I'm baaack

[Chaos Butterfly]

Day 11


Today we went to Liechtenstein a small principality between Switzerland and Austria. It is a very rich country because everyone puts their money there for the tax benefits. The Prince lives up in a castle on the hill. We stopped for lunch and sent ourselves post cards from Liechtenstein because it?s the only thing to do in Liechtenstein. I wrote ?I went to Liechtenstein and all I got was this postcard? I should have added ?and a kebab in a bun? (what is up with that ?kebab burgers? [img]confused.gif[/img] ). We drove through the mountains into Austria where we all sang to ?The Sound of Music? [img]graemlins/music.gif[/img] , which is cheesy under normal circumstances but extra cheesy driving through the hills of Austria. Steph asked about 3 times if we really wanted to hear the story of the real ?Maria? and we said ?yes? you should have seen the glum faces as we all learnt she was actually something of a cold-hearted bitch who, later on, had one of the children she had with von Trapp lobotomised. :sad: We dropped a lot of the gang off as they were going white water rafting. Then all us non-white water rafters went and lazed around in the sun at the end point having lunch.

We went to the town of Innsbruck and saw the ?Golden roof?. We went to the Swarovski Crystal Gallery, which was gorgeous and I found a little crystal dog that looks just like my dog and I also bought the 2003 Christmas star. I found an amazing Christmas shop (Christmas decorations being one of my long time obsessions) there were about 5 rooms full of decorations, mostly hand made, and hundreds and hundreds of hand-painted egg decorations they were wonderful I was so tempted by a glass bauble with Edelweiss flowers painted around it but it all looked so delicate I was sure it would break even if I packed it carefully and I?d just bought my Xmas star so I managed to tear myself away without buying anything which was a rare occurrence indeed on my holiday.

In the evening we had ?Schnappy Happy Hour? which went on for about 6 hours. The prices were reasonable so we went about trying different Schnapps, the liqueurs and the real thing (some could double as paint stripper). I tried chocolate schnapps, which was OK but my favourite was a local brew, which I am gutted that I didn?t have time to buy a bottle of before we left the next morning. It was called Glacier Ice and it was bright blue and it pretty much blew your head off then cooled you down with a real minty fresh after taste. [img]graemlins/martini.gif[/img] I drank many shots of this I seemed to be one of few people who actually liked it. The most popular shot of the night however was a creamy vanilla liqueur called a ?Sperm shot? it came in a little liqueur bottle shaped like a sperm with a wiggly tail and a head as the lid which had big cute cartoon eyes. I took some empty bottles home with me to brighten up the area at work where we process fertilities and post vasectomy checks. (And that was a completely normal sentence for a microbiologist.)

I'm hoping to go and get a few photos scanned next weekend.

[3peanuts]

"Sperm shot"?

Oh dear God Almighty...ewww...

Not like the communist cocktail I created called "Palmiro"... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Chaos Butterfly]

Finally got around to some photos.

Different kinds of flowers are not the only things you can purchase at the flower markets in Amsterdam.



Market day canal-side in Amsterdam



Vapour trails at sunset - Amsterdam



Latest suicidal extreme sport equipment - Amsterdam

[Chaos Butterfly]

Vineyards on the steep slopes of the Rhine Valley as we cruise the Rhine River - St. Goar Germany



Beer anyone?

[Chaos Butterfly]

Day 12

We travelled through the Brenner Pass to Italy. We went through the Italian countryside with lots of vineyards, orchards and the occasional castle. It rained for a while and it looked like our luck with the weather was going to run out. We stopped at the Autogrill for lunch. Yet more confusing attempts to buy food, this time round you had to look for what you wanted, find out what it was called, go up and pay for it and get a ticket, then take the ticket back to where you were in the first place and give them the ticket to get the food. Somehow, in a funny way that seems to make a ?hangi? (digging a hole, filling it with hot rocks, putting your covered food in it covering it with dirt then digging it up a few hours later when cooked) sound like ?fast food?. Or you could just get pizza or pasta, which seemed a bit easier, I got mystery pasta [img]eek.gif[/img] because I was too nervous to ask what was in it. (We hadn?t really had much of an Italian lesson yet apart from ?Grazie-thankyou? and ?Uscita- exit? to make sure we found or way out of the autogrill.) It turned out to be mussels so that was OK.

By the time we actually got to Venezia it was brilliantly fine Yay! We took a boat ride over to the island, past the Church of Maria Therese. We went into St. Marks square, it was beautiful. We took pictures of the beautiful St. Mark?s Cathedral. I didn?t actually go inside, as there were so many things to see and not much time. We went to a pretty amazing glass blowing demonstration, they had awesome stuff but it was really, really expensive. The we were left to wander around and get lost in Venice which is very easy to do, the streets are really narrow and you keep walking over canals, it is very cool I wish I had more time to get lost. There were heaps of shops selling carnival masks, I was really keen to buy one but I never found one I really, really liked and if I did see one I fancied it was the most expensive one in the shop. So I settled on dangly earrings with carnival mask faces on them. I bought a few pairs, I made the mistake of buying the first pair too close to St. Marks square so I paid more than I should as I discovered further away from the main tourist area where I bought my other earring for much cheaper. Oh well, I suppose you have to get ripped off at some point on holiday. Continued with the getting lost and actually found some of my Contiki friends, then we stopped for gelato as it was now quite hot and then found a cute gondolier to have our photos taken with, hehe, lots of ?OK now its your turn to hold the ice-cream and my turn to hold the gondolier? [img]wink.gif[/img] . We finally managed to find our way to the Rialto Bridge just in time to have to turn back and try to find St. Marks square again so we could meet up with the group. On the way back we did manage to find dozens of designer shops with gorgeous clothes and bags that we could never afford in the windows.

Once the Contiki group met up, we were off for one of the highlights of the evening; a gondola ride through the canals, it was really cool. Then we went out for one of the organised Italian dinners. [img]graemlins/dish.gif[/img] It was awesome, not to mention huge. First there was bread, then antipasti, then pasta, then a main course, and dessert, all served with plenty of wine and plenty of entertainment from a few guys who sang and played the accordion. After all this food we waddled back to St. Marks Square to soak up the night atmosphere and the music. You can get a seat outside at a caf? and have a coffee, it?ll cost about 12 euros but you can sit there all evening and be entertained by the excellent classical musicians playing Italian music. Unfortunately we had to get back on a boat to go to the hotel. However, Steph did announce that we get to sleep in an extra hour tomorrow. Hurray! [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

[3peanuts]

Ahahaa! So you discovered the Italian way to buy food: pay before and eat it perhaps...
Autogrill...eh eh eh

Mystery pasta: 'twas probably pasta alla marinara or something like spaghetti con le cozze.
A mystery revealed....

I never got to visit Venice...it would be great.
But 12 euros for a coffee? It's not so expensive in Rome...tourist things I guess.

[Crystal princess]

Just wondering where those glass sperm things got to!
Did you have one of those drinks?
Now, more on Italy please.

[Chaos Butterfly]

Day 12

All roads lead to Rome today. We pass through the Appenine mountains into the Tuscan region. We keep passing huge fields of sunflowers; unfortunately they have passed their moment of glory and are probably going to be harvested soon. Steph has in fact been bombarding us with more trivia throughout the trip so I took advantage of the drive to note some of it down. The patent for the triangle shape of Toblerone chocolate was signed by Albert Einstein when he was working at the patent office before he became famous. The CH on the numberplates of Swiss cars stands for Confederation Helvetica (the old name). ?Mad Cow? disease originated in Switzerland because all the cows (and this is true I saw it) have huge bells around their necks so the farmers can find them, and every time they move ?Ding-Dong? no wonder they went crazy.
We arrive in Rome and after checking in at the hotel Paul drops us at the metro station, as Steph is going to take us on an unofficial walking tour of Rome.
The train pulls up and it is a lot different to the sterile London underground. Every single train I saw in Rome (and I used the metro a lot) was completely covered in graffiti. We went to the Spanish Steps, Trevi fountain, the Four Rivers fountain in the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon. We were left to hunt out our own dinner, our waiter was a comedian after everything we ordered he would say ?OK you want pizza? even if that wasn?t what we ordered. We wandered back to the Piazza Navona to meet Steph eating gelato on the way, Polizio are everywhere it feels really quite safe, [img]graemlins/hmmm.gif[/img] well at least ?til a couple tried to ?pick us up? especially Sam and Daphne, one even gave them his phone number to ring him when he was off duty. It was funny. Nina and I decided to stay in town to wander around and soak up the atmosphere but the others went back to the hotel to get ready to go clubbing. We made wishes at the Trevi fountain and ate more gelato. We met up with a few others who had stayed in town and took the train back, but we weren?t quite sure which way to go from there as we had been dropped off at the station and weren?t paying attention. I was designated ?ask for directions person? so I popped into McDonald?s and showed them the name of the street and hotel I wanted to go. They found me highly amusing [img]rolleyes.gif[/img] and weren?t much help so I returned to the group and we just went in the most likely direction and found the hotel. I think the others got back from clubbing at 5am with rumours of Daphne meeting up with her policeman and Sam being followed from the club by a guy yelling ?Sam, come back I want to make love to you? [img]graemlins/broken_heart.gif[/img]

[Exotic Ginger]

I am so jealous. [img]frown.gif[/img]

[3peanuts]

A-hem...guess your Polizio were "Poliziotti", we cut words a lot...

So, how was our gelato? Tried Nocciola and Mint? My fave...slurp.

Clubbing in Rome can get very risky: kind of Sandman risky thing where you wake up into the city's dreams .

Eh...

[img]wink.gif[/img]