welll... our main aim for this part of our trip was to see blue and white houses!! if you have ever seen a picture of greece you will know what i mean... it is those amazing white painted houses with blue shutters and doors overlooking the blue blue of the mediterranean!! basically we had no other plan!! so it was pretty easy not to be disappointed on this leg!! the other side point was that we had to be in istanbul, turkey on the 12th of may to catch a flight back to london so from athens we were island hopping [View Full Entry]

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another of my list of 'must dos' ... the parthenon in Athens... the only european thing on our list for this trip so I was pretty excited about this bit!! despite being very sad to be leaving england and the comfort of my second home we got a little bit excited about starting our adventure again! unfortunately, not being good greek orthodox people we neglected to know that it was greek easter and we were arriving on the equivalent of good friday!! so we flew in not knowing if anything would be open the entire time we were there! our first [View Full Entry]

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After 3 rather quick days in NY, we got onto a plane (yet another 7am flight, which meant getting to the airport at 5 aargh) and headed off to UK. We were quite excited about UK. The objectives here were very different to the other countries so far - we were mainly going to be seeing relatives, and doing minimal sightseeing! So no mad trekking around from sight to sight, lonely planets clutched in hand, while trying to speak some foreign language! And of course, staying with relatives means no need to worry about organising food, accomodation, etc - whoohoo!! Arrived [View Full Entry]

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So after 3 wonderful days in Mexico, we finally decided it was time to move on to New York. Wistfully said goodbye to our georgeous hotel, as we knew that we were heading back into Hostel Hell after this :) We were looking forward to going back to a country where everyone spoke English, and the usual amenities would be avaialble again, and people did things 'just like us'. It's funny how you start to crave things like that after a while. Even was looking forward to the flight, which was a first. By now, I was well and truly sick [View Full Entry]

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let me preface today by saying that I am a great backpacker... can do without hot water for at least 2 hours/ can cope with dirty sheets (take my own clean ones!) and can carry my back pack for at least 200 metres! however...Mexico city was the scene for our romantic fourth anniversary (awwww!) so we showed up and Dave whisked me on off in a very expensive (safe) taxi to the Sheraton in the middle of town... i walked into the hotel room and cried! it was sooo beautiful... flowers on the table from Dave.. a heart made from towels [View Full Entry]

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Hi all you readers out there, Just a very quick update to let you know that we have finally managed to upload some pics for the Machu Picchu blog that we wrote earlier. So if you click "Previous Journal" above, you will be able to view them. enjoy!! We'll be updating with Mexico and New York very soon... [View Full Entry]

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Well... Dave´s birthday... now what can I do to make sure that he remembers it for the rest of his life?? I think that a trip to the ancient city hidden in the cloud forests of peru should just about do it! Machu picchu (MP) for the non ancient peruvian historians amongst you, is an old Incan city... think that dave has told you who the incans were already! Anyway for some strange reason it was not "discovered" until the 1910s. Maybe that is because it is surrounded by unassailable mountainous andean cloud forests (called such because they are so high [View Full Entry]

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Welcome all to our next instalment. Before I start I feel that I need to address some comments I have recieved from my previous blog re: drug use. In Peru, coca leaves are everywhere you look. When you have a meal, you get coca tea. Every shop sells the leaves as they are meant to have medicinal value, especially for dealing with high altitudes. They are given to kids as afternoon tea. Put into lasagnes as a seasoning. Turns out that the coca leaves, if properly processed, can be used to make cocaine too, which is why these leaves are illegal [View Full Entry]

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Notes on travelling sensibly...If you read your travel guides carefully, the sensible way to travel in high altitudes is to take it at 1000 metres every two days to let yourself acclimatise properly! However, as you would imagine if you know us at all... we travel as we do life!... trying to do way too much in way to short a time!... so we started in Lima at 0 metres above sea level... we had climbed to 4910 m in 20 hours (all by land I might add!) Dave of course didn't even notice the height apart from a little bit [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone out there who is reading this... surprisingly a lot of you from the looks of it and all the wonderful comments we have been receiving!! thank you very much everyone for your great comments and messages!! Being away is a real blast, but you can feel isolated and we absolutely love hearing from all of you!! Except for one of you... look Adrian or whatever you name is, I DON'T want a university degree for $100, so can you please take me off your list?? So stop emailing me already.... So to the rest of you, apart from Adrian, [View Full Entry]

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