No shoestrings attached...

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Sal was right about the Lonely Planet's "Europe on a Shoestring": 'Well, that is unless you call over a thousand bucks a week "shoestring"'. Nonetheless, as we hit the end of Adventure no. 1: Europe, we thought we'd give a bit of a summary. This computer is cool, we have just realised, because you can change the nationality of the keyboard (except it keeps defaulting to hungarian). So:

Happz Euro travel blog )HungarianÖ
Hqppy Euro trqvel blog 9French0

So the run down....

1. Portugal
Best food: That take away chicken shop in Lagos. We would have taken away the shop too if we had been allowed.
Best food 2: Those custard tarts with cinnamon and icing sugar.
Hostel: Carlos House in Lagos had the most eccentric owner, and the best terrace for drinking the local ale. And port. Oh, so much port.
Best feature: Portugese are soooooooo friendly. They have so much time to put up with our lack of Portuguesh (when they talk, they sound like Sean Connery). And its cheap.

2. Spain
Best food: Those strawberries bigger than a house.
Best feature: Mosaics, Gaudi. And litre beers.
Best people: Definitely those hundreds of enlightened Gap Year USA students. Wonderful company, so considerate in the dorms, NOT!!!
Advice: Don't travel at Easter. Rooms are pricey and there are lots of Gap Year Students.

3. France
Best food: Nutella Crepes.
Best Hostel: Carine's house.
Best Exhibition: Well, its tough to call between the David Lynch one, the Dali one and the Picasso one.
Best Eiffel Tower: Definitely the big one in Paris. I mean, the one in World Park in Fengtai, China, is kinda cool, but doesn't cut the mustard. Or the nutella. Or any condiment metaphor you wish to mention.

4. Germany
Best food: Berlinas.
Best beer: Anything under A$3 per litre has to be good, which covers nearly all of the 756 different german beers that we tried.
Best Hostel: Jetpak original.
Best wild boar: Jetpak original.
Best forest: Jetpak original.
Best take away pizza: Jetpak original.
Best feature: All of the above. Plus the lego bonanza. And 2nd hand clothes by the kilo. And the coolest cd stores this side of the north pole.

5. Poland
Best food: See the entry on the meal at Zofia's.
Best Hostel: Hostel Helvetia in Warsaw was wicked, and it was a superb location for
drinking DOG IN THE FOG.
Advice: Auschwitz is a must.
Best feature: Georgian restaurants, along with DOG IN THE FOG. Oh, and try to have a meal at Zofia's. Oh, and they do beer by the litre too! And the old towns of warsaw and krakow. And parks. With peacocks desperate to copulate.

6. Estonia
Best food: Champignon and blue cheese. (pancakes, if you didn't realise that, then you're fired).
Best bar: I think we may have been to Hell Hunt one or two times and enjoyed it.
Best hostel: Here. Thats the tallinn backpackets. backpackers rather.
Best feature: Best old town in Europe.
Best illness: Actually, here is the only place where we have both been sick. Only for 24 hours. Except Zac was sick in Bordeaux too, but that doesn't count cos Sof was tip top.
Advice: Great place to chill out for a week. Don't do anything except drink Gin Longs. And home made cider. And beer. And the fussball competition is really very weak, even from those Mediterraneans who think that they're good cos they invented the game. They should come to Adelaide, then they'd realise who the kings are!! Whahaha.

So now we enter phase 2: Russia. And we'll be pretty busy taking in all the action so probably won't write for quite a while. We'll tell you all about it later. Til then (which will probably be mongolia!), ciao from Zac and The Newest Courtney. Getting fatter by the day. Hopefully will lose weight in Russia. Hopefully.

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Photos

No durians allowed in Singapore
If you smelt them you'd understand why. The fruit. Not the Singapore.

Tiles in the Subway
Lisbon has the coolest underground. Like, underground as in the trains.

Valencia
No oranges here.
Just bad hair.

Giraffe and Zac
A different kind of longneck in Berlin

Sof and the Harry Potter tree
In tallinn. The tree thought that she was tastier than a pancake.

Comments

[Charlee]

Durians, King of the Fruits...
..closely followed by mangostiens, queen of the fruits! When we hired a car last year in Singapore to drive up to KL, one of the clauses in the lease was "You may not have or pick up any Durians in the car". I had no idea what this meant, and thought it might be a little more dirty than it really was (think the regulars of Orchard towers...). Needless to say when we were booting down the freeway behind a Durian truck all that changed.

[Dixon]

Lose weight in Russia?
U'r joking, right? All the luck be with you.