Maps

Entire Holiday. Purple is rail, car , bus or ferry. Blue is plane. Red dots are the places I stayed overnight.

The first five weeks (Julia only)

Milan to Ljubljana

Ljubljana to Maribor

Maribor to Bratislava

Bratislava to Krakow

Scotland

UK

London to Amsterdam

Brugge to Amsterdam

Netherlands - Rotterdam and Amsterdam

Our first stop in the Netherlands was Rotterdam. We had originally planned to stay for an extra few days somewhere in France but it was too tricky to work out transport and accommodation at the last minute so we had to chose an extra stop before Amsterdam. We chose Rotterdam because it had the highest rated hostel and knew nothing about the city when we booked, but it turned out to be an excellent choice. The city was pretty much entirely destroyed in WW2 so there is a lot of modern architecture which made a nice change from the old cities which are very beautiful but start to all look the same after a while. It was also the 5th Birthday of the hostel so there was an all day party going on, free drinks at the bar and a great band playing most of the evening.

The Erasmus Bridge.

Houses along the river. Rottedam has the biggest port in Europe so there is plenty of water and  lots of boats.

Cube houses. These houses are built on top of a bridge. 

Our last stop was Amsterdam. We stayed in a hotel/hostel (they called it a hotel but the prices were like a hostel and the bathrooms were communal) that was about 20mins outside of the centre by tram. It was really nice to be in a bit of a quieter area but our room was tiny! Lucky there was a fantastic breakfast to make up for it.

Our room.  There was no window, just a skylight that you could open and close with a long pole.  The only problem was that it was really hot with thunderstorms, so we couldn't leave the skylight open because we got rained on at night.

Amsterdam street.

Peak hour on the canal. It was such a sunny day that everyone was out drinking in their boats.

In the city centre.

Another canal

...and another

 We did a bike tour of the outer city one day which gave me a greater appreciation for the crazyness of the bike riders. Sometimes we had no idea who had right of way or where to go so you would just keep riding and hope you didn't crash. The tour also included cheese tasting and watching some clog-making.

photo from the bike

Riding in the countryside. About 2m below sea level - the water level of the canals was above the land.

Clogs.

Buildings in Amsterdam. They have moved because they are built on clay so the buildings all lean towards the street at different angles.

This is a "Piss-Deflector". The idea is that because lots of people get drunk and don't want to pay to use a toilet the guys all piss in the streets, so to stop this happening the council put all these piss-deflectors up in corners. As the name suggests, they are designed so that whatever direction you piss on them from it deflects back at you. Andy and I thought that this probably isn't very effective because if you were really drunk it would seem like a great challenge to try to get an angle that didn't deflect.

Our plane home.

Belgium - Brugge and Gent

After two full on weeks and three big cities (London, Barcelona, Paris) it was a relief to return move on to some quieter, more relaxed areas. Both Andy and I were looking forward to Belgium - Andy for the beer and me for the chocolate - and it certainly lived up to our expectations. Andy described our time in Belgium as beer, beer, beer, chocolate, chocolate, beer, chocolate, chocolate, beer and waffles, and I think he was fairly accurate although we managed to fit a fair but of walking and cycling in as well so hopefully we worked off some of the beer and chocolate.

Brugge. We stayed here for four nights in a pretty dodgy hostel but it was the only place in the town that matched our budget. We were very lucky to be sharing a dorm with nice people.

Brugge again. Lots of canals and more bikes than cars which was really nice.

Beer.

Waffle with chocolate and cream.

Strawberries from the market - the best, juiciest, sweetest strawberries I have ever eaten.

...and the best hot chocolate ever! You are given a cup of really hot steamed milk, a little  pot of melted dark chocolate that you mix into the milk, some cream to go on top and a selection of home made chocolates to sample (just in case you hadn't had enough chocolate already).

We hired bikes for a day and rode to a small town about 5km from Brugge called Damme and then went on to the beach - about a 40km round trip.

A windmill.

The bike path. It was really beautiful riding along the canals on tiny back streets with almost no cars and no hills.

Scenery on the ride.

The beach. It was very cold and windy! The beach itself was nice but there were lots of ugly high-rise buildings very close to the shore that I didn't like.

Another day we took the train to Gent to check out a bigger town. 

Gent reminded me of melbourne a bit, it was probably the tram lines everywhere.

A River in Gent

Gent.

On the footpath - I guess this is how they keep the streets clean!

Paris

We only had 3 nights (2 full days) in Paris so we were on the go all the time to try and see as much as possible. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to sit next to a really friendly man from France (now living in Barcelona) on the plane. He gave us his map of Paris, made some excellent suggestions of things to do and circled all the places we should avoid at night.

We found a good deal on wotif so stayed in a hotel which was like luxury for us - our own room, an ensuite and a decent breakfast!

The Seine River at dusk

A street in Paris

The Catacombes. By the 17th century people were getting sick from drinking water contaminated  by decaying bodies in the cemetery so they dug up all the graves and lined the walls of an old quarry with the bones. 

More of the Catacombes

Entrance to the Louvre. We decided not to go in and went to the Musee  d'Orsay instead to see the old train station and the impressionist art inside. It was really good... we saw some Monet, Manet, Van Gough and many others.

View from the Arc de Triomphe

Cars on the Champs Elysees. And this was only a Sunday evening...

The Eiffel Tower

Andy and the Eiffel Tower

.... and the tower at night from a river cruise.

The delicious Macaroon we shared with our picnic lunch. 

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral