Hola!!!

Hola from Madrid! After a couple of average days in a crappy hotel in Bordeaux and after much confusion at the train station we boarded a train to Irun, a wee town just on the border between France and Spain. It was a nice train actually, one of those ones with cabins for you to sit in and spread out a bit. Just before we got into Irun a French man with a huge yellow balloon visited us to play hit the balloon around the cabin. Random. He seemed really nice thoug, kept trying to make us understand his French, we didnt. We decided to have a walk around Irun since it was a friday night and we had a couple of hours to spend. We soon found out the locals didnt seem to keen to have us there, lots of weird looks and crossing the street so as not to pass us.
We had booked a ´couchette´ for our trip to Madrid so that we could sleep. It was amazing to see 6 people and all our luggage fit into this tiny cabin. About half an hour into our trip there was a bit of a halla ballo outside our cabin, most of it was in a tounge we didnt understand but we could hear over and over ´we are the police you must give us your passport´. After a while a plain clothes cop came into our cabin to see our passports too. I made sure I checked out his badge and we gave him our passports. They carried on for some time outside the cabin with the passport check resistors and eventually it all calmed down. Drama!
We got here to Madrid this morning and its awesome. It seems the further south we go the less english is spoken. We are making good use of our phrase book here. It feels a bit silly talking Spanish though, you kinda have to lisp some sounds. Andrew learnt the word for beer pretty quick though. We went to the Royal Palace thismorning. I have never seen such opulence and extravagence before. It was amazing, one room was entirely covered in porcelin.
Our hostel seems fun but maybe not as much as the flying pig. All the rooms face onto a communal courtyard which we are hoping is where the party is at tonight.
Tomorrow we have been promised a tour by a spanish guy we meet on the subway today. He was on his way home from a party at 8 when we were arriving.

Onward

So we're in Paris now. We should be in Bordeaux but we managed to underestimate just how booked the trains would be.

We got on our "cruise ship" in Amsterdam on Friday afternoon, and once set up headed back into the city for one final night. How different it was, being a Friday night. That place changes on the weekend, and I didn't like it. It's a shame, as I bet most people end up visiting then and get a pretty horrible impression of the place. What's weird, is that despite the tolerence that Amsterdam is known for, liberal laws on soft drugs and legalised prostitution, which some people might think are bad things, the worst thing I saw was drunk people, which happens everywhere in the world..

We arrived in Rotterdam at 1pm, and no offence Rotterdam, but what a boring city. Most of it was bombed in WWII so it's all new. It's just like Christchurch really, probably nice to live in but not so nice to visit.

Next day was Antwerp, Belgium. This city was alright actually. We found ourselves in a big square, which had a lot of restaurants and bars and a big old church and was just nice to be in. We had some chocolate.

We arrived the next day in Brussels but hopped on the first train to Paris. Paris is a nice city, quite big and a lot of old stuff. The louvre is huge and has a lot of art and the people dress well, not as well as in Amsterdam though. The first day was only ok for me but as time went on I enjoyed it more and more. We saw the Eiffel Tower and everything else. Stuff is old here.

Anyway, internet time ticks by quickly and expensively over here, especially when paying in euros..

Heineken Experience

I should have put this in the last post but I forgot, and I can't work out on these dutch computers which is "edit post" so it's just a new one for now.

Two days ago we went to the "Heineken Experience" which is like a brewery tour, but more like science alive in how it works. It was $11 (imagine that $ is actually a euro sign) each which ended up quite good value because they gave us 3 tokens each for a beer and also a gift token which netted us 1 bottle opener and bottle opener holder in each of our hands. And since Alice doesn't like beer all that much, I got her tokens. So we stopped at the first bar stop and I got 2, and then send a video from the museum of us dancing in front of a dutch windmill to our families, and continued around. They had comfy personal seats that showed all their ads on TV since the 50's and they just had tons of cool rides and things to do. Then the next bar came along so I got another 2 beers, and while sitting down enjoying those I got gifted another 2 tokens, the seat I had picked happened to be by the door, and a lot of people apparently don't want to drink beer, so they'd hand their tokens onto the person sitting at the door, me. Some people from a christian college from Kentucky sat next to us and I got gifted x amount of coins which at this stage meant I had 2 new beers in front of me and 7 tokens in my hand. I ended up giving some of the tokens away but I feel I got very good value for money from the place and would highly recommend it, even if you don't enjoy free beer.

Amsterdamage

Once again, concurrent posts..

London was a lot of fun, I grew to like the place more and more as time went on, and I really enjoyed the time we spent with Jeremy & Sarah. Good times, good memories.

It's Thursday today, which is a shame because it means only one more day here after today. I love this place, it's so cool to walk around, just such a beautiful city, and our hostel (Flying Pig Amsterdam) is probably one of the best hostels I have ever seen. They have a bar and are quite tolerant of people's activities and it's a greaat place. It rained the first few days but it doesn't really matter.

We went for a walking tour which was really interesting, and just walking around at night time is fun, they of course have the red light district which is an interesting walk, I actually think the city council have put this part of the city aside for adults because there are signposts with red lights in them when you go into the area, and it's like they've done it to remind parents not to bring their children, it's just odd that it's so "official". It's the very city centre so it's interesting architecurally too..

We've been having a great time, it's probably the most fun place I've visited so far.

Amsterdam

I think I've had the most fun of my life here in Amsterdam. And so you dont get any strange ideas, not because of the typical Amsterdam pleasures. The hostel we are staying at is so cool, so many people to meet. We have been out to dinner, to the pub or walking around with different people everyday. Last night we went out to dinner with Corey and Laura from the US. We started the night getting horribly lost and taking an hour to get to this place that was 5 mins away from our hostel. I dont think the night would have been quite as fun if we had just gone there. Today we did a walking tour with Jess and Joel all through old medievel Amsterdam. Theres some crazy random things here. The flowers are so beautiful and cheap that I bought myself a huge bunch of pink roses. Andrew is trying to dream up ways that we can move here. We realised last night that we hadnt really eaten meat at all since we got here, there's so much amazing delicious food. We've been having the best falafeel every day for lunch with a huge fresh salad. Finally Andrew conceeds that ultra healthy food can be yummy too!!!!
-Alice

Leaving London

We've had a brillant time here with Jeremy and Sarah, Miriam and Robert and Tim. Its sooo nice to be with friends isnt it. Big ups to Jeremy and Sarah for having us stay and taking us to the yummiest spanish resturant ever. We will have amazing linen for you for when you need to stay with us. Sorry to Rob and Tim again for being an hour late to meet you guys for lunch. Blimmen tube. Glad you are patient. Sorry to miss Izzy.
Heres a list of my top six fav bands of the moment (in no particular order)
-Crowded House
-Feelers
-Elemnopea
-Micheal Buble
-Chilli Peppers
-Switchfoot

Things I like
-Nice sheets
-Paper shopping bags
-Purfume
-Hamsters
-The colour pink
-Murder mystery books/Historal romance
-Hand written letters
-The tired achy after exercise feeling
-Clean socks
-Family (mostly)
-Having piggyback races

Things that I would like to do
-Eat a very sweet strawberry
-Give more hugs
-Write more letters
-Try vegetarianism
-Have a baby
-Form an opinion
-Lie in a park all day and watch the clouds go by
-Be completely myself
-Own a boat
-Fly kites
-Write more poems
-Love completely without inhibition or pride

Alice

London Chappies

Our first stop in a different country, still English speaking though. We have spent most of our time here so far being jet lagged and in bed, which is a shame. I got a cold on leaving NYC and have been glad for the bed at Jeremy's and Sarah's where we've been able to chill out a bit.Our nice friends at HSBC helped us get some money and off we trotted to the shops with it. Had a yummy tea on Wed at Wagamama's- very nice Asian cuisine and tonight a nice home cooked and few bottles of wine meal with Jeremy and Sarah. Went to Harrods today, tried the perfume in the bathrooms and found the NZ baby gear (just on our way past that section of course). I dont think we'll see it all here, its really nice to see old friends though.
-Alice

Well, I was gutted to leave America. I actually really liked it, I think I fitted in quite well really. But times goes on. The flight was nice because we weren't with American Airlines and so we actually got fed and got to watch something. I watched "Children of Men" and personally, don't get what all the fuss is about. Landed in London and met Jeremy, which was good, really good actually. Very tired from the crappy plane sleep so slept most of yesterday day and went to a pub and to a restaurant last night. Today slept in and went to the science museum and harrods, and yeah. London is quite a bit different to New York, I mean, well, you don't exactly expect them to be the same, but they're probably the two biggest city centres in the western world, and they couldn't be much different. The people are the difference really.
-Andrew

Here's the top of the cruise ship, where people can choose to sunbath if they don't like peace or quiet.



Here's Alice sitting on a 2000 year old Mayan ruin.



Here's the waterfall in Jamaica, running into the Ocean



Here's one of the rastafarians in front of some coconut drink.



Here's Alice on the cruise ship in the room with a towel pig they made us.



Alice again, and the Dodge minivan we converted into a poor-mans campervan, at a rest stop.



The nice beach in Grand Cayman, where we saw fish, some jellyfish stung Alice and a plastic bag scared the crap out of me.



Hey Alice how come you're in every picture? This is the Jack Daniels Distillery.



The hot-tub at the log cabin, looking into a forest in the smokey mountains



"Foam Henge", a fake Stone Henge replica on some back road randomly in Virginia



The Orioles mascot, a big bird!



As close as you can get (as a pedestrian) to the white house.



Abraham Lincoln. So big.



We went up the Rockefeller centre so we could see the empire state building, one thing you can't see from the empire state building. Such a large city.



Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I did not feel liberated, just sea sick.



Doug, Amy & Kayla (spelling?), the kind family we stayed with in San Francisco, at Muir Woods



The golden gate bridge, which is not made of gold, and has more of a toll booth than a gate.