Berlin, Germany Berlin is such a great city! We went to the zoo like the super dorks that we are. I kind of obsessed over this silver monkey and Shane had it in for the lions, tigers and bears. It is such a new feeling city. There are lots of museums and tourists but we stayed in the Kreuzberg (Turkish Quarter) and it was very friendly. Free parking rocks! Food & booze were well priced, especially at supermarkets. The Jewish Museum (Judisches) was excellent and absolutely focused. The Geraldi Museum was EXCELLENT! Carravagio, Titian, Rembrant… Art heaven. Berlin i [View Full Entry]

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Wales, Conwy & Caernferon, ie. excuse to add pictures The glorious Conwy Castle and exploration of the town. Doves & pigeons (are doves just white pigeons?). In this castle King Louis had himself a private privy built, eh. We looked down it. You really can’t understand Welsh at all. It is a lovely sounding language though. Hand gestures gets ye by. [View Full Entry]

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Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, Germany Sobering and impossible to fully grasp; the two hot and dusty hours we experienced can only come the smallest step towards comprehending what occurred here. It is tradition for each new Prime Minister of Israel to visit this former work camp. Part of the Jewish barracks was burned by Neo Nazis and that is why you can see the fire damage in some of the shots. Of the ~200,000 prisoners that entered the camp about 30,00 never left due mostly impart to the Nazis killing mass numbers at the end of the war when they were [View Full Entry]

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Salisbury Cathedral in South West England (near Stonehenge) Holy House of God! We felt a touch blasphemous sneaking in for the price of one… It was impressive! Supposedly the granite columns holding up the tower are supposed to be the sagging under its great weight… Scary... Lots of really old graves in the floor and the foundation is only 4 ft deep (they showed us, it’s true)! Warwick My Grandma grew up here and my mum was born just outside in Leamington Spa so we paid a visit. Warwick Castle is famous, however, it seems to have been taken o [View Full Entry]

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<h2>Amsterdam, The Netherlands</h2> Flat fields dotted with cows and the odd wind mill here and there. We head straight to Amsterdam with thoughts of neon lights filtering through the haze of smoke while we cruise down the canals enjoying a nice cold Heineken. Well, we weren’t disappointed but it wasn’t quite as idyllic. The canals are really reserved for tourists packed into boats, pumping top 40, or rich locals taking a tour (lovely). We found a free campsite a short train ride away from town as we were warned that driving in Amsterdam is crazy. We didn’ [View Full Entry]

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The lovely town of Bath, sort of I am not joking about needing a bath. I am not the best smelling of people on a good day. We are a bit behind on blogs as we have been having trouble coordinating battery power and free internet. We actually visited Bath ahwile ago but it was so awesome we thought a belated post was due. The place is called Bath because it is centered around some old Roman bathing pools (I guess all roman things are old at this point). The Romans thought the natural spring was a gift from god [View Full Entry]

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Conquering Heights Shane has been challenging his fear of heights regularly here in Europe. This post is about a few of our high up adventures!! Part I: Cheddar, West England We went to Cheddar on an off chance (well not really..Meg likes cheese and that decided it). We did get some really lovely cheddar cheese, and 5L of cider (Meg eagle eye spotted this farm fresh cider shop on the way in). More on the escapades of the cider later. Much to our surprise Cheddar features a gorgeous gorge..called of all things Cheddar gorge. See ajoining pics. We did a [View Full Entry]

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The journey has begun We have officially begun touring Europe!! WooHoo! We picked up the van in London and Shane had an extremely stressful driving experience. Driving on the wrong side of the road, while sitting on the wrong side of the vehicle, shifting with his left hand in a large van in London which has the narrowest streets possible and the fastest most impatient drivers. Luckily we negotiated and managed to get 50 pounds off the van price as well as a TomTom (GPS) with western European maps. The TomTom was necessary in London..otherwise we would still be there... [View Full Entry]

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It is time to name the van...suggestions welcome We have a van...well we are getting it tomorrow, but the deposit has been paid. The make is a '88 Ford Transit, which is a commercial type vehicle, with the modification into a camper van done professionally by a company that takes vehicle from factory and coverts them. The other option was some home brew van with much hippie character, but much less practicality...and yeah it smelled like hippies. Meaghan's bag finally arrived, which relieved some of the stress we have been dealing with since we arrived. Things can get goin [View Full Entry]

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We are going to look for vans today. We explored a few options such as long term leasing and Euro rail, but all either lacked the freedom we want or were too expensive. Actually the long term leasing was outrageous...one quote for the six months was $70 000!!!!!!!! Either way after some more internet detective work we found some good sites for buying vans and even got a reasonable quote for insurance that is good all over the UK. We found out today that Jenn, our intended travel buddy, wont be coming on our trip. We were disappointed but understood. We [View Full Entry]

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