carrieandkyle

The bus ride from Nafplio to Olympia was one of the most incredible and scary experiences of my life - I highly recommend it. We went from Nafplio to Tripoli and then transferred to a bus that we thought was going to take us directly to Olympia. Throughout the whole of the trip we saw some spectacular scenery. We wound our way up and down mountains on narrow roads where one side of us would be sheer cliffs going up and the other side would be drops going several hundred feet down with little clearance for the bus. We saw amazing towns built into the mountains with buildings up and down the cliff face. The roads were so narrow and winding at points I did not think that the bus would make it through. We thought ... read more

We began our trip to Greece by getting up at 3:30 am to catch our 6:00 am flight. This was followed by a 60 Euro ($100) cab ride to the airport that I don’t think I have quite gotten over! So anyways we arrived in Athens around noon local time and were greeted by + 30 degrees weather. Being from Manitoba +30 in October seemed truly unnatural. We found our way into the city and to our hostel easy enough, got settled in and went straight out to start some sight seeing. Our first stop after the tourist office was heading straight for the Acropolis. It was very hot and it was quite the climb to the top but it was worth it. Seeing the Parthenon up close was cool (even though it was covered in ... read more

Our first impression of Salzburg was that it is a very cute city surrounded by beautiful county side. The office at our campground was in a quintessential Alpine house and walking just minutes from our site were spectacular views of farm land, rolling hills, and mountains in the distance. We bought Salzburg cards, which give you free public transportation and admission to many of the sights for a 48 hour period. We started our process of getting the most for our money by taking the funicular (sort of an elevator on rails that go up the side of a hill) up to the Festung Hohensalzburg the fortress that looks down on Salzburg. There were incredible views from the top. The fortress also houses a war museum and marionette museum (creepy!). On the way to lunch we ... read more

So this is just a little blog to let everyone know that we are in fact alive and kicking despite the lack of communication. We are currently in Fort William, Scotland in the Highlands -- it is a town nestled in the mountains which sort of reminds us of Banff. We did not end up completing our bike journey from Belgium to Paris as our bikes turned out to be crap (we purchased them at the Belgium equivilent of WalMart so what can you expect eh?) but we did make it to Dunkurk in France and then back to Belgium again which was over 100km in a few days so not so bad I guess. Since then we have been baking in the heat (above 30 everyday -- sometimes as much as 38) in Belgium until ... read more

Okay so it is pretty apparent that I am writing this blog much later than the actual events so hopefully I can still do the trip justice and make it sound interesting or at the very least not boring. So we flew to Scotland on July 27 - another lovely Ryan Air flight where I spend most of the flight hoping that the plane does not fall apart (Ryan Air is a low budget airline which I am sure has wonderful safety standards but since I pay twenty bucks for the flight I tend to be a bit nervous). We arrived on time but did not get our luggage for an hour - it is official I have bad airplane luck. Kyle’s dad’s cousin George and his wife Phyllis were at the airport to pick us ... read more

Well as you may or may not remember we were heading on a bike trip from the Belgium coast to France and down the Seine into Paris. But alas as the title of this entry implies this endeavor was not as successful as we had hoped… We began our (brief) journey at the Leuven train station where we first realized that things might not go as smoothly as we had hoped. We purchased tickets for our bikes and ourselves to take to train to Oostende on the Belgium coast where we would begin our ride. We were led to believe that boarding the train with our bikes would be a simple task - perhaps for others it is but nothing is simple in the realm of Carrie and Kyle. After one missed train (due to the ... read more