This is the end….

So our trip finally comes to a close after 3 months.

We have had a lot of fun here in our 7 days of rest and relaxation in Thailand and we have pretty much lazed by the pool, read, got massages, shopped at the markets and drank cocktails. We had a great night out with some Aussies we met the other night which turned into an all nighter after we bar-hopped down bangla road. We went to the Phuket shooting range and shot some guns which was definately an adrenaline rush we both shot a 9mm and a rifle. Was definitely an awesome experience, and the guns had a lot of kickback and were very loud! But other than that we have been spending lots of time walking on the beach and not doing much at all which was the perfect end to our holiday.

So its been an awesome three months, thanks all for reading, and we had the best time of our lives. Some of our more memorable experiences include

-A gondola ride down the Venice canal

- Drinking wine by the canal and hearing the church bells at 7am in the morning

- Our boat cruise, on the biggest ship ever, with the most fanciest 3 course dinners, on the open sea and being awesome in every way.

- Walking around the wall of the old town of Dubrovnik, Croatia

- Seeing riots down the streets of Turkey and finding a cute kitten

- Going to a water park In Corfu, Greece on a freezing cold day

- Visiting Olympia, Greece

- Climbing to the top of the Acropolis in Athens

- Not getting to Mykonos because of high seas

- Gorgeous scenery and atv riding in Santorini

- Seeing the massive ruins of Pompeii

- Seeing everything ancient in Rome, especially the Colloseium, and almost being able to “hear” the Gladiators

- Eating lots of pizza and pasta and Nutella crepes in Florence

- Seeing the absolute massivity of the Statue of David and the Birth of Venus in Florence

- Going to the leaning tower of Pisa and getting told to get off the grass!

- Seeing all the rich people in Monte Carlo/Monaco

- Walking along the rocky beach of Nice and going to see a whale show at Seaworld

- Nick having his first Belgian beer in Brussels

- Going to I LOVE TECHNO, the biggest and best dance party we have ever experienced

- Walking down Las Ramblas in Barcelona

- Seeing a massive hippo jump out of the water at the zoo in Barcelona

- Relaxing and watching sunsets at Cafe Del Mar Ibiza

- Going to superclub PACHA in Ibiza

- Falling in a big hole in Madrid!

- PARIS!!! PARIS PARIS!!!

- Climbing the Eiffel tower

- Going to the Moulin Rouge

- Having a crazy time on the Paris Pub Crawl

- Visiting champagne houses and tasting expensive Champagne in Reims, France

- Sampling coffee houses in Amsterdam

- Amsterdam nightlife & red light district

- Visiting the Anne Frank house

- Finding Vegemite in Frankfurt

- Driving on the autobahn from Frankfurt to Berlin at 190kms/hr

- Visiting a concentration camp in Berlin

- The Christmas markets everywhere!

- The Berlin pub crawl ending at 6am

- The cute cobblestone town of Prague and lots of nights at home with movies home made dinners

- Discovering yummy “bread cylinders”

- The Haufbrauhaus in Munich

- All the awesome Munich beers

- The massive xmas trees in the middle of the town in Munich

- Our xmas day watching love actually and eating roast lamb at an expensive restaurant

- SKIING INTERLAKEN!!!

- Seeing it snow at 3am in interlaken whilst driving to the hospital

- The gorgeous and most beautiful scenery of the mountains in Interlaken and our cute little b & b.

- Our new years rugged up on the grass in the middle of town

- Relaxing in Thailand

- Shooting guns at a shooting range

So thats it, we will leave you with our last set of pics from Thailand, cant wait to see everyone!

Love Amy and Nick xox

Phuket, Thailand

So we pretty much havent been doing anything since we got here but lay by the pool, read books and drink cocktails.

Perfect way to finish our trip. Although it was extremely weird going from Minus 7 degrees to 30 degrees, although we hear that its mid 40s in Australia – crazy!

Only 4 days left of our trip, we cant believe its almost over.

Some piccies for you all

End of Interlaken (and almost our trip!!)

—- Amy

So after my big scary hospital trip, I spent the next day and a half recovering in our hotel watching lots of bad reality TV on MTV and being brought lots of cups of tea by Nick. I recovered really quickly surprisingly considering how sick I was, which was great, as we decided we would aim to make up our day of missed skiing on the 1^st, the day we were due to leave. Our new years was fairly quiet and very reserved, compared to the shenanigans that went on in Torquay last year! I managed to have at least one glass of champagne to celebrate and we went out into the main park in the centre of town to bring in the new year. Wrapped up in many layers and armed with a massive thick blanket we camped out on the grass and re-lived our best moments of 2007, and talked about what was to come in 2008. There were a couple of different fireworks that went off at midnight, nothing too spectacular however as Switzerland celebrates its new year on the 1^st, not the 31^st, weird. But we watched fireworks for a while before making our way back to our hotel around 1am, poor effort for a new years celebration but with skiing the next day and our bodies still worn out from our hospital visit, there seemed like no better place but bed!

 

So we woke up this morning to go on our last day of skiing, but of course as fate would have it, struck Nick down with a mystery illness as soon as we woke up. Insistant we press on anyway we made our way up to Shilthorn, our last mountain left to explore in Interlaken. Nick being on and off throughout our train trip up the mountain I wasn’t sure we should keep going, but of course he insisted he would be better so we went. After doing a couple of easy blue runs (blue is green over here) it seemed like Nick definitely wasn’t getting any better so he decided to take a break while I went off over the other side of the mountain and explored some steeper territory. It was quite cold today and my undergloves were definitely not keeping me warm, in fact my fingertips were freezing! It was definitely a great day to be on the slopes though, absolutely no one around because they were all nursing their hangovers from last night! After about an hour I returned to a worse for wear Nick and we decided to throw in the towel early and head for Zurich, our last destination in Europe!

 

So Interlaken in summary was amazing, beautiful, breathtaking, gorgeous and definitely one of the most amazing places ive ever visited in my life. I definitely can’t wait to go back for a proper skiing holiday there, because it is nothing like I have ever experienced. Not just the fact that the runs go for ages and that there is so much fresh powder and snow, but skiing in the swiss alps is just such breathtaking scenery. Skiing between massive mountains, snow capped trees and houses buried in snow is so beautiful and its such a shame that Australia now longer has anything that even closely compares to it. We did all three mountains in 3 days but I think we definitely only covered about 35% of the runs, and I don’t even think we did the same run twice! Unlike Mt Buller where you ski the same 3 runs all day!! Its definitely made me more into skiing (if that’s even possible) and gonna buy some skis when we get back to Australia, and even thinking about a New Zealand ski trip later on this year.

 

So at the moment we are on our way to Zurich, almost arrived in fact, and tomorrow we will be flying out to Singapore to get our connecting flight to Phuket, Thailand. Our last stop on our trip, there may not be many blog updates as we are planning to relax and sit on the beach pretty much all day everyday. But it definitely going to be interesting going from minus 7 back to 35 degrees!!! Nick is feeling a bit better now, but nothing he doesn’t think a good nights rest will fix, so hopefully we will both be well and on our way to Thailand tomorrow, I cant believe our Europe trip is almost over! Three months have gone so so quickly, but as Nick and I said on new years last night, definitely the best 3 months of our lives…without doubt.

View from our room

New years in the park

 

Hospital trip!

—– Amy

 

So our 3^rd day planned skiing was cut short late last night when I got very very sick and had to be taken to Interlaken hospital. We spent most of the early morning in the Emergency Room and then most of the day in the regular hospital with me being IV’ed painkillers and a drip. Not a very pleasant experience to say the least, and even though the hospital wanted me to stay another day I wanted to go back to our hotel. So here I am, not fully well, but much better than I was a few hours ago. Hospital trips overseas are very scary and lucky for me Nick stayed with me all night and day, even though the staff said I had a contagious virus. So apart from it being an awful experience, we lost our lift passes that we had bought the previous day and also paid to hire skis for a day we didn’t need. But in the end im just glad I’m better and out of hospital.

Zurich & Interlaken Switzerland

–Nick

 

Taking you back a few days, back to the 25^th, Christmas day rolled around in Zurich. It didn’t really feel like Christmas, the first time we had ever not been home for waking up early, and the tremendous amounts of food to be consumed (lovely roast meats, mmm). So we woke up late (afternoon-ish) and set out to find somewhere for Christmas lunch, roast meats was an early requirement however there really wasn’t a lot open so we decided on a nice looking place in the middle of Zurich. It was, as is pretty much everything in Switzerland, quite expensive. However the lasagne and lamb fillets we ordered were ridiculously good (and we got our fix of tasty roast meat). Initally we thought Switzerland with its Swiss Franc more or less 1 = 1 with the AUD it would be easier to tell how much everything is as there would be not conversion required. However all it has done has reinforced how much everything costs, as everything is just 75% more expensive in Swiss Francs. Our lunch was a taste sensation and worth every cent, the next day we were headed out to Interlaken for some skiing action, which as you know by my preemptive photo post, has been awesome!

 

On the 26^th, the day we arrived in Interlaken, we set about organizing everything we needed for our scheduled 3 days of skiing, we sorted out hiring skis, boots and poles, and got our 2 day lift ticket. The lift ticket system here is much better than at home, every lift has a turnstile type system with a RFID scanner that scans the ticket in your pocket and lets you through. Much quicker than having someone check your printed ticket, it also ensures that everyone has to buy a lift ticket, unlike at home where people can sneak through. Another difference on the slopes here, is the majority of all lifts are run automatically there are almost no ‘lifties’ or people to help you with the lifts / t-bars etc. Which must mean a great deal of savings for the people running the mountain. And most of the chairlifts are padded and have a little bubble you can put over you for when it is windy or snowing.

 

More importantly the snow and slopes here are almost perfect and endless, over our 3 days of skiing, we are skiing three different mountains all within short train trip from Interlaken. In a packed full day we won’t cover anywhere near all the runs that we want to, we might ski 60% of the mountain. There are just so many runs! Also each run takes between 20 and 40 minutes to complete, unlike Buller where you might be lucky to finish a run in 2-3 minutes. The “home” trails that take you back to the main village run for about 45 minutes and are just picturesque and amazing.

 

Our first day we skied Grinderwald, First and Oberjoch (all one mountain), which has a highest point of 2500m. There is a good mix of beginner, intermediate and expert runs (their colouring system is different, it goes blue, red, black. Not green, blue, black. Which makes sense with a percentage of the population being green/blue colour blind I suppose) and we had a great deal of fun trying our skills and the various runs. Both of us had 2 big stacks each, the rental skis are not up to our awesome skill standards =), and we took lots of photos, check them out!

 

Another thing that has amazed us is the amount of snow, unlike at home where if there was 50cm we’d be happy, there is just snow everywhere, all the runs are open and the locals keep telling us that “there isn’t that much snow, wait until January”.

 

On the second day (after waking up earlier to beat the rush) we were a bit more sore and sorry for ourselves but had much more skiing to do. Our mountain today was the Jungfrau, Mannlichen region. This is the biggest mountain in Europe at 3454m, huge! In a full day we only skied probably half of the runs we wanted to, including a scary black run, they just go forever, and by 3pm I was stuffed, so we headed back down to the train on the equivalent of the ‘home trail’ at buller, a run that goes from the top of the mountain all the way to the train / car park. After a few rests we finally got to the train and I collapsed in a big heap, quads are on fire. At the moment we are having a day off, resting and recuperating in preparation for our final skiing day at Murren / Shilthorn.

 

(I just can’t believe how amazing the runs are here they go forever, the snow is powdery and soft and there is just so much of it. Most of the time we are skiing with the most amazing beautiful view of massive mountains in front of us and we just can’t believe we are actually getting the chance to ski in Switzerland!!! We are both improving so much and building leg muscle with such long runs, I just wish we were here for longer so we could explore more of the mountain! —– Amy)

 

We are leaving for Thailand in only a couple of days (2^nd of Jan), very sad to be leaving Europe, and our trip is coming to a close, back home and back to work, boo. But we have had an awesome time so far, learnt and experienced so much.

Interlaken / Jungfrau, Switzerland

Hi!

We are having to much fun skiing (and sleeping when we are not skiing) to properly write something for the blog, however we are having a great time (had two days skiing already, legs are feeling it) and have one more planned with some rest in between.

BTW: Jungfrau Peak (the highest mountain we are near, and in europe) is nearly 3500m! huge!

Here are some photos!

Merry Christmas!

To all of our friends and family,
Merry Christmas, hope everyone has a wonderful, safe holiday.
Missing you all on this special day.
Love lots, Amy & Nick xox

Munich Day 2/3 & Zurich

—- Nick

So after some checking, you have to book 6 months in advance to do the BMW factory tour (boo) so that was out of the question, instead we headed city centre bound and wandered around the old kings palace & gardens which was nice, it was also covered in frost/snow (which was cool, also gives you an idea how cold it is here, -8). Amy also did some xmas shopping of her own buying some Christmas decorations for our tree next year as well as some clothes. We also perused the main shopping strip with lots of rich people in fur coats shopping at Louis Vutton after they parked their M6’s. We also watched people on main city ice skating rink before heading out for some awesome Chinese for dinner. We didn’t sleep that well as Amy’s cough got a little worse but eventually got a few hours in. The real action comes on our third day where we got up early to do the free walking tour of Munich, run by the same company as the other cities we have done. They have always proved be to very informative and great fun, we found them great at the start of the stay in the city but in too many cities we end up doing them at the end of our stay.. Either way the Munich tour was no different and had a quick but in-depth view of the city’s history as well as landmarks etc.

 

Especially after just being in Berlin, how the history lessons overlap is great. Talking about how Hitler was arrested and jailed in 1923 for a failed coup, all of this happened in Munich, we saw the birth place of the Nazi party and again how Hitler was almost bloody killed a million times but never seems to cop it. Even how the German military didn’t promote him over message boy as they thought he lacked leadership skills (!). It was also interesting to see the different ways that the two cities respect the events of the past, Berlin having huge memorial and monuments to those who were killed, and Munich having a few small inconspicuous plaques around the city. Munich was very interesting, and the architecture, although very German is always significant to the people in some way or another. (We also learnt that in Oktoberfest, lots of Aussies kept losing their passports when they got really drunk, but couldn’t get a new one because the closest embassy involved crossing a border. So for the two weeks that Oktoberfest is on the Aussie embassy sets up a temporary station at the British embassy, especially for drunken aussies that lose their passports, so funny! — Amy)

 

However interesting our walking tour, it was still bloody freezing, after the Paris walking tour and hearing how when Napoleon marched his army to conquer Russia in the winter, and when his troops heard clunking noises from their boots, the noises coming from the toes they have lost to frostbite, we venture inside when our extremities get too cold. So we warmed up in toasty Starbucks (they are everywhere EXCEPT in Italy), went home to prepare ourselves for our BREWERY TOUR.

 

Now, while preferably I wanted to do the Erdinger Weissbier tour in the town of Erding 30km from Munich city itself, which goes for 3 hours and would be awesome, they aren’t running any English tours until January 7^th, so no Erdinger tour =(. Our next best option was a privately run brewery and beerhouse tour. The brewery tour whilst much shorter and less thorough as I’m sure the Erdinger tour would have been, it was good to do one whilst in Munich. What topped this was the world famous Hofbrauhaus! A famous, huge Munich beer house where men gather, and drink lots of tasty beer, eat large amounts of grilled meat and sing merrily whilst the band play on brass instruments in their Leiderhausen.. It’s a great atmosphere and really can’t faulted, they really have thought of everything when it comes to drinking beer.

 

In the hofbrauhaus, which has been around for hundred of years, before they had toilets, they just had troughs that ran the length of the beer hall and out onto the street where men could piss in when they required it, so they wouldn’t lose their seat (genius). They now have toilets, but even there the innovation continues, they have a spew trough in the guy toilets! Just in case you have to many, they don’t want you blocking the urinals so you just go in the spew trough… smart people! Something else worth mentioning in the beer house ethos is a status called ‘Stammtisch’, which is an honour placed upon a long time patron by the beer hall that gives you the privilege of always having a seat even if people are sitting there they must move, and have your stein (massive beer mug) kept under lock and key at the beer hall itself. This honour is only inherited from their fathers or earned by being a resident patron for 30 years… pretty crazy!

 

Long and short of it being that Munich beer halls are awesome, best beer in the world and cheap as chips, can’t be beaten, as well as the huge pretzels they sell! We indulged in a pork knuckle between us for dinner whilst we drank (I even managed to down 2 beers, so proud of myself — Amy) which was a massive slab of pork on a bone.

 

The next day (I managed to not write myself off, I’m proud) we headed to Zurich, where we’ll be for 3 nights over chrissy before we head off to Interlaken / Grindelwald for some skiing action, Zurich is quite nice, but it seems it is all winding down for the holidays so it could be a quiet couple of days. (Zurich is a beautiful winter wonderland city, where you can ‘feel’ Christmas everywhere — Amy).

 

Note: I am getting so good at hacking people’s wireless now, got it down to an art. Got someone 128bit WEP key in just a couple of minutes today, fools =)

If we had an annual Christmas card….

These would be our pics.

We Love White Christmases.

Prague # 2 & Munich, Germany

—- Amy

So we got to really explore all of Prague having a good 5 days to actually look around the city and really be able to take it all in. In a lot of the cities we have been in it feels like we are always rushed as we only have a couple of days to fit in everything the city has to offer. So our last two days in Prague were spent exploring the city centre and more Christmas markets as well as some shopping centers. But as we aren’t home this year we quickly discovered that the last minute Christmas rush happens everywhere! We did some shopping though and got some cold essentials like scarves and more beanies as well as warming up with some hot drinks. We took a walk along the main river and had a look at some of the old bridges as well as taking in the town at night and looking at how incredible the Prague castle looks all lit up in all its glory. We didn’t do anything too touristy as such in our last two days as we were more than happy just walking down all the winding cobblestone streets and exploring all the little back alleys Prague had to offer. The main old town square full of Christmas markets and people drinking hot wine was where we always kept ending back up, even though we took every possible different route away from there! It has also been good having our own kitchen as we have been making lots of stir fries and healthy stuff, I think we both miss having home cooked meals.

Our hostel was pretty good as well, we had our own little bungalow type of room in the middle of a garden, and when not out exploring the city, it was nice to come back to our little “house” and chill with a bottle of wine and a movie on the laptop. Our last day in Prague was extremely cold as we were walking around the old Wencelas square, so we decided to go and see a movie. We found an English cinema and saw “BEE Movie” which was very cute and Nick and I enjoyed it a lot. So apart from me having a nasty chest infection and not feeling 100% we headed to Munich on the train yesterday which took around 6 hours. We had a compartment train, and it wasn’t nearly as fancy as the other trains we have been on but I spent most of it sleeping, as I haven’t been very well, I think the constant in and out of the freezing cold is wreaking havoc with my immune system…and of course Nick isn’t even slighty sick! (I am impenetrable! -Nick)

So our train ride was through a lot of fog and snow capped houses, and we arrived in Munich thinking it may be warmer than Prague, but have arrived to find it is about minus 7 degrees! We arrived at around 4pm (so it was dark) and are very pleased with our hotel, which is very comfy and roomy with big warm doonas! So we headed out to the main square with more Christmas markets in front of a massive church, and a choir singing from the outside balconies. Christmas here is such a big deal to everyone, and it is so beautiful the way everyone celebrates it. It’s a shame that we don’t have that kind of thing in Australia. So many gorgeous Christmas decorations and cute little market stalls selling the most beautiful Christmas decorations, everyone here seems happy and glad that it is Christmas. Although I don’t think that Germany is anywhere near as beautiful as any of the other cities I do have an appreciation for all the “Big and neat” buildings and the way that everything is done with such efficiency. So about to head out on an exploration adventure of the city during the day, as Nick’s favourite Erdinger Brewery doesn’t run English tours as we found out today. We will be doing a tour on Saturday night though which covers all the beer halls, so he is happy about that, and he has just discovered that there is a BMW museum, so I guess that Munich is definitely gonna be a “boy” city. Last night we had a lovely dinner of fancy pasta and pizza after we had a couple of cocktails at local bar which were quite potent. But we have discovered happy hour is from 6-8pm, so that has definitely made us both happy!!! So other than it being freezing here, it seems that this city will be go go go until we arrive in Zurich for Christmas. I can’t believe Christmas is only 4 days away!!!

Thermals! So many layers make me look fat!!