Mum!

Mum has met us in Thailand! For a week of shopping and tiger patting.

Reports from home: Bay-Bay (our rat) has cancer (according to his vet), mum took him to the vet. It sounds like she's put a lot of effort into looking after him, I think she secretly loves him as much as we do.

Today we went shopping in Phuket. Mum's picked up haggling really quickly.

Have you heard of colour coded shopping bags? That are suppose to let other vendours now how much of a push over you are?

Apparently red-pink means you are easy and black means that you are a good haggler. The first bag we got was red, the second was black!
So I think there may be something to the theory.

It's so hot here! Ri is complaining about the heat. I spent the last month complaining about the cold, so I guess it's his turn. It's so different to Europe here!

Here is one last Euro-photo: Henri at the Louvre.

Photos From Paris

At the Moulin Rouge.

Walking around Paris when we got back from Disneyland.

The Art at Versailles

Inside Versailles. My favourite room!

So I've finally put up some photos to go with the last few blogs.

We are currently in Phuket after 4 flights in 2 days (exhausting!)

I'll put up a bigger blog a bit later! I'm pretty excited about tomorrow... someone special is meeting us in Thailand!

Penultimate night in Europe

It feels like we are going home. Our flight to Singapore is tomorrow, then we're spending two weeks in Thailand and THEN home.
Rar! I still cannot seem to upload photos onto blogger! Will have to try again in Singapore.
Singapore! Wow we are leaving Europe! We've spent 90 days in Europe and 45 days in the UK. I'm pretty proud of that effort!
Hopefully we will be able to leave tomorrow! With all the strikes going on in France (the only way its impacted us so far is that we spent an hour at a train station only to have our train cancelled, so we had to get a Taxi to a different station, on our way to Versailles, haven't seen any riots or fires or upside-down cars).
In the last blog I said we were going to Moulin Rouge that night and we did. I had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be a pretty entertaining (if not a bit corny) show. Some of it was really funny. The only thing that sucked was that we couldn't buy drinks. So if you want drinks you have to pay an extra 20 euro when you buy your ticket, even if you only want a coke. And the ticket is called show plus 1/2 bottle of Champagne and since 08 I haven't been able to drink Champagne/white wine with any level of pleasure. (Post exam celebrations).
Yesterday or the day after Moulin Rouge we took the train back to Versailles. We accidently went on a Monday in July (resulting in an excellent day spent in the gardens) so we had to go back to see the Palace, and it was soooo worth it. Absolutely brilliant. At the moment they are showing the art of the Japanese modern artist Takashi Mukakami, who does statues based on Manga or Japanese cute. I loved it. Some people didn't. I guess when you go to Versailles you may not be expecting to see a six foot ball of teeth and eyes, it could be distressing. I found it a pleasant surprise. CUTE. Plus there was the whole Palace thing too.
Today we went to Disneyland.
I love Disney.
I was so excited to be going to my second Disneyland for the year and my third with Ri.
We're both big kids when it comes to Disney.
I am so tired! I usually blog at midnight so please excuse typos or fragmented thought processes! If I didn't type it straight in like this I would never post!
I logged into the internet because Ri was worried that someone (anyone) may be worried with the images of France on TV and us being in Paris. Logged on. Nope. It probably hasn't even made the news back home.
Next time from Asia....

Paris in Autumn

Probably should have titled the blog Paris in Fall. Oh well I've always loved the word Autumn.

As you may already know, Ri and I spent an unimpressed 4 days in Paris in July. We didn't have a bad time, but we didn't have a great time either. I think these are the reasons we didn't enjoy it the first time around. Firstly the hotel and it's location sucked. Secondly there were so many people (tourist, so there were more gypsies trying to sell stuff to tourists). Lastly it was our first non-English speaking location.
It's a completely different place this time around! It's cold (so cold) but we are having a great time. Our hotel is within walking distance of the Louvre - and it's such a pretty walk with the big trees losing their leaves. The place feels less crowded. And if you can get by in Napoli you can get by anywhere!
We arrived in Paris yesterday, in the early afternoon. And I'm almost sorry to report nothing went wrong with the plane/bags/taxis/hotel. We had a nap and then braved the streets to find somewhere to eat. We are in a nice neighbourhood with alot of Japanese restaurants. We ended up in the oldest Sushi place in the street (10 whole years) and it was actually really good. After dinner we walked to the Eiffel tower and took some photos of it at night.
We were so convinced that today was Wednesday! Turns out it is Tuesday, which foiled our plans to visit the Louvre today. Instead we consulted the ever reliable Lonely Planet and found somewhere to have a nice lunch - a Japanese noodle place (Completely different to Sushi!) We spent an extremely stressed 5 minutes with the all-in-French menu, trying to figure out what may be vegetarian and deciding the Porc=Pork. The waitress could only laugh at our faces as they flooded with relief when it turned out she not only spoke English but used to live in Sydney.
After lunch (it was really yummy) we went to Musee d'Orsay. And the best thing happened!
After an hour or so of rating how dotty a painting was I recognised someone. Now I've been seeing my friends all over the place, but it never actually ends up being them... but this time it was! Dr and Mrs Doyle were at the Musee d'Orsay too! (Friend of mine from the Biom part of my undergrad degree). Turns out they've been in all the same places (Rome, Praha, Wien, Munchen). I was completely thrilled to see someone from Brisbane!
After the gallery we hit the shops to find some shoes for Ri to wear tonight at the Moulin Rouge! He ended up finding a 'they'll do' pair of black shoes and an awesomely fashionable pair of grandpa pants that are so Ri.
Blogger is not letting me upload photos again!

Welshie does Barcelona

Henri caught my cold so he needed some time in bed with a nice warm cup of tea or two... to fill in the role of posing plush Welshie (from Wales) volunteered to join us on our two day tour of Barcelona.

Fighting the End Of Honeymoon Blues

When we got back from Japan (after only 10 days overseas!) I was cranky and restless and just-wanted-to-go-back-travelling-NOW for weeks.

I can only imagine that it'll be that much worse after 6 months and two days. So I'm trying to have a 'plan' in place. Things do help with adjusting to returning home. Seeing as I don't really know what I'll be doing with myself (not long term anyway).
So we have the following (short term):

Mac spending spree
Christmas! (This is why there is a photo of a puppy.. uh hum Ri)
Planning a trip to see my family in Melbourne!

Seeing all my beautiful friends who I've missed so much!

Getting to see our wedding photos (on a bigger screen) and putting together our album.

And seeing my baby Brother!

http://mybestthingtoday.com/ I'm loving this site!

We still have 3 weeks to go! So I best get some sleep and make the most of it!

=)

my lil drinker

Henri at Oktoberfest and at the Guinness Storehouse. We are obviously not big drinkers! These are really the only times we've had a drink.

Location: Barcelona

Henri loved Portugal.

Sunny Portugal. Us at the castle.

Ri reading his mini languages book at the castle.

Me, while we were out buying the last of our Portuguese souvenirs and finding somewhere to have dinner.

We made it to Barcelona. I had a feeling DEEP in my bones that something was going to happen today. Everything was too organised. Everything had gone way too smoothly! We had our great two days in Portugal and packed the night before our flight, woke up and were early for our taxi, made it to the plane with no dramas (stopping at Harrods for a cup of tea at the airport).

So when Ri handed over the address of our hotel to the Taxi driver and the drivers reply was 'that is in a different city,' I was not the least bit surprised. Or even stressed. I just laughed and strongly suggested we get to the CBD, have lunch and then find the internet. While Ri stressed. I think the Taxi drivers plan was to drive us up to every hotel in the city until we found one with a room, a kind but very expensive offer. So Ri pretended to have found a room at the first hotel and after pausing to make sure the coast was clear, we made our way to the first place that sold Paella. Then to an internet cafe, where I had some green tea and read Novembers UK Cosmo (that I picked up in Ireland) while Ri found us this hotel, which is, you know, in the right location to start with.

Ri says: ok i stuffed up again but at least it wasn't as bad as the whole coventry fiasco. The place I did book was in barcelona just in an outer suburb that appears to be in no way connected to any tourist attraction...... i am never using europe-citys again. Oh well only one more thing to book :(

Peri Peri

My mother has diagnosed our rat (Baylee) with Cancer. A couple of phone calls ago our Japanese fighting fish (Kyzer) was ‘not looking so good.’ I’m beginning to think I left my poor boys in the wrong hands. Ky is over 2 years old so it is to be expected that he may ‘not be looking so good.’ But my wee Bay-Bay is barely 18 months old, I gave strict instructions for Bay-Bay to be taken to the vet (the one where he has a file, he got the sniffles before we left and needed antibiotics from a tiny syringe for a couple of weeks). I hope they are both there when we get home... mother dearest.

We have just spent three nights in Portugal. On arriving in Portugal we had another one of those moments when we’ve realised that neither of us really wanted to come to Portugal, neither of us had a clue about what we were doing to do with our time in Lisbon. So Ri pulled out the trusty lonely planet and found a castle, a museum, a gallery and a couple of recommended restaurants. We ended up eating a Nood (an Asian fusion restaurant) twice because they made the YUMMIEST vegetarian ramen noodles. We had a brilliant time in Lisbon! The castle was interesting and fun to walk around and the museum was a bit different. The most surprising bit for me was the modern art gallery, after the Guggenheim in NYC I thought that I hated modern art galleries. Turns out I only like the good modern art galleries with well thought out/ clever themes and pieces of art! Which were both lacking at the Guggenheim. Who knew that modern art wasn’t just for toss pots? I’d say it surprised us both.

On the most part the people here in Portugal have been really lovely to us, the old ladies seem to yell at us a bit, but from what we can tell they seem to be yelling advice at us, so even they appear to mean well. Taxi drivers here is Lisbon have been awesome. We took a taxi home from the museum and it looked like the driver was doing the dance we knew so well from Italy (where the metre runs while he locates the hotel in a map after trying the gps and a couple of other methods that fail) but after the dance the Portuguese taxi driver reset the metre telling us that he’s never charge us for that sort of thing immediately ranking him as *hero* in Ri’s books.

We can’t seem to be able to remember any Portuguese, we have tried to memorise thank you so many times but it just will NOT stick. It doesn’t help that there is a male and a female thank you. Sorry Portugal.

Our last day in Dublin was a good one! We went to the Guinness Storehouse at St James’s gate Brewery, and it was a surprisingly good day out. I don’t like beer very much, but Guinness is alright. We learned all about how you make beer, then went to the (free) tasting room, then learnt about how to cooper a barrel, then learnt how to pour (free) Guinness (while Ri was pouring his the guy who had provided the instructions on how to pour a Guinness pointed to Ri and said “that is how you’ll see the professionals doing it up stairs”.... argh he just has to do everything right doesn’t he!), then we looked at some ads for Guinness, then went up for a free Guinness at the Gravity bars with a view of Dublin.



We only have one week left in Europe before we are off to Thailand. I have love, love, loved every minute of this leg of our journey. I don’t think I would change a thing.

kiss me! i'm irish...

the steps ri kisses the blarney stone

me feeling a little concussed

henri fell when he went in for a kiss of the stone...

We went to Blarney today. I climbed the impossible stairs to end up with an Irish man head butting my head into the Blarney stone. So while Ri is now sitting next to me being extremely eloquent in all his speech, I just have a bump on my head. Ri says the Irish man told me of his plan with my head and the stone (I couldn't extend my neck to kiss the stone) but I didn't hear the plan so I have a photo of me looking very surprized for having my head bumped into a rock.

One more day in Ireland before our flight to Portugal!

Venice

I’ve just had a quick look at my past 3 or 4 blogs and it looks like the only thing that I’ve blogged about since Venice is the fact that I am cold. Which is a shame because even though its been really cold we have had a great time in the past two weeks or so, so lets back track to Venice and I’ll try to tell a story from each place we’ve been since.
As we were in Venice on our honeymoon we couldn’t leave without going on a gondola ride. We opted for the long gondola ride (60 minutes) from a gondola near our hotel away from the all the tourists. Our gondola driver was reasonably young (in his twenties) and told us that he was the latest in a 500 year family business... From this point onwards we assumed that at least 67.9% of what he told us was made up on the spot. We affectionately nicknamed him Bender as he reminded us of the lovable robot from Futurama, spontaneously bursting into half a chorus of an obscure song, as if he was trying to avoid having to pay royalties (e.g., Relax, yeah baby uh huh uh huh), truth be told he probably just didn’t know any songs in full. We unknowingly timed it at the top of the tide which resulted in Ri having to run to the front of the gondola every time we came to a bridge to prevent us from hitting it, we have a photo which shows that didn’t always work (mustn’t of had enough gelato at that stage). He took us through the quite backwaters of Venice which was wonderful, past the Casanovas, Marco polo’s, Mozart’s and Johnny Depps house (who, according to Bender, goes through a couple of ‘grams’ a night... sniff sniff). At the end of it he set up shots of Ri driving the gondola and all in all we had an entertaining and romantic ride.

Henri Loved Praha!

Ri thinks that is called Henry's tower.

We have taken Henri everywhere with us on our trip, but as I look back on our photos of him I'm finding that the locations we photograph him in are sometimes hard to identify! And we usually don't take a photo of him in front of the obvious stuff. That photo above is one of two places in Prague. We didn't get one of him and the castle or on the bridge or with the clock. I'll have to count how many Henri shots we have! Must be hundreds.

The Luck of the Irish

Photo: Freezing in Prague.

I have a cold. It's only a 48 hour thing (I hope), with a shnuffly nose, sore throat and a sometimes absent voice. Ri is fine. Happily reading Lonely Planets 'Europe on a shoe-string' while I suffer in silence. **SOB**.
So Prague was our Eastern European Representative and we loved it. We mostly walked around the beautiful city in the cold. We even managed to stay out til dark, Prague is so amazing at night! I'm trying to upload some photos right now but am not having much luck with the internet.
I really enjoyed the 5 hour train trip from Vienna to Prague, we had a little cabin of six seats to ourselves. I hadn't been so keen on the French or Italian trains. Ahhhhh there is a frustrated tale of trying to catch an Italian train. But then there is a frustrated tale to do with trying to use any type of Italian transport.
Ri has decided to state that he strongly dislikes all European Taxi Drivers (excluding UK and Southern Irish Taxi Drivers - I think he really likes them).
I don't entirely blame them for continuously ripping us off. If I were a European I'd be jealous of Australians too. That's probably just the cold weather making me cranky at Europe.
It was so cold in Prague! I don't think I've been so cold with so many clothes on!
OK my brain is a bit fuzzy tonight! I might head to bed and complete my post on Prague tomorrow! I even picked a blurry photo of Prague!

Time, she flies

October!! No! No! No! No! NO!

It's our last full month of travel - then we have one teensy week in November and then home.

Do you like my dress from Munchen? I wore it to one of the beer halls! The waitress seemed to approve. Now I only need to find an excuse to wear it at home. I could learn to bake and it can be my baking dress!

Please don't look at my hair! I REALLY need to dye it again but I haven't found the time, so I invested in a hat from Pimkie.

Let's see.... today we walked around Vienna! And my feet feel like blocks of ice! You can tell when I'm cold in a location because I don't take half as many photos (keeping hands warm in coat) and I'm never in the few photos that have been taken (camera ends up someone in my coat).

The food in Vienna has been great. Tonight we went to this really good Japanese place. We had lunch at this nice little vegetarian place. I think we're both trying to get rid of our Gelati bellies! Japanese and vegetarian is good for you, right?

We went to an art gallery, 1) to get out of the cold and 2) because I got sick of Ri's tendency to just walk around a city - which is fine in the warm weather! but when I'm cold I like a destination!

So we saw a Picasso exhibit because Ri has said before that he never liked Picasso's work and I think I read somewhere that as his wife it is my job to make him do stuff that he doesn't like.

Except he liked it. Even said it was 'entertaining.'

Best go to bed. We're catching a train to Prague tomorrow!