We had a great time in Turkey. It´s just like Thailand, but with a more middle eastern feel. It´s organised chaos. Istanbul was stunning, especially the Spice Bazaar and the Blue Mosque - all with the They Might Be Giants song running through our heads. We toured the Gallipoli battlefields and chilled on a three day Gullet boat cruise off southern Turkey. Ate plenty of Kebaps, bread, Lokum (Turkish Delight) and drank Turkish tea.

We think we got some good photos. Will post some later.

A couple of weeks ago we hit the slopes of La Plagne in the French Alps for a few days of snow boarding. Brilliant sunshine and blue skies made up for a lack of fresh snow for two weeks prior to us arriving.

Bon Année from Paris!

We made the weekend before Christmas (sorry this post is late - we've been busy) a long weekend, and headed off to Amsterdam. The city was much nicer than I had expected. In winter at least, Amsterdam is a really chilled out and laid back place. Everybody cruises around on push-bikes, so we did the same. Another thing I wasn't excpecting is the canals - the old part of Amsterdam is like a honeycomb canal network. It was a cold weekend, but the clear blue skies were reviving for us after drab grey London.

Brussels, in Belgium, hosts the European Union HQ. The 'eurocrats' vacate the city on weekends, leaving excess hotel capacity and therefore some tempting 'city-break' Eurostar packages.

Our weekend in Brussels included their local specialty meal of 'mussels and chips', It would have been wrong not to enjoy the Belgian beers, chocolate and waffles too (didn't want to offend the locals). The excellent neo-classical architecture, the comic museum, and a little shopping filled in the rest of the time.

Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy

For our 3rd Wedding Anniversary we took a 4 day weekend and went to Cinque Terre, Italy. Cinque Terre means 'five lands' and is five villages in a 12 km stretch of magnificent coastline, connected by a clifftop walking trail.

We spent the time doing the walk, exploring, swimming in the med, gorging on seafood, pasta and pizza, vino and devouring coffees.

Cinque Terre Coastal Trail

Menu

Unfiltered, unaltered photo...

Manarola

Swimming in the harbour

Vernazza Piazza

Hot and tired after walking from the village in the distance

Beautiful, brown Italians

'allo

After Rome we had 2 nights in London. We had just enough time to get some stuff sorted out (tax, stored junk, etc) and squeeze in a pub lunch with some of Aimee's (now ex) work collegues (a good excuse for a last meal of 'sausages and mash' and a pint of real ale) before boarding a flight to the USA for the last leg of our trip.

Thanks again Liv for putting us up and feeding us some of your good Irish cooking (that was Irish Chillie, yeah?).

The USA is where we are now. More on that soon...

Buon giorno.

Italy is a fantastic country. The food is fantastic - the best pasta, pizza, dolchi - fantastic vino, culture, art, architecture, history, language, climate, mountains, lakes and countryside.

There is a lot to see in Rome (besides old Beatles), so we did a lot of walking to see as much as we could in the couple of days we had there.

We tried to imagine gladiators playing Aussie Rules at the Coloseum, checked out some ruins, visted the famous piazzas, climbed the Spanish Steps, and saw the Tivoli Fountain.

We went to the Vatican City (the worlds smallest state) and climbed the dome at the massive St Peters Bascillica (all the other cathedrals we have visted pale next to this one) for the best view of Rome, and visted the tombs of past Popes in the celler. We craned our necks at the dazling ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

For our last meal in Italy we stuffed ourselves full of pizza, pasta and vino rosso and boarded our plane back to London.

Ciao.

We were looking for a quieter, less touristed corner of Tuscany. We found it in the virtually unchanged medieval hilltop town of Cortona in SE Tuscany. Our accomodation was in a hostel in an old convent with a vaulted hall for a common room.

After Tuscany we would be spending the next 2 weeks or so in Rome, London, New York and LA in that order, so we made the most of the countryside. We walked in the hills, amongst the vineyards, stone villas and pencil pines. We stopped for a coffee at a small village cafe where old Italian men were playing cards. We even took to the steep cobbled streets at dawn in search of good photos. Honest...

We made our way from Torbole south through fair Verona (of Romeo and Juliet fame) and Bologna (of spag bol fame) to Florence in Tuscany.

Florence is where the Renaissance began in the 14th century and is still Italy's home of Art and Architecture. We spent several days wandering the streets and alleys, admiring the piazzas and statues.

Budget hotels don't really exist in Florence and the hostels aren't great. We got 'touted' though, and stayed at the Camping Michealangleo camping ground (backpackers can hire tents and it is half the price of the cheapest hotel in town), perched up in the gardens in the hills overlooking Florence. Its only 20 mins walk into town, the views are spectacular. There is a foodmarket, a bar and a really nice patio for hanging out and looking at the view and enjoying the cool evening after a hot day in Florence.

We couldn't decide between checking out the Renaissance art at the Uffizi Gallery, or going to the Academia Gallery to see Michealangelo's David sculpture. We chose one and lined up and were stoked to discover we were there in Italy's Cultural Week and that all the state run gallerys were free - so we went and saw both. The David sculpture was larger and more impressive than we expected.

One night we stumbled across a restraunt which was a no frills 'locals' restaurant, away from the tourist areas. We could get a plate of excellent pasta there so big that we both had to tackle 1 together, and it would cost about 3 euro - less than half the restaurants in the tourist areas. Every meal is accompanied with vino, of course. We went back 3 more times to stuff ourselves full, and passed the tip on to other backpackers we came across.

Florence is a university town - which means head to the uni quarter for good value cafes and restaurants. We found a cool cafe bar were we indulged in Machiatos.

We did a couple of day trips. We went to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. It's impressive to see - the photos don't do it justice. The best description we could come up with for it was "really leany".

We also went to the Medieval hill-top town of San Gimignano in the rolling hills of central Tuscany. Its really cool, but a massive tourist magnet overrun by hordes of school groups and stampeding tour groups. Go in winter in the rain, or in the late afternoon and stay for the evening.

We did the train thing again to get from Nice to Venice in Italy, via a short stop in Milan. Venice was fantastic, but not cheap, so after a couple of days we were looking for another spot to hang out in northern Italy.

We found out that Adam (a friend from Melbourne currently living in Germany) and his girlfriend, Sandra, were going to be camping in a town called Torbole from the next day onwards. Torbole wasn't in our guide book, so we found it on a map in a bookstore and found out roughly how to get there from the information people at the station (people in Venice seem unaware that there is a world outside of Venice and they are very unhelpful!).

We eventualy found our way to Torbole late in the evening to find there was a big Mountain Biking festival on in the neighbouring town of Riva. The only accomodation we could find was above a Pizzaria. After that Adam and Sandra were kind enought to offer us some very nice accomodation on their campsite - we slept in the back of their station-wagon for a couple of nights. Thanks guys.

Torbole is at the northern end of a large lake called Largo di Garda, which is nestled into the fringe of the Italian Alps. Steep mountains rise up from the sides of the lake the the scenery is spectacular. Torbole is in Italy but it is extremely popular with Germans who come down to windsurf and mountain bike. Every their speaks either Italian or German and English is a distant second, which was really weird. Its a small sports and out-door oriented town, and very relaxed.

We spent a great couple of days catching up with Adam and chilling out by the lake. While Adam and Sandra were off bombing down mountains on their hi-tech bikes Aimee and I walked some trails and put some hire bikes through their paces riding some much tamer paths around the lake and amongst the vineyards in the valley.

I drooled over way too many good bikes. Think I might have to upgrade when we get home...

We rolled into Rome yesterday to discover there was a free concert on.

On a hot Rome night we went along to see Paul Mcartney perform outside the Coloseum! It was fantastic. With the Coloseum lit up behind him he belted out 3 hours of Beatles, Wings and his other songs. It was at it's most surreal when he sung Let it Be and Hey Jude (although we think some Italians were singing 'hey dude') as the crowd really got behind these.

Aimee was quick to notice the irony when he sung Live and Let Die...

Bonjour!

We spent a great week in the south of France on the Cote de Azure; The French Riviera.

We enjoyed sunning ourselves on the beaches in Nice and Cannes (home of the film festival) with the beautiful people, and paying out on the posh, monied 'Guchi Gang' (with their jumpers draped over their shoulders and leading their tiny dogs) on the promenades.

We based ourselves in Nice, the only semi-affordable place on the coast (our budget hotel had thread-bear carpet on the steps and half of the wooden shutters were missing but it was cheaper than 2 dorm beds).

We saved some Euros by cooking our dinner (accompanied by a bottle of the local wine) on Nice's pebble beach as the sun set each evening. This left us some cash to frequent some cafes and down coffee and French tarts and pastries. Mmmm French tarts and pastries...

We spent a day in Monaco, marvelling at the lavishness. I was drooling over the largest power-boats and yahts I've ever seen, bobbing in the harbour there. Some people have way too much money. The boys at home would have appreciated the cars cruising the streets and parked outside the Monte Carlo Cassino (where Aimee had a gamble). So many Ferraris, Lambognis, Porches, Lotus etc. Don't worry, I took some photos.

Au revoir!

OK, so I just did a post for Spain, but we have actually gotten a little bit behind in the posts, thanks to some extortionate internet cafe fees outside of Spain.

We have actually moved through the south of France (sunned ourselves on the French Riviera) and into Italy (getting stuck into piazzas and pizzas). We have visited Venice, camped by a lake in the mountains with a friend from home (Adam C. of hostel fame) and we are now in Florence.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself though, and have you miss out on all the juicy travel anecdotes, so we'll put up some posts for France and then Italy soon.

We went down to the coast to Almaria for a day or 2 on the beach. Unfortunatley the weather turned rather 'blustery' on us about an hour after we arrived. We spent the whole next day killing time in what must be the south of Spain's most boring and back-backer unfriendly town, waiting for our 9:30pm overnight bus to Barcelona to leave. Drank way too much coffee.

Barcelona, on the other hand, was excellent.

Barcellona has a vibrant 'old quarter' where we lined up for beds in a hostel. The alleyways are a fun place to get lost.

We checked out some of Gaudi's cool architecture (think Salvidore Dali designing buildings with lots of droopy curves) and the Picaso museum was great too (you can see how he progressed to the Weeping Woman style of painting and it starts to all make sense).

Yes, Chis, Barcelona 'Back Beach' is a nice place to chill out when you are done with the culture thing.

We are in Granada, south end of Spain.

Easter has snuck up on us a bit. We tried to book overnight train tickets to Barcelona today (for tomorrow) and found that all the trains are fully booked for the next week.

We´ve decided to head back down to the coast instead and take it from there. We are going to head to Almaria on the South West coast, where we´ve heard it is nice. Intended destination is a little town called San Jose, but we´ll see what happens. Being Easter all the Spaniards are travelling and accomodation is getting scarce. Even the little back-alley Pensions and Hostals we are staying in are booked up. Hopefully we´ll find something.

Easter in Spain is interesting. Every night during Easter week the churches have parades through the streets, with marching bands, large statues of Jesus and Mary surrounded by candles and people dressed in pointed hoods and robes, scarily like the Klu Klux Klan. Thousands of people turn out to watch each night.

Unfortunatly they don´t seem to have Hot Cross Buns in Spain, and we both love them. Don´t appear to have Easter Eggs either so we might have to improvise.

Off for a quick siesta then to a bar which we discovered last night has free Tapas when you buy a drink.

Following several long delays with our flight (one whilst we were actually still in the air) we made it safely to Spain, from Athens via London, last Monday night.

We landed in Madrid and whilst coming through the arrival gates were surprised to see that someone had organised a large welcoming party for us, including journalists and televisions crew. Our fame was short lived however, when the Manchester United football team came throught a few minutes after us, including David Beckham, who got completely mobbed.

Man U were in town for a big game against Real Madrid and the city was full of English football fans. This made for an interesting few days watching the fans get increasingly drunk, sunburnt and naked - streaking around Plaza de Mayor after an afternoon drinking in the sun.

After Madrid we made our way to Seville, home of the bull fight and flamenco dancing. The Plaza de Toro (bull ring) had an excellent tour but the bull fighting festival does not start until late April.

We bused, walked, begged and hitch hiked our way down the south west coast of Spain, through the small seaside town of Conil and on to Tarifa, the trendy town full of windsurfers and kite surfers. Although the weather here is not great, we both feel really at home as it is just like a Spanish version of Torquay (in Aus) and the beach is beautiful and stormy. Tarifa is the southern most town in Europe and you can see Africa across the water, where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean.

We are trying to get used to Siestas where everything closes from 2:00pm to 5:30pm and are really enjoying eating Tapas, when we are not cooking on our little burner to save a bit of cash.

Here are some hastily posted photos from our time in Athens and on Naxos.

Parthenon at the Acropolis.

Sunset on Naxos.

On the beach, Agia Anna, Naxos.

Cycling back to Naxos town.

We've arrived in the land of marble, souvalaki and olive oil. We have spent a couple of days looking around Athens, enjoying the sunshine and seeing some ancient Greek stuff - the best being the Parthenon and the Acropolis. Now we are on a Greek island.

Today we took a 6 hour ferry ride to one of the islands, Naxos. The houses in the town are white cubes with blue doors and shutters. The sun is shining and warm, but the wind is blowing and is quite cold. Tomorrow we hope it will be warm enough to find a sheltered beach somewhere and start to thaw out after a London winter.

Naxos is really quiet at this time of year, having just come out of winter and not really warmed up yet. We scored a really nice room at a cheap price but we are annoyed right now as we just found out the owner won't turn the heater on unless we hand over some more Euros.

Ok, off to find another char grilled Gyros for me and another Greek Salad for Aimee.

We just spent an fantastic weekend in Paris. We caught the Eurostar train over there on Saturday morning, and returned Monday night, after celebrating Aimee's birthday in style.

Paris is a beautiful city. It seems to be amazingly unspoilt - the buildings are all old and of Parisian style. The meandering alleyways (of the Left Bank at least) are filled with cute cafes and boutique shops and galleries - and you couldn't find a McDonalds, a Burger King or a Starbucks chain store if you tried. We have heard much about how touristy Paris is, but it is now winter (the temp was between about 0c and 4c the whole time) so there were hardly any tourists or lines to get in anywhere. Most people we came across were actually french and everybody spoke to us in French, assuming we did too (but hello and thank-you is about it for us).

We visited grand gothic Notre Dame cathedral, strolled along the Sein river, viewed the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo at the massive Louvre Museum and climbed the Eiffel Tower. We walked along the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe which is in the middle of a huge round-about where 12 roads merge (and there are no road rules...). We took in the views from Sacre Coeur cathedral at the top of the hill at Montmartre, and wandered past Moulin Rouge, but didn't take in a show.

We stayed in a hotel (half price thanks to www.wotif.com ;-] ) on Saint Germain des Pres (St. Germain Square). Actually, on the first night we got shifted to a nicer hotel next to Jardin de Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens) because the heating in our hotel wasn't working. We had coffee at the cafe Les Duex Magots on Saint Germain Des Pres, where Paris' intellectuals and artists (such as Picasso and Hemmingway) have been hanging out since the 1880s.

We explored the quaint old alleyways of the Latin Quarter and tested out some of the delicious French Patisseries (pastry shops), cool cafes and cosy restaurants in that area. We ate Escargot for the first time (slippery little suckers!) and discovered that French Onion Soup has a thick layer of grilled cheese on top.

Monday was Aimee's birthday so we visited a Chococlatier, where they serve you delicate morsels of chocolate while wearing white linen gloves. Aimee got to spend her birthday in both Paris and London. Don't know how we can better that next year.

(photos to come soon)