Finally have internet access!!

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Hi everyone!

Sorry for the huge gap in entries (though you might be sick of hearing from me by now so the break was welcome!) but I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, just having difficulty finding computers! I am now in Munich, but i've been quite a few places before then, so i'll just take us back a couple of weeks...

It was actually quite sad leaving Dublin, cos it really is a nice little city. Nice and flat, so good for sight seeing! It was nice to know that our real holiday was about to start, though it had been such an exciting 6 weeks that it felt like it was holiday all along! Our first stop was flying to Paris, and hopefully I never have to fly RyanAir ever again! Poor Jovanka had to pay about $50 AUD in exess baggage for taking 18.8kg of luggage (they have a measly 15kg limit), and they don't assign seats so it's a free- for- all at boarding time. Luckily, we paid an extra €3 to have priority boarding so we were first on the plane and got lovely seats up front!

Paris was MUCH nicer than when I was here last time, so it has redeemed itself a bit! The weather was beautiful, and we got to go see the final stage of the Tour de France, though we didn't know what the Aussie guy looked like unfortunately! We did the usual sight´seeing stuff, like the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysess (spelling?), the Bastille, Notre Dame, the Louvre, etc, and went to Versailles for a day. We went up the Eiffel Tower at night, which was great, but still incredibly crowded. That is one huge problem about travelling in Europe in summer- crowds everywhere you go! You get much more done in winter time cos you don't have to line up for anything! For the da Vini Code people, I also went to St Sulpice and saw the Rose Line, though apparently the P and S on it stand for Peter and Suplice, not the Priory of Sion! And I tried frogs' legs and snails! The legs tasted good but looked horrible- they were still frog-shaped! the snails were a weird texture and really garlicky, and i don't think i'll be having them again!

One of the highlights of Paris was going to Disneyland, though none of the other girls were keen, so i had to go on my own 😞 It wasn't as good as when i went last time with Kelly, but i still managed to have fun! I got on the wrong train on my way there, but luckily some nice French people helped me out and explained how the trains work, so no major damage done! when I eventually got there, I went on 2 rollercoaters, which is probably a record for me! I went the whole hog and bought minnie ears and had my photo with mickey- if you go to disneyland you have to do it properly! by the end of the day i was quite over crying children though!

From Paris, we took the train to Cologne in Germany, which i thought was going to be slow and boring, but it was actually quite nice and relaxing. Much more leg room than on RyanAir. Cologne was lovely, nice and small, and we only had 2 days there so we just did the highlights. We climbed the 509 stairs of the Kölner Dom (Cathedral) which was quite an effort and left our legs feeling like jelly! We also went to the Chocolate Museum and sampled Lindt chocloate and sort of went crazy in the gift shop buying chocolate to take home. I also bought some Cologne #4771, which is the original cologne that started modern perfumery (supposedly).

We arrived in Munich on Saturday, and so far have explored the city a bit, including the Hofbrauhaus. I have been branching out since I've been here, and ordered a 1L stein of beer at the Hofbrauhaus (though it was mixed with lemonade!) and i also had some wurst and pork schnitzel (i don't normally drink beer or eat red meat for those unaware). I figured there probably wasn't much real meat in the wurst anyway, so it's ok. I didn't manage to drink the whole stein, but i drank more than half, which is a pretty good effort i reckon!

Today we went on a tour of king Ludwig's castle, which was great! the first castle was Linderhoff, was was quite small but easily the best castle- palacey thing that i've been too. We then went shopping in a small german village (not good, bank balance was much smaller after that) then on to Neuschwanstein. I kept thinking about Pola's year 12 german assignement on the topic, which was wonderfully accurate! Neuschwanstein was really beautiful, though on top of a rather large hill that required lots of walking! More jelly legs.

So there we go, we're all up to date! Sorry if you've all fallen asleep by now! Thank you all for your messages and comments and emails, it's really great to hear what you're up to, though it's making me miss you all even more!

Bye for now,

Leibe von Rikki

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