It was a VERY wet night last night and our group had 1 well flooded tent, many flat lilos and quite a few wet bags (but some had been left in the orning and thought that that would stop them from getting wet... Yea right!) Today was our free day in Amsterdam and guess who we hung out with... No, how did you guess? Yip, Tim and Carla (but that's ok because it was our last day together and they were going to do exactly the same as what we wanted to do). Today's mission... not to get too wet with the constant down pours! Alex dropped us off on the outskirts of Amsterdam them everyone walked with out tour leader into the town centre (except us) because some of them were doing a free bike ... read more

Today we started off with a 2.5 hour walking tour with a tour guide arounf Berlin – it was not a usual tour where he took us to buildings and explained what they were, he took us to very random places like construction sites and the underground subway station and explained the history and what used to be where we were standing. We were taking to the carpark of an apartment building to be told we were standing where the bunker of Hitler used to be and where he commited suicide. After this Steve and I along with a few others were on a mission to find some Havianias (Mum – they are a brand of jandles/thongs/flip flops/slip slops/whatever you call them!) as both our jandles are broken and we both have sore feet... unfortunately we ... read more

This morning one of the other Christchurch girl's said 'It's September 4th today' and it took me a while to click! I cannot believe it has been an entire year that we have put up with earthquakes! This morning brekkie wasn't until 9.30 but it got very warm so Steve and I were up at 7.40 and got ready to put a load of washing on... problem was the guy standing in the reception did not speak a single word of English and I had to sit outside the reception area for 50 minutes waiting for an English speaking receptionist to arrive (even though the sign on the door said reception was open from 6am-10pm!!!!!). We got our load of washing on and were then informed it would take 90 minutes to go through the washing ... read more

We started today off with a driving tour around Vienna, stopped of at a castle then we were dropped off in the middle of town. We some how ended up hanging around with Tim and Carla today. Our aim was to find the markets that had been pointed out at the beginning to the driving tour... unfortunatly we were given the wrong directions and ended up spending most of our day walking around. We went to a cafe and had tradtional Veinna coffee, a slice of Suck-a-toe (as Steve calls it, I think it is actually Sucatorte) and an apple strudle with vanilla sauce – that was really nice!!!!! We were picked up at 3.30 to go on a tour of the original Schnapps museum. The guy that took our tour was the 5th generation of ... read more

– The new rap Steve has made up... oh joy! Today was a free day in Budapest. We were given train tickets the night before so we were able to head into town whenever we wanted. We decided to hang out with Tim and Carla again today. We headed up the hill to find the underground caves which we really didn't find (turns out they were closed anyway) and instead we went to find the Labirynth... which was also closed! We gave up eventually and Steve and Tim went to the 'House of Terror' and Carla and I went to have a massage and shop. It was my first ever massage and eventually we found a place for Thai massages... little did I know and little did Carla inform me that Thai massages are the most ... read more