Travel Blog – Hongkas and Ireland done.

We aren’t sure if it was because princess Mary had just poped out the first royal girl in 65 years, or if the planets had aligned or if it was the hot 25 degree day, but the Danes had cracked out the shorts and were living it up with smiles and XL sized ice creams.

Seriously, they were the happiest people we have seen so far. The weather was great and everyone was eating these GIANT ice creams, if we were half organised we would have got a decent photo. It was so nice we walked around for 10 1/2 hours, just checking out the sites (the castle, the Little Mermaid, hans Christian Anderson’s House). We eventually found a good ice cream joint and indulged, they were as good as they looked.

We didnt do much more before heading off for Berlin, but it was great to see so many people out on the streets soaking up the sun and having fun. It was so good that we almost forgot that when we turned up on the saturday arvo (and the place closes up sat and sun) there had been a problem with our booking and no-one thought to let us know. We had it soughted in a few hours but it wasnt the best after the night before in Amsterdam.

Berlin…..

So we made it to Amsterdamn and, thanks to the help of a friendly German man, made our way to the hostel. We had a whirlwind 3 days in Amsterdamn so this entry will be the same.

We stayed in an ok hostel in the Museum area, although, funilly enough, we didnt manage to see any museums. We did a bike tour the first day we were there. It was the tour guides first ever tour……in english. despite that we managed to see most of Amsterdam including the canals, some old buildings and the red light district (RLD). The whole place, including the rld, was reasonably clean and friendly so we decided that we should check out some of the history. Heeeellloo Heinekin Factory.

We paid a small fee and got to walk through the original Heiniken factory. It was well worth it as there were three fresh, straight from the brewery, ice cold beers, each waiting for us at the end. We were there kind of late and forced to down the drinks pretty quick so after that we were looking to kick on.

We got changed and headed out for some dinner at a pizza and pasta place (good for those pre-drink carbs), then headed to a some-times strip club that was playing the liverpool-someone game. The crowd was big and the drinks were cheap so we stayed there for quite a while. We were drinking 5 for the price of 4 beers until about 1am when our waitress was so drunk that we couldnt order drinks anymore. From there we headed out to a night club that had been recomended as the Wednesday place to go. It was pretty good, playing a varied selection of songs, the club itself was a great setup and we managed to stay till the place closed at 4:30 (the taxi driver had that gwen stefani and e-v-e song playing on the way home, score).

A cleaner had to wake us up at 10:15 the next morning to tell us check out was 10:00. Whoops, we crawled across the road to a park and slept all day, from there it was Hamburg for one night (just slept, not worth a proper mention) then on to visit Princess Mary in Copenhagen (Kopenhagen).

Interesting Amsterdam Facts:

- The bus station isnt close to anything.
- Heiniken is the cheap beer, even through a special ‘ice cold’ tap. niiice
- There are people asleep in the parks 24 hours a day. Mostly backpackers and students.
- Amsterdams that good, people like xzibit (rap guy, host of ‘pimp my ride’) will play a club that holds only a thousand or so people. I dont think he goes for the money.

Brussels, Better than youd think.

To be honest I expected Brussels to be nice, but boring. There is no real city centre to speak of and the whole place just stinks of being a good place to chill but on the whole uninteresting. Little did we know.

Apparently Brussels was huge in the early 90′s for Electro-ish music. So theres still alot of weird clubs and record stores (that only sell vinyl) kicking around. We were only around for one day so we didnt get to explore to much but, if anyones in the area, you could easily spend 3 or 4 days there.

As a sidenote, there are H&M stores eeeeeverywhere. I’m not sure if they are in Aus yet but in every city weve been to there is a couple of these H&M stores in one area.

There was a bit of a monster walk to get to the bus station but we made it and that was it, off to Amsterdam.

The last few entries have been pretty much, straight from the travel diary onto this page. This was because we left it for so long that we had to much to update. So we will try to clean them up soon, but more probably we will just start writing some smaller entries from here. Soooo, to catch up with where we are now you are all getting point form on what weve been doing.

Paris.

Location: Althought we have now mastered the lost art of catching trains to stations with the letters Æ and Ø in the name, we had a hard time finding this one (I cant even remember what it was called). It was a fair way from the city too, but once we got the trains right it wasnt too bad. It was like going to Sydney and staying in Ryde, if Ryde was spelt Chatau` Le R¤y’øµæ.

What we Did: We caught the usual things in Paris, the Louve…etc. But the three best things were the Arc de Triumph, the Eiffel tower at night and the Bike tour we did. Bree and I spent an hour at the top of the Arc, in peak hour, watching the traffic go round the round about. It was INSANE. Ill search youtube later cause there has to be some good stack videos. ¨

Watching the Eiffel tower light up was one of the highlights we have seen so far (no pun intended). After the Arc we grabbed a couple of Heinekens and sat in the park till the lights came on. The park wasnt that full so it was good to kick back and chill for a couple of hours. On the hour every hour the Tower goes insane with flashing lights.

We also went on a bike tour around Paris. It went for a few hours and we got to see all the sights. there were no major stacks except for one kid (approx. 30yo) trying to do a wheelie and falling off the back. It was good enough that we think we will do one in Berlin aswell.

From here it was to Brussels and Amsterdam.

P.s. We didnt have snails or frogs legs, but we did have 20 Crossiants.