September 28 - Berlin

Spent the morning at the Hauptbahnhof getting a ticket to Munich sorted out. HOORAY! I am skipping the Prague leg of the Contiki tour and going straight to Munich for more Oktoberfest and to hang out with Nick and Harry.

That afternoon we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum and that whole area was SO touristy I was irritated by the lack of history. The "You are leaving the American sector" sign is still up and the little checkpoint house is still there though. The museum was pretty cool, the way people escaped Eastern Germany was pretty amazing.

Then Sarah and I hung out in Alexanderplatz and did a spot of shopping. I liked how I knew my way around Berlin enough to take people places and stuff, so that was kind of cool. :) Then we headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner; they took us to a restaurant called Kartoffelnsomething so I knew it would be good (since kartoffel = potato). Then we did a bar crawl to a few places and that was kind of fun, because I could sort of ask for things at the bar and talk to people. That was really fun and it was a good way to bond with the tour peeps. Downside is that I lost my earring when I was taking a photo with Bevan (the kiwi boy) and then I cut my hand looking for it. :( Oh well. Will buy more earrings here. Stole a beer glass with a monk on it from the last place we were at and got home at like 2am. It was a good night for all. :)

September 26 - Berlin

Yes. :) Spent the whole day driving across Germany to get to Berlin, so we didn't get in until it was time for dinner. We went to a beer hall type thing for dinner, and it was pretty good. I got a banane-weissebier which really did smell and have a taste of bananas! It is weird, I think of all the people here I can speak the most German, and that really is not saying much considering I did six weeks of German for reading proficiency. I can say enough to get by, but some of the grammar throws me.

Early night in. We have a nice hostel room though; there is an ensuite in ours and the other girls didn't get one. :)

September 25 - Amsterdam

Spent the morning riding granny bikes around Edam (where cheese is made backwards... I am punful!!) We got to taste the cheese and we also saw a crazy dutch guy making clogs (seriously, he was hilarious but a nutter). In the afternoon I went to the Anne Frank house where she and her family hid during WW2. It was really, really sad, but I am glad I went. There isn't any furniture in there but the wallpaper is the same and the stove/sink/etc. is still there.

The weather here is shithouse; it would randomly rain (but not real rain, just misty fluffy rain) and then get pretty cold. That evening we had a group cruise through the canals and that was really fun - the boats are really low so they can fit under all the bridges. After that we were let loose in the city again. Caught a cab home with some of the guys - on the way back I saw the "I AMsterdam" sign but I couldn't take photos because I was in a car.

September 24 - Amsterdam

Got up at freaking 5am to get on the Contiki bus to Amsterdam! We took the ferry from Dover (so I got to see the white cliffs) and we went to Calais in France and then we drove onto Amsterdam!

That night we went around the red light district - you couldn't take photos, but the hookers have these little rooms with red lights above the doors and big glass doors and they stand in front of the door (or we saw a lady being classy and standing to the side but so that her image was reflected off an mirror and through the glass). Basically they stand there until someone comes over to negotiate a price, and then they shut the curtains. They have a bed, a sink and mirror and sometimes a shelf with towels and stuff on it. That is about all.

It was interesting where they built the district because it was right next to a really old church (the church was there first) and then on top of the hooker shops there was a kindergarten!! After that some people had the option of going to a sex show but I spent my €26 on a €3.50 beer and a €4 space cake. (Yum. Yes.) Lee from the group also bought us shots and Kelly shared her white widow with us. Hee. That was fun wandering around in the seediest streets ever.

September 23 - London

Did a tour of Warwick castle, Stratford upon Avon and Oxford today. Warwick castle was a bit of a wank. The actual castle itself was nice, but they stuck all these wax figures in it pretending to do castle-y stuff and it was kind of cheesy. They had a real working trebuchet on the castle grounds but we couldn't stay for the actual show.

Our next stop was the town of Stratford on the Avon river. It was such a cute little town. Shakespeare was born and died here and everything was about him in this place. Everyone went for lunch but I ate on the bus so I had an extra hour to wander around there and see the place. I went over to New Place which was the house where Shakespeare died and they left the foundations of the house there with a garden. They have all these bronze Shakespeare play figures too. I also saw the theater where the Royal Shakespeare Company performs but it was being renovated.

Avon River was SO cute! There are all these ducks and barges and a market along the banks and yeah. I liked it a lot. I also went to the Shakespeare birthplace and it was really amazing how they crammed their entire family into this house, plus their doorframes were really small (I still didn't have to duck though, but most people did). The coat of arms for the shakespeare family has a yellow background with a silver spear on it, but when I first saw it I thought it was a fountain pen (which would be kind of fitting, but oh well).

Then it was on to Oxford. Holy crap. I want to go there SO badly for my PhD program. It was sunday so I couldn't go and check out the department and stuff, but I still got to wander around and the atmosphere was awesome. I saw the dining hall in Christ Church College which was used in the Harry Potter movies and there was a big portrait of John Locke in there! He is an alumnus! That was pretty cool. Anyway, then it was time to go back to London and meet with the Contiki people (most of whom seemed loud and drunk already).

September 22 - London

Toursity day! I spent the morning down at Camden Markets which was SO awesome; it is a huge outdoor market over Camden Lock (like a river thing) and there were tons of shops with really retro or punk/goth/stupid emo clothes, and lots of nifty stuff. The Lock was pretty. I also met a guy from Afghanistan who offered me his phone number and some cannabis candy. Eh? I declined.

Then I headed over to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen!! Of course, she wasn't there. The Queen opens the State Rooms of the Palace to the public for 8 weeks in the year during summer while she is out in Balmoral Castle or something on holiday, so I got to duck in and have a look around. The Palace was nice. Ridiculously decorated, but nice nonetheless. I also got to walk through some of the roped off rooms because I needed to go to the bathroom halfway through the tour and I had an escort to the bathroom on the other side of the Palace grounds!! That was a way to feel like a VIP, hahaha.


After that I walked through St. James' park where half the population of England seemed obsessed with feeding the squirrels there. They would sit on a bench and let the squirrel come and climb up their legs and eat out of their hands!! Um, squirrels can have rabies. On the other side of the park were the old War Rooms (not that interesting) and the new Bali memorial. I then tried to get into #10 Downing Street but the whole street was blocked off by cops with big guns at both ends. I had to pretend I was lost and asking for directions for a better view. ;) Then I went up to the Horse Guard Palace, through the stone arch and down to the other side of Downing St. where the cops were nicer and there was a big crowd of people (so I thought the Prime minister was going to come out but he didn't).

Further on I saw Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Pretty impressive stuff. What I would have given for a Guy Fawkes mask and a cape at that time. I was kind of disappointed that Big Ben didn't chime on the hour, because I sat on a big concrete roadblocky thing to get a good video of it and that didn't work, but oh well. Then I went to Westminster Abbey which was really cool. They have updated the statues of famous saints/people they have on their west (I think) entrance and now it includes 20th Century people like MLK and stuff.

After that I wandered (via the Tube) over to Trafalgar Square, which is basically a freaking huge roundabout with the National Gallery. There was an event or something going on there so there were a lot of people, and then I went over to get some dinner and by that time I was done walking around.

September 21 - London

A non-exciting business day today. Had to go out to friggin' Hounslow (out near Heathrow airport) on a 40 minute train ride to get my mobile phone sorted out. So that was pretty uneventful.

That afternoon I went over to University College London to check out their school (I am applying there for PhD programs) and hang out with the embalmed body of Jeremy Bentham which happens to be on campus. That was really cool, but no pics. :( I also went to the court/business district and saw the Old Bailey (which probably hasn't changed at all since the convict days) and the Bank of England, and then I walked towards St. Paul's Cathedral (which is so pretty, even though they are doing renovations or something) and all the streets were lined with yuppies having friday night drinks. Ugh. :P

September 20 - London

Stonehenge and Bath today! Ella and I basically spent the day looking at a bunch of rocks and a bathtub. It was cold. Stonehenge was nice, but it was freaking windy and the audio tour was really weird, but it was cool to be so close to something so old.

Bath Abbey was also nice; that is where the first king of all England crowned himself (or got the archbishop to do it for him or something). The baths were old and arsty but the water was pretty rank. The whole city of Bath was really cute though and it had lots of parks and cute old buildings and suburbs up in the hills.

Our guide was a really cool toothless Pom guy and also pointed out things like Windsor Castle, the military base at Salsbury Plains and Hugh Grant's primary school!

September 19 - London

Met up with Ella to hang out in London!! :)

We had tea and toast for breakfast (how Pommy!) and then checked out Russell Square which was basically a big square garden. Then we headed up to Convent Garden for some shopping and walked down the Strand before going to the Tower of London. Our tour guide there was a Yeoman (Beefeater - I should have asked where that name came from) and he told us lots of super gory stories about executions and whatnot that happened there. That was super cool.

We saw the guards change too, and I almost got run over by them because they just march towards you and yell at you to get out of the way! Whoops. There are a bunch of ravens at the ToL and basically there is a superstition that if the ravens left the Tower then the white tower (where the king lived) would crumble and the monarchy would fall (how lord of the rings-esque), so the king at the time (I think it was Charles II) made a decree saying that there had to be at least 6 ravens at all times at the Tower, so now there are. There was also a tour on a conveyor belt thingy of the crown jewels, and that was SO much bling in one room. Seriously I think the royal family all suffer from spinal injuries from toting those things around on their heads.

That evening we did a Jack the Ripper tour and got a cruise up the Thames. The Thames is the most disgusting river I have ever seen in my life, and after the stories of the executions that took place and how the decapitated heads would just fall into the river and people would dump their poo into it and whatnot, it was pretty rank to cruise up. Nice views though. We saw the square (on Tower Hill) where people used to get executed and Sir Thomas More was amongst them! We also saw the old walls that divided the Roman city of Londonium from the outside, and then we went to Whitechapel and did all the JtR stuff. The walk was good, and we also saw where William Wallace got executed. Basically it was a pretty gory day, and then it was home to bed.

September 18 - London

Flew to London today! It took 3 hours to get from Gatwick airport to my hotel in the city! Boo train system. I also didn't have any of my tour vouchers sent to me in the US and I was supposed to pick them up from London but they never arrived, so I had a bitch of a time checking into the hotel. Anyway, once that was sorted, I went to Picadilly to get my stupid train ticket dealt with. Basically, the deal is that I am going on a tour which goes from Berlin to Prague to Munich, and I was going to leave Prague a day early and then go to Munich. The head office for RailEurope is in London, and yet nobody there could sell me a Prague to Munich ticket!! BOO. What a shitty start to merry old England. Found an internet cafe though but everything here is super expensive (1 pound for 20 mins) and the customer service was nonexistent.

That night I was too tired and/or mad to get food or anything so I had cup noodles for dinner in my hotel room and watched TV (Law and Order) until I met my roommate Stephanie from Seattle. She seems cool. She just got back from a tour and she said Heathrow airport was shit and lost all her luggage so when she arrived in France she had nothing at all and had to buy everything from scratch, so I guess that it could have been worse.

September 17 - Barcelona

I made a new friend today! His name is Boris and he is my new travel buddy. :)

Today I did a bike tour of Barcelona which included the Sagrada Familia, the Olympic village (which is on a beach which had to be made especially for the Olympics - before that it was a swamp or something), the old royal palace, Arc de Triomf (yes, there is one here as well as in Paris) etc. and then we had sangrias on the beach! I got a kid's bike because I was too little to ride a big bike, hahaha. It was really fun, and we covered all of downtown Barcelona in about 4.5 hours.

After that I met up with Olena again and we did a spot of shopping at the southern end of La Rambla and also saw the Christopher Columbus statue which is on the port. It is a big column with a statue of Chris on the top and he is pointing out to the sea (presumably in the general direction of the new world?) and around the column are little statues of the events that took him on his voyage to America. They had one which looked like a Spanish missionary trying to convert a native american, and I don't know about that one. You could also pay to go up it but we didn't. That night we met up with Olena's friends from her exchange program and hung out in some seedy suburb of Barcelona where we got shots for €2 each (but they were tequila, and I hate tequila). Oh well.

September 16 - Barcelona

Today Miquel, Anais and I drove down from Lleida and spent the day hanging out in Barcelona, but not before I made some phone calls home and whatnot (props to Miquel for pointing out the 2c per minute rate on Skype!) and then I found out that I was a pseudo-aunt because my cousin just had a baby! So yeah, I'm excited to meet my pseudo-niece when I get home. :)

Anyway, so we got into Barcelona around lunchtime. Spanish hospitality is awesome - but the people here fight worse over the bill than Chinese people! I mean, Miquel let me stay with his family and they bought me lunch, and he bought my ticket into the club last night and Anais wouldn't let me pay her for gas money for the drive down (it was like an hour and a bit). I got them back when we had lunch at a place called "El Glop". Ha. The food was good; their mousakka was really tasty. :)

After that we walked up the main street called La Rambla. Barcelona is the capital of the old country of Catalonia before the Spanish conquered it and the people here still read and speak Catalan (so the signs are in Catalan and Spanish). Catalan is similar to French so I foung that I could read a lot of stuff but my pronounciation of stuff was strangled French/retard Spanish. I'm getting better at rolling my "r"s though without drooling everywhere. But yeah, picking up new languages is fun.

We went to the Gaudi houses - there is one with balconies shaped like skulls (Manzana de la Discordia) and another which has no corners (Casa Mila). The architecture here is freaking awesome. We went to Casa Mila for €2 each and got to walk around the rooftops which gave a great view of Barcelona (and the roof itself was something to look at). That was cool. There was also a Gaudi exhibition in the building which showed his inspiration for this buildings, and a lot of it was organic stuff like snake skeletons, shells and tree branches. There was also an apartment from the 1900s which was open to the public and that was pretty cool.

After that we walked around a bit more, and then it was time for Miquel and Anais to go back to Lleida. :( But then we called Olena and she and her mom were going to Plaza d'Espanya (I think it is spelt like that, because it isn't spelt the way it is supposed to) that night, so I met up with them. There is a big fountain there and thursday to sunday there is a light show and they play music and the fountain does all this fancy stuff, so that was really kind of cool. The view there was really pretty too.

September 15 - Lleida

The night train got into Chamartin at like 9am and then I had to jump on the Metro to Atocha and get the train leaving there for Lleida at 10. Blargh. I barely made it, and it took three burly Spanish men to stuff my gigantic pack into the luggage rack. Hahaha.

So then I made it into Lleida, which is the city where Miquel and Anaïs are from. It is about an hour northwest of Barcelona. Miquel and his dad got me from the station and took me to their house, and I got a real shower and my clothes washed and they took me out to lunch where I had real paella and snails. They were really kind and it was great to have a real kind of home-type reception. Miquel´s brother taught me how to eat snails; you have to skewer them and then pull the poo chute out the back before you eat it. I also learnt a new drink - it sounded like the word "shampoo" in Catalan (which is what they speak in this part of Spain, aka former Catalonia) but in Barcelona it is called Clara. In Australia and England it is called Shandy. Yep, beer and lemonade, but it was beer and limonada, not the fake sprite stuff or the super sweet American stuff. It was good. I think I have lost track of how much I have had to drink in Europe so far, but I know that I´ve had at least two drinks a day for the past three weeks... yeah.

Then we walked around the city a bit more in the shopping district and met up with Anaïs who was shopping with her friend. We went to this big cathedral in the middle of Lleida which is on a hill with the rest of the town around it. It´s Lleida´s icon, so that was pretty cool. Then we walked around the cathedral and then it was time to get ready to go out for dinner, only it was 11pm! Miquel told me that everything happens later in Spain, and he´s right! I met Miquel´s friends and we went out to dinner until 1:30am, and then out to a club after that called Gurugu or something and it was freaking awesome; it was an outdoor tent thingy with couches and twirly lights and a free drink upon entry and they were playing all kinds of music, so you´d get a salsa song and then the next one would be punk rock and then pop and then techno. Very fun.

We left at like 5am but people were still at the club. I don´t know how I can keep up with these Spanish kids! Haha.

September 14 - Lisboa to Lleida

Spent the day at the beach in Estoril on the coast with Kaisa and Tanya, where people (read: men) don´t even bother hiding the fact that they think you are a piece of meat. We had a picnic lunch and worked on our tans and drank caipirhinas (a Brazilian drink with crushed ice and crushed limes and vodka). Twas good.

That was the whole day though and then I had to get back to the hostel and pack. We had dinner nearby and then it was time for me to jump on the night train to Lleida. I wish I had stayed longer in Portugal though; it looked like an awesome place and I was just getting my lisp right so I could talk to the locals. Maybe next time.

September 13 - Lisboa

A sad day today when I arrived in Lisboa (pronounced Lish-bo-er) to discover Harry was missing. Interestingly my first thought was donde estas Harry? which I am sure was gramatically wrong, but whatever. So that was sad because I lost my travel buddy. Then I stored my stuff at the hostel and went exploring.

Down the street was the Parque Eduardo VII which basically was a big park. The streets of Lisbon are really fucking hilly and I was walking downhill away fromthe park, and the side streets all led uphill to other hills so at one point I stopped in a smaller park which was full of pigeons and a fountain. I ended up on a bench next to this semi-deranged homeless guy who would walk around the fountain pontificating to nobody and then yelling at the pigeons. After that interesting encounter I went back to the hostel after buying the cheapest lunch ever (for €2 I got an apple, a pear, a bag of honey roasted nuts, a croissant and a liter of juice).

Took a cruise up and down the Tagus river - it´s the big river to the sea in Lisbon (like the Yarra in Melbourne). Saw some pretty cool sights like the long ass Vasco da Gama bridge (which spans the river and is like 3km or something), the Belem tower and the site of the 1998 world expo.

That night I met Kaisa who is this really cute girl from Sweden at the hostel, and we went out for pizza and cerveza. She´s studying nursing and had been in Lisbon for a week and a bit so she took me around to fun places like the Barrio Alto district, which had a ton of people. That night I also met Tanya from Portugal and Kirsten from Germany, plus a girl from Brazil who didn´t speak any English but seemed kind of nice.

September 12 - Madrid to Lisbon

Got up to get the bus back to Madrid, but not before we stopped at the Plaza de España. The Plaza was built for the world fair and has a tile plaque thing for each province in Spain. The Seville one was first because it was the host city, and then each province was listed alphabetically. We only had a few minutes to look around so a bunch of happy snaps ensued and then it was time to go.

When we got back to Madrid we had to say out goodbyes. Jeff, Shani, Gill and I split at the station as they were heading south to Atocha and I was going north to Charmartin. But then it turned out that Gill´s train left from Charmartin so she found me at the station and we had a really expensive (read €7!!!) meal of none other than Burger King to celebrate. Then she left for Barcelona and I hopped on the night train for Lisbon.

September 11 - Seville

Got up ridiculously early to leave Granada and get to Jerez where sherry comes from (Sherry is the british people´s word for the drink from Jerez). After some tasty tasting of 100 year old sherry which tasted like mashed sultanas, we had lunch and headed into Seville. We did a walking tour ofthe city and there were a lot of super swanky pretentious shops.

I went to the cathedral in Seville with Marc, Jeff, Andrew and Cherry. The cathedral is the 3rd largest in the world and holds some other guiness title. There were a lot of little chapels inside it too. It also had the tomb of Christopher Columbus and several cardinals. I tried to take a picture but when it didn´t work I accidentally cussed in the church, whoops.

We went to the bell tower at the top and saw all of Seville, including the bullring, river and suburbs. Then the bells rang and scared the living crap out of us. After that we walked around the city a bit more and then Gillian and I went to the bullring. It was closed as their wasn´t a bullfight on, but we still could walk around it.

Then we had tapas for dinner- Jeff, Michele and I got 9 plates and 6 drinks between us for €6 each. Then Laura took us tothe roof of a hotel that gave us a gorgeous view of the bell tower and cathedral. The drinks there were really expensive. Then some people told us there was a free concert in Plaza Neuva so we went there and there was a symphony orchestraof some sort and hundreds of people standing around watching. Right after they finished it started to rain so Gill and I ran home.

September 10 - Granada

Spent the morning at the Alhambra, which is the old palace at the border of where the Christians and the Moors fought. Granada was the last Muslim city to be conquered by the Christians. There is a huge garden (where they grew their own fruit and veg and still do) and all these rooms that we had to go through even before the palace. It was amazing. I want a big ass garden like this.

There was also this garden with a big tree in it where apaprently one night the King caught his wife with some guy but he couldn´t see who, only the coat which told him which noble family this guy came from, so the king had all 37 members of that family decapitated!! How... thorough. You could also see the ruins of their house because they lived on alhambra grounds.

Anyway, the view from the top was gorgeous and there was an aqueduct and stuff too. Then that afternoon Shani, Shannon, Jen and I went to a tapas bar for lunch. If you buy a drink, you get a free serve of tapas, and additional tapas was only €1. After getting nice and intoxicated over lunch we walked around the street markets. Granada is a rather hippie city and there were a lot of hippie stores, people trying to sell us pot, etc.

That night we went to a Moroccan restaurant and then across the street to a teahouse to have some hookah! That was fun, and a good bonding experience for all, althoughI learnt that having berocca and coffee makes me too hyper to function in most people´s regard, ha.