Viva Espanià

Paris has been interesting. There is amazing architecturer, sculptures, monuments, but we're over it. We've spent a week here and are very happy to be moving on. So Spain - Here We Come!

I was hoping to be able to download some photos, of all the sites that we've seen, but I haven't been able too - usually because I forget to bring the cable along with me. So I will just have to bore you all when I get back with the photos.

Anyway, time is nearly up. Hope everyone is doing well and I'll see ya'll in 7 weeks.

Free tours - gotta love 'em

Yesterday we did a free tour of Munich. It was great (not at good as the one in Edinburgh, but still good). The free tour is a walking tour, so again the day was spent wandering around the city. This city has some pretty cool sites too. Particularly considering it was pretty much wiped out in WWII.

Anyway, today we're off to the castle and we probbly need to get going. Hope all is good with everyone.

Munich

We arrives safetly in Munich this morning at 7.30am. Neither of us got any sleep on the bus, and we've decided that we won't be doing any more overnight bus rides. Our backs, legs, knee, neckes etc are aching. So no more busses. The bus trip was reasonably unadventful. We drove through the Czech Republic (yay another stamp in our passports). All we can say about the Czech Republic is it put on an awesome lightning storm for us.

The case of the missing underwear (and in Mandy's case clothes) has not been resolved. We spent close to 3 hours chatting with the Police in Poland explaining how it went missing (never again will we trust the hostel laundry service). Now we're just trying to work out how to claim this on our travel insurance. We'll see how good it is.

Today as we were both shattered from the complete lack of sleep, we spent the day trying to replace the missing items. We did ok, but we managed to find pretty much every other store in town before we found clothing stores - gee's we're chicks you would think that we had a homing beaker for clothes shops. So luggage is back to being heavy again.

Thursday we're off to Neuschwanstein Castle (yay) and tomorrow we'll discover what Munich has to offer.

For those of you who don't touch type would find travelling easy as so far each country we have gone to has had different keyboards (this one is winning as my personal favourite as the z and y keys have switched places and the ä us where the ' should be). It all make it fun huh.

Has anyone seen my Underwear??

Here we sit, waiting to hear from the boss of the hostel what happened to our clothes. For me it's not so bad, I only lost underwear, while Mandy has lost heaps of her clothes. We gave them to the hostel to wash and now they're missing. We don't have long as we have to catch a bus, so hopefully they'll get here soon.

Krakow & Auschwitz

We arrived in Krakow on Thursday morning {thanks Mark for Dropping us at Gatwick at stupid-o'clock}. The Old part of Krakow is very beautiful. It was also very warm when we got hot (33 degrees).

Krakow is a pretty amazing place - it has heaps of history and some amazing architecture. There are heaps of tourists here, but the city appears to be learning how to deal with them, there are information centres, that don't hold a lot of information, trams and trains run frequently to various places but little information is available (in english) on how to utilise them. But none the less, it's a great city.

Auschwitz.... well what can be said. It was a very moving experience going there. While we were looking at the remains of one of the crematoriums, a group of Jewish tourists started to sing in Hebrew. Gee's that was made it even more moving. It's really hard to explain the emotions that are felt while seeing the attrocious living conditions, torture chambers, stolen items etc that are there. It was saddening and sickening. People can be so cruel.

Tomorrow we head for Munich, and then we'll be onto Paris, so whatever relief the budget was feeling while being in Poland it will suffer some shock going back to the Euro. Today we'll explore the old Jewish part of Krakow.

Just Relaxing ......

The last two days have been very relaxing. Infact we've been very slack. We've been staying at Mark and Joanne's (Simon's Aunt & Uncle) place since Friday, and it's been fantastic. Yesterday they were nice enough to take us for a drive around the area (they both took us on separate site seeing tours of the local area), this was very cool. Joanne took us through Greenwich - which is beautiful, and Mark drove us through a tunnel under the Thames that has been there since the late 1800's. It was pretty amazing considering Perth has only had the Farmer Freeway since 2000.

Tomorrow hopefully we'll be off to Dover, assuming we can find the bus stop. This in itself could be an adventure, but I'll let you know how it goes. I think today (or what's left of today), we'll probably check out Eltham Palace and the local area as Mark has told us so much about the local area.

Streets of London - well Oxford to be exact.

We´re currently sitting in an internet cafe on Oxford St. We arrived in London this afternoon - staying in a funky little backpackers that is right next to the train station (always a bonus when one is carrying a backpack) and is above a pub (again always a bonus when one has carried a backpack and worked up a thirst).

We decided that we needed to see a bit of town and headed to Oxford St - got as far as an internet cafe and well stayed here.

The past three days have been beautiful.

Nothing of great excitement to report. All is safe and well.

Day at the Beach!

Yesterday was the first really warm beautiful day we've had since I've been here, so we (along with the rest of the population of York) headed towards Scarborough to the beach. Well lets just say we had our first real introduction to British Traffic Jams. OMG!!!!!! Put it this way, we decided to give the beach a miss and headed for the moors instead. Beautiful scenery.

Almost out of time.

Ciao

What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?

They built Hadrians Wall! It was pretty cool too. We walked along a little bit of it, but not the complete wall, as it goes pretty much east to west. That will have to be another trip.

We've finally had a couple of nice days. Inverness was fantastic, and we drove out to Loch Ness, which was a lot larger than I had imagined. But we didn't spot Nessies - very dissapointing.

We hired a car in Inverness on Tuesday and have slowly made our way down to the Lake District. Scotland was awesome, and there is so much to see and do here, that you could really spend at least a month or so in each country.

Apart from being bloody cold, or as the locals say "it's a bit fresh", the trip has been great. Hostel life is something that everyone should try at least once in their life - nothing quite like being kept awake most of the night by loud choral snoring, and then when you have drifted off, you get woken up by people packing as they have to leave early, or they're just completely ignoring the fact that there are 6 other people in the room who are asleep - again, you would think the loud snoring would give it away, but clearly no! Mind you nothing quites beats the woman in Dublin that pushed someone out of bed because she wanted the lower bunk (at midnight mind you and we were all asleep!)

Not sure where we're off to tomorrow, but no doubt it'll be south somewhere. Anyway, times nearly up.

Oh - and don't forget to check Mandy's blog too - it's http://www.mctraveller.blogspot.com