Welcome to Sin City ... The only country in the world where you can get high and pay for sex and no one cares!!! We arrived in Amsterdam at midnight on a Saturday night ... apparentlly not a very bright idea, as there wasn't anywhere to sleep!!! Up until this point in our travels we haven't prebooked any accomadation in Europe, so this took us by biiiig surprise and we ended up wandering up and down the streets ducking into anything that looked like a hotel asking for a place to sleep. It wasn't fun. It turns out that Amsterdam is [View Full Entry]

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Did you know that Belgium has 500 different kinds of beer?? Trevor tried with all his might to sample them ... but the grand finale was ... 5 ... out of 500 ... that makes it a whopping 1%! We had heard from EVERYONE we'd meet about a town in northern Belgium called Brugge. Apparentlly it is "the cutest, quaintest, most awesome and amazing place" we'd ever go ... so of course we set off to grab ourselves a slice of this perfection ... only to be sorely disappointed! Brugge certainlly was a quaint little town ... but it is tourist [View Full Entry]

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France has been one of the coolest countries so far! Not only do they have the first real resemblance of a first world country, but... they also have cool war history too! After feeling like we got the boot from the French Alps, we decided to take a trip up to the Normandy and Flanders regions of northern France. In order to do this though we had to pass through Paris... and that is exactly what we did! Totally and completely chopped it out of our trip :) Paris will still be there when we are old and wrinkled, no? Anyways, [View Full Entry]

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Actuaaaally, we dodged Paris, but believe it or not, there are still other places to go in France! From Venice we took the train to the city of Montpellier in the south of France to meet up with Kristena's friend Jordan ... and we pretty much spent the time just visiting and seeing bits and pieces of the area. We hunted for a man painting a picture in a beret and red and white striped shirt, fumbled through some pathetic french sentences, chomped on a baguette, sipped cafe au lait from dinky shot glasses, and ate copious amounts of lunch meat [View Full Entry]

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Pisa ... Florence ... Modena ... and Venice! After Rome, we headed to Pisa where the leaning tower really is leaning. In Florence we saw the statue of David ... he is ginormous but a bit over rated. From Florence we headed to Modena to see the ferrari gallery. Trevor was in his glory ... both he and Jesus (the Mexican we picked up in Athens) were drooling all over the place and could hardly contain their excitement! It was pretty funny. We tried to get into the factory, but they no longer give tours to commoners ... unless of course [View Full Entry]

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We didn't REALLY have pizza with the pope. Internet is unbelievably retardedly expensive in Europe (aka anywhere from 4 to 9 Euros an hour) ... soooo we use it sparsely! Here is an update: Leaving Greece was as much of a gong show as entering it. We met a new amigo in Athens, who was also heading to Italy, and the three of us all have Eurail passes and were told that the ferry from Greece to Italy is FREE ... so of course we signed up! The lady at the ferry counter assured us that we would have seats inside [View Full Entry]

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Destination: Greece! Goal: Walk across border! We decided that in keeping with the whole "budget thing" we'd try to save a bit of money by WALKING across the Turkey/Greece border rather than PAY a tour company or taxi or bus to take us across. In Canada this wouldn't be a challenge ... however, apparentlly in Turkey and Greece it is!!! Our adventure started by us taking a bus north to the town of Keshan, thinking we'd be able to catch a minibus to the border town of Ipsala. We arrived late though, and no more minibuses were heading that way, so [View Full Entry]

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Antalya ... Olympos ... Canakkale ... We finished our time in Turkey by wandering up the Aegan coast back towards Istanbul. After our stay in Antalya with Rabia and her dad, we headed west to Olympos, a charming village in a valley on the sea. Olympos is huge with backpackers in the summer because of the fantastic beaches, but also because of the atmosphere. People pay copious amounts of money to sleep in glorified treehouses. Because it's winter in Turkey we lucked out by having an entire camp to ourselves ... but the experience was a bit lost on Kristena because [View Full Entry]

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We are in Turkey!!! After doing the whole "group travel thing" (ie: our guide holding our hands for two weeks in Egypt), we were both itching for some independance again! Three months ago neither one of us would ever imagine saying that! We expect Europe to be very expensive, and so far, Turkey has not disappointed, so we chose to start the budget thing early. First task was to get ourselves from the airport to a hostel (ANY hostel, haha) via public transportation!! Considering we speak as much Turkish as we do Russian, it was a bit of an adventure - [View Full Entry]

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Dahab Rocked!!! We arrived in Dahab for 3 days of much needed R&R ... and loved it!!! Dahab is on the eastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula. It was probablly the most "touristy" of our stops in Egypt (Europeans flock here to go diving), but certainlly the most relaxing! We decided against scuba diving, but did a snorkel instead ... and it's true that the waters here are amazing, but still nothing compared to the Galapagos!!! We spent the rest of our time shopping, eating, and lazing around - but not on the beach because it's blistering cold and windy in [View Full Entry]

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