The Amsterdam Experience

So our unplanned trip to Amsterdam turned out to be very eventful indeed. Although I don't really know what we did, I think we're still recovering!

When we arrived we expected to have a day to ourselves before we caught up with our Oktoberfest buddies again, but turns out they were there a day early as well. We decided to get stuck into it and headed out for the night. We were staying in a funky backpackers with awesome 2-4-1 deals so we didn't leave in a hurry.

Amsterdam at night is like one big neon light show - everywhere you go there are blue, pink, red, yellow, orange, green glows coming from every corner. It was enough to keep anybody with a short attention span entertained. We also came across a bit of an amusement park with lots of rides but try as we might we couldn't get Matt onto another ride!

And we did cruise the red light district, which is just a must when you visit the city, kinda hard to miss. Although it had the feel of a wondow-shopping sleazy style. Walking past all these street level glass doors with red lights in the background and a different girl in each window "selling" herself. It is definitely nothing like we'd seen before! And the district seemed to go on for miles!

So our three nights were spent pretty much in a different pub or club. Matt and I managed to squeeze in an English-speaking movie, which was very novel! It seems like the most mundane thing to do when you're visiting a city like Amsterdam, but we were so excited to find a cinema. We also had a good time watching England go down to Russia in the Euro Cup qualifier and then reading about it all in English papers the next day, ha ha!

We also met up with Matt's cousin Helen who showed us round the shopping district, the flower market, and pointed out some good places to visit if we were there for the culture as opposed to the pubs. We had a really nice lunch in this cramped three story cafe but seeing as it was rainy and freezing outside we were happy to stay there for most of the afternoon. Matt and Helen figured out it had been 13 years since they last saw each other, so there was lots of catching up to be done!

The strangest thing that did happen on our visit was a bit of role reversal for Matt and I - I visited spew city on our last night (ewww) and he got up in a karaoke bar and sang his heart out. It was all the sing star practice he had before we left Brisbane! He belted out Ice Ice Baby and Baby Got Back and oh how we laughed and laughed and laughed! Lots of fun though. And we met up with some Irish girls who invited us to visit them in Cork when we get over to Ireland. We just may do that cause they were lots of fun and we had a great night out.

So big and good times in Amsterdam. The worst part was boarding a cramped EasyJet flight for London with the worst hangover I've had in a long long time...

How very Belgique!

The flight to Brussels lasted less than 60 minutes and we just couldn't get over that. We spent more time in Hamburg airport! It's still a bit of a shock to be in another country after such a short travel time. And once we arrived at our hotel (which was a bit out of town) we felt like we were back to something we knew about - all things French! Matt was delighted. I think it was more to do with French pastries.

Our hotel was about 20 minutes out of the centre of Brussels but it was worth it. The room was much much better than a dodgy digs in Hamburg and the hotel backed onto a park; a very beautiful park. As the seasons are changing the leaves were falling and were a mixture of oranges and greens. It really was relaxing sitting and watching people walking through the park with their dogs. Better them walking in the freezing than us! Ha! But no, it was pretty.

We only had two nights and we arrived pretty late-ish from our flight so we really only had a full day to explore the city and we knew what we wanted to do - visit the Grand Place, drink Belgian beer, eat Belgian chocolate, and have a croque monsiour/madame for old times sake! And we managed to do all that *and* meet a nutter at an Irish bar (as you do!).

Grand Place was literally that - a big open plaza with a grand looking church and old buildings surrounding it. Little alley ways led off the plaza in all directions which reminded us a lot of France and it's alley ways. We went exploring and found lots and lots of chocolatiers, everywhere, man I was in heaven! And of course to go with the chocolatiers there were lots of pubs, Matt was in heaven! Sounds like the best place for the both of us!

After ticking everything off our list we decided to spend the evening in a tiny Irish pub we found and that's were we met our very own nutter. He just had to find the only empty seat at the bar which was next to me, didn't he? Some guy from Essex who had just got a new job, was having problems with his wife, had two kids and a bit of a drinking problem. We got to know him well, before we downed our drinks and made up an excuse to get out of there! And when we left the pub we realised that (a) it was dark and (b) we were starving. So we did what all good tourists do in this situation, we headed for the nearest Maccas! Ha!

We we had a fun time in Brussels and although we'd heard it was supposed to be a "boring city" we weren't bored. Although in saying that we didn't stay very long. I'm sure we'll go back, it's French enough for Matt but not too French for me. A nice compromise!

We then caught a train for another unplanned stop on our trip...Amsterdam.

Last stop in Germany...Hamburg

Well our Hamburg visit didn't get off to a good start. We arrived at our Pension to discover that the double room we'd booked was actually a twin share and when they said that there was a "private bathroom" they actually meant a shower at the foot of one of the beds. Literally just a shower (with sliding doors and a nice bit of mould, but no separate room). So anyway we decided it wasn't for us and cancelled the booking and found something else. It was a bit on the dodgy side but at least there was a separate room for the shower! We had to laugh though.

So we did a tour bus trip of the town, which is quite pretty when you get to the outskirts - lots of trees and greenery - reminded us a bit of Vienna actually as there were lots of grand homes painted yellow and white.

The cool thing they did have in the centre of town was a man-made lake. On the one day when it was sunny it was beautiful sitting on the side of the lake sipping our hot chocolates and eating our kartoffelsuppe...hmmm! Even though it was sunny it was still freezing though. Winter is definitely coming...I even had to go out and buy a coat, scarf, and some gloves...eek! And they're shopping district was quite impressive. Two pedestrian strips of shops as well as lots of galleries and passages all with boutique style shops and cosy cafes.

Matt's favourite stop in Hamburg was a place called Saturn - a four story electronics and multimedia shopping centre, apparently the largest in the world. Actually that was something we noticed in our travels around Germany, they've got a claim to fame for something..."insert German town here" has the world's largest, longest, fastest, tallest, oldest, prettiest "insert random object here". It was funny when we started noticing it on every tour we went on! But needless to say we spent a lot of time in Saturn and Matt was very close to buying a laptop, if only it wasn't for the German QWERZ keyboard...

So we probably stayed one night too long in Hamburg and unfortunately for us our hotel was in a seedy part of town. But the tour that we did and the shops that we found made it worth the stop. And the delish cake that we discovered called Marmurkuchen - chocolate and vanilla marble cake covered in chocolate icing...oh yeah!

Our next stop was a bit of a detour from our original itinerary - Brussels, only a 60 min plane ride away...

Up and down in Berlin

Wow, what a week we had in Berlin - and we reckon we still could have stayed longer. We pretty much agree that of all the captial cities we´ve seen so far in Europe, Berlin is the best. There´s just something about the place that appeals to us both. It´s so big, yet it´s not imposing like Rome or Paris were. There´s history and culture and architecture everywhere you go, very impressive city.

We saw the Brandenburg Gates (magnificent), the Reichstag buliding (a little daunting), the remains of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, including it´s museum. We walked through Potsdamer Platz (destroyed during the war but now rebuilt with amazing contemporary buildings on all sides), Alexanderplatz and Friedrich Strasse (both shopping hubs). We also visited the Berlin Zoo, the Anne Frank centre, and a Museum of Nature. And what do you know, Matt also managed to find Lego Land where I´m pretty certain he was the biggest kid there (was kinda fun...)!

We also did a walking tour as opposed to our usual bus tour, which proved to be very interesting and filled with lots of history. Apart from the usual sites we also visited the site where Hitler´s bunker once was (aparently they can´t build there anymore due to the unsafe foundations) and a beautiful place called Gendarmenmarkt (there were three magnificent buildings; two cathedrals and a concert hall). We also walked through Museum Island, which what would you know, is an actual island with museums (ha we laughed and laughed). But in all seriousness it really was beautiful.

It seems like visiting Berlin was one big history lesson, but it was so intriguing to be in a place where so much has happened. The people were great and eating and drinking out was awesome (so much variety) ! Although we were quite disappointed to see Australia loose to England AND be surrounded by so many of them singing a song that I have now grown to dispise - swing low sweet chariot...aaargh!

The only thing we grew to get quite tired of were all the stairs in the U-bahns and S-bahns...everywhere we went it was up one set of stairs tojust go down another set. Look I´m sure our legs appreciated a bit more hard core exercise but *seriously*! ;)

Oh and Ed, George, and Ross - we managed to bump into a few of your friends from your World Cup trip - they said to say hi...

Discovering Dresden

We hadn´t initially planned on a trip to Dresden, but after some research and reading that it was a "top five highlight" of Germany we decided to add it to our itinerary and it has turned out to be quite a nice city.




We´ve been typical tourists again and taken a double-decker bus tour, always a good way to see a city we don´t know too much about. Although we were a bit surprised when English-speakers could only sit on the bottom deck of the bus (were we being segregated from everyone else? Felt like it for a bit! LOL). We hopped on and off to see an aquarium and some lovely gardens with pretty blooming flowers, and a palace surrounded by greenery.





And I learnt that Dresden housed one of my favourite paintings - Sistine Madonna - bonus! So we had a bit of a cultured morning and went to the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. We also visited the local brewery to discover if we really were over beer after Oktoberfest, and it turned out to be ... true! We could only stomach a pint before heading off again.





Today is a public holiday in Germany - Day of German Re-unification - which we only discovered when we took a walk to the brewery and discovered a bit of a festival going on. Lots of stalls selling all sorts of food - bratwursts, schnitzel, sweets, roasted nuts, cakes - delish. This time it was a bit of a mini-Ekka. It was nice.

We also managed to squeeze in a bit of not doing too much. We´ve both been suffering from a bit of a cold, so we figured some down-time was in order. Tomorrow we head to Berlin for a week. We´ve booked an apartment so that will be great - more home-cooked meals!

Cruising Bankfurt and beyond

We left rainy Munich and arrived in rainy and super chilly Frankfurt (or as we later came to know it, Bankfurt). And unfortunately my once sexy husky voice (from too much screaming in Oktoberfest) had turned into a bit of a sore throat. So not only were we cold and wet but also a bit grumpy (yes, I´ll admit it, grumpy!).

Everything seemed to get a bit better after some throat lozengers and the discovery that our hotel had about 5 English-speaking TV channels, yee-ha!

So our first day in Frankfurt was overcast but at least not too rainy. We managed a walking tour of the city, which proved to be quite nice and very full of banks - they even had their own version of Wall Street. The walk turned out to be very fortunate for me as we discovered the shopping district and you know cause the weather wasn´t the best we had to spend time in them..! We also discovered an Aussie pub and specialty ice-cream shop with macadamia ice-cream..hmm.




We´d decided to spend two nights in Frankfurt and also do a bit of cruise in the Rhine River but after watching the weather channel we decided to stay an extra night in Koblenz as the weather looked to be clearing the next day. So our plan was a train ride to Koblenz, a night there, and then a cruise back to Mainz to get the train back to Frankfurt. A bit of a trip but it was all worth it when we woke to lovely blue skies on our planned cruise day.



All up the cruise went for about 8 hours, quite long, but it was lovely. It was warm in the sun and the numerous castles and tiny villages along the river were spectacular (loads of photos were taken! See our album for all of them). We would have liked to have gotten off and had a bit of stroll, but it wasn´t to be. Nonetheless we enjoyed the bar on the boat and the views. One of us also managed to squeeze in a bit of a kip (too much of doing nothing makes me sleepy!).



So our Rhine River cruise was gorgeous and the extra night worth it for warm sunshine. Actually, we´re starting to appreciate the sunshine now that we´re not getting too much of it. It´s starting to get quite cold and I´ll need to go coat shopping soon, there´s only so much layering I can do!