we changed direction so we were backwards again grrr! Oh and I had to kick some kids out of my new seat, they clearly didn't have tickets! Anyways, I passed out again and when I woke up we got off the train in Marseille- 3 1/2 hours later. Had a 2 1/2 hour layover there so I ventured out and found a grocery store...bread cheese ham and water, voila! Lunch! And dinner... Sat around for a while, paid to use the bathroom damn it!! Got on another train, fell asleep, ate, played cards and arrived in Barcelona 4 hours later. Wandered around like lost little souls, found the metro, rode our 3rd and 4th trains of the day, found the hostel...
Its not nearly as nice as the last couple but it will do. Had to rent sheets- soo annoying!! We wandered around a little last night but pretty much just came home and went to bed!
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11 different cereals to choose from!!

2006-09-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

This new hostel is pretty sweet- while breakfast isn't quite as good as our last place, its still pretty good!! And I guess its a top ranked hostel- I recomend it- Villa Saint Exupery.
We arrived at about 8 last night, took a bus, climbed a huge hill- with our packs of course- and finally found our hostel. Its a cute, pretty big place, it used to be a monastery!! The bar is in the chapel...ironic. We are in a 25 bed dorm, we have nicknamed "the zoo", everyone here is pretty cool, we met 2 girls from Sweden, 2 from Oregon, 3 Aussies, 2 Candians...I think that's it so far. We learned a new drinking game called Dice, we're going to play tonight. Ummm, oh yeah, beer is cheaper than water!! Haha.
This morning we got up, went to breakfast, the Swedish girls were getting ready to leave so we made plans to meet them in Barcelona this weekend- apparently there's a huge music festival there Fri-Mon so that should be sweet. Then we ventured out, down the massive hill, to find the bus to the beach...after 2 buses and a pretty long walk down a cliff we found the beach! Plaga Mala. Its a tiny little cove surrounded by cliffs with massive houses which look like they could fall off the cliff any minute. Dave and I swam out to a floating platform and hung out there for a while...Wisco we thought about you and it was about 7.15am your time- how was practice?? hahahaha. 1 star day today??
So here we are chillin on a beach, its nice not to be walking around looking at stuff all day, sometimes you need to just sit. Although its pebbly so we asked how much beach loungers were and the dude said 14euro!! We paid 2.50 in Santorini!! No way!! But at least our hostel gave us clean beach towels to use free of charge.
Tomorrow we may venture into Monaco where all the rich people like Bono and the rest of U2 live since no one has to pay taxes there.
Alright well I'm gonna nap...on the beach...in the S. Of France :) happy Monday!
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I can see the sea!!

2006-09-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

We're rolling into Nice at sunset and its beautiful!!!
And we just called the hostel (after trying 5 different numbers), they have tons of beds and will come pick us up!! How sweet is that?!
Hooray France!!
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Ciao Italia

2006-09-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

The original plan was to go to La Spezia/Cinque Terre after Florence and before Nice. This is not happening. In fact we are on the train and just stopped in La Spezia but did not get off as there are no beds in any hostels. Sweet. I was so psyched to go there but we couldn't make it work. We already stayed in Florence longer than planned and there are no beds there either so staying another night was not an option. So we're on our way to Nice which should also be beautiful and we found a sweet hostel there to stay at which has beds...25 bed dorms to be exact haha, possibly another 'dungeon' for any of you who were in Santorini.
Getting on a train this morning was a pain, we went to make reservations and the dude was less that helpful, went to get on the train and there weren't seats, he didnt make reservations for us...got back in line, found another train to take, needed to make reservations for the 2nd and 3rd parts, que'ed up again, finally got reservations and made it onto a train 2 hours after we arrived there. I'm hoping the travelling process is going to get easier as we go!! Or at least that people will be friendlier and more helpful.
The man next to me on the train is a huge lumberjack type guy either German or Austrian, wearing hiking boots and short shorts, has hiking poles sticking out of his roll-along bag...he's mildly amusing.
The weather seems to be clearing up, we just passed a beach and there were people on it so it must be somewhat warm although its not very sunny.
Hopefully Nice will be a little cheaper than Italy was, our hostel is going to be so that's a start, but everything in Italy was about twice what we paid for it in Greece! Crazy expensive!
Alright well my next report will be from Nice, unless I get bored again along the way.
P.s. Wisco I'm proud of you for loading the 8's up high w/out me..hope Milwaukee was fun although I heard rumours...
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Rainy days...

2006-09-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

It's days like today that I just wanna sput on sweats, curl up in a blanket and lay on the couch all day...so I kind of did that, in a "I'm in Florence and don't have sweats" kind of way... I sat in the plaza for a while and then realized I had left my keys to the hostel on my bed..sweet. Walked home, got my keys. Decided I'd walk over the Arno and see if I could find a coffee shop to hang out in for a while. There were a few but I ended up grabbing a slice of pizza and then went back to the plaza by a dude playing his guitar and read for a while there. Saw a little kid experience his first puddle which was super cute- he ran over in sandle/shoe type things but was wearing socks, he ran through the puddle and then stopped and looked at his feet as if he couldn't figure out how they got wet! It was soo cute, kids are sooo innocent...anyways, I got cold, so I went home. Dave came home a little later and we just hung out and did nothing. If only I had a pair of sweats with me damn it!! Eventually decided we should go grab some dinner (another day with all 3 meals!! This hostel is good for me!) Melissa (our new friend) came with us and we went to a 'spagheteria' haha which was reallllly good. Came home, met a new room mate, Lauren, and started to play cards, decided we'd be better off at a bar so went to the Irish one down the street again. Ran into a guy there who I met when I was doing laundry yesterday, and saw him at this bar again last night ha, he's stalking me?! Got some cider and played cards...2 old Italian dudes were fasinated by our game and came over to watch- it wasn't anything amazing, but we explained the game to them and they watched for a while. Bought a couple of rounds, hung out for a while and came home. Apparently I attract old men- yesterday Dave and I were walking home and this 60 year old man says "ciao bella!!" Which is standard but when I didn't really say anything back he started to follow us-sweet!! He was singing and talking the whole time, the he turned up a street and invited us to go with him...haha in his dreams! But seriously, why old men?!
I forgot to mention earlier that the dude on the bunk below me growls in his sleep hahaha no joke, growls!! Everytime I moved and the bed creaked he growled!! This led to a pretty shitty night sleep, he's not home yet but I hope he doesn't growl tonight!!
I also had some crazy dreams last night- 1 was that it was raining and I was pissed because I couldn't get a cool pic of the Duomo- which was true. The next was that I found a duck and took it home hahahaha- not true as of yet, maybe tomorrow?! And the last was that I met a super cool, hot guy- also not true today.
Maybe tomorrow...
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Why do Asians always hold up the peace sign in photos?

2006-09-16T04:45:00.000-07:00

I'm currently sitting in Piazza della Signoria, by the replica statue of David...beat that!! Ha.
Its raining today- again- which kind of sucks but its kind of nice too, although the millions of umbrellas are lethal.
Yesterdat Dave and I walked accross the Arno to Piazzale Michelangelo, hiked up to an amazing view of the city, then went further to Chiesa di San Miniato al Monte- a beautiful little church at the top of a hill...more amazing views, and very peaceful. We hung out up there for a while then headed back down into town. We met up with Patrick- a guy we ran into the night before, then grabbed some lunch. The 3 of us then went to the Uffizi Gallery (where I once again got a discount for being English!! Hooray!! Dave wasn't happy!) The gallery actually isn't that big which is good because I lose attention pretty fast. We saw The Birth of Venus which is pretty much all I wanted to see...its beautiful!
After that Dave and I walked through the market and headed back to the hostel. I switched rooms- into the same one as Dave, then took a nap :) naps are good! Woke up and did some laundry while Dave went back to where we were earlier in the day to see the sunset. Last night we hung out for a while and then decided to go to the bar down the street for some ciders...went out after that but weren't out too long, it was dead, no one was out!! Strange.
This morning we woke up to another amazing breakfast made by Clara, including a delicious lemon cake!! She rocks!! This hostel is by far the best ever!! We're going to have high expectations now! After eating, we went back to bed for a while...we decided to stay here another night because the hostels in Cinque Terre are all booked. So today we're just chillin. Dave is going to the Academia Gallery but I'm just going to hang out arund town for a while. Maybe we'll have a wild night out tonight?
PEACE! Haha.
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Food!!

2006-09-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I ate all 3 meals today!! That's sooo exciting!!! Hahaha
Now I'm drinking cider at some "irish" bar in Florence!!
How was Bucky Days, Wisco???
Muhahahahahaha
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Firenze!

2006-09-15T01:11:00.000-07:00

Bongiorno!! The other day I forgot to mention that Dave and I climbed the 550 stairs to the top of St. Peters. It was an amazing view!!! (And a workout!). It was great. I forgot something else too but I can't remember that right now either haha.
So yesterday we arived in Florence a little later then we had planned but it wasn't a big deal since we didn't have to pay for a reservation and it was nice to sit and chill for a while. We didn't make a reservation in a hostel but had a list of ones to go to...this didn't work...we walked around for ages and everything was booked..mwe finally got a list from the Info center, met an Aussie guy there in the same situation as us so he came along too and we went to the closest hostel on the list- booked. The next 1 had 1 bed so wee let the Aussie dude take it and the guy there said to try upstairs. Went upstairs and she had 2 beds left in this beautiful hostel, she showed us the rooms before we even said yes and she was just pretty much great!! This place is luxury!! Albergo Paola...I recomend it to everyone!! Its super clean, really bright and colorful and it smells amazing! There are huge closet lockers for everyone and then a small bedside locker too!! Everyone gets a key to the front door, the entry door to the hostel and the door to their room and lockers!
Anyways, yesterday after we got here we went and wandered around town, then Anneka's friend Jocelyn called so we met with her and went to get tickets to Uffitzi Gallery but we couldn't so we are going to have to go and wait in line today...We split from Jocelyn but arranged a tome to meet her later, wandered around some more, went back to the hostel, got changed and walked over to Jocelyn's place. Went to eat dinner then bought a couple of beers and went back to her place. Hung out for a while then went out to the bars. We had tons of fun at a couple of different bars, I think I only took 1 picture though which is weird for me, but oh well. It poured with rain the entire night so the walk home was not fun and my clothes are still soaked. Jocelyn is going to Cinque Terre today until Sunday so we're hopefully going to meet up with her there...good times.
Alright well I'm going to go see if Dave is awake (we're in seperate rooms..although maybe ill be able to switch now).
Ciao ciao.
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On the move..

2006-09-14T03:08:00.000-07:00

Last night our 8 room mates couldn't have been much louder, I dunno why they couldn't go into the common room and be loud there...the hostel pretty much sucked in general, only 1 of the 3 showers worked, the stove didn't work, there was water leaking all over the place. So we were pretty happy to get out of there...
We're on the train to Florence, its pretty dull outside today but the countryside is pretty. Its relaxing to be sitting doing nothing, I finished "My Friend Leonard" by James Frey- its a sequel-kind of- to "A Million Little Pieces" which I read last week and I highly recomend (why can't I spell that?!) so you should read them both! They're pretty quick, easy, page turners and you'll laugh and cry...what more can you ask for?!
So now I'm finally going to start "East of Eden" by Steinbeck...hopefully that will take a while because I don't have anymore to read after that!! And book stores are dangerous, I can spend hours in them.
Its hard to believe we've only been gone 10 days, it feels like at least a month! Does The Vatican City count as another country on our list since its its own state??
Ciao
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Gelato w/ the Pope!!

2006-09-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

Forgot to mention yesterday that Dave was mad because she isn't English- she didn't get the EU discount at the Colloseum! Haha.

Woke up this morning feeling like crap, caught a cold or something. Also, our room smelled rancid, turns out it was leaking something disgusting all over the floor...I couldn't smell it ha but the other 7 people were almost throwing up! Gross, everyone packed their stuff and took off ASAP. Dave and I walked over to another hostel we had found the day before, booked beds, dumped our stuff and took the train to the Vatican City. It was amazingly beautiful...I don't really do religion as you all should know, but this was pretty cool. Do you think the Pope ever lays out/tans in his gardens? Haha.
Also went to the Sistine Chapel-our student card finally saved us some money, hooray! The chapel was beautiful, but I probably would have appreciated it more if I had an Art History degree or something like that, but it was great.
We left there and walked accross the river saw the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain and a bunch of other things along the way.
We've walked pretty much the whole city and its time to get out...tomorrow we're heading to Florence.
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Rome Tuesday!

2006-09-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

Looking back we should have stayed in Santorini Sunday night and most of Monday and then back to Athens, but oh well.
Also, there were soo many police around yesterday and the aussie girls pointed out it was 9/11 so that makes sense...pretty much lost track of date and time :)
Anyways,
Dave and I got up reaaallly early Tuesday, took a cab to the bus station and then a bus to the airport...on the bus we met 3 guys from CA who were also going on the flight to Rome. So we talked to them, checked in and all that junk, no security really, well there was but it wasn't a big deal like in the states- hooray.
The flight was only 2 hours and we got fed!! Yay!! We arrived, met up with the boys again, got our bags, found the train and took it to Termini- the main station in Rome. Then we followed, well showed the boys the way to their hostel, they were pretty useless with direction. We were going to try and stay there- Yellow- because several people had reccomended it to us butttt it was full! Boo! So Dave and I wandered around and found another hostel, its not that nice, but it will do for tonight. We found a new hostel for tomorrow night but we might try and leave here tomorrow night...hmm.
Today we went to the Colloseum and wandered around the city, tonight we went to the Spanish steps and around some more of the city so tomorrow we only have the Vatican to do...Rome in a day and a half, we're pro's now!! Haha
Its actually pretty difficult changing cities, we just got comfortable in Athens, and knew our way around, and now we're in a different country and another crazy city! But at least the maps here are up to date, unlike the 200 year old maps of Athens- someone should get on that and re-map Athens!!!
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Santorini Saturday, Sunday and Athens Monday!!

2006-09-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

Saturday we got up and caught the bus to Perissa which is on the other/east coast of the island. The beach is pretty much right at the bus stop so we hopped off, and voila, we were on the beach! We paid for beach beds since we only had tiny hotel towels (which were large in comparison to the chammies we brought with us! ). The sand here is black from the volcano so its pretty but really hot! The water is really really clear, you can see everything!! We met a group of guys in the water....ok so maybe they were the reason we went into the water :) anyways, 2 Aussies: Aidan and Matt and then Jeff from Montreal...we talked for them for, well, hours. Dave and the Aussie boys swam out to the end of the cliff, climbed up and stylishly jumped off! Jeff and I stayed on the beach, and according to him we made out the whole time, but he must have been dreaming! He wanted to party, I told him the bars were by our hostel and that he was welcome to stay with us.... Dave and the Aussies came back about an hour later and we sat around for a while then the boys left to go back to their hostel. Jeff strategically stole Dave's watch so that we would stay at the beach until he came back, "in less than an hour". 2 hours later the wanderer returned and came sauntering down the beach, laid down on a beach chair and fell asleep. The Aussies came back and decided that they wanted to come party with us too...5 of us, 2 small beds...ok. We arranged to meet them at the bus stop by our place at 8.30 and Dave and I headed back. I showered and started to pack my stuff away, then we went to the bus stop to meet the boys...they didn't show up at 8.30 on that bus, or 9.00 ... Dave left me there and went home to shower, when she came back they still weren't there...at 9.30- an hour late, they finally showed up "we missed the bus, thanks for waiting, we brought friends!!" So now there's 9 of us- the family, Dave and I are the newest members- hooray for lots of friends- other than the boys from the beach there was Amanda and Carter from California, and Sarah and Christina from Australia. We took the boys stuff back to our place and then went to the supermarket to buy alcohol etc...we emerged half an hour later with 3 bottles of vodka, several cartons of juice, a couple of bags of chips, 2 sticks of bread, some. Taramasalata (mum, I finally ate it, its pretty good), Tzatziki (sp?) And something else. Good and ready for a night of partying! We sat out by the pool, ate, drank, Spilled, laughed, got marker/sharpie tattoos from Jeff- super cool!, and just had a lot of fun...we were just about to pack it all away and go to the bars when. French dude walked out from his room in his orange and pink pajamas, hahaha, and said "I think now is a good time for you to go to bars" haha so we agreed, apologized, cleaned up and took off.
1st stop was Murphys which was the Irish bar that ripped us off the night before...we got beer for 5euro and danced for a while. I walked outside for some air and I found a little kiosk store that sold cans of beer for 1,50 so of course I got beer there and drank it in the street...I ran into Carter and Amanda and she went and told the rest of the group about the cheap beer while Carter and I bought more beer. The whole group came out and we partied in the street for a while, well it wasn't even a street, more like an alleyway, lots of fun!! We went to another bar where ladies got a free drink so that was super sweet...after that we headed back to our place and the bus stop along the way- Amanda, Carter, Sarah and Christina yook a taxi home and then the Aussie boys, Jeff, Davies and I went back to our place...woke up in the morning and had to check out, the Aussie boys disappeared and aparently got on a ferry and took it to another island. Then Jeff Dave and I took the bus back to Perissi and met up with the rest of the group on the beach again! We hung out there all day then showered secretly at our new family's hostel! Got some more bread and dip haha and took a taxi to the port. Sarah and Christina flipped a coin which decided that they would go to Athens so they caught the overnight ferry back with Dave and I...the ferry was freeeeziiiingggg!! We wore sooo many clothes and were sooo cold! We arrived in the morning, walked back to our original hostel, checked in and got a rooom really fast because the woman at the desk recognized me ha! Then all 4 of us passed out and slept for 4 hours, it was pretty funny because we didn't realize we were that tired. Then Dave and I got up and took the train to the Athens Olympic site. It was completely desserted which was kind of surprising but I giuess makes sense. So we wandered around there for a while took some pretty amusing pictures on the diving blocks of the pool and some other stuff. Then went to Plaka, got a coffee...with Baileys of course ;) then went back and met the girls at the hostel. Hung out for a while, then Christina realized that her shirt was missing from the balcony (the 6th floor) so she ran down and was trying to find it in the trees...some local guy came over and pointed it out to her, someone gave her a broom and she got it down. Of course Dave Sarah and I just watched from the balcony :) After the drama we took the train to Plaka for some dinner, we ran into some local dude who asked what we were looking for so we told him and he took us to his favorite restaraunt. One of the waiters grabbed my hand and pretty much dragged me to a table, it was kind of amusing...we sat, ordered etc, we had finished eating and were waiting for the bill when the waiter came back and said "I'm your grandfather and I take care of you, I only have sons, no girls!" So we kind of just sat there, what do you say? Then he came back with a plate of fruit (which we hadn't ordered) so we thanked him and ate it...then we were sitting, waiting, laughing and he came over with a huge plate of melon, cut a piece, Sarah said jokingly "what's he gonna do?! Feed it to us?!" and he proceded to used my fork to feed watermelon to Sarah, it was so funny! Oh, and during our rediculously long dinner we saw a dude from Australian Idol, apparently he got 10th and also got caught with Paris Hilton- the girls filled Dave and I in on all the gossip...
We headed home after a pretty amusing evening, Dave and packed our stuff ready to leave in the morning and we finally crawled into bed around 1am.
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Santorini...time to party :)

2006-09-11T04:19:00.000-07:00

Friday night Dave and I had a couple of drinks in our room before heading out to the bars down the street...Dave got the first rounf of drinks but couldn't hear the bartender when he said how much, she handed him a 10euro note and he looked at her like she was stupid and asked for 5 more Euro!!! 15Euro for 2 drinks?! So she turned around and said "we're going to finish the bottle (of vodka) at our place!" So we drank our expensicve drinks and wwent home to the vodka! Went back out to the bars...met some people from all over the place, it was fun...dunno when we got home- bars are open until like 6am or something...
To be continued...
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Ha!

2006-09-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

I wanted to take this opportunity to let everyone know that Dave and I are currently laying on a beautiful black sand beach surrounded by cliffs!!
...Nursing hangovers :)

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Our first boat and car rides and first octopi!!

2006-09-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

Erin and I woke up wayyyy early this morning, 5.30am!! Sick!! Pam- our room mate at the new hostel- did I ell you about her?? I dunno, she's pretty cool, quit her job on corporate banking to travel...pretty sweet!! Anyways, we all got up early as we were all taking the same ferry. We got dressed and walked to the train station, took it to Pireaus where we boarded our ferry- our first boat ride of the trip!!! And now that I think about it, there prolly won't be very many boats involved in this trip. Anyways, the ferry departed at 7.30am, it stopped at a couple of the other Greek Islands on the way to the last stop, Santorini, which is where Dave and I were heading. Pam disembarked at around noon, when we stopped at Paros...dave and I continued sitting in the same seat for another 3 hours after those 5...yes, an 8 hour ferry ride! There were several families with young kids on the ferry, one of which was just not at all cute- do all parents think there kids are cute? Even if they are ugly? Just wondering...
If you think the smoking is bad in America you should come to Europe and sit inside a ferry full of Greeks chain smoking for 8 hours. As you can imagine, it was quite the experience!! It was a choice between sitting inside and getting lung cancer or sitting outside in the Mediteranean sun for 8 hours and get skin cancer. We decided inside today and outside tomorrow on the beach...figured we'd balance it out a little.
Dave taught me 2 new card games today and I beat her at both of them :)
We arrived safely, Dave pointed out this island type thing which I told her looked like a pile of poop..we later found out that its a volcano hahaha. The dude from our hotel- yes, hotel, not hostel, no typo here- picked us up at the port in a van- hooray!! First car ride!! And he pointed some stuff out to us on the drive to the hotel- such as the volcanic pile of poop. The hotel is quaint, cute, and it has a pool and free internet!! Air conditioning, a TV, mini closet and mini fridge all in the room!!! We have only stayed in 2 hostels so far and I know that we will have a lot of hostelling to deal with, but I appreciate this hotel fully!! And its the same prioce as the hostel we were in last night but 100 times better!! We are staying her 2 nights so we will make the most of it for sure!!
Once we had settled in, we wandered around to see where things are...everything is super cute and the views are amazing, there a crazy houses and restaraunts perched on the edge of the cliffs, its really pretty. We saw our first octopi being hung out to dry on clothes lines!
I think I've yet to mention that the Greeks prefer to use their car horns than their brakes...they don't slow down for anything- not cars, people, donkeys, nothing! They just honk! I wonder if Greeks go deaf earlier, on average than other populations because of the excessive honking? Someone should do a study on that. And they drive like psychos, there are millions of mopeds and motorcyles all over the road! And they just honk, honk, hoooonkkkkk!
Anyways, dave and I grabbed a gyro for dinner- yummy! Then bought some stuff at the supermarket where I used a 50 euro note to pay for a 5euro charge...the chick handed me 25euro change and I was standing there checking it when she said "what's your problem?!" In some glorious form of English, to which I replied, "you owe me 20 more Euro" yeah she wasn't too happy about that and I wish I had been able to say it in Greek damn it!!
Oh, we also got another coffee with Baileys..Starbucks should start serving this, its soooo good!! Yes I realize that would not only be drinking and driving, but also drinking at work...but I'm sure that already happens, as does drunk driving.
Well speaking drinking, dave and I are going to have a couple of drinks and go to the bars.
Will report about that tomorrow, have a goodnight everyone!
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Less miles walked

2006-09-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

But still several hundred...maybe even thousands!
Last night I forgot to mention a few things: while in the Acropolis we saw the Church of the Apostles and there was a bell with its string tied sso that you couldn't ring it...well Dave dared me to and, well I mayhave given it a quick 'ding'...and yes, wehave pictures. Also- that the French dude, Matt was apparently a Regional Champion in rowing in Marseille...or at least that's what we think we understood. Also they both invited Dave and I to stay with them when wwe got through the S. Of France in a couple of weeks, so that's pretty cool. AND the cowboy hat came out and is featured in pictures!
This morning we slept late- after a late night w/ the Frenchies. Then we checked out of the hostel and took the metro to Plaka to our new hostel. We had to wait a little for our room to be cleaned so we talked to the lady in the travel center of the hostel- we booked a 3 day, 2 night trip to Santorini which is cheaper than another trip we were looking at and this is more days...hooray. Oh! AND we have our own room in a hotel so we won't have to carry everything important with us all the time and we can take our clothes out of oiu backpacks! Ok I realize that we are only a couple of days into our trip but there are just some things that take a while to get used to. Anyways, we got our room and compared to the 1st hostel (which was 1/2 the price of this one) this room is TINY, we have bunk beds and 1 other roommate who we have yet to meet. But, this hostel is in a great location and I guess that's what matters- I can say that now while I still have money, let's hope I don't regret it later.
Soooo Dave and I walked to Monstiraki and wandered around the market and stores for a while. Taz! We saw a sticker in the back window of a car that had a picture of the original Taz and a caption: "V.I.P on board!!" So naturally we thought of you, and we took a picture. Then came back to the hostel and sat down for a while before going to the Parliment Building to see the changing of the guard. This was pretty cool, they wear a red beret type hat with what kind of looks like a side pony tail of stringy hair hanging down to their waists. There shirt is a tan color and I'd kind of a dress with a belt...although short enough to be a miniskirt. Then they have cream colored wool tights which must be rediculously hot to wear. Their shoes are clogs and have a big pom-pom on the toes! They carry a rifle and have a knife on their belt. Don't worry, I ran up and got a picture with one In case my description is not good enough! After this Dave and I went for a walk around the National Garden....we didn't get very far before deciding to sit for a while. So we sat and before long an old dude sat on the bench opposite us on the other side of the path, and let's just say that he should have been arrested- I'm going to leave out the details.
Moving right along- Davies and I left ASAP and walked, yes, more walking, to the staium where the marathon ended in the 2004 Olympics. Then we wandered around an old part of town which was nice to see. We made our way back towards the hostel and are currently sitting enjoying a Nescafe frape w/ Kahlua- who would have thought that instant coffee could taste so good?! Hahaa-in a cute coffee shop courtyard.
Soon we are going to go shower and go eat our first meal of the day- see dad, none of that 40dollars a day!! :)
I have finished my delicious coffee but it is worrying me because the foam is begining to solidify in the glass...I can only imagine what it is doing to my stomach.
And with that I'm going to go shower andf get ready for the evening. Our ferry to Santorini leaves at 7am tomorrow which means that we have to get up at 5.30-ouch! So, unfortunately tonight may not be quite as exciting as we had hoped.
The cowboy hat has not made an appearance today, although it did ride along on the back of my pack through the train station...
Ok goodbye!
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Ist real day in Athens!!

2006-09-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

Last night davies and I went to bed around 9.30 b.c we were sooo tired. About half an hour later our 2 other room mates showed up...I opened the door and it was a girl and a guy and they are French!! And he speaks some English but she doesn't really so I try and explain to them that we only have 1 key and that if we leave then it needs to be given to thje front desk...it wasn't easy since we were exhausted and were trying to work through a language barrier...we finally figure it out and they ask us if we are going out...no! I'm in bed!! So we go back to bed and they are ridiculously loud and get ready for I dunno how long but dave and I were having conversations about them in our sleep...later I went to the bathroom and when I come back Davies is certain that I let Matt in abd that he left Nina somewhere on her own...this isn't the case...they didn't come home until like 4am. Anyways, Dave and I got up early today to conquer The Acropolis, and conquer it we did!!! It was really interesting and soooo old!! Haha it took about 4-5 hours, that place is huge!! We asked a guide where the Temple of Zeus was and she stuck her arm out and said "straight ahead, straight, straight ahead" so we went straight and didn't find it b.c Dave made us turn left and walk up 8500 stairs to where we had been earlier...we give up on Zeus and after walking aimlessly to dead ends, we finally find it (and Hadrians Arch). B.c we weren't looking for it. But they were both really cool. Soo lots of walking and lots of sun and surprisingly several wrong turns. I did however meet a nice man, Alex I took a picture with him so that you can see how good looking he is...then I found out his whole name: Alexander the Great hahahah, his decapitated head from a statue was on display!
After walking around for hours and hours, we decided to continue walking around and we went to Plaka- anoother region of Athens. We found a new hostel here in a lively area so booked that for tomorrow night. After walking about 850000000miles we went back to our hostel and hung out for a while...I found a sweet cowboy hat that someone was throwing out, so that is coming on the trip now...look for it in pics (which won't be posted for a while). Dave taught me a new card game and after I beat her at that she taught me another 'james bond' and ibeat her at that so we gave up on cards and went to Monastiraki. We walked another 850000 miles and finally chose a restaraunt where I got a Greek salad which was delicious and an amazing iced coffee w. Baileys, it was amazing!! Then we came home and Nina and Matt were here so we sat on th balcony and talked about whatever- we worked with the language barrier, I remembered maybe 1/1000000th of the 6 years of French that I took (oh, Bruni, I took 3 years of Russian when I was in high school in England). We talked about some really random stuff and laughed A LOT. So that's about all...tomorrow we are moving to a new location and we are going to figure out a trip to Santorini for a couple of days...
Gooodnight!!
P.s Bruni, there are lots of Hookah stores around here, but uh I'm only travelling with a backpack, otherwise I'd bring one back for you :)
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