Saturday, February 24, 2007

Aspects of research

It's probably quite obvious, but you want to have an idea about where your going, about the things in the cities that you're going to. I mean, imagine coming to Christchurch and not going to the square and seeing that massive cup/chalice thing made of leaves! You might as well have not even come!

The idea here, is I'm going to research some places, and then write about it. You think that's boring? Well I've got news for you buddy, it's my blog and I'll write what I damn well want to write. Also, if you hate history, well, you're (not) in luck, because this blog isn't just fun, it's edufuncational!

Anyway, Rotterdam. We leave Amsterdam on a boat to Rotterdam despite the fact that it's like an hour on the train, in fact, I just learned, only 80kms. We're taking an easycruise which is a cruise ship, but don't let yourselves think that it's a luxury cruise liner, it's a ship with cabins, and it's about as cheap as normal accomodation, only you're moving. So, we get to Rotterdam at 1pm and then have to leave by 4am the next morning. So we get the afternoon to do what we can in the city, have dinner, wander/drink and then get back.

Here is what Rotterdam looks like:



Holy moly! I didn't know we'd be catching up with Christopher Columbus! Also, did you know that blogger has terrible html when you use it to add images. I had to edit the html because it looked ugly? html should look somewhat sexy but always decent and in control.

Rotterdam has the biggest port in Europe. They do a lot of shipping there I assume. Rotterdam also has a Tax Museum. The population is about 600,000. Apparently there is a reasonable amount of northern African inhabitants that live in or around streets, which also apparently isn't really an issue, despite the fact that there has been recent tension between the native Dutch and Muslims.

The natural centre of the city was bombed away in WWII, so there's a lot of new architecture (sweet) but the city lacks a centralised "feel", or so they say.

Since Rotterdam has like 14 million museums, no doubt we'll have to check a couple out, which ones though I don't know. I'm not personally all that interested in art history, but they have an architecture museum and this one with a really weird website. They also have a zoo with an aquarium, and Alice loves aquariums, so we should probably go there! They also have a massive tall thing, one of those things cities do so they can be better than others. This one is called the Euromast Space Tower, and has been extended a number of times to retain records.

There doesn't actually appear to be a whole lot else in the city, I mean, I'm sure there is, but Rotterdam isn't a massive tourist destination, so a lot of the experiencing we're going to have to do is just that, experiencing the city, which is fine by me, even though as I mentioned the city doesn't really have a centre, so it might not be easy.


Antwerp is no longer the Netherlands, it's Belguim. It's one last stop before Brussels. "Antwerp, the second biggest city in Belgium and also one of the biggest ports in Europe, is the capital of the province of the same name. As well as being at the forefront of the diamond industry, it’s also well known as one of the most up-and-coming fashion design centres in Europe."

This handy guide informs me.. It too has more museums than McDonalds, so maybe we could drop by some of them. We really are going to be spoilt for choice with Museums in Europe, but in these two places, we're only going to have a few hours of day-time, so mabye we might have to skip them just to do some other things, although, in these relatively old cities that aren't real touristy, maybe there won't be all that much else to do, tourist wise. There will always be lots to see, as in, look at but not all that much to do. We might have to find a "trendy" bar and sit and drink the day away, as Antwerp is meant to be quite a fashionable city, although, I'm sure that means that I just won't fit in.

I guess there's not a lot of point trying to work out too much about these cities any more than I've done. I guess when we get there these cities hopefully will be a bit more obvious, and I'm sure that we'll see the bunches of drunks that are on the cruise with us, which will make it interesting too.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Destinations

We're going to be visiting a lot of places on this trip. I'm going to try to list the main stops we've planned, to see if I can remember:

LA
Colorado
Las Vegas
Tijuana
San Francisco
Miami
Carribbean Islands
New York
London
Amsterdam
Antwerp
Rotterdam
Brussels
Paris?
Madrid
Marakech
Barcelona
Egypt
Whole bunch of European cities on the way from Barcelona to Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece
Hong Kong
Thailand

It's late and I can't think. This list doubles for me so I can keep a track of my preperations too.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

plans so far

So we've had a bit of a hard decision to make. In order to go to Egypt we'd either have to move some flights so we don't cut into our Europe time, or cut into our Europe time. We don't want to cut into our Europe time, so we had to see if we could move the flight from the UK to Bangkok back 2 weeks. Well, it was only possible to move it back 6 weeks, which would mean we'd be spending about an extra 6-8 weeks travelling longer than we had expected. So instead of either of those two, now we're re-issuing our tickets so that instead of going from the UK -> Bangkok, we now go to Hong Kong in between, for two weeks (we hope) so now we get to experience China too! Bonus! Then fly directly into Koh Samui, not the 'kok.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Ejipt

Guess what. I've been abused that I haven't been updating this thing. Don't get mad at me it's just as much Alice's job too!
Anyway, We've decided to add Egypt to our trip. We still don't know how we're going to get there, well, we have options, but they're all expensive. Thankfully Egypt itself isn't, with accommodation costing less than $6 some places.. We're planning to go there for 2 weeks. Did I also mention we're going to Morocco? That's 2 African countries we'll be going to!

It's only 4 weeks and 3-4 days until I go and then another week until Alice leaves. Wow it's close. There's still a few things to do. We have to choose travel insurance. One option is a cheaper medical only one (probably the potentially most expensive thing that could happen), and then another is a comprehensive one, which is considerably more expensive. Don't know what to choose, but then again, it's insurance, you never know do you?

Also, we're hitting Thailand for 4 weeks, what are we going to do there? Are we going to cruise to Cambodia for a while? I hear the landmines are nice this time of year.. Or will we just relax. Or maybe something else. We really wanted to go to India or China, but the effort and cost might not be worth it, and the time involved to get visa. Stupid countries without easy visa entries! Why do you hate freedom?????