WT09

I AMsterdam (and also london)

vivienne_and_iona — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:18:00 GMT

after a very long bus ride next to a quite unfriendly chain smoking french man, i finally completed the journey from london to paris where iona and i were REUNITED in the relatively unglamorous gallieni bus terminal.

for the next 2 days we hung out in paree gorging on croissants and bakery food (as usual) and also got very enthusiastic about a french halloween party which was made quite a lot easier by everyone's determination to practice their english!

THEN, as november started, so did amsterdam. or at least, so did our really really long trip to amsterdam, which saw us arrive in the pouring rain, in the dark, with our massive bags and no real clue as to what was going on. this was not assisted by the eurolines woman informing us that we were in a completely different spot on the map from where we actually were, and it took all our (ok fine, iona's) map reading ability to actually find where we needed to go.

our hostel was right in the middle of the red light district, aka right in the middle of the action, so to speak. it's a bit weird at first to walk through the area - for those of you who have never been, one of amsterdam's main attractions is it's sex industry, and the 'girls in the windows' but we did get used to it, and because there's so many people out at night, (parents, this is for you) it's actually quite a safe city.

something that we found quite astonishing was that for a city with such potential to be completely seedy, amsterdam is actually a really beautiful place - something that others who had been there before failed to mention. it's full of canals, museums (we went to the van gogh one which was really good), old, beautiful streets and buildings, and, as we learnt on a fateful 4 hour walking tour in the freezing cold rain, lots and lots of history.

we really enjoyed amsterdam, but as a place notorious for its party atmosphere, the 2 1/2 days we stayed there left us exhausted and quite happy to jet off to london, where we arrived (once again) in the middle of the night and curled up in out massive bed at the ritz.

no, you did not read that wrong, and i'm not making some sort of joke about the quality of london hostels - thanks to my lovely nana and papa (HI), our first 3 nights in london were spent feeling very snazzy and important at the ritz hotel. the staff even knew who we were and what room we were in, most likely because we were the only people there under the age of about 60, and therefore stuck out like 2 sore thumbs.

during the day we did all the touristy things (i know you've heard about them a thousand times so i won't bore you with too many details) like the london eye and buckingham palace, and we also got to see lucy and franny which was cool as well!

BUT the highlight of our daily activities was definitely the day that all four of us had afternoon tea at the ritz, where high tea was born. it was incredible and so so posh, so that just by being there we could almost forget we were backpacking, except that we were so excited it was obvous we weren't exactly there every day! we even ate gold (no, really. we did).

london is a great city - there's so much to see and do and i don't think you could ever get bored (we didn't, at least), especially not when there's all the monopoly places to spot! we even made a trip out to old kent road, to discover that there is definitely a reason why it's the cheapest place in monopoly...

after a fantastic 5 days in london it was time for the next phase of WT09 - SOUTH AMERICA. but, quite clearly, that's another story and so you will have to wait.

much much love,

vivienne (and iona)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

iona main eats a lot of waffles and drinks a lot of beer

vivienne_and_iona — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:11:00 GMT

and so, at last count, i was lurking around a slightly scruffy parisian hostel when a friendly danish guy offered me a lift to brussels. nice. love danish people.

as countless backpackers have discovered, free transport in europe (and probably anywhere) is basically non-existent unless you are in the back of a police car or have missed your bus/train/ferry stop, so the prospect of a free ride to a foreign country was one i gratefully accepted.

and, let's be honest, good-looking scandanavians are basically the icing on the cake.

the trip that would apparently take '2 or 3 hours' saw us pull up outside our brussels hostel at 11.50pm, almost 7 hours since we left our digs in paris (although to be fair that included a lot of messing around with the europcar people who seemed to speak neither french nor english, and definitely no danish). But, it quickly became clear (after a night's sleep in a room with a guy who snored like a bear and smelt like feet who made a hasty departure the following day, presumably out of embarrassment) that brussels was worth the effort, if not for the nice-but-not-that-exciting town centre then at least for the vast number of shops selling waffles, beer and chocolate, or a combination of the three.

in short, my kind of city.

two days in brussels was basically enough- it's really nice but there's not heaps to do, save perhaps for the tintin museum and the breweries (i will be honest and say that in my first day in belgium, i drank more beer than i had in my entire life up to that point) and after 48 hours of eating exclusively the above (plus a serve of hot chips with mayo) i was starting to think a new town and some nutritious food might be an idea.

i farewelled denmark (i believe i am one of a select few who can say they learnt some danish in belgium) and got on a train to bruges, an often-mocked town that features in a movie everybody but me seems to have seen, and quickly discovered for myself that despite the countless horse-drawn carriages and wooden canal boats carting american tourists around, it's actually a really cute little town.

my first stop was the chocolate museum, arguably the best 5 euro i have ever spent (it's up there with the donkey ride in santorini) if only for the chocolate statue of barack obama. nice.

i also managed to get hopelessly lost in the (very small) town, despite having a map, and finally admitted that maybe my sense of direction isn't quite as good as i have always claimed. but, in the process, i saw a vial of something claiming to be the blood of jesus (pretty cool if it's true but probably just a great revenue-raiser for an unremarkable little church) and ate an apple, which represented my attempted return to healthy eating.

seriously, if you can make it through belgium without succumbing to the delicious unhealthiness of the food, then you are not only a man of steel but you also can't have had any fun.

a very early wake-up and a bone-shatteringly expensive train ticket later (apparently second class was booked out, tchuh) i rolled back into paris's gare du nord with the satisfaction of knowing i had spent my week well.

belgium may indeed be the butt of all jokes, have it's only claim to fame being that it's the home of tintin, and the people may speak reeeeeally sloooowly, but it is also the home to some hilarious chocolate vendors, some incredible food and a lot of very, very good beer. not that i would know, parents, grandparents and other advocates of responsible drinking.

xoxo iona

ENGLAND (you'll have to imagine the witty title - sorry)

vivienne_and_iona — Fri, 6 Nov 2009 12:18:00 GMT

HELLO FRIENDS AND FAMILY

the time has come, the walrus said, for you to all finally know how on earth i survived a month without iona in the big (ok, small) bad country that is england.

to tell you the truth, i didn't quite know how i was going to do it myself, and it wasn't really looking good just after iona left when i had to buy a lot of lollies to calm myself down, but it did all turn out in the end. at the very least, i'm still alive, and mostly in one piece!

BASICALLY, i stayed in edinburgh for a couple of days on my own, pretending to be a local (though i never quite mastered the accent..), and having the very exciting experience of being id-ed for the first time ever. unfortunately, because iona was in paris, i was out with people from the hostel, and they didn't understand the momentous occasion that this entailed. i got excited nonetheless.

after edinburgh, i headed to newcastle, where WT09 (the vivienne october edition) really began. i discovered that newcastle doesn't offer a great deal in the way of daytime activities, so highlights probably include seeing the bridge that is exactly like the harbour bridge, and a quite cool museum that i went to, as well as the nightlife, which is hilarious. essentially, newcastle is the bucks/hens night capital of england, and so everywhere you looked there were people wearing ridiculous costumes, rampaging around and shrieking.

after newcastle, i bussed it down to york, where i met up with claire! we had a really really good time squirrel spotting, directing people to things i had never heard of (sucked in annoying boys - i dont think they ever found the cinema...) and generally charging around the minster (absolutely incredible) and the student nights out. we met some friendly canadians at our hostel as well, and educated (or possibly bothered) them with our taste in music...

...until it was time for both of us to hit up manchester, which was really fun. once again, it sort of lacked daytime activities (somewhat of a trend in england, i've found) but we had a really really nice time first, just us 2, and then with some people claire had met earlier in the year at glastonbury (dan and tom) and their friends, who very kindly let us stay at their house and entertained us for a couple of days! needless to say we had a lot of fun, living in a student house for 2 nights, pretending to go to manchester uni and eating 2 pound pizzas. we also had the exciting experience of going to a comedy club, which i was quite sceptical about, but it was actually really funny. the only lowlight (unfortunately) was the australian comedian, which was a little bit embarassing...

because claire had plans already to go to scotland, i had to go thorough another sad goodbye as she headed for glasgow (land of the indecipherable accent) and i marched on towards liverpool, which was only a 2 pound bus ride away. yessssssss.

liverpool is, for those who dont know, the home of the beatles, and i had a lot of fun there with some cool people from the hostel, getting swept up (sort of) in 'beatle mania' and the like.

after liverpool, i braved the 6 hour bus ride (which i almost missed, thanks to me being at the wrong bus stop - i was saved by the friendly bus driver who ran down the road to make sure i wasnt meant to be on his bus - i was.) to london, which i really enjoyed! london's such a massive city which is a tiny bit overwhelming but theres so much cool stuff to do and see, and so many travellers to meet, that i had an awesome time. i rampaged around there for a little while, doing some of the touristy stuff and FINALLY sorting out my visa for brazil (the london embassy actually existed, which is always helpful), before i woke up one morning with absolutely no voice whatsoever - no idea how that happened - and decided to get away from the cities for a little bit.

so next stop was the beautiful bath, which was really really nice, though perhaps not quite as relaxing as i was expecting, being a university town and everything! i spent a realy nice few days wandering around the town (seeing the roman baths - incredible - among other things), and one day i went down to stonehenge! it wasn't as big as i was expecting but it was still really cool. i somehaow managed to resist the temptation to buy the tacky souveneirs (they were really really awful, that's how), so i felt pretty proud of myself after that.

after a few days in bath i wasn't really getting any better voice-wise (one person kindly informed me that i "sounded like darth vader") so i figured it was time to go somewhere that was actually quiet. that is how i chose reading. there is, as far as i was, and still am (having now been) aware, absolutely nothing to do there. which was perfect.

after that i headed back to london for a few more days, where i had a really good time with some awesome girls from england (and another vivian from australia!!) who i met at the hostel before the day finally came and i got up at 5 am (whoo) to head back to paris and BACK TO IONA!

but that is another story, this one is definitely already long enough...

much much love to one and all, and i'm sory this was such a long time coming,

vivienne

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

fake IDs, green day and eiffel tower mania = 2 weeks in paris

vivienne_and_iona — Sun, 1 Nov 2009 11:26:00 GMT

my plan for october was to go to paris, quickly find an easy and well-paid job (something like sampling chocolate was what i had in mind) and spend the large part of the next month wandering around galleries, shopping and eating crepes.

well, it would seem i was perhaps a little optimistic, but in spite of my limited success in the parisian job market (although to be fair i was offered 2 jobs- one in a bar that meant walking 20km home at 4am each night, and the other was only offered 4 days before my planned departure), i have actually had an incredibly good time so far, with the only thing missing being that tall brunette girl who i seem to see everywhere (and apparently she's having a good time on the other side of the channel so i'm not too worried).

basically, the job-hunt consigned to the too-hard basket, i proceeded to catch up with a few friends lurking around (you know who you are), hang around in a lot of impressive galleries pretending i knew about art, and eat my own weight in nutella crepes. life was good.

i've been staying with arguably the world's most hospitable family friends, who had met me all of twice before i turned up at charles de gaulle requesting food and accommodation, and have very generously had me stay in their house on and off since my arrival. AND, on top of all that, they're really nice people.

jeremy, eldest son of family, 19 and pretty cool, gave me a good introduction to paris as on my first weekend he took me to two parties (if any australian girls are feeling unloved they should definitely give france a go), the green day concert (for which he wouldn't let me pay him back and where i actually had a really good time, despite being in the mosh pit and surrounded by sweaty french emos) and finally lent me his NaviGo card for when he doesn't need it, which is basically a glorified train pass that identifies me as Jeremy Watkins, 19-year-old blonde male, and so is essentially a fake ID that would have me laughed out of any club. but still.

i spent the next week sleeping in, hanging out with jesse treharne, lucy bowers or a combination of the two, seeing some of paris's sights that had previously escaped my notice (i don't know why people queue for hours for the louvre, the musée d'orsay was incredible and we saw a guy who looked just like justin timberlake from behind), and generally came to feel a little less like a tourist in this beautiful city.

then, WEEK 2.5 (my second whole week in paris), rupert saxton and his beloved fluffy blonde hair turned up at Gare Montparnasse for his last week in paris, where we stayed in a slightly scruffy but really friendly hostel called the 3 Ducks, 10 minutes from the Eiffel Tower. having both seen pretty much every landmark paris has to offer (and there are many), we felt little pressure to sightsee and so spent a large proportion of our time cooking up a storm in the hostel kitchen, making friends with the many cool people who passed through the hostel's doors (you, too, know who you are) and going on pub crawls pretending we were siblings- on one famous occasion rupert only bought one drink and i managed to somehow make €5, which had something to do with a kebab but we're not quite sure.

we also made the trip out to the Palace of Versailles, where the massive queue made us consider going home, but after lining up for 15 minutes we discovered that as members of the European Union (we both have a parent from sunny Great Britain) we were allowed to jump the queue, flash a passport and feel really clever all at once. the palace is really incredible, must have been awesome to live in, and the gardens are bigger than several parisian arrondisements put together. nice.

rupert and i basically ended the week with a few photos of versailles, a zillion of the eiffel tower with people walking through the picture and one of me in 'the batcave' (a doona cover with pictures of che guevara on it that would make the revolutionary turn in his grave). a good result.

on rupert's last day in paris, and my last day of having any plans, i was kind of mooching around the courtyard when a nice danish guy we'd met a few days earlier asked me why i looked so devo, and i explained that i was at the end of a pretty fun few weeks with no plans ahead, and he asked me if i wanted to come to belgium with him and a friend. that night.

and so, with no good reason to say no and previous research indicating that scandanavian people are all really nice, i accepted.

but you'll have to wait for that one.

edinburg(h)er*

vivienne_and_iona — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:51:00 GMT

* just for the record, we didn't actually call it that... i just thought of it then and thought it was funny... i'm pretty cool, i know.

ANYWAY. first thing first, sorry that this is ridiculously late, but, to be honest, since iona isn't here to remind me to do important things like the blog anymore, i pretty much just forget... clearly i am very organised.

SO, to the real story now. after saying a very sad goodbye to iona's lovely family, iona and i jetted off to edinburgh, and managed to arrive at a reasonable hour, somewhat unlike our last entry into scotland. for those who don't remember - good one - we managed to arrive in glasgow at the lovely time of 3am. thank you easyjet.

Edinburgh was absolutely gorgeous as far as big cities go - lots of old buildings and a really cool castle with a working cannon that fires every day. we were suitably impressed with the city already, especially when we discovered that we had managed to score a 6 bed dorm, empty except for ourselves! this might not exactly sound like cause for celebration, but it was a chance to spread our stuff around, and generally take up as many beds as it was possible for 2 people to occupy (all of them, as it turned out), which, after almost 5 months of sharing with people who are not always those we would have chosen, was very exciting indeed. and that was a very long sentence. sorry.

the day after we arrived, we split up for the morning so that i could sort out my compulsory (obviously) visa for brazil and iona could check out the sights of the city on a walking tour. this seemed like it would be a reasonably straightforward, extremely productive morning, but do not be fooled, dear readers, because:

a) iona discovered that her tour group was full of slow walkers, which, in the freezing scotland weather, rendered her so cold she had to concede defeat and go back to the hostel and;

b) i trailed around edinburgh for a few hours, looking for the brazilian consulate, which, i later discovered, did not exist. cool.

so, all in all, the morning was a pretty epic failure.

that afternoon we went for a wander, our super speedy walking pace (ha) a bit easier to cope with as far as the weather was concerned, and made use of posibly the 2 most useful things iona had learnt that morning - a shortcut between our hostel and the royal mile, and the suggestion that we try a deep fried mars bar. it was, as expected, disgusting and delicious at the same time, and probably would have killed us both courtesy of a heart attack had we not taken the sensible option and shared one. we also killed a few hours in topshop, obviously not shopping, but playing what will forevermore be known as 'the topshop game'. it can't really be fully described in words, but for an idea please just look at the following picture.

and that evening we caught up with one of iona's lovely cousins, helen, who goes to uni in edinburgh, for a drink and to marvel at the amazing student accommodation in scotland. i have seen student houses in sydney, and i have never ever seen one as nice as helen's!

the next day we went up to edinburgh castle, where we saw the cannon up close, learnt a bit of history and saw some of the crown jewels.

and then came the moment we'd been expecting, but also not quite expecting would actually come - saying goodbye to each other (only for a month, but still). iona headed off towards the airport and paris, and i stomped off to buy an enormous bag of lollies to cheer myself up, and work out what on earth to do now...

but that, as they say, is another story, so you'll probably have to wait until iona reminds me to do it to hear then next installment of WT09 (vivienne version).

BUT now that i have actually managed to complete this blog, iona can tell you all about her exciting adventures in paris... get excited!

much much love

vivienne (and iona)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

a whirlwind tour of ireland in more style than we're used to

vivienne_and_iona — Sat, 3 Oct 2009 15:45:00 GMT

so, historic tour of scotland over (with particular emphasis on all the places my dad has crashed vintage cars throughout the st andrews area during his university years), we wound up back in glasgow to send my sad little sister back to australia for school and ourselves jumped on a plane to belfast, northern ireland, and then into a hire car (fancy) to drive down to dublin. the WT09 party now including vivienne and i, obviously, and my parents- the ones we must thank for lifting the general standard of nutrition, transportation, cleanliness and accommodation of v and i from very low to quite good, really. at least for a week, anyway.

this journey from the highlands to dublin was made considerably less pleasant by the fact that i'd somehow contracted a vicious stomach bug, but i won't bore or disgust you with the details. anyway, vivienne and my parents got to know each other even better than they already did as i lay around and moaned.

SO. DUBLIN.

For those who have had the fortune to visit this lovely city, it's not full of drunken irish people as most would have you believe (there's still a few around, obviously, it probably depends where you hang out) but in fact lots of pretty buildings and double-decker buses in bright colours and friendly people with incomprehensible accents and welcoming-looking pubs and bars that sell nothing but guinness.

the fact that there must be hundreds of bars like this, all full of people and making money, is merely a testament to the irish love of guinness. as pretty much non-beer drinkers, vivienne, my mum and i all politely had a sip of the pints we were served at the end of our tour of the guinness factory and then watched my dad, a dedicated beer-drinker, happily devour everything we had failed to consume (this being the best part of 3 pints of guinness). all i can say is well played, andrew main.

in dublin we also saw the earliest copy of the bible still in existence, the book of kells (which for those who care was in fact written on the isle of iona, before being taken away when my violent norse ancestors turned up and ransacked the place in the 14th century). well played, ancestors. we also did lots of other fun stuff but in the interests of keeping things short(ish), i will let you be imaginative.

in short, dublin: big tick. go there.

from dublin we ended up in a place called Youghal, which promised us 'miles of golden beaches' and in fact was cold, windy and full of teenage mums, but was slightly improved by a really really incredible seafood restaurant, a nice hotel built before Captain Cook had even been born, let alone contemplated discovering Australia, and the fact that the town is pronounced Y'all.

then, we lurked around killarney while i attempted to re-apply to university (i'm still not 100 per cent sure the UAC even knows i exist), then headed to a beautiful place called Kells where my great-aunt used to live, in the very bottom-left corner of Ireland. alas her enormous old house was a bit lacking in the heating and hot water departments, but a fire was constructed and we all sat around being jolly and actually had quite a nice time.

from Kells we whizzed up through the countryside to a place called Carlingford Loch, which was nice but seemed to have a bit of a girl shortage judging by the ridiculous number of beeps we got wandering around in trackies, and then to the VERY FAR NORTH of Northern Ireland, to see the Giant's Causeway.

for those who don't know, the Giant's Causeway is a zillion-year-old series of rock formations on an incredibly beautiful coastline where my dad wandered around being friendly to spanish tourists and we enjoyed the view.

and, lastly, we headed once more to belfast to fly back to glasgow, our highly enjoyable family (vivienne replacing laura) holiday to ireland. my lovely parentals headed home to sydney, and v and i jumped on a bus to edinburgh.

but THAT, as they say, is ANOTHER STORY.

much love to all concerned x

the hilarity that is scottish dancing (and various other bits and pieces)

vivienne_and_iona — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:08:00 GMT

The wedding of iona's cousin ewen and his new wife annie was the main reason we came to scotland, and so when the day arrived, we were, safe to say, reasonably excited (and not only because of the scottish dancing we had been promised). we (being the main family and me - the self-proclaimed honorary member of the main family) drove up to aviemore in the somewhat miraculous sun and proceeded to spend the next 2 hours wandering around the hotel and getting ready. this was a fairly big occasion, considering i'm pretty sure it was the first time on this trip that both iona and i have looked clean and nice. quelle miracle.

the wedding itself was really really fun. neither of us have what you would call vast experience with weddings (i think we can count both of our appearances at these occasiona on one hand) but we had a lovely time. the bride looked gorgeous and everyone was having a good night! we also quickly decided that scottish weddings are much better than non-scottish ones - lots of people in kilts (SO much better than suits) and a reasonable amount of people falling over in the highly amusing and apparently highly dangerous highland dancing. we had a pretty good go at most of the dances, iona even attempting one which involved the guys spinning the girls in some sort of flying manouvre. i spent a large part of that one congratulating myself on sitting it out, but apparently it was really good. another one we tried was called the 51st, and it rendered both of us so confused we ended up being dragged around by the people on either side so that we didn't do too much of the wrong thing!

the day after the wedding we jetted off (in the car) to the town of st andrews, where iona's dad went to university. it was a really cute place, full of memories for iona's dad and full of little cafes and gift shop type places for the rest of us! we spent the afternoon playing golf on the course where golf was apparently invented (we actually played putt putt, but it was still at the same course so we felt pretty cool).

the next day we went to a strawberry farm to pick strawberries which was really good fun! we in fact got so carried away that we managed to leave with almost 4 kilos of strawberries - and that's not even including the ones we ate along the way! we then left the st andrews area and started to make our way back to ardgour, stopping to see stirling castle, which was really cool, but unfortunately located in a town which we concluded to be full of 'gross people, obese people, skinheads and tourists'. awesome.

we spent the next couple of days chilling with iona's more extended family again, and then iona, laura and i drove down to the islands of mull and (somewhat more importantly) iona. we rampaged around there for a couple of days, mavelling at the cuteness of tobermory's rainbow buildings and charging around the isle of iona with 2 main objectives:

1 to get as many photos of iona with iona signs as humanly possible and,

2 to purchase as much iona related merchandise as iona could lay her hands on!

now we're back in ardgour again for a couple of days, before we leave sunny scotland and head for ireland with iona's parents. but as we haven't done that yet, that story will have to wait for next time...

much love,

vivienne (and iona)

xxxxxxxxxxxx

glasgow and a somewhat wet arrival in the highlands

vivienne_and_iona — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:44:00 GMT

after arriving comically early at spain's alicante airport for our really cheap flight to glasgow (we thought we were clever by scoring a place in sleazyjet's 'boarding group B' until we found out that the boarding groups actually only extend to B) and having a slightly awkward smile-and-nod conversation with the friendly but completely incomprehensible glaswegian man in front of us, we touched down in glasgow. our arrival at 2am could be blamed on (arguably) the world's worst airline but alas the 13C weather was something that no amount of whingeing would correct (and believe me we tried).

a brief (and somewhat compulsory) taxi ride later, the public transport to and from the airport having long since closed, we were starting to worry that the language barrier was going to be even greater in scotland than it was in spain, as we had recently had several more complicated and confusing conversations with scottish people despite the fact that everybody was theoretically speaking english.

we became, that evening, the people in dorm hostel rooms that everybody hates as we turned up shortly before 3am and rustled around in the dark for the next half-hour before crashing into bed. although, we were slightly less hated than the girl who turned up after us, really drunk and apparently sleeping in a bed full of plastic bags.

basically, v and i were in scotland for my cousin's wedding further north the following weekend, and really just arrived in glasgow because we could get there cheaply. as one does. but, armed with thick jumpers and a scrawled list of 'things to do' from a cousin i hadn't met since i was 7, we decided we were pretty well-equipped to see glasgow.

our first morning in the grey, rainy but also quite likeable city was taken up with finding somewhere to get haircuts (we were both looking a bit like cousin it and were determined to not be the bogan australian cousins at the wedding) and discovering that vivienne needs to pay a visit to the brazilian consulate in edinburgh in order to legally travel into south america (i, however, am somehow exempt from getting a visa because i have a british passport. clearly).

we then went to the kelvingrove museum, where we ignored pretty much everything except the stuff that was actually about scotland, and were secretly quite pleased that it was completely free and really good. bargain.

that night we hit sauchiehall st with some of the girls from our dorm, sauchiehall being a nightspot my cousin had described as 'a sight to see', which i had foolishly assumed to mean 'good', when in fact we encountered more vomiting drunks than we'd seen in a while and were amazed at how little clothing glaswegian girls manage to wear considering the weather. despite all this we had a really good night, and the next morning wandered around the high st shops before trekking up the hill with all our stuff to the buchanan st bus station, where a bus would take us to a place called the corran ferry just south of fort william, in north-west scotland.

sans problemes we crossed the loch on the ferry to a town called ardgour, the closest civilisation to where the scottish branch of my family lives in one of the most beautiful parts of scotland.

vivienne and i basically spent the next few days sleeping, eating, watching movies, drinking tea and catching up with my lovely extended family (most of whom i basically hadn't seen since 1998).

it was a faint desire for exercise that led us to tackle a hike on one of the big hills surrounding ardgour, called kiel- a decision which we questioned somewhat as my uncle robin sent us off with two chocolate bars and the number of the helicopter rescue people. we actually made it most of the way up and back without too much drama, miraculously weren't really rained on and got some amazing views from the top.

then, it was with great excitement that my mum, dad and little sister turned up (my father apparently having driven like 'a madman' from glasgow airport) on wednesday, partly for my cousin ewen's wedding to a gorgeous girl called annie, and partly to bring vivienne and i all the things we'd forgotten and to take home the things we didn't need and more. such nice people, my family.

some scottish dancing practice last night in the kitchen (vivienne's excitement was second to none and she did better than the half-scottish members of the family) got us pretty geared up for the wedding tomorrow, but i'll let vivienne tell you about that. she is, after all, as excited as i am!

love to all xxx

being boiling hot

vivienne_and_iona — Tue, 8 Sep 2009 11:31:00 GMT

the next part of our spanish adventure was basically a combination of 2 things: a complete lack of knowledge about good places to go, and the realisation that we had a week left in spain and nothing planned to do... basically we hit up seville (where claire and campbell already were), to discover that the beautiful city was also the 'hottest in europe'. mm.

we arrived after a 9 hour train trip that seemed to take so long because the train would stop for about 15 minutes at every station so that passengers could get off and smoke. this would have been ok except that they also turned off the airconditioning and there was a man sitting across the aisle from us who found it funny to occasionally proclaim that he 'loooove'd us. so friendly.

when we finally got there we found that the reason it seemed so hot was because it was - one sign very nicely informed us that it was 37 degrees. at 9pm. and so we decided to be very brave and leapt onto a bus to huddle in the airconditioning.

we did have a lot of fun that night hanging at the hostel with claire and campbell and the days that followed essentially involved a lot of icecream, a few trips to the supermarket (it was airconditioned) and as much walking around the beautiful but boiling city as we could bear.

in case you're worried we spent the entire time complaining about the heat and not doing much else, i'm sorry to say you are partly right, although we did see sights as well, mostly thanks to a walking tour which took us pretty much everywhere in a couple of hours. we also climbed to the top of the cathedral, and saw the palace where the king stays 'when he's in town'. you know.

unfortunately, as you can probably tell, seville didnt quite capture our hearts as maybe it should have (a lot of people have raved about it), so we left a day earlier than we were meant to. this involved quite an exciting last minute bus change - we decided at 6pm that we wanted to leave that night, and then had to change our bus booking, cancel a night's accommmodation, book another night's accommodation at the next place, pack all of our stuff, have some dinner and get ourselves to the bus station in the space of about an hour and a half. this somewhat stupid and stressful plan actually worked so we felt pretty clever for a while after that.

an overnight bus later we arrived in alicante, essentially a stopover to catch our flight to glasgow the next night. we discovered it was full of british people, by the beach and mercifully not nearly as hot as seville. we basically spent the day having a bit of a wander and lying on the beach, but i won't bore you with the details of our endless trips to the supermarket (seemingly our new hang zone, wherever we are. we're so cool.) because let's be honest, alicante was nice, but kind of boring. we were not all that sad to be getting out of spain.

much much love

vivienne (and iona)

xxxxxxxxxx

the real reason we came to spain...

vivienne_and_iona — Tue, 1 Sep 2009 15:07:00 GMT

...was not to embarrass ourselves with our terrible spanish, nor to drink a lot of sangria, nor to enjoy the almost laughably laid-back spanish lifestyle (siesta often begins around midday and continues until about 9 the following morning), although a lot of all of this happened. in fact, we came to spain for la tomatina- for those not in the know, a tomato fight held once a year in a town called buñol, near valencia, where people basically spend an hour hurling tomatoes at one another for a reason that nobody can remember (although theories apparently include a group of students who would annually pelt their least favourite teacher with tomatoes, which i doubt improved their marks but probably made them feel better).

vivienne and i had a conversation many months back that involved a picture of people covered in tomato and the realisation that we would be in france in august, and that the tomatina is in august, and that france isn't all that far from spain. that may sound like a bit of a leap but this is in fact the way we travel, which actually works a surprisingly large part of the time (i think this can be attributed to luck more than good planning).

and so, after getting a rather exciting lift from manon's auntie to barcelona and having a lovely rampage around with lucy and franny, we caught a train (in 'class turistica', what an honour) down to valencia to our hostel where vivienne and i would not be sleeping in the same room for the first time in almost 4 months- gasp! we'd agreed we would each pick a key and stick with our room no matter what, which worked in my favour as i was with some nice tasmanians and poor vivienne scored a bunch of people who either didn't know la tomatina was on (but were presumably wondering why their dorm bed was costing them €30 a night), didn't speak english, spent all their time sleeping or a combination of the three. mad.

that evening met up with clare, lucy, claire and campbell (clare lucy and claire being friends from school and campbell being a friend of claire's) for a paella at a really dodgy restaurant and a catch up on everybody's goss from the last several months of travel. lucy and clare also handed out our 'tomatina outfits' that they'd bought in madrid for the grand total of €4 per person, which consisted of a white hooded shirt that said 'aloha college girls' on it, and some red silky jogging shorts that were such an unflattering style that even gemma ward couldn't have pulled them off. i will attempt to find a photo of the outfit, i promise.

we caught the train (along with the other 45 000 people who apparently participated in la tomatina) out to buñol pretty early in the day to get a good spot, but found when we arrived at about 9am that the streets were already packed with people, an enormous proportion of whom were australian (for some reason australians get really into things like this) and the majority of whom were boredly standing around waiting for the tomato-throwing to start (the few who weren't bored were the thieves and the aggressive spaniards pegging knotted t-shirts at unsuspecting tourists). the day did not begin well as a nasty spanish person pickpocketed campbell's camera, which is why we have only memories and no photos, and as we struggled through the crowd i got squashed between the backs of two really big guys and kind of freaked out as i couldn't move or breathe properly (the streets of buñol are really pretty narrow and with the huge numbers of people packing them we are amazed that apparently nobody has ever been seriously hurt). anyway, a few elbows out later the 6 of us emerged into a side-street for some fresh air and to discover that we were actually in a really good spot, as we wouldn't get crushed by massive numbers of people but were really close to where the trucks with the tomatoes pass by!

at 11am, the trucks roll through the main street and locals in the back pour armfuls of tomatoes into the crowd, who then spend the next hour hurling them at each other. there are few words to describe seeing thousands of people mash tomato into one another's hair and clothing, but hilarious is definitely one! locals on balconies also hose water into the crowd, which means that the gutters quickly fill with watery tomato pulp, which then runs down into the streets below (presumably to the great disadvantage of the poor people who live there).

as we agreed when we unexpectedly copped a bucket of water from a balcony prior to the tomato-throwing starting, the town of buñol is a bit of a hole and throwing water onto tourists is probably the highlight of their year.

after about half an hour of truck after truck rolling past and tomatoes flying everywhere, things calmed down a bit and we walked down our little alleyway to the street below, where we discovered hundreds more people flinging the tomato pulp that had washed down the streets at anything that moved (and a lot of things that didn't).

we had such a good day, other than the obviously annoying loss of campbell's camera, and made it back to the train station at the top of the hill looking like we'd bathed in pasta sauce and smelling like we'd slept in a bin. but all in the name of fun. and fun it was!

that night we were all really tired and so had a picnic in a park in valencia, where i insulted a south african by asking him if he was from new zealand and we played photo challenge in the dark, before saying bye and heading home.

we hadn't really planned a lot for valencia other than la tomatina (let's be honest, we didn't really plan a lot for spain other than la tomatina), so we did a 'free' walking tour (they always ask for money at the end) but it was actually really good and we found out all this stuff about how the christians and the muslim moors just rampaged around spain throughout the 19th and 20th centuries burning down one another's religious buildings and constructing their own over the top. such cool people.

v and i thought valencia was pretty nice, there's heaps of lovely old buildings and fountains and stuff, although we had kind of done everything by the time we left and weren't sad to be moving on to the next place. we would, however, be sad when we realised that the temperature in our next destination rarely drops below 40C and there isn't much to do there other than sit in front of the airconditioning and eat icecream.

but i'll let vivienne tell you about that.

barca barca barca

vivienne_and_iona — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:08:00 GMT

sup friends.

BASICALLY when we left you a couple of days ago (we are now so up to date with this blog its insane) we were about to make the trek from angouleme down to barcelona, which was made infinitely easier for us by manon's lovely auntie who just happened to be driving to a place called sitges (about 30 mins south of barca) at exactly the time we wanted to go. fate (and a very long sentence) is what i would call that. the 9 hour car trip was definitely better than training it, and was also the cause of some hilarity from the moment we entered spain, as cecile's (manon's aunt) driving got exponentially worse the further we got from the french-spanish border... but we made it in the end, and after lugging our bags for about a kilometre inside the station (i have no idea why european train stations feel the need to be quite so enormous) we arrived at the hostel and were pleased to note an absence of the insufferably weird in our dorm.

the next day we hit up Park Guell to see the work of arguably one of the most famous architects ever, Gaudi. Everything there was incredible, and even though neither of us knows anything about architecture we both really really loved it. for those of you who dont really know much about Gaudi, the buildings look like they're straight out of a story book and everything is covered in these amazing mosaics which would make even normal buildings look cool... Also, the park was at the top of this enormous hill which meant we got to see the whole city, which made a nice change from the obscene number of terrible mullets we kept seeing, on both men and women.

that afternoon was also super exciting because lucy and franny arrived! it was really really good to see them and i seem to remember some excited screaming which may or may not have annoyed the other people at the hostel. oh well. we had a really nice couple of days and nights (both in the hostel and out on the town) with them after that, culminating in the addition of a tattoo to iona's lower back.

we basically spent the whole time talking and rampaging around the city (something we do best) attempting to get to places like 'J9 on the map' with one of the massive-est maps i have ever had to use, which didnt even have all the street names, but LUCKILY had all the McDonalds marked. phew. safe to say it was pretty difficult, but we did get to most of the places in the end...

we really enjoyed seeing la sagrada familia too (although lucy wasn't feeling well so it was just us 2 and franny), but we felt kind of stupid after complaining for several minutes about it being covered in scaffolding when we later found out that one of the church's interesting points is that it's been under construction since it first started being built back in the 1800s. well done us.

the four of us also had a really nice picnic beside a fountain, if one could count sandwiches and sangria as dinner, except it was slightly marred by the fact that dodgy men kept coming up and offering to sell us beer out of plastic bags (it's illegal for shops to sell alcohol after 11 in spain), and when we refused offered to sell us various types of drugs in hushed tones. such cool people.

essentially we had a really great time in barca and a really really great time with lucy and franny, which meant it was really hard to say goodbye but the promised fun that was la tomatina drew us away eventually...

much much love,

vivienne (and iona)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

ps. worry not iona's family, iona's tattoo is actually very nice. tasteful unlike some tramp stamps... and also it came out of a chip packet.

PARIS and more (but mostly just paris)

vivienne_and_iona — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:44:00 GMT

we're going on a bit of a rampage updating this blog but it's so much easier if we just get it up to date rather than running about three weeks behind forever more, although this may give you the impression that we spent a very busy 24 hours in france rather than a bit over 3 weeks! so, sorry about that.

i believe vivienne last left us in the very pleasant but not all-that-exciting town of angouleme, somewhere north of bordeaux, about a week ago (we're talking real time rather than blog time now). thanks to our dear friend manon and her french student card we somehow managed to get some really cheap return train tickets for paris (really cheap compared to the outrageous normal prices, actually, but still), as well as free accommodation at some distant relative's house about 20 minutes to the south of paris. we had heard stories about people paying €40 a night for a room the size of a bathroom (which begs the question of how big the bathroom was), so were very grateful to be staying with manon's slightly crazy but very nice relatives.

so nice, in fact, that every vague interest or like that vivienne or i expressed was met with some kind of response, so that v mentioning she'd heard the eiffel tower gets lit up at night resulted us in getting driven into town to see it at midnight, and me saying i loved cheese and had never tried frog's legs or snails was met with a massive platter of all three of the above. frog's legs did indeed taste a bit like chicken and were actually pretty tasty but are distinctly recognisable as the legs of a frog, which makes you feel really sick when you think about it while eating them, so we moved onto the snails. as far as i am concerned, snails taste as one would expect a snail to taste- kind of brown and chewy. yum. but the sauce was good, and we did the right thing by eating a few each and being really appreciative of the effort they'd gone to!

we basically spent 4 days staying with the rels and going into paris on the train each day to see all the sights- manon had never been to paris before (which is like an australian teenager admitting they've never been to canberra, it's not so much a matter of choice as a rite of passage) so vivienne and i found ourselves explaining why the eiffel tower was built and negotiating ticket prices without a great deal of help from our gorgeous but not very worldly french friend.

in any case, we had a fantastic time- we did all the touristy sights, from walking halfway up the eiffel tower and then conceding defeat to the lifts, to visiting montmartre and sacre coeur and managing to avoid the dodgy bracelet scam, to wandering down the champs-elysees with our mouths hanging open at the main shopping street in arguably the world's most fashionable city. we felt a bit pathetic after a wander around louis vuitton, where i saw a lovely red bag but realised it was the bag or the rest of this trip- we are now in spain, so i think you can guess which one i sensibly chose. after our slightly whirlwind but very enjoyable self-guided tour of paris and its southern suburbs, we indulged a promise vivienne and i had made to each other many, many months ago and got on a train to euro disney.

for those whose parents have denied them the once-in-a-lifetime experience (whether enjoyable or otherwise) that is euro disney, basically it involves a large collection of elaborate and disney-themed rides (surprise surprise) that have queues of up to about 2 hours, so we felt very clever for managing to queue very little (and for some inexplicable reason the indiana jones ride never had anybody on it, which was nice). euro disney was also really funny in that pretty much everything is in several languages, meaning we watched a parade where buzz lightyear spoke spanish and the disney princesses were singing in french, but princess jasmine was, somewhat disappointingly, a white person with brown facepaint on.

we had been mildly concerned that we would be a bit old and sad for euro disney (being 18 and not having young children), but if we were then we still weren't as old and sad as the 30-something couples who were doing the same thing (and who still didn't have children). in any case, we had a really nice time there as i had overcome my dislike of rollercoasters pretty quickly and vivienne enjoyed being the 'ear police', which involved her checking that i was always wearing the minnie mouse ears we'd bought. we are, after all, pretty cool.

so on friday night we farewelled the slightly tacky but highly enjoyable world of disney to get on a train back to angouleme, where manon's dad picked us up from the station and took us back to manon's, where we had a very short sleep and a slightly teary goodbye with manon and her lovely family, before jumping in the car with her auntie and cousin and heading down to spain.

but that's another story.

chillin in the fridge (i.e. in angouleme)

vivienne_and_iona — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:46:00 GMT

hey girls (and boys) hey

as luck, and i like to think karma would have it, the day we returned from our summer holiday at ile d'oleron (the only place we had to wear jeans so far) to angouleme the nice weather came out to play. this was, i think, natures way of telling us that our 3 month run of near perfect weather for whtever we wanted to do was perhaps coming to an end.

anyway, luckily angouleme is a really cute town so the sun meant we could actually get out and see it on a couple of days, while we spent the est of the time chilling and generally taking every oppotunity to sleep in to 11 or 12 without feeling like we were completely wasting the day.

we spent the first few days back at angouleme with manon and her various friends (especially the lovely pauline, who iona mentioned in the last blog), which meant iona got to see a couple of her friends from exchange, and that i finally got to meet them after seeing photos and hearing stories for the past 2 and a half years! another highlight of the days with manon was ou exciting tip to the doctor because iona had a throat infection, which also resulted in a demonstration of my ever present mozzie bites and consequently a bag full of medicine to be split between iona and myself. the french (apparently a nation of hypochondriacs) really do love distributing drugs.

the second half of our week back we went to stay with ionas old host family which was also really good. her old host mum collette is absolutely gorgeous, and went to extraordinary lengths to try and make sure we had a nice time. a particular example of this being when we mentioned it was a shame not to have been able to go to bordeaux and she drove us there the very next day.

it was fantastic as expected, full of amazing old buildings and churches and this enormous park in which iona and i rampaged, once almost accidentally sitting on a woman sleeping on a park bench, but avoiding the obvious embarassment that would bring by noticing her at the very last minute...

while the town of angouleme is maybe not as exciting as places like paris, we really did have a really really nice time there. even though we're not into comic books.

much love,

vivienne (and iona)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

ALSO, as you may or may not have noticed, iona and i write pretty much exactly the same way, so now seems to be an appropriate time to tell you that we have pretty much become the same person. don't say we didnt warn you...

a slightly unglamourous arrival in france and a camping holiday, french-style

vivienne_and_iona — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:45:00 GMT

apologies for taking almost a month to update you all on our adventures but in the few times when we've had internet access in the past three weeks facebook has unfortunately taken precedent, or failing that we've been booking things etc. and i didn't really get time. soz about that.

so, it was with sadness that we left the very lovely city of florence, in the land of the enormous pizzas, cheap-ish gelato and helpful people in train stations. our destination was angouleme, a nice but not very exciting town in the middle of western france where i spent 3 months on exchange many years ago (2007). france being france, the trains only run from north to south and as we were travelling west to east the trip took about 24 hours, involving an overnight stint in a cabin with some hilarious dutch people (we are yet to meet any dutch people we didn't like), and then about 8 hours crammed into a 4-seater with a sleeping old lady and a man who was cross because we'd asked him to move his suitcase so we could sit down. anyway, he was nicer after we both whipped out sudoku books (yes we are really cool) and even went so far as to make a joke about horses that we didn't really understand. it was, after all, in french.

the reason we were trekking to angouleme was not for the excitement and raging nightlife of the town (angouleme is, i will have you all know, the 'world capital' of comic books, if that gives you some indication of what kind of town it is), but to see a gorgeous friend of mine called manon with whom we were going on a 'camping holiday', and then on to paris.

every year, 5 million french people spend at least a week of their summer holidays in 'campings' (we watched a report about it on the french news channel which is why we now know so much about it), many having travelled impressive distances (or at least impressive by french standards) in bumper-to-bumper traffic in order to spend a week in a tent, caravan or mobile home in mediocre weather by the beach, pretending to be having a great time.

manon, her best friend pauline, vivienne and i had basically hit the jackpot by being able to stay in some friend-of-a-friend's 'mobilhome' (french for mobile home), being the creme de la creme of french camping accommodation.

highlights of the week that we spent at l'ile d'oleron (it's an island with a bridge, so it doesn't really count) were teaching manon and pauline the soulja boy dance and all the words to various sneaky sound system songs (for no reason other than that they liked them, and it made a nice break from listening to rihanna), as well as doing a 'cooking day' where we made some biscuits where we halved all the ingredients except the sugar and used nesquik instead of milo. basically we made far too much noise and drank far too much alcohol (we discovered manzana, a kind of apple liquor that costs €4 a litre and is absolutely delicious) considering we were staying in a family-oriented camping place, although one could argue that it was BECAUSE we were staying in a famil-oriented camping place that we did this.

lowlights involve the pretty bad weather, although we did get a few days at the beach it wasn't nearly as good as those at home (let's face it, australians can afford to be beach snobs), and also the day we managed to get a borrowed bike stolen from outside a supermarket and ate an entire packet of kinder while we stood around hoping the bike would come back.

on the whole, though, we had a really good time, and v and i both really enjoyed lying around and not doing much after quite a long time of moving on from place to place every couple of days. trust me it was perhaps more fun than it sounds! just some advice, though, french pools are really weird (we only went past cos the lifeguard was hotter than the weather but neither hot enough to bother going swimming), they make you shower in cold water and wash your feet before you even go in, and guys aren't allowed to wear boardies. after we learnt this, we stayed well away!

AND NOW, the lovely vivienne will give you a brief run-down of the excitement of the following week.

much love xxx

PS: It was apparently a 'blatant lie' that i told when i said 'we discovered manzana', it was in fact rupert saxton who first 'discovered manzana' and has never let anybody forget it. many thanks to rupert for pointing this out. several times.

florence + pisa + general coolness

vivienne_and_iona — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:31:00 GMT

NOW i know you've probably been waiting with baited breath for the next instalment of our lovely blog, but iona and i like to keep you on your toes, because it makes us feel important to have people checking to see if we've written anything new. and also we haven't had any computer access for the past week and a bit... sorry.

anyway. after our lovely whirlwind tour of rome we headed to florence on a very cheap, not entirely pleasant local train so that we could impose a bit of WT09 magic on yet another city.

we got briefly lost after getting off the train (a bit unfortunate because we'd told a nice guy we met on the train that we knew the way to the hostel) but we got there 'in the end' i.e after about 15 minutes - florence is almost comically tiny.

after discovering our roomates (2 nice australian girls, an extremely annoying argentinian guy and a rotating 6th person) we decided to spend as much time as humanly possible avoiding conversation with the argentinian, who spent most of his time either interrupting you when you were doing something, staring vacantly and inappropriately or singing in spanish then translating for our benefit. by the end, each time he opened his mouth to say anything iona would quickly say something (anything) loud and irrelevant to keep him quiet... and even that only sometimes worked.

thankfully, florence being such a beautiful little city (full of the cobbled laneway type streets where pedestrians reign over cars and there are markets everywhere you want to go) it was definitely a pleasure to be outside and out of the hostel. it was lucky that the city was so small because we were constantly getting lost or distracted by markets or just wandering in completely the wrong direction, as one does. my map skills may be much improved but they are a very very long way from perfect...

we spent a lot of time at the amazing galleries (specifically the uffizi and the academia) where we got to see some incredible art like the statue of David (Academia) and The Birth of Venus (Uffizi) as well as heaps of other equally amazing but less well known art. actually most of it was well-known, just not to us. Unfortunately you weren't allowed to take pictures inside (understandably) as one poor girl discovered the hard way when she took out her camera and a guard came leaping over people etc towards her shouting 'NO PHOTO NO PHOTO'. it was quite entertaining, but i think only because we weren't the ones to have whipped out our cameras!

we also saw some incredible churches, like the duomo, which is the 4th biggest cathedral in the world and is incredible. we went to a mass there, and even though neither of us is catholic or can speak italian i think it was one of the best things we did while we were in Florence. Especially because it took us a couple of goes to actually find the entrance for the mass rather than the tourist entrance just to see the cathedral! if this makes us sound a bit stupid, believe us, it was very confusing - the duomo had multiple doors, each used for a different and unique purpose!

another day we went to Pisa, home of the most famous of the world's dodgy building attempts - the leaning tower of Pisa. the tower itself is very very comical in real life, much more so than i'd ever imagined. it looks like someone put it there as some sort of joke. of course, we took the obligatory (and hilarious) 'holding up' and 'pushing over' the tower photos, defying the guard who tried fruitlessly to keep about 400 people off the grass. ha. good luck.

so basically our time in florence was spent discovering that just because a city is tiny doesn't mean that it isn't home to some of the most amazing things in the world. and also (of course) keeping up our daily gelato. i'm sure you would expect nothing less.

much love,

vivienne (and iona)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

bella ROMA

vivienne_and_iona — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:20:00 GMT

SO after a not very exciting series of flights from santorini to rome, and a very expensive train ride into the centre of town (but what were we to do? not go into rome? ha!), we arrived at Termini Station and realised we knew the name of our hostel and little else (excellent planning as usual). i sat on our bags and ate our remaining supplies of kinder chocolate outside the world's seediest internet café while vivienne attempted to figure out where we were meant to be going, a pursuit in which she succeeded as a short while later we found ourselves being introduced to the weird swedish boy we were sharing a room with at the nice but bizarrely named Legends Hostel. and that was a very long sentence.

our demands of rome that afternoon were pretty straightforward- we wanted to see harry potter. however, even cinemas in italy close for siesta and so we had to wait until the evening (although even italy has a stronger work ethic than greece, where shops would open when they felt like it in the mornings and close around lunch time until the next day, when they would do it all again) but it was definitely worth it. 'a good use of time in rome', you may say (and people have), but we were a bit sick of feeling like the only people in the world who hadn't seen HP6 yet so we got pretty excited when the opportunity finally arose.

ANYWAY, rome is a really beautiful city, full of little cobbled laneways, vespa scooters and attractive italian people, as well as gelato stores everywhere which made for five days of fairly unhealthy but oh-so-delicious desserts (and breakfast dessert and lunch dessert now count as official meals, not to be missed).

we spent our first full day doing all the tourist sights, all of which are permanently packed with american tourists, it seems, but also definitely worth the crowds because every sight we visited was great. the colosseum was fantastic, although it actually looks cooler from the outside, and the trevi fountain is really spectacular but a bit of a hazard as there are so many tourists cramming to get a perfect photo that vivienne almost fell in when a pushy italian woman pushed her a bit far. but then i managed to fall partway down the spanish steps at the piazza di spagna so i guess we're just making fools of ourselves everywhere we go.

the next day we went to the vatican to see st peter's basilica and the musei vaticani (with the sistine chapel), both of which were absolutely incredible, even for two non-catholics. by some massive fluke we didn't really queue for either of them, which was nice.

THEN, thanks to the kindness and generosity of vivienne's lovely nanna, we checked into a very snazzy hotel called the Westin Excelsior (sure beats Legends Hostel), where we lay in bed in the airconditioning, eating kinder and watching gossip girl. now before you say that was a terrible waste of time in rome, we'd actually already seen the best sights and we did spend a morning wandering around the designer boutiques at the foot of the spanish steps, pretending we were incredibly wealthy and could easily afford a 9000 euro valentino dress (although neither of us were brave enough to try it on). i don't think we fooled anybody.

we also had a really great meal beside the colosseum on our last night (although we kind of over-ordered, oh well) that saw us get down to our last euro between us, due to the fact that we couldn't make my ATM card work, which was kind of worrying until we found out they have really low withdrawal limits in italy- but basically, we stood around colosseo metro station looking a bit pathetic, having eaten a really great dinner but being a euro short of a metro ride home, until a helpful italian guy donated to our cause. a very desperate man in the station the next day asked vivienne for a euro, which she gave him, so it seems that what goes around does indeed come around. and we will never again assume that a whole lot of money will be easily obtained by putting a card in a machine, because it seems it doesn't always work like that.

so, after two days sightseeing and two days relaxing, we left rome a bit sad to be gone so soon because it really is a great city... but florence awaited us and having bought the cheapest ticket possible to get there, moving it back a few days wasn't really an option. sigh.

i'm afraid the hilarious photo of vivienne having almost fallen in the trevi fountain is on her camera so i can't put it up, and hopefully nobody photographed me tripping down the spanish steps, so you'll just have to enjoy the kind of posy ones instead. sorry.

much love to one and all

iona and vivienne

the greek islands and beyond (except not really beyond)

vivienne_and_iona — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:48:00 GMT

hey hey hey

because we are very clever, we are keeping up to date, and so now you get to find out about the incredible, tiring, beautiful, reasonably hectic greek islands. lucky you. even though it was us who went...

MYKONOS

As Iona said in the last blog, our ferry to Mykonos left hideously early, but it all worked out well as we got to mykonos (the most famous of greece's hedonistic islands) early enough in the day to be able to have a nap before our big venture into the world of clubbing that night. it was almost as though mykonos was celebrating the occasion because that night sneaky sound system were playing. as they do. just because. as you can imagine, it was awesome (a word i have not used in a while) and an amazing start to mykonos!

for the next couple of days and nights there iona and i entertained ourselves with a combination of sleep, beach, food and dancing like crazy people.

AND THEN, the day we were waiting for finally arrived - our dear friend jackie joined us, and then our (ok, my) dream of being a part of the 3 musketeers was finally realised! jackie came just in time for the full moon party, and even though she was tired we forced attendance upon her. we're such nice people.

while mykonos was pretty great, we did feel quite a lot younger than a majority of the other tourists there - most people were in their mid to late 20s, and a lot of them were very sleazy and italian - and also mykonos is almost ridiculously expensive, so we were excited to move onto the next island...

IOS

Part of the appeal of Ios lay in the fact that the first 2 letters of its name are the same as ionas (which is undeniably pretty exciting) but once we got there we realised it had much much more to offer to 3 hardcore travellers such as ourselves.

by the time we were a couple of days into ios, we no longer considered it strange to eat dinner around midnight, then go out after that, come home sometime after sunrise and sleep for half a day. then do it all again. we felt like quite accomplished partiers, until we saw some of the people that are in ios for the 'season' (roughly 2-3 months) who do exactly that for the entire time. every night. and often during the day.

it was cleverly pointed out to us by iona's dad that by the 3rd day in ios we were basically keeping new zealand time. on the other side of the world. i for one think that is pretty cool.

another thing that was really cool were these things called chocolate shots which we found at orange bar (go there if you ever get the chance). basically the woman there invented all these crazy shots which taste exactly like various chocolates, like malteser, bounty, twix etc etc. the list was soo long, and they were so good. we had them as our dessert. yum.

obviously we couldn't sustain the crazy hours forever (we're not quite as hardcore as i would have you believe) so next we hit up santorini for some much needed rest and relaxation. and some time to get over the somewhat disgusting 'ios cough' which apparently latches itself to anyone who visits ios for more than a few days. i also had to find my voice, which i cleverly managed to misplace somewhere between the mykonos and ios...

SANTORINI

Santorini was a fantastic place to end our time in Greece. the 3 of us spent copious amounts of time sleeping in our (airconditioned!) room and some time lying around on the black sand beaches of perissa. we also made a few ventures into town, and did one day tour around the island, when we got to climb a volcano, swim in some hot springs and see an incredible sunset from a part of santorini called oia.

we honestly did not do much more than that, and it was exactly what we needeed, so that iona and i could get ourselves ready for our somewhat impromptu trip to italy (yay!) and jackie could rev herself up for what sounds like a hectic hike in Crete!

so remain tuned, loyal readers, because next stop is rome!!!!!!

we love you lots and lots

vivienne (and iona)

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78 hours of travel (a new record) and finally ATHENS

vivienne_and_iona — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:15:00 GMT

so as Vivienne last left us (i believe she mentioned something about my complete loss of dignity in front of a large crowd), we were sitting in a Bangkok internet cafe killing time very effectively.

well, there is little to report of the journey between the lovely chumphon in southern thailand and the (really) lovely city of athens, greece. other than the fact that the total journey took us 78 hours, with no opportunity for showers or any attempts at personal hygiene, it was really pretty boring. heathrow's terminal 5 was actually pretty disappointing, we spent our 5 hours there eating dairy milk chocolate and taking up more than our fair share of seats.

i'm pretty sure the most fun we had was at either end of the journey, as i began the evening pushing vivienne around bangkok international airport on a luggage trolley with our bags in tow, to the great hilarity of the thai check-in ladies and to the general irritation of everybody else. then, several days and multiple time zones later, we emerged into the sunlight in athens (who told us it was hot?? it's got nothing on cambodia!) feeling pretty clever as i had used my european union passport for the first time (i felt like a bit of a fraud queueing up with all the greeks but whatever, the line was shorter).

we caught a really slow bus from the airport to our hostel, but as we were actually delirious with tiredness we found our favourite last-resort game of word association made us hysterical with laughter, so much so that the other people on the bus must have thought we were either drunk or insane. or both.

anyway we finally made it to the very lovely Athens Backpackers (the best hostel in athens we hear, no excuses for not staying there if you make it to greece!), had our first real greek food for dinner, literally at the foot of the acropolis, and were invited out by the waiter to 'test out his new car'. a likely story.

parents, you will be pleased to know that we declined his offer and went home to bed. friends, you will be pleased to know that he wasn't even good looking. nice try, greek man.

the next day (i can't remember what day of the week it was, we struggle with which month we're in so days kind of merge into one another) we hit up the tourist-packed but absolutely amazing acropolis (see photo) and a few of the other ancient ruins around the city. in the afternoon, we caught the metro to a shopping area near another set of ruins called the roman agora, and instead of going into the ruins we bought a kilo of cherries for 2 euro, sat on some steps and ate them all.

that night we did a pub crawl which was fun fun fun, and the next day ate baklava for breakfast and basically wandered around the very lovely city of athens. we also spent a bit too much of the afternoon playing guitar hero in the greek version of HMV, but we played with some nice australian guys from the hostel and these greek kids killing time in their summer holidays, so we figure we can still consider it to be a cultural experience. sort of.

our third and final night in athens was well-spent playing middle cup with some norweigan guys (both of whom were more than 2 metres tall, they made vivienne look laughably short which was a bit of a novelty) and some girls from the netherlands, before having to get up horribly early the next morning to catch our ferry to MYKONOS, apparently the most expensive place in greece. yay!

so i will add on anything i've forgotten later, but don't go away because sometime between tomorrow and three weeks from now vivienne will update you on the PG-rated version of our time in the greek islands. how exciting!

but please send us your comments and your love, the photos may eventually go on facebook but don't hold your breath.

hugs and kisses from your two favourite gap-yearers

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an epic amount of travel, and the very worthwhile end result.

vivienne_and_iona — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:29:00 GMT

HEY HEY HEY

since we last left you, iona and i have discovered a new limit to the amount of time that can be spent on an undeniably crap asian bus. before we had to travel from vang vieng (near the top of laos) to koh tao (at the bottom of thailand) we thought that 6 hours of atrocious karaoke was about it. how very very wrong we were. 30 (i kid you not) hours spent crammed into a bus seat or on the back of a pick up truck later, and we've decided that limits are out the window. no amount of transport can possibly be worse than that, and we left the experience feeling like very seasoned travellers. we're so clever.

but all that travel time, and a brief overnight transit in possibly the worst town in the history of asia (well, maybe not, but it really is very very dull) the end result was defintiely worth it!

because BASICALLY, this past week we've been on the absolutely amazing thai island of koh tao, and we had an absolutely fantastic time. not to make you jealous or anything (ok, maybe to make you jealous) but we spent our days lying either by the pool or on the beach, ocasionally moving to fetch nourishment or venture out in the evening. AND we somehow managed to get ourselves acommodation at a resort for $20 a night for both of us - still not quite sure how - which definitely made for a very welcome change!

and actually, once we did engage in strenuous activity... we went scuba diving! which was so so fun. we saw heaps of fish, a little family of nemos, a couple of sting rays, and loads of other stuff - though unfortunately no sharks... it is safe to say that we had an amazing amazing day, and we were quite sad not to be able to do the full 4 day course, but doing it for the day was fantastic!

sorry this is short, but in true vivienne and iona style we have scheduled a train in about 10 minutes and i for one am not going to risk missing it and staying in this godforsaken place of chumphon (mentioned above) for one second longer than is necessary.

so perhaps we will flesh out this exciting entry some time in the near future. perhaps not. i dont really know.

but until next time (WHEN WE MAY WELL BE IN GREECE - YAY)

much much love,

vivienne (and iona)

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NOW as we are essentially killing about 16 hours in Bangkok today, im just going to add a hilarious anecdote (i love that word) which really capped off our departure from koh tao and arrival back in the dreaded Chumphon.

basically to get to and from the islands, you get this ferry thing which is altogether not the most exciting thing in the world. BUT to get to and from the ferry at the chumphon end of the journey, there's this really long, entirely dangerous pier, which sort of looks like i may have built it. so imagine that for yourselves.

but yesterday, iona managed to prove the danger of said pier, by overbalancing while carrying all her worldly possessions, as we got off the boat. it was a moment of great hilarity as we both lay on the ground for approx 5 minutes in hysterics until the helpful ferry staff did what perhaps i should have done and helped iona up. we laughed the entire way to chumphon, and let me tell you, it was possibly the most fun we had the entire time we were in chumphon.

general hilarity and intoxication on the mekong

vivienne_and_iona — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:47:00 GMT

we were a bit sad to leave luang prabang, but it's common knowledge that the most fun thing to do in laos is undoubtedly 'tubing' down the mekong near the town of vang vieng, an activity which basically involves jumping in a truck tyre inner tube and floating down a river.

vivienne and i had been given the impression by many other travellers and friends that the day is mostly tubing, and then stopping off here and there at outdoor bars for a drink along the way. turns out, the day is in fact mostly spent at bars, with the odd bit of tubing in between, and some impressively high rope swings and flying foxes into the river added for good measure. basically, this is a fairly dangerous activity to which large quantities of cheap asian alcohol is added, making for one of the most injury-riddled backpacker communities in asia.

BUT you will be pleased to know that despite our enjoyment of the 'lao lao' (a general term for alcohol brewed in laos, all of which you could fuel your car and clean out your insides with a few short gulps, and can be purchased more cheaply than a bottle of water) neither vivienne nor i sustained any serious injuries. regrettably we've hardly got any photos of the two days we spent tubing (most say three days would be their limit, we met a guy who'd been in vang vieng for months and could barely string two words together) as alcohol, rivers and expensive digital cameras don't really mix.

vivienne made many daring leaps off high platforms, working her arm muscles but doing so with grace and finesse (she once got a round of applause), whereas i managed to score a loud OOOOOOOOH from the crowd of spectators (or so i'm told) when i landed very awkwardly on the one time i did brave the giant trapeze. anyway. nothing some tiger balm won't fix.

the lao people are also very generous with their tiger whisky (so called because it's got a picture of a tiger on the front, apparently that's not actually it's name but nobody we met could read lao), and we really developed a great appreciation for it (basically, it's free and after a couple you can't taste it any more. nice!).

of the half-dozen bars along the river our favourite was definitely the 'mud bar', where they have these giant pools of muddy water and the ground is so muddy that people are constantly slipping over. it's one of those things that everybody would be like 'ew, gross' if they were sober but it's late afternoon by the time anybody arrives this far down the river and most people are far too drunk to care if they're covered in mud.

we met a few people with waterproof cameras who we will hopefully be able to get photos off (they would be very much worth seeing, i have no doubt) but we'll see how we go with that.

vang vieng is really beautiful but not that exciting- other than tubing, there's not a whole heap to do (unless you're into caving, apparently, i think we can safely say we aren't), but selected highlights involve a really delicious green curry and vivienne falling asleep at the table when we went out for dinner on day one. that's pretty much it.

anyway send us your comments and your love, vivienne will be back next week to tell you about our 30-hour bus/truck journey and the thai islands. yay!

x iona (and vivienne)