Danny & Skye

skyemarie

Danny & Skye

We are both 24, from Australia (Danny is originally from NZ) and about to get married.

Our first overseas trip together (Skye's first overseas trip ever) was in March - May 2010 where we set off to Europe for four weeks, stopping in Malaysia for a week on the way.

After visting the humidity of Malaysia, we flew into the icy cold wind of Paris, and went on to Strasbourg, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Venice, Florence, Pisa and Rome.

Needless to say, it was the trip of a lifetime and an experience we will never forget (mostly thanks to the blogging we did on the trip!)

Our next trip will be our honeymoon - driving around New Zealand for 4 weeks, visiting as many places in both the North and South Islands as we can fit into that time.

Day 32 - Rome and the Pantheon

Europe » Italy » Lazio » Rome April 30th 2010

A pyramid?

skyemarie

We ended up catching a later train than the 6.30am one we had originally planned to take to Rome - instead we caught one at about 9.30 and got into Rome in about an hour. It was quite a long way to our hotel, and expensive in a taxi, but still a much better option that trying to figure out how the public transport system here works with all of our bags with us. This ended up being a very good choice as you have to catch at least one train, a bus, and then walk a little way to get to our hotel, and since we didn't know which train or which bus we had to catch it would have just ended in disaster. So we got to our hotel and were quite dismayed to ... read more

Day 31 - Florence, Da Vinci and Pisa

Europe » Italy » Tuscany » Florence April 30th 2010

Small version of David

skyemarie

On day 31 we got up with the intention of visiting a church where we could climb the dome. As we were walking through the streets of Florence, Danny was saying that he would really like to see some things done by Da Vinci, and I took a few more steps, turned to my right, looked at a shop, and it was a Da Vinci museum. Perfect! So we went inside and Danny had lots of fun looking at and playing with different inventions and learning more about his hero. We watched a dvd about Da Vinci's life for ages - I think we were both a bit tired, and it was actually interesting, so we just sat and watched it for about a half hour before we remembered that we had a lot to do ... read more

Day 30 - Florence, David and Gelato

Europe » Italy » Tuscany » Florence April 30th 2010

Florence 001

skyemarie

On our first day in Florence, we arrived at about 12.30 after a three hour train ride from Venice. We caught a taxi to the hostel (since trying to carry all our stuff there only ends in tears, literally, the bags really hurt after about ten minutes of lugging them through uneven cobbled streets). We couldn't check in because our room wasn't ready, so we left our bags and headed out to see Florence. We walked towards the Accademia Galleria, the home of Michelangelo's David, and stood in a very short line to get into the museum. There are no photos allowed in the museum, so sorry that there aren't any of the sculpture on here, but I will try to describe it. From what I remember, 'David' is over 5 metres tall, and we were ... read more

Day 29 - Venice, a riot, and a ride on a gondola

Europe » Italy » Veneto » Venice April 25th 2010

Venice 010

skyemarie

Day 29 in Venice began brilliantly as we had slept really well on the wonderful beds at the Plaza - we woke up feeling much better than the day before and I spent a bit of time in the lobby using the free internet while Danny snoozed a bit longer. Breakfast finished at 10, and I totally lost track of the time and it wasn't until Danny came down to see where I was at about 9:55 that we realised we had better hurry if we wanted to catch breakfast. We just squeezed in before they shut the doors to stop more people coming in, and we ate a nice breakfast before going to catch another train over to the island of Venice. Instead of walking all the way back to St Mark's Square, we just ... read more

Day 28 - Venice and a lot of masks!

Europe » Italy » Veneto » Venice April 24th 2010

Masks (taken by Danny)

skyemarie

On day 28 we woke up in a tiny smelly cabin to the sound of roaring planes. We got ready, didn't have any breakfast because they don't have any food at the campsite, and headed into the city. We headed straight across the road from the train station to the Plaza Hotel, and had a look at a few of their rooms before deciding that even the cheapest one of them would be a huge upgrade from where we were currently staying (in fact, even the hallways were nicer than the campsite) and so we booked it and decided to go back later that evening to get our luggage. We found some brekkie at the train station, and caught a train over to the San Lucia train station on the island of Venice. And so we ... read more

Day 27 - Traveling to Venice, and the dreadful campsite

Europe » Italy » Veneto » Venice April 24th 2010

Our "cabin"

skyemarie

Day 27 was mainly uneventful as over 6 and a half hours of it were spent traveling. We boarded a train, which we had actually been able to reserve seats on, and had a long trip, with a short stop in Milan, to Venice. The train was cool because it had power outlets and we could keep the laptop charging while on the train, which meant we could watch episodes of Dollhouse the whole way (which, by the way, is a really weird show). We kept having to pause it to look out at the huge mountains covered in snow as we were going through Switzerland. By the time we reached Milan, we we sick of watching dvds, so we just chatted and looked out the window at the buildings changing from what we had seen ... read more

Day 26 - Zurich, Rhine Falls and Uetliburg

Europe » Switzerland » North-East » Zürich April 22nd 2010

Cool house on the outskirts of Zurich

skyemarie

On day 26 we managed to get up a bit earlier than the day before, but it was still 11am before we left the hotel. We caught a train out to the Rhine Falls and enjoyed the countryside on the way out there. It is just so green everywhere! This is still a novelty for us, and we really enjoyed looking at all the big hills and the cool houses. We arrived at the Rhine Falls station and almost died when we saw how far we had to walk to get to the top and buy our tickets (well, I almost died, I'm sure Danny was fine and didn't even flinch). Eventually we made it up there and did some souvenir shopping before buying our tickets and then walking all the way down the hillside with ... read more

Day 25 - Zurich, Lindt factory store, and army knives

Europe » Switzerland » North-East » Zürich April 21st 2010

Early Childhood place Robert should work at!

skyemarie

We woke up quite late on day 25 as we hadn't gone to bed until about 12.30 the night before (I was on the computer, which still has Australian time on it, and converted the time wrong in my head - I thought it was much earlier than it actually was!) I was feeling quite horrible as I have caught Danny's cold from Paris, which he has only just gotten over. So we didn't actually get moving until about 1pm, we just lazed around in the room for a while, Danny played his new favourite game, plant v. zombie, and I felt miserable! Eventually I got ready and we went, catching two trains and then walking for about 15 minutes to get to the Lindt factory store. It was basically like a small supermarket, complete with ... read more

Isn't it a cool building? It makes me want to be an early childhood teacher just so I can work there

This is what the Lindt shop looks like from the outside, we almost missed it because it just looks like an office

Day 24 - Zurich, fondue and exploding snow-men

Europe » Switzerland » North-East » Zürich April 20th 2010

a KETTLE!

skyemarie

We arrived in Zurich at about 5pm after a four and a half hour train ride. We spent a lot of the trip looking out the window at the countryside - it is so cool here! Everything is so green, and the hills are beautiful. They have houses built in really strange spots, and everything is just lovely! We decided to get a cab to the hotel, which was more expensive than any of the others have been, but it would have been hard to find our way since we didn't have a map or know anything about the rail system at this point. We arrived at the hotel - it is the only one we booked ourselves, since our travel agents didn't have anything that wasn't insanely expensive, and after seeing how good it is ... read more

Day 23 - Munich and the Dachau Memorial

Europe » Germany » Bavaria » Dachau April 19th 2010

The sleeping quarters and part of the courtyard

skyemarie

Day 23 and our trip to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial is a difficult day to write about. I want to share it with everyone back home, but at the same time it is hard to do that in a way that doesn't belittle genocide into my simplistic understanding of what happened in WWII. The Dachau concentration camp was the main reason we organised to come to Munich. It wasn't something we were excited about seeing, but it was something that we felt we needed to see. Especially after travelling through Europe for the last few weeks. We went on a tour as Dachau is a little bit complicated to get to, and we thought it would be a lot easier to go with someone who goes almost everyday rather than try and find it ourselves. ... read more

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