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Croatia
Too beautiful for words! England May 15-18:
Liverpool: Checked out the beatles history museum, discovered Cream club and wandering the streets of the entertainment district. Very clean city!
First stay at London was scary. Way too small. The room was cold and they couldn't offer us heat! The shower was big enough for a two year old. Found a nearby internet cafe that we frequented a few times (hence the previous blogs). At a Canadian Pub (go figure), a few people tried to sneak the last table available while we polite Canadians waited (but we complained to the waitress, she knew we had been standing there)...what can you do? We also partied at the famous Ministry of Sound nightclub that Ivan has been wanting to go to for 20 years!
Stonehenge and Bath was beautiful. We didn't have nearly enough time to appreciate. Got some "Bath" water as a souvenir. We took a bus tour to see Stonehenge-only spent about 40 minutes there. That was NOT enough time to appreciate the beauty of it!
Paris: May 19th-22nd
We left for 5:00 a.m. from London to Paris to arrive early in Paris on Monday morning. We showed up to find out
Croatia
Dubrovnic is gorgeous! the agency we booked with did NOT keep our hotel room, and we were lucky to get an early check in in another room. The hotel was only a few blocks away from the Eiffel Tower.
We spoke with the nice Concierge guy who said that we should have booked dinner on the Eiffel tower two months ago. I suppose we should have thought that to be obvious! At one point we were in a little cafe, where the older french regulars (all men) helped us with directions. The coffee servings are insanely small in Europe!!! Mind you Starbucks are certainly to be found in Paris.
A man at the eiffel tower tried to give me a rose and we asked if it was free? He said yes, than we keep walking and he spins around and walks along beside Ivan to ask for money and I have the rose back!
With only the intention of seeing the place, we went to see the show at Moulin Rouge!!! We waited in line and almost snuck in! It was a great show (but not cheap)!
We checked out Verseilles in the day. Gorgeous grounds. Hardly even had
Croatia
Hangin' out in Dubrovnic time to check a third of it. The only thing you have to prepare for in Paris, is insane wait lines. We waited in line for tickets for about an hour, and another hour in the second line just to get in. The women's washrroms are the same as home too. A bunch of sneaky french high school girls kept trying to sneak in the line with their friends and kept saying "passe passe"...I stood in there way. There would be no "passe"!!! I did manage to get along well with my french, not really any problems with people understanding me, especially the taxi drivers!
We met some Scarborough ladies at the metro in Paris to find out that there was strike. We had waited until this last morning to go to the Louvre, and with transportation on strike and demonstrations also in the way, we didn't make it. Mona Lisa will have to wait for another trip. That was very dissappointing. Then we found out rather than looking at the departure time for Amsterdam to be the time we thought, we discovered that we had looked at the ticket wrong, and has looked at the Amsterdam arrival time
Dubrovnic!
Ready to dive in! instead. Oops. We got that transferred to the next train though thank goodness.
We got to Amsterdam late on Thursday night. We went out around 12:30 to try and find a "coffeeshop" that was "green". By the time we got to the equivalent of their entertainment district, it was almost 1am and most bars and shops were closing up, from there the plan was to go through the red light district and see what the fuss was about. Basically it was alot of guys wandering the streets, and a few women too, looking at scantilly clad women egging the guys on to come and negotiate a price for services right at the window. Literally they would come up to the window, the girl was standing in which opens up as a door and a deal is made on the spot. So after a quick walk-through we decided to check out a lounge that was right beside the hotel (where we saw a flyer for them), the DJ played some decent beats but the place was fairly dead so we called it a night around 2:45. We later realized later that there were lots of places that were open until
See ya Italy!
Getting to Barcelona on our "ferry" 5am, but we just didn't find them, so we could have had the true Amsterdam experience, but missed out on that too! The vibe in Amsterdam though was one of D'Arcy's favourites.
The next day, on Friday, after a much needed rest, we decided to see the local sites. For 18 euro each we got tickets for a "Canal-Bus". One of the easiest ways to get around amsterdam is by water and the city was built with many winding waterways through the city. The Canal bus pass took us all over the core of the city on these waterways and to the major attractions and museums. Along with this we purchased an "I Am-Sterdam" pass which got us free admission to most museums and discounts at some restaurants. The one most remarkable museum we saw was the "Anne Frank House". This was the place where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary while her family was in hiding from the Nazis. They basically restored the home back to its setup in her time with the hidden staircase behind a bookshelf and we got to tour around the home to see how the Frank family was able to live all those
Venice
Dinner by the water years until the Nazis found them. Also full of cool artwork was the Van Gogh museum which a must for any art buffs out there. Unfortunately our time in Amsterdam was too short and we had to leave.
Germany May 23rd-25th
Went on our first night train called a sleeper to get ourselves en-route through Brussels, Belgium to Berlin, Germany.
We had a long day in Berlin. We wend on a bus tour where you hop on and off to all of the sites all day as you please. We weren't too impressed with the people. Many people were quite stand-offish and fairly ignorant, but what can you do? We went in to see the Berlin Wall Museum. Again, similar to the Anne Frank museum, we saw more impressive stories on what people with do in order to survive hard times during war.
Munich was a much different story. We took another overnight train. Here we found the German people to be much more laid back, open and friendly. We went to the German pub and shared some stories over some great German beer Octoberfest style! Loved that place. There was a small tune the musicians plays
Pisa
Ivan trying to fix the tower in Pisa in a brass band that you would have to drink too every time you heard it. We woudn't have even known that if the first couple we sat with hadn't told us! We also had a great time chatting with another couple people we headed to the station to get ready for yet another overnight train, this time to Zagreb, Croatia!
Zagreb, May 26-and still...
We got to Zagreb on Monday morning, only to realise that our attempts to communicate when we would be here didn't work! THat's ok, Ivan's Uncle Marko picked us up soon enough and we went to his home for a nice lunch and then it was off to see Ivan's Uncle Zvonko and Aunt Anna in Tucepi. We stayed over and the next day we headed out for a day trip to Dubrovnik (one of the oldest cities in the world). It was beautiful. Living right by the Ocean would be ideal to say the least. We stayed again overnight, and the next day we headed back to see another Aunt of Ivan's, Aunt Milena and Uncle Vlado. We stayed overnight there as well. Today, we then visited another Aunt, Ivan's Aunt Minka
The eye ball...
Outside the Sistine Chapel...this actually was an art sculpture that rotated...cool. and also visited Ivan's sisted who passes away when she only a few weeks old, Kristina. Now we're catching up. Today we are off to see another relative. We will be leaving on another night train to get to Venice for Saturday morning. Likely (and hopefully) we'll catch up again then!!!
Hope all is well. Sorry about not keeping up to date! It's not an easy think to do when you're hoping all over Europe as we are! Keep in touch, see everyone soon, and enjoy the pictures to come!!!
D'Arcy and Ivan XOXOX
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