Thanks

Thanks to all who of you who have been reading our travel blog and the feedback you have given us. I know that several of you have had some trouble trying to comment on site, I'm not sure why that is, but we knew you were reading anyway.
We have decided to keep the blog going over the next few weeks, or until Xmas anyway so that some of the pics and video can be loaded up.
We'll also try and tell you some of the cool stories that haven't been told because of our technical issues such as Larry the Price Waterhouse partner we met in the Amsterdam casino who agreed that his expense account could afford to buy us happy "honeymooners" a drink. To our surprise he then bought us not one, but two bottles of Dom Perignon at 189 euro each. (heh heh, very nice thank you!
Or how we met an American guy in the smallest village in Cinque Terre who spends 6 months of his year working in Napier at the doctors Rachel used to go to when she lived there; she remembered his name!!!
Lots of people have been amazed at how much seems to happen to us when we travel; we thought it was luck for a start but we now realise that it's because we go looking for it.
The whole time we were away we ate "in house" only twice and had junk food once (McDonalds) as we were travelling late at night. Every other time we hit the town looking for somewhere cool to dine inevitably a) only going in if it looked cool and b) being the last ones to leave. In general if something looked strange, interesting, fun etc we gave it a crack.
Do that and you can't help but stumble across fantastic memories or at least a good conversation piece like how on our second to last night we hung out with a real live super model.
No pictures sorry to say, but we didn't actually know she was a famous person until afterwards...Doh!

We're home!

Yay, it's nice to be home and the sun is shining.
After 36 hours in transit we arrived back in Chch at 8.30am Friday morning.
We decided to upgrade to Business class on our San Fran/Auckland flight which was fantastic with the new bed/seats allowing us to sleep most of the way.
Then it's been all about catching up with the kids who were happy to see us and lots of laundry!

Today we hit the garden and cleaned up the pool which is already at 24C
Still sleepy but feeling much better than we thought we would be.

Homeward bound

We're now on our way home but only just.
After another few days in Cunio we were having a leaving lunch again at Danilo's place complete with another masterpiece meal from Momma and Rach was talking to Michela and Paola about our travel dates. "We fly on Thursday morning and get home Friday" Rachel tells them.
"How can that be they ask, it doesn't work with the time differance?"
A quick check of the tickets shows we actually fly out of Frankfurt on wednesday morning to get home Friday AM NZ time.
Phew, we wouldn't have checked otherwise.....

Just what language?

Last night in Geneva (Swiss) we were sitting in an Indian restaurant ordering in French and Rachel asks me in Italian how to say "excuse me lady" in French.
What's funnier is that I knew and answered her in half Italian and half French without remembering that I could also speak English.

Back in Baden

We have made another great call.For our last real (not packing) night in Europe we decided to call back in to Baden Baden for a night.
And it just happens to be the first night of the Xmas festival. Very cool and just another highlight!

Photos

We have taken thousands of photos on this trip and I had wanted to post some of the very good and funny ones. But things have conspired against us. Last night our camera gave up and it looks to be stuffed. The whole laptop thing has been an issue and this weekend Danilo is going to take the monitor off my hands.
So any remaining posts will be from cafes and won't have any pics. I will post some after we get home however.

Misty ole Milan

Hi folks we have been in Milan for the last day or 2 and the credit card has been severely whipped! For the first time in Europe we have found clothes that a) we like, b) are a fair price and c) actually fit.
Seriously most of the clothing shops seem to make adult clothes for 10yr olds!
The weather is now completely crap and we are over rain; I personally am blaming the Pope.
Milan is a pretty cool city, a city of the future is the claim. Very different to the rest of Italy that we have seen anyway. Last night we went to a Thanks giving party complete with pumpkin pie etc.
The first night here we met a guy in a local bar (Tricky's bar) who was a mate of Tricky that owned a Mexican restaurant we wanted to go to. This guy, Danny, then invites us to another bar, he has several, for the big thanksgiving party complete with the US embassy staff and a few Italian celebs. To be honest it was pretty crap and we spent most of the night drinking bud and watching the Dallas cowboys beat NY jets.
Today we are moving on again back to Cuneo for the weekend to hang out with Michela, Danilo etc before starting the journey north to Frankfurt where we fly from on Thursday.
We have flagged away Prague, it's too far, too cold and we really don't have any info on it.
So probably stops for a day in Zurich and somewhere in Germany, maybe back to Baden Baden.

Venice

Yup, we're in Venice.
We encountered snow and black ice getting here and it was with some trepidation that the decision to cross the water and stay here was made. We actually only booked in for 2 nights, but now that the weather has improved we've extended another 2 days and are here until Wednesday.
Here's some stuff I didn't know about Venice; if you know already,cool, if not I hope it's interesting for you.
Venice is not part of the Italian mainland, it is in fact a group of 118 islands 2 1/2 kms offshore. The famed canals are actually the sea between the islands, the crafty Venetians have concreted them up that's all. as most people know the place is sinking, in fact many of the buildings now do not use the ground floor at all. There is however an enormous amount of work being done on the canals and walls to keep the water out. The Italian govt are spending 4Billion Euro to build huge underwater gates to limit the height of extreme tides.
we did the gondola thing today; it was nice.
Everything is expensive here and it's easy to be caught out in Italy and Rome and Venice in particular. Most restaurants have a cover charge of which you first learn of when you get the bill. The waiter kindly places a basket of bread on your table which is common every where we have been, but they charge you for it whether you eat it or not.
Beer is about 4 or 5 Euro, but so is Coke, spite etc. Wine is basically the same price!!!! Not hard to guess what our staple liquid consumption has been. Without even trying you spend 100 -150 euro each day on food and that's even if you get breakfast included in your hotel bill....
Yesterday, lunch in a basic cafe was pizza for rach, me pasta. We shared a bottle of red wine and bread and a bottle of water. That was 55 Euro.
Then dinner was steak for me, spaghetti for rach and more wine and water; 80Euro.
After dinner we went to a concert, Vivaldi's four seasons which was beautiful, fantastic. On our way home, 2 espresso, 2 glasses of desert wine and a shared desert, 56 Euro. SO BRING LOTS OF MONEY!!!!!!
Venice has an incredible amount of glass blowing shops and we bought some gifts and jewellery today. It is of course also famous for it's masks, masquerade style, and we are buying some of those too.
Anyway, after Venice we are thinking Milan for 2 days then perhaps Turin to catch up with the mad lot from Cuneo again.
We'll keep you posted!

The Horns party (part 2)

Ok, so we had seen the posters and after talking to the locals my best interpretation was that there would be a parade when the men who had been horned and all the rest of the male followers would call on "women" to select the best one for them.

The dozen or so "horned" men would each carry a placard although we weren't sure whether the placards showed their attributes, was a wish list or contained disparaging comments regarding their wives..

Then there would be a street party and it was free to attend!

So we went out for dinner in a local restaurant and this was happening next door.

The boys were getting warmed up!

Then the parade started and of course there were chants and songs and I sang along heartily having no idea what we were singing, but it was all good fun.

Finally we arrived at a corner and 3 guys climbed up a ladder and the MC grabbed a big funnel and started speaking. He was very funny or so it seemed, but his speech went for almost 45 minutes.

You should note the big guy with the beard. He was the grand poohbah and the thing in his hand was a metre long bottle of "bulls blood", the good wine only to be drunk by the horned men and dignitaries.

This picture needs no caption.

So we had some roasted chestnuts and drank some of their home brew wine for 1Euro a cup. Frankly it was bloody awful, think raspberry janola!

But the chief took a shine to someone...

Then Rachel made her move!

The bull's blood was about 1000 times better than the other brew.

But after a big night we had to run and catch our train back to Riomaggiore or walk the 10km or so home.

It was all good fun with only a couple of casualties....

Moving on...

Rome has been cool, but the journey continues.
We're keen to spend some of our time in Venice over the weekend rather than midweek so we're going to bypass Florence even though it's apparently quite nice.
So tomorrow we are probably going back up the road north this time to a small thermal town called Montecatini for a night before zooming up to Venice for 3 or 4 days.
Hopefully Montecatini is as good as Baden Baden was in Germany.
Today we went back to the Vatican city, in particular the Vatican museum and the famous Sistine Chapel. Words and pictures cannot start to describe this place. I won't try.
After that we took the subway back for our 3rd go at the Colosseum and it rained again. But we did it anyway and feel we've seen enough in Rome to justify moving on.

When in Rome.......

Well we decided that while in Rome we must of course visit the Vatican City. Well we read up on it in our trusty Frommers book and it mentioned that when the pope is in town he holds an audience at his place. So like good kiwis we invited our selves along.

It was a little chilly and was looking bleak 20 mins before the big man arrived. It started to rain so we had to bring out the trusty red plastic poncho's.












However if there is one man on this earth who should be able to stop the rain it's the Pope, right? Well thankfully he did stop the rain and we sat through a pleasant one and a half hour speech from the pope and his faithful servants. There were thousands of people there and all were as excited as we were.

The Pope is a very impressive man, he gave great blessings and addressed the crowds and groups with passion and thought. He spoke all 7 languages perfectly and fluently! Amazing!

And as Kevin proposed he was expecting us and gave Kevin the wave and the nod. Needless to say Kev was pretty stoked with that!

The Pope also addressed the fact that he had heard about Kevin walking on water a few weeks ago so has asked that we share this miracle with the world!

It rained today!

It rained today and we got soaked, like really really wet.
No complaints though, believe it or not, it's the first rain we have had on the entire trip.
There was drizzle in Paris one day, and maybe it's rained at night, not sure, but today was the first proper rain.
Oh, and it was Hokitika rain too which is always pretty neat.
The street hawkers doubled their prices and for the bargain price of only 9 Euros we bought 2 Chinese made umbrellas. Mine wasn't very big although one arm did kind of stay dry!

We have just been checking the weather forecasts for the next couple of weeks, it's snowing in Prague today and is minus 4C! Yikes!!!!!

Polizia

One thing about Rome is the incredable prescence of the police here. Just before we arrived there were some pretty full on riots and a soccer fan was killed by the police, so we were a bit cautious when we got here. But no worries!

At any given time I reckon there is a Polizia car or squad within 100 metres of us and we have never felt safer!

It was a bit the same in Paris particular around the tourist spots.

One funny thing was when we happened upon a protest sit-in with about 100 students wearing white coats and the riot squad of about 120 and over 30 vans!

Things were going pretty quietly, so I stood up on the wall behind the protest and yelled in my best "Allo Allo" voice that we must all "fight for zee freedom" and tried to get a bit of a chant going

This seemed to help liven things up a bit anyway before Rachel dragged me away!

Technical issues

Here's the set up I need to use my laptop! The picture doesn't really show it but the monitor is twice the size of the laptop.

See the cool bottle of Limoncetto which helps me put up with the "stress"

You know we read a lot about how poor Internet access NZ has and how slow our broadband is, but we have had all sorts of issues on this trip.

Wireless is either slow or unaffordable and it drops out every ten minutes anyway. Broadband is a joke and the best connection we've had in a month is here in Rome on dial up through the telephone line!

It's a party!!!!!!

So you're wandering along the beach and you see a poster on a wall promoting an event happening that day in the small town you are in (Monterosso) that exact day.

It looks "interesting" and you wander down to the town square to check it out and find another poster.

It's mostly in Italian....

And "Liberty" is wearing interesting head gear.

Then you find an English translation and things become as clear as mud.

It's a party.

What do you do?

Or more specifically, what do you think we did???

Credit card woes.

Crikey, it does happen!
Someone has kept a credit card receipt (or something like that) from one of Rachel's transactions in France and has been using it to buy up large on the Internet.

Big ups to the fraud team at the National bank who discovered it and stopped Rachel's card before things went mad.
Oh, and they also credited back all the illegal spend.
Good on them!!!!!

Rome

Here we are in Rome.
Man there's a lot of old stuff here, a good property developer could make a fortune!!!!

Today we checked out the Pantheon (awesome), the Spanish steps (so-so), Trevli fountain (pretty cool) and stood on top of the big white monstrosity that houses the tomb of the unknown soldier and was built for the first King of Italy. From there we could see right across ancient Rome (as pictured) which we will check out more closely later on.

Tomorrow it's Vatican city.
Every Wednesday (if he's in town) the Pope speaks to the masses at 10.30, so hopefully we might see him. (If I hadn't lost my phone I could text him and check, but maybe he'll read this blog and give us a wave anyway?)

"The family"

Our Italian family!



Angelo, Danilo and Clelia (the world famous Mamma)








Danilo and girlfriend Paola in a very cool local restaurant in rural Cuneo.





Michela and I watching Danilo not play soccer.


She looks happy, I look like the kiwi Godfather.

Cinque Terre

Okay a quick post we are in an internet cafe and must go to catch a train....soon!
Cinque Terre (Five Lands) is a group of 5 villages along the coast that are seperated by hills and cliffs but are connected by walking tracks or trains! Very cool little place and although the whole place wouldn't be more than 10kms long each village has it's own dialect (different types of italian!) very confusing!

More later, sorry can't post pics at the moment, due to the terrorism act of 2005!
Seriously.........

Mi Amore ITALY!

Hi there everyone, well alot has been happening so far in Italy and it has all been pretty excellent. I will start from the beginning, arriving in Italy.
As Kevin mentioned earlier our friend Danilo that we met at Oktoberfest had been texting us and asking us to visit him at his home in Cuneo. So we decided to go, not knowing what to expect, he had to meet us at a little town so we could follow him to his house as it was out in the middle of nowhere. When we arrived he informs us that his brother, sister-in-love (yes love) and their children are joining us, we think this is great. Then he says and also my Mother and Father are here, we say great, then he says that all the others from Oktoberfest will be here a little later on for supper! So we walk in and two of them speak broken english and everyone else speaks Italian. Well after the home cooked feast of a life time and all the homemade wine we are in heaven and of course speaking Italian like fluent mexicans!! But it was great.
The next day our freinds all took the day off work to spend with us driving around their home town and surrounding districts!!
I could ramble on more but all there is to really say is that these people are probably the most generous and welcoming people we have met on this trip! Lovely, lovely people!
Before driving to Cinque Terra we called into Danilo's house for a coffee and to say goodbye and "Mama" had cooked us another 5 course lunch!! Needless to say we spent another couple of hours there!!

Italy

Hi folks we are in Italy with our mad Italian friends.

Rachel will update in the next few days if we can, but internet access and the time to do it is difficult.
We are actually in Cuneo, which is in northern Italy having probably the best time of our holiday so far. Last night we had dinner with a whole Italian family in their house enjoying the most incredible home cooked meal ever. Lots of wine, i mean lots, and unbelievable food and laughter.

Tomorrow we head to Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre and i doubt we will ahve any internet at all until we get to Rome in 4 or 5 days.

It's nice in Nice.

Yup, we're now on the French riviera, actually in Nice, for the next couple of days.
First mission tomorrow is a laundrette. The last time we were able to wash our clothes was way back in Amsterdam, so things are getting pretty average. Neither of us are prepared to do the smell test anymore, although I bought 20 pairs of undies in Bordeaux which has put me well ahead of the game. Shopping is one solution, but we now have so much luggage, that we are having to freight some stuff home in the next few days.

We have decided to change our homeward plans and have cancelled the 5 days in the USA and added those days to our Europe stay. We are undecided as to where to go, but Prague is being considered as we will now be flying out of Frankfurt.
Don't panic; we will still be on the same flight back to NZ as originally planned.

The cowboy thing was bit lame, just a glorified horse trek really although I did manage to get 22 mosquito bites. Those who have travelled with me know that I am a walking pharmaceutical company and luckily had stuff to rub into them.

It's Art.....

A spooky shot from the Salvador Dali museum.

Deep in thought.

"Now where did I go wrong?"

Rach contemplates another mystery meal.

Aigues Mortes

Hi folks, we didn't get to Avignon, but instead got sidetracked by Aigues-Mortes instead.
Very cool 13th century town still fully enclosed by a huge stone wall.

We're off to day to be French cowboys riding horses and rounding up black bulls!

Update

We're back in France, actually in Perpignan, which is just over the border from Spain. It's all part of the district of Catalonia, so in a way it's more Spanish than French.
For those Tradestaffer's this is pretty much the area in which Alex lived for a couple of years.

After Barcelona we travelled just up the road to Figureres for 2 reasons; it reputedly has one of the best restaurants in Spain and the Salvador Dali Museum.
Both were superb and I'll post more on Dali later.
The restaurant was also a treat. Rachel asked for agua (water) and they bought her an agua menu which had a choice of 16 still waters and 12 sparkling.
They didn't have any Chch tap water which I personally thought was pretty poor.

Having said that, being Spain we ate 3 courses each with 2 glasses of Cava (Spanish champagne) espressos and a bottle of pretty good wine for 120 Euros.
In France the same meal in a similar restaurant would be over 300 Euros which when you double it to get $NZ is the reason we did it in Spain.

Tomorrow we head up towards the Rivieria probably with a stay in Avignon or somewhere similar. Alex has given us plenty to do while we are there.

Any-one checking against our schedule will see that we are a bit ahead of ourselves, we are only supposed to get to Perpignon tomorrow. The reason is our quick trip across Spain to escape the cold. We are also thinking of dropping Marseille as all the Kiwis we have met on the trip didn't rate it at all.

So, our plan is to take an extra 2 days in Italy after Nice and go to Turin.
The reason for Turin is these 2 people.
We met them way back at Oktoberfest where they invited us to come and stay in their town for a day or two. We have kept in contact since and the thought of a home cooked meal and hanging out somewhere other than a restaurant or hotel room is pretty exciting.

Lost cell phone!

More bad news.
I lost my cell phone in Barcelona.
The worst part of it was that I lost it the morning my Grandad died, so I had no idea until hours later when we let home know that our contact would now have to be Rachel's phone.
So if you have txted me in the last 3 days, I haven't got it.

Just in case....

You forgot!

Road signs

This one is all over Europe.

It's like they forgot to finish it!

Again this is typical of every where we have been.

It's not unusual at all to have 2 or 3 conflicting sets of instructions at an intersection.

We were told early in the trip that it's actually illegal for people to honk their horn at you to show displeasure at your driving.

Our advisor said that it was more a case of them showing their appreciation for you showing them a new way of doing things.

When they are honking their horn, it really means "wow, thanks for teaching me a new way of doing things".

As always, I am happy to be an educator!

Speyer

I know it was weeks ago, so I'm going to get Germany wrapped up in condensed versions. Otherwise I will forget where the hell we have been.

From Munich we travelled via Augsburg to Baden Baden as you know.

The next day we flagged away going to Strasbourg and headed for the Rhine valley.

First stop and lunch was Speyer.

Lunch was good although the waiter had no idea what planet we were from and we used the point and shrug method.

He did however understand that I wanted beer!

This is the Kaiserdom Cathedral which is fairly significant in that it's the largest Romanesque building in Germany. The tombs in the basement house 4 emperors, 4 kings and a whole bunch of bishops.

The round thing is actually a wine bowl about 900 years old.

When ever a new bishop was announced the locals filled it with about 1500 litres of wine and they had a festival until it was empty.

This place was incredibly spectatular and again photos cannot do it justice. It looked like an old castle and we thought it was pretty bloody cool.

No one goes to Speyer, it's off the tourist track and until we got to Cologne a few days later we thought this would be the cathedral we would remember as being the best in Germany.

Sad news.

My grandad died last night.
Robert Hugh McTague was the last of my grandparents, he was my mum's dad.
Granddad has been pretty crook for a long time, he had his first heart attack when I was a youngster and heart surgery not long afterwards. He was a grumpy bugger and more stubborn than anyone I have ever met. He has been in a home for some years now and hated it!

My everlasting regret is that he had an operation in ChCh the week before we came away and I didn't go and see him. Could have, but didn't.
For the first time in my life I understand the phrase rest in peace, he was well and truely ready.

Language difficulties

To be honest there have been only a few and we have been surprised how many people speak some form of English, but at times ordering food has been exciting, particually when it arrives and isn´t what you expected.

In Paris simon was telling us about how he was impressing the kids and in his absolute best French he ordered 2 beers and 2 lemonades for the kids. They were very impressed until 2 loaves of bread arrived! I have had my moments and on our last day in Paris we had lunch with Thorney after visiting the Pere Lachaise cemetery I ordered a nice bottle of white wine to share. Out arrived 1 jug of cheap red wine and 1 jug of cheap white wine. When our meals arrived none of us knew who´s was who´s so we just guessed. The most fun has been the road signs. I have been taking pictures of some of them, but it´s fair to say we understand very few of the hazard signs.

They put up big flashing lights and warning signs and we drive straght past them not having a clue!

The Haircut....the real version!

We arrive in Paris and Kevin has been moaning for atleast a week that his "fluffy head" needs a trim! So we walk past almost the entire Parisian hairdressing world all the while he looks in and says "i´m not getting my hair cut in there, those hairdressers are too gay!" referring to the male hairdressers inside the salons. I try to reason with him and say that really how does he know that and they are just people....NO! he exclaims I refuse!
So a couple of days later I head off to the post office to mail a few postcards, Kevin announces that he can see a hairdresser sign down the street so goes off to investigate, i send my postcards and figure he must have finally found somewhere as he isnt´back yet and no where to be seen on the street.
I wander down the street and Kevin comes flying out of a shop with a salon robe on announcing that he was having his hair cut, i get inside and find........well how do i start...........Kev´´s new best freind...."Lola"
Now this "lady" had the deepest voice and the shortest skirt and is fair to say "she" may have also had some stubble.......i think for the first time my husband was trying to avoid looking up "her" dress..............
Now Kevin will try and tell you he did this purely for the story....but I think we know better, I honestly think he was just frightened when "she" came out and asked in a voice huskier than Louis Armstrongs - "You wanna trim" - he just looked up at "her" towering over him and said "yes.........uh..........MAM????"

Poetic don´t you think?

The hair cut, my story.

As you all know my hair grows very fast. At home I have to get it cut every 3 weeks.
In Paris i was getting a bit woolly so decided to get it cut short.
Everywhere I looked was a bit flash, a bit French really and looked busy, so I said to Rachel that the next place I found where they weren´t too posh or busy I would go in.

So while Rach went to the post office I looked down the street and saw a small hairdresser.
While I was looking in the window this young "lady" came out and asked me if I would like a "trim." (Her voice was like Windsor Davies from It ain´t half hot mum). Thinking it would be funny to get a haircut from what was obviously a transsexual and knowing it would be a great story to tell later I headed in for the trim.
"Lola" was an interesting hairdresser, think Edward sizzorhands in a mini skirt and for 20 euros I got the second worst haircut of my life. The worst was when my mum used an attachment on the end of the vacuum cleaner when I was eleven.

Anyway thats the official version, no matter what rachel says!

Hola everyone!

Okay so i just wanted to say g´day and hope everyone is well.
am missing everyone, but am really enjoying hanging out with my husband in the most interesting places we have ever been.
Cass, hope the so-cal family are good and safe
Holly hope you and James are well
Amy & Erika, we love you and miss you heaps (and very proud of you both for all the cool things you are acheiving at school) can´t wait to get home and give you lotsa hugs!
Margaret / Mum - thank you for everything, i´m sorry to hear Huey isnt doing so well. My thoughts are with you.
Mum miss you heaps and heaps. I see Perth is starting to get some pretty nice weather huh?! Love to George and miss you heaps!
Whanau & Freinds - love to you all, cannot wait to share our experiences with you and for those of you who have never had the chance to come to this side of the world, make it your next priority - its a great experience!
Kev is posting about Spain and some of the cool things we have done in the past few days so will let him update you on all of that.
Adios! Love always - Rach xxx

It´s Bathelonnna!

At least thats how us locals say it.
We left San Sebastian as it was just too bloody cold.
We went sight seeing and it really was quite beautiful, but 5C and not much fun.
So we made the decision to shoot straight across Spain to Tarragona, an ancient Roman city about 100kms south of Barcelona. We got up early expecting the 500km trip to take all day.
We did it in under 4 hours mostly travelling in the slow lane!

Tarragona was a great choice and we are pleased we made the decision to go there. Instantly it was 15C warmer and I could wear my shorts again without the locals looking at me like I was a refugee or mad or both!
Our hotel looked right down on an old Roman amphitheatre and across the nice blue sea.
On the second day we found a nice little village square (plaza) with restaurants, bar and lots of locals. We had a very cool 3 days with lots of fun and it was probably the best part of our holiday so far. Lots of laughs with heaps of photos to come later. One special highlight was sitting in on a
Castell (Like a Spanish human pyramid building festival)!
From there we moved up the coast to Barcelona and have experienced all the city has to offer. Despite being told it was too dangerous we hit the local nightlife with reckless abandon. Late, in fact very late we found ourselves in a bar with a Spanish barman, A colombian man, a french woman and an italian couple all speaking different languages.

At one stage the men decided that Tequila is the language of men and the barman produced a plastic bottle with a hand written label attched to it with a sticking plaster. Brilliant!
Any way Rachel invited them, along with at least half of Spain back to our house for Xmas.

I didn´t /couldn´t leave our hotel at all the next day so we added an extra night to our Barcelona stay.
We used that day to simply be tourists, something we have pretty much not done on this trip and toured the city on an open double decker bus and looked at the Gaudi cathedral and park.
Today it´s All Saints day here in Europe so not much is open. We are going to move up to Figuers (sorry about the spelling, the spell check works in Spanish only) the place of birth and death of Salvador Dali. I´m a Dali fan, so will be visiting his house and museum.
Then we are back across the border back into France where we will spend a week in the south before moving on to Italy.

Does anyone know?

What this is?

Anyway, thinking it was the toilet I peed in it, then discovered we had a toilet.

Road rules!

We've now done almost 3000kms in Europe and it's fair to say that maybe, just maybe, we should have learnt the road rules before we came.
Now after only about 400 near misses we pretty much have it sussed.

1. You must always drive at least 25kms faster than the speed limit.
2. If you turn your hazard lights on you can go anywhere or stop and park anywhere, this includes roundabouts, pedestrian crossings and ramps.
3. If you are turning left you are stuffed coz everyone has the right away except you.
4. Red lights do not mean stop, they mean slow down and go if the orange light is also flashing.
5. Cars can go anywhere a person can go, this includes footpaths, pedestrian crossings and cycle lanes.
6. Bicycles should always be ridden on the footpaths, particualy where-ever there are lots of people.
7. A motor bike is just a motor bicycles and rule 6 applies.
8. The shortest way is never the quickest way and you should just use the Toll road.

Rule 8 has led to a mjor falling out in the ranks. Jeanie (our GPS) has fallen away poorly since we left Paris. She sends us up one way streets and randomly just loses where we are and starts giving false instructions like "turn left now" when there is nothing but the sea to the left.
She is now called Molly and we hate her!

Backwards

More technical issues!
Suddenly the mouse control on my mouse has gone backwards, if i move it left, it goes right and if i move it up, it goes down!

Does anyone know how to fix this coz it's driving me mad!!

Anyone for Pitxos?

Hola from San Sebastian on the northern coast of Spain.
After Rachel's many years of anticipation of being in Spain and with her learning plenty of the language it was pretty bloody funny to get here and see her forget almost everything and start talking to the locals in French.
This is Basque country and they don't particularly like the Castillian version(which we have learnt) being used anyway. In actual fact English is preferred.
Sobering thing was that last night when we were out on the town some English folk told us they had been out to some of the more remote villages and were met with hostility from the Basque separatists because they were speaking Spanish!

We went out on a Tapa crawl last night, although here they are called Pitxos (Pen-chos) and the crawl is called a "poteo-ir-de-pitxos" which is certainly a new experience. Basically all the bars have platters of all this finger food loaded up on the bar and you help yourself, as you would at a 21st at home. Then you order some drinks and go back and forward to the bar for more food as you like. Each piece of food is held together with a tooth pick and you keep these in your pocket.
At the end of the night you count the tooth picks and tell them how many you have and the number of drinks and they add it up and charge you. Then you go onto the next bar and so on and so on. The food is bloody awesome, lots of fish, crab and prawns which we have loved after all the meat and bread in Germany and France.

Then we went to a local dance bar and the first guys we see are bloody Kiwis!
After that we foolishly went on to the Casino where Rach lost her money on Black Jack and me at Poker. It was very interesting to play cards having no idea at all what anyone else at the table was saying!
While we like it here, it is bloody cold.
San Sebastian is where all of Spain comes in the middle of Summer, so now in Autumn there's no-one here and for the first time on this trip our off-season timing sucks!
We are staying here one more night, then heading across country and south, way south, to find some sunshine and to speak some proper Spanish!

Today

We arrived in Poitiers last night which is about 1/2 way between Paris and Spain.
We'll head down in the direction of Bordeaux today before starting the Spain leg of our journey tomorrow. First stop today will be the small town of Cognac, famous for guess what???

The weather is becoming an issue now with it getting to zero overnight and a high of 9C yesterday and today. We have had to buy woollen coats and jerseys!
Actually since Amsterdam the only man, other than myself, I have seen wearing shorts was also wearing jandles and a Waikato jersey!

Baden Baden

Time to catch up a bit from when we went missing in Germany.

After leaving Augsburg after lunch we intended to head to Strasbourg which is actually over the Rhine river in France. But the navigator for Germany (me) decided that we should instead stay on the Geram side of the river and head for Baden Baden, an old Roman thermal spa town.

This is one seriously cool place and it was a perfect place for us to practise our driving on cobbled lanes less than 2 metres wide.

This is our Hotel.

The only issue about our hotel was that we were right next door to the church which we had been warned were likely to ring their bells pretty often.

They rang continuously for 15 minutes at 6.45pm (just after we checked in and we wondered if we would get any sleep.

Then they didn't ring again until 7am, then they didn't stop until 7.30am.

No-one sleeps past 7am in Baden Baden!

The Romans came here to recuperate after a tough battle and we needed to do the same after Munich. Basically no-one spoke English or was interested in rugby, so we just bunkered down and took in all the history and healing qualities of the "slightly radioactive" spa water which has pools today which are actually on the old Roman ruins.

Think Hamner, only 2000 years older!

I can confirm one thing, the Germans love their nudity. The public area downstairs was normally only half full while the "Roman gardens" area where everyone, and I mean everyone" gets their kit off was packed.

Unfortunately I couldn't take the camera in there so you will have to imagine me wandering around naked......

So-Cal in Flames

Cassie my friend I hope all of your family are safe and well amid the flames in your home town. Our thoughts are with the peeps of So-Cal.

xxx Kev and Rach xxxx

Read the full story here

Amsterdam PART 2

Heineken Brewery - Well there was a cool tour! Up and down stairs and just when you think you can walk no further ahhhh....beer!



Actually there were three free beers within the tour and a few cool (and not so cool) interactive rides!

If you were smart like the backpackers you would follow the asian tourists around coz most of them don't use their tokens as they don't drink, so if you were clever you could sit there all day and get pissed!




Here is Kev having his quota.......

Here is a link to a video we made inside a fermenting tank at the Brewery.






All in all Amsterdam people are pretty cool as long as you know these important things:


There is always a place that will relax you...........




You can always find plenty of beer to quench your thirst.....






And always be careful when walking..........


I guess the taxi is on the NVT huh??

Shane bloody Edmond

There's a guy I have known for over 30 years called Shane Edmond. He lived a few hundred metres down the road from me in Tinwald, went to the same primary school and married a girl I knew called Belinda Reid. Shane is a very successful guy and heads, I think, one of the biggest stock broking organisations in NZ
Shane and I have never really been mates, he's 2 years older than me, but in the last 5 or so years we just keep bumping into each other in the strangest places. If there is any one person in the world who will turn up in the most unexpected place at any given time for me, it's Shane.
I have told heaps of stories about Shane and I bumping into each other in some very strange places.. We get on well and I suspect that one day we will do something together.
Today I asked Rachel to take a picture of me wearing my SA scarf and just as she clicks Shane is walking down the footpath in Paris, sees me and sticks out his hand.

You can tell by my expression what I'm saying to him.

The final

Well at least the Poms disn't win!
Yesterday to the amazement of many (myself included) I bought a South African scarf and have worn it since.
2 reasons; firstly I simply couldn't handle England having 2 world cups when we have one
and secondly after the quarter final losss to France I had 3 Poms poke me in the chest and ask me what it felt like to be a loser.
We have met many people in the last few days (Poms, SA's, French etc) that have all said NZ are the best and have asked us what happened.
Our answer has been stock standard, that is we don't know but it doesn't matter coz we ain't in the final.
This has won us plenty of friends!
We will report on Paris more fully soon but the last couple of days has been about catching up with friends. Yesterday we spent all with Simon and Steph who came over here for the rugby AFTER the AB's got home! They have had a great time and although they went to bed at 11pm Rach and I stayed in their hotel house bar until 4.30am drinking Johhny Waker green label with Jake White's best man and learnt a lot about the upcoming challenges to SA rugby with the TEN minimum black player per team quota next year.
Then before the game we met up with Thorney for a beer or 5 on the Champs des Elyees only 200 metres from the Arc de Triomphe and experienced something only Thorney can provide.
The guy is a friggen superstar!
People just walk up and start taking photos, it is actually quite bizarre to see how people react to him. He is taking us to a cemetery tomorrow that contains , amongst others, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Chopin and Oscar Wilde. Should be interesting!

Deaker.

The definition of a non-friend!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4245664a1823.html
Do not believe all you read, kiwi's in Europe (at least the ones we have met) are much more understanding than you are led to believe.

Paris

Bonjour, yes we are here safe and sound along with the half of NZ that wasn't at Disney when we were there.
By the way, here's the answer to the celebrity question.

It was Jason bloody Gunn!

Amsterdam and................Windmills?? PART 1

Actually, Windmill (singular) - Yes this is about the only windmill we saw in the entire of Holland - instead they have replaced them with those great big wind farm monstrosity's! How disappointing!

It's fair to say that Kevin especially was very sad to leave Germany and was skeptical on what Amsterdam would bring us, after staying in small quaint little towns we weren't sure if the big city would be right for us. We arrived a little panicky as had no accommodation and again 6pm was rolling around quickly, but we soon found a gorgeous hotel just off the "high end fashion street" and decided to splash out! A beautifully quiet hotel with friendly helpful staff and a great bed!(always important)

So after checking in we felt much better and headed off for some dinner, but first cocktails and 'bitterballs' this is a dutch thing and is the norm for them before tea.

Kevin almost got run over aimlessly looking around at the town by not a car but a bicycle! They are everywhere, there is at least one for every person in Amsterdam, in fact many people have two bikes and they ride everywhere. Driving is just hard work so it's much better to just park up! So if you can't beat em, join em ..... and that's exactly what we did....

But then it was fair to say that it wasn't at all like you felt intimidated on a bike.....................................

So we toured around the whole city on bicycles which is by far the best thing to do. There are truely just bikes everywhere 1.6 million of them in fact and pretty much no car parking just bike parks?? - This pic is seriously a parking ramp - in fact three story's of one and it's all for bikes! Also the older and crappier your bike is the better as it's less likely to get pinched!

The Dutch are apparently some of the most calm and laid back people in the world, well the ones in Amsterdam at least. I'd have to agree - we felt so 'chilled out' the whole time! :)

More on Amsterdam later including the tour of the Heineken Brewery! I have to get ready now as we are off to PARIS! Au Reviour for now!