Blogs from Europe - page 11370

Sex, Drugs and Wooden Shoes Our arrival in Amsterdam was fraught with one of the craziest airport experiences that we’ve had to date. You’d think that airports around the world would become crazier the further you moved from the first world but our experience has been just the opposite. Since most of Asia isn’t as security conscious and has smaller less crowded airports, things aren’t incredibly crazy. The moment you step back in Europe, the crazy factor jumps a million-fold. Thinking that Iceland’s main airport couldn’t get that many people traveling through it at 6:15am on a Sunday was a huge mistake on our part. We dropped our rental car off in the parking lot of the bus station and got on the 5:45am “Fly Bus” which took us to the airport. There may have ... read more

After a 12 hour train trip, on which we met a lovely Swedish couple, the female half who talked non-stop but was a fantastic source of information on Scandinavia and Copenhagen. Everybody speaks such good English it is embarassing!! We arrived at our B&B (without breakfast....????) almost 2 hours after we expected to. The Danish public transport system was a bit hard to navigate and they have ridiculously long words it isn't funny. Because all the words are so long they can't fit a lot of then on the signs so abbreviate which makes sense except if we have the full word and see a shortened version (that looks like a normal long word instead of a sentence with no spaces!) we get mighty confused! Lucky everyone speaks English. Anyhow our B&B is nice and cosy ... read more

“. . . girl don't let your dreams be dreams you know this living is not so hard as it seems . . .” Jack Johnson The song that was playing in a café one day in June around the time I read about a holiday run by an English company where you can “swim with dolphins in the open ocean”. It just so happened their next trip worked perfectly into my schedule, so I signed on to the adventure to experience, up close and personal, one of my great loves . . . dolphins. So here I am (let’s pretend I’m up to date with my blog) in the Azores, on the island of Pico, which is located between Portugal and the US. Pico reminds me a little bit of the big island of Hawaii ... read more

Tired and cramped we arrived in Vilnius after the overnight bus journey. We made our way directly to our hostel where we went straight to bed for a few hours to recover. A few hours later and feeling better we set out to explore Vilnius. Neither of us knew much about Lithuania, I remember hearing about all the run ins they had with the USSR, when they tried to regain their independence, but I was quite young and didn't really understand what was going on. The city was certainly nice and good-looking, and boasted one of the largest old town centres in Europe. One thing we immediately noticed was the old town didn't seem particularly old. A great amount of work seemed to be under-way in order to (at least from what we could see), make ... read more

******************************************************************************************************************** I don't have any blog for Em and her travels around Scotland and Wales, but, as she had the camera, I do have some photo's which are the ones shown over the next few weeks. Just don't try to link the text with the photos or you'll be confused! ************************************************************************************************************ Monday 23rd July Today at work I introduced my workmates to the Tim Tam Bomb (ie. drinking tea/coffee using the TimTam as a straw after biting off opposite corners, and shoving it in your mouth before it dissolves into a gooey chocolatey "bomb") and although at first apprehensive (mentioning bombs around Londoners isn't the best idea) they took to it like natives. Obviously they will need training, but there i... read more