If anyone ever needs a reminder of how little money they really have they should head to Monaco! We went there two days ago with our new friends from Australia. We stopped in a village called Eze on the way there and went through a tour of a perfume factory to avoid the pouring rain. I can still smell the perfume on me, it's that strong! Here in Nice there are a lot of people who are obviously wealthy, but in Monaco it's the people who aren't who stick out more. We mostly just walked around the town and window shopped for 17 000 euro watches and rings. I had never seen a Prada store before! Obviously we went in the Monte Carlo Casino. But to see the large portion of the interior you had to ... read more

So we applied at over 100 vineyards, or chateaux, figuring we'd find work right away. However, it turned out we were about a week late for the whites picking season and a week early for the reds, so most people replied that their 'equipe' was already complete. We wanted to wait one more day (Tuesday) just in case an offer came through and this is where the great trek for a bed began! The hotel we were at was full for that night, so we tried the one next door, and the one down the street, and the one around the block, the one near the train station ... (you get the idea). We came to the conclusion that we needed to get out of the big city to find a cheap hotel to wait in ... read more

Well we have made it to France after a squirly road coming out of Andorra and a expensive but speedy TGV train from Toulouse to Bordeaux. We have spent most of the day so far trying to figure out how to find a grape picking job here. We went to the tourist office and asked for a map of the vineyards. Holy cow there are a lot! On the map there was a webpage for the vineyard's association, (www.fgvb.monAOC.com) which has been great for searching vineyards and contacting them directly. Alex's french has come in super handy. It's cute to listen to him parle français. I've had a harder time, but with drastic body movements I can still get my point across! We bought a teenie laptop in Andorra because there are no taxes. It only ... read more

Hello again. We´ve now moved onto Valencia further up the coast heading towards France. The city is beautiful with all sorts of old catholic and roman relics. There´s a cathedral here that supposedly holds the Holy Grail according to the Vatican so we´ll have to go check that out and report back to any DaVinci Code fans out there. We´re in a great little hostel with all sorts of other tourists our age which is nice after the hotels in Almeria and Cabo de Gata. A little about Cabo de Gata. It was this very small town stuck out in the middle of the desert but still on the water. We stayed at the only hotel in the town and on the first day we thought we´d take our white bodies down to the beach. Bad ... read more

Just a quick one before we head from Inverness to Aberdeen. The Orkneys were amazing! Definately the highlight of the trip so far. We stayed in Stromness for 5 nights and just cruised around enjoying the slow lifestyle. It was my kind of place with local produce everywhere; we had Orkney cheese, bread, ice cream, vegetables, beer, haggis and everything else under the sun. We did get some family research done there and found out some interesting stuff but didn't find any gravestones or anything as I guess they were a pretty poor lot back then. The best thing we did though was rent bikes for a day to go check out the farm on which they lived in Mousland, just north of Stromness. We checked out an old derelict stone building that was likely the ... read more