Venice

Venice was AMAZING!!! So incredible. It's like what you have imagined (which is quite surreal) - lots of canals and boats and gondalas and ancient palaces rising out of the water. We also had the most amazing hotel room - our windows opened right out onto the Grand Canal and had marble floors and sumptuous decor (we think it may have been recently redecorated) so felt very special. All the buildings are painted in hues of pink and orange and cream and many have an eastern influence in their design. We queued for about an hour to see S. Marco which was really worth it with the golden tesserae covering the roof WOW!! what a sight. We also went to the Island Murano to look at the Venetian glass. It was a really magical time together and felt like you had to keep blinking to check it was real...


The photo of Reuben is from our hotel room looking towards the Accademia Bridge.

Any Italian churches you go into insist on you covering your immoral shoulders if you're wearing a singlet top, hence the 1euro shawl you see in front of S. Marco...

The Bridge of Sighs

Konstanz

We really appreciated our time in Konstanz with Cherry after feeling pretty burnt out after Paris. It was great to see some natural scenery (Konstanz is on the edge of a lake) and spend some time recuperating. It probably sounds like complaining, but it gets quite tiring always being the tourist - even simple things like getting food for the day can become quite stressful when you don't know where anything is so it was great to get some home-cooked meals and chill out with Cherry!!

We went over to Meersburg one day (on the other side of the lake) which is very picturesque and has the oldest castle in Germany (7th century) - very cool, and popped over to Switzerland in the afternoon another day! We also had a great German meal with Cherry, including sauerkraut and lots of beer!!

We also managed to get some new glasses for Reuben which was really great. He can now see things without having to use binoculars! :)

Paris

Paris was wonderful and full-on and stressful and hot!
It was about 30 degrees every day - this made everything quite intense and we were continually drinking water (evian of course!) and scurrying into the shade wherever we could find it.

We felt a little bit of pressure to see and do all the things Paris has to offer. As an indication, in our guidebook there are are about 20 things listed for London and about 35 for Paris (and we had about 10 days in London and 3 in Paris). Everywhere you turn is a magnificent sculpture or building, and there are so many museums and art galleries worth having a look at.

It's also quite emotional walking around Paris - there are so many things that somehow seem so symbolic of Europe etc - things that you have grown up knowing about, such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, that when you turn a corner on the street and happen upon it, you feel a little tearful sometimes (well Katie anyway!).

We ate crepes every day - often with nutella which the french seem to be obsessed with for some reason. We spent most of our money on entry fees etc so didn't really eat in many french restaurants, but still ate some good french food and lots of icecreams.

We really enjoyed the Louvre - it's an amazing building in its own right, but also has the most amazing collection of sculptures and paintings. As they say, you could spend days there. We saw the usual Parisian attractions: the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysee, Invalides, Luxembourg gardens, Musee d'Orsay, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and Sainte Chapelle, and also went to Montmartre and Versailles (yes, all in three days).

We're now feeling a little exhausted and are recharging our batteries with Cherry (Katie's sister) in beautiful Konstanz.

North and South Holland

Well it feels a while since we last wrote! We had a great time in Amsterdam and other parts of Holland. We were able to see a lot of North Holland because Marianne kindly took us on all sorts of excursions in the car - everywhere is relatively close in the Netherlands!!! Reuben even swam in the North Sea.

We ate lots of dutch food (we won't list it all because we can't remember how to spell it!!!) and drunk some dutch beer. We also gorged ourselves silly on dropje (salty dutch licorise) and paid for it afterwards!.

Amsterdam is a fascinating city: a mix of kitch dutch tourism (clogs, windmills etc); the presentation of being liberal (drugs, sex industry etc); and very picturesque streets and canals everywhere, and everyone riding crazily on bikes... We really enjoyed wandering the streets, and felt that every corner we came to was another photo opportunity with all the bridges and canals and dolls-house buildings. There's a cool atmosphere, and we really liked how there were lots of flower stalls everywhere - the dutch seem to give flowers for all sorts of occasions so that you will often see someone riding on a bike with flowers in one hand.

We gave the biking a go in central Amsterdam but found it a little too unnerving (people drive on the right (wrong) side of the road!!!) so we were grandmas and only biked in the suburbs (much better for the blood pressure... and the marriage).

We went to lots of museums: the Rijksmuseum, the van Gogh museum (which we particuarly enjoyed), the Amsterdam Historic Museum, and the Jewish museum. It's quite fascinating learning about how the whole area developed as a city - basically created by man's endeavours. Also interesting seeing the consequences of these actions now - some issues with land sinking etc...

Some other excursions included a day in Utrecht, and a day driving around North Holland (the province) including a drive over the 9 km dijk between Lelystad (where Katie found her favourite jeans for only 18 euros - normally 180 NZ) and Enkhuizen . We saw a lot of very flat, very green fields and some cute sea villages.

We also stayed a night with relatives Erik and Hanneke in an area just outside Delft, and visited Den Haag to see where Reuben's mum Trudi grew up (even saw the very steps she tried to break her ankle on!).

Edinburgh

Hi everyone!! We spent four great nights in Edinburgh with the hospitable Rose family. It was funny to hear the accents change on the train as we moved further and further north from London - as people got on and off the train.

On our first day we climbed to the top of the formidable Arthur's Seat (hill) for a view of the city. The volcanic formations reminded us of the Port Hills / Banks Pensinsula, although the medieval city in view was much different from anything you would see in NZ! The old buildings of the city centre (built without gap on either side) are all made from the same material and are in the same style, so that from far away they all become one huge 'wall' of buildings. Together with the impressive castle, it makes for a dramatic skyline.

We visited the Castle on our second day and spent a long time looking around. Some areas were fenced off for preparing fireworks for Sunday night to celebrate the end of the Edinburgh International Festival (unfortunately we left on Sunday morning so couldn't see them). Reuben also ingeniously realised that instead of paying for two audio guides, we can use our headphone adaptor for our mp3 player and our spare headphones so that we can both listen to the one audio guide. Is this cheapskate scottish, dutch or just plain brilliant?!!!

Some other things that we really enjoyed in Edinburgh are: the Ron Mueck exhibition (look at http://www.nationalgalleries.org/mueck/highlights.html for an idea of his intriguing works, the Nederalands Dans Theater performance (see http://www.eif.co.uk/G73_Video_Clips.php for video clips of Sh-Boom and Silent Screen) - both very impressive, and a good old movie night seeing 'Nacho Libre'! - a very funny movie!!

We also visited the nearby Falkirk Wheel - a charmingly simple solution (as with all engineering solutions of course!!) to the problem of connecting two canals of varying levels (c.115 feet) together. It was built in 2003 and won many awards, and uses the Archimedes principle of displacement. We will post some photos later so you can see what we are talking about - the computer we are currently using does not have a USB port so we can't connect our camera to get the photos off.

Thanks to the Roses we had some good Scottish food - particularly haggis and neeps (which Reuben took a liking to), and experienced a local pub quizz night (where we were absolutely useless with all the UK trivia).

London, Part 3

We are now in bonny Edinburgh and are enjoying the slightly slower pace of life (more to follow later). London was overwhelmingly big and noisy and bustling and dirty and exciting... lots of people, sirens, stairs (especially going down to the tube stations!), smoking, opportunities, grime, and history everywhere. We really enjoyed the range of things to see and do, and felt like we gave London a good go (for the two weeks or so that we were there). It is interesting trying to get the balance right for "sight-seeing" - one can very quickly reach saturation point with museums and art galleries etc so we are trying to be a little choosy in what we do each day. None-the-less, we don't want to lose sight of all the exciting opportunities we have while we're here!!!

Some of the other things we did in London that we really enjoyed but have not mentioned yet are: Greenwich (Reuben was particularly excited to go in the Royal Observatory there), Hampton Court Palace, the British Museum, climbing to the top of the St Pauls Cathedral dome, and attending a performance of the Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare's Globe (standing in the 'yard' with the rabble) - so much fun!

We've had a few misadventures already - have managed to lose Reuben's glasses (still trying to replace) and got our credit card swallowed in a ticketing machine (so we had to cancel it and are getting a new one delivered to an Amsterdam bank)... the joys of travel!

We were well looked after by Marisa (Reuben's sister) and really appreciated staying in her flat in Dulwich with her (thanks Marisa!!!)

View of London from St Pauls - you might be able to spy the London Eye on the other side of the river if you click on the photo to enlarge it...







View towards Tower Bridge from St Pauls.








Reuben and Marisa. If you click on the photo you might be able to see Big Ben in the background. This photo was taken on the Millenium Bridge.