Greece....

Greece...

So from Barcelona, Spain. A flight leaves at 11pm headed for Athens, Greece and aboard it are kristie and i.....previously to departure we had been stuck in the barcelona airport...in terminal C...other wise know as ' in the middle of Butt Face nowhere'...about a 15 min walk from the main terminal...Anyway we had a whole 5 hours to kill in 'terminal c'..you could imagine the joy!..then our flight took off..ahhh relief right? i dont think so, kris and i endured a two and a half hour flight of pure A grade turbulence..on our no name airline which to be frank, smelt like fish.

so we get off from 'turblance airways' - 2.25am - Athens airport....metro to our hostel does not start running till 6am....well well another few hours to kill in the airport..kris and i played cards, slept next to a homeless person then at 5 am decided to go to Mac Donalds for the remainder of our time...we had a joyous breakfast...so did the lady next to us...she had a big mac biggi meal with about 5 cigarettes...mmmmm..the traditional greek breakfast (becuase in greece you can smoke anywhere you like...disgusting).

(4am athens airport)

after some trouble actually figuring out the greek rail sytem, we arrived at our 1 star hostel.... only to find we couldn' check into 12pm.. so we drop of our bags and went right into athens for some sight seeing... now im going to put this a nicely as possible for any greeks out there who r reading this.. athens is a bit behind its fellow europian capitals, with its constent stench, and dirty streets, similar to what u would find in india...(trust me i no)

so we found out that the only thing , and i mean ONLY thing to do in athens was to go see the Acropolis, which literally means a high city. For purposes of defense, it is the ancent city in which the parthanon stands, and although it is 'tourist' city, it is definatly spectacular and big!!!

that evening we checked into our shoebox of a room and headed out for dinner with a girl we met on contiki and her bro and friend Nat..who we will be doing the greek islands with.

so the next day in athens we hung out with them and visited some markets, before catching a ferry to mykonos (6am ferry might i add) - our first stop on the greek islands. while on the ferry we got some great news that a turkish ferry - similar to the one we were on sank...!!! comforting!

ok now on to more positive stuff... the greek islands...!!!!

Mykonos....otherwise know for its homosexuality...so we both fitted in just fine....Expecialy Al

we hopped off the boat to be flooded by people hawking accomodation...we found a nice aussi guy and got accommodation for 10 euros...the place we stayed was beautfiul...small rooms...but beuatiful sandy beachs and lagoon like swimming area full with sea life and naked old men and women....yep! if you cant beat them join them...so we did...?...nt...

The main town ´was built to confuse pirates and boy did it confuse us a number of times...though it did not matter beacuse the whole town was stunning...cute small streets lined with white buildings either side and framed with blue windows, not to mention (for kristies sake) that there was an abundance of gorgeous shops. So no need to say that we had a fantastic two nights there.

(Mykonos)

(Pool at Mykonos)

(Party?)

(the girls and their erotic\amazing strawberry and nutella crepe)

(Ps we were meant to go to ios, but that fell through due to ferries).

(santorinis beach)

Santorini - the famous sunset island, here we also got lucky and stayed at perissa beach, its beach fornt is lined with heaps of funky bars and restraunts...and because we were there just out of peak season everything was half price or more...so cocktails for 3euro...enough said...kris, i and our friends from contiki spent most of our time on the beach. When we wernt we were either on a quad or a scooter flying around the island seeing the sights, and ultimatly going around the the best spot to see the sunset, might i add we had the best dinner at a cliff side tabled that overlooked the sunset...yep yep. on a bad note it acutally rained whilst we were there! what! i know! the locals said it was the first rain all year, and it rained heavy for about 5 hours, and when it was at its heaviest i was driving a qaud with kristie on the back, exposed to natures elements. none the less the photos can show you how wet i got. by the by did i meantion the beachs are black? they actually also have a red beach.

(santorinis buildings and the hansom couple and some old chicky in the back taking a photo, in turn ruining ours)

(Cocktails baby!)

(How wet my front half got on the quad)

(the beautiful where we had dinner overlooking the sunset)

(santorini sunset, it lives up to its name)

(our sexy Scooters!)

(Lunch overlooking red beach)

Which Brings me to the last 24 hours.....in short...a nine hour ferry from santorini to athens (which had no organiation..i had to flight old grandmas to get mx bags in a amd dash to get off the boat where it was a fight club), a night in athens (at this funky hotel, see picture), bed time 1.30am...woke up at 6.30...caught a bus the the airport...two hours at the air port...1.45min flight to Rome....Two hours in rome....1.30min flight to Veinna...Train from veinna airport to our hostel...arrival time 7pm.....though it was a fun day, exhastion took over and we laughed about everything till we could not contain ourselves.

(Singing 'happy birthday Mr. President' whilst on the ferry) )

(on the tarmac at rome, suffering from overtierdnessnessness, symptoms include delusion, nausea, frustration, un controlled laughter)

(our phycadelic hotel, and yes i am fat)

So here we are in vienna, which so far looks amazing, we are staying in a uni residence which is good enough, though it is about 17C here, which is cold for us. Another thing, tonight there is a madonna concert on here and tomorrow is coldplay, so kris and i are going to try and get tickets to that.

(tying to work out the menu in vienna, which was a confusing shape and in german)

Today in Vienna - All i can say is that Austria has got things right, everything about this place fits in, there up to date with everything, things run like clockwork and everyone is really friendly. Vienna is full of parks, historical buildings, trams and clean streets.

Tomorrow to Zagreb, Croatia

(ps for a few more photos, (if you need it?) are on Kristies FaceBook)

over and out

Love Kris and Al

Miss You all

From Riches to Rags...(Barcelona,Spain)

First of all, Thank you Stephen Coade for putting us up in the AB SKIPPER for two nights, it was absolutly amazing, such a delight. But now i write to you from Saint Jordi..A youth hostel...here are some comparisons of the two.

(Meal near the AB Skipper)

(Meals at the Hostel)

(our old living space)

(Our new living space)

(Our bathroom at the AB skipper, we have no photo of the other one saldy, but think of a cardboard box, then stamp on it, thats where we shower now)

(ahh the beach, nice fresh air)

(ahh a giant laundry shoot nest to our kitchen)

(roof top pool at the skipper)

(the view from our room, and the second pool at ground level)

(our current view)

Well....enough said?

over and out

Ps its not that bad

So on a different note, i have not talked about barcelona, first of all it is pretty dam big, it has seven beachs, all of which are fake, the sand was brought in from egypt, for the olympics all those years ago. So the sand is very dust but all in all they are beautiful beachs. small point - it has a starbucks on every corner, which i was not expecting. It is pretty bad for pit pockets ect...for instace the first thing kris and i saw was a girl getting her bagged snatched..(but fear not..her boyfriend ran after the guy and got it, what a dreamboat)...then i told kris i would do that for her if it happened and she just said....´thats sweet...but you cant run or defend yourself´....hmmm...another thing i forgot to mention about san sebastion...it is the home of tapas, which they call pinxos, so there were tapas bars everywhere...actually too many, you could never find a actual restaurant..it seems all the spanish do is eat tiny portions, party, siesta, eat pinoxs, siesta.

Ps - there is another blog below which you may not have read yet

over and under then out

When In Rome.....and a lot of other places

Ok...So where have we been? What have we been doing? i know the suspense has been killing anyone who has been following our blog (thats if anyone actually cares about what were doing). Well Last time we left you we had just been to Pisa on Contiki, So i shall re-cap on what happened from then till now!. Well we went to Florence (Florenzo) for two nights, Florence is a very beautiful city, though there seemed to be boundless amounts of graffiti on most of the buildings which took away from its beauty. Space Disco was a club we went to one night, pretty cool place, for instance the bar was a giant fish tank, enough said.

(Us before Space)

When in Rome, Thats right we then hit Roma! Besides the fact the second night we were their i had a serious ear infection and balled like a little baby everything was sweet apples. It was abotu 28 in Rome, Kris and i had a brilliant day exploring the city and seeing the major sites we went to Vatican City, Trevi Fountain and the spanish steps just to name a few. On the other hand John and i had an adventure trying to get out of the colosseum (that thing only has one exit and is very hard to find) so indo endo we ended up late for our bus and running around and out of the colosseum with many bystanders looking puzzled and somewhat scared at us. (might i add this is not the first time john and have been late for bus and had to run out of a major attraction, we also ran out of the monte carlo casino).

Contiki then took us to the watery streets of Venice, that campsite we stayed at was very cool and had 6 other contiki groups staying their so it was pretty much party central, the first night we were there was actually Kristie and I´s Two Year anniversary!!! John made a speech at dinner infront of everyone, thanks buddy. ah ha. Veince was a very odd city when you walked around, it was stunning but very different to anything i have seen before. A Gondola ride was in order and was lovely, we ate chips and drank wine whilst crusing the streets? Cannals?. Though i am pretty sure our driver was abusing us and contiki in italian for the entine 60minutes.

Then We headed to Australia, no no Austria, sorry. Contiki owned a nice big house in Austria in a tiny towned called Hofgarten, not much to report besides both going white water rafting, mountain biking, paragliding (yes paragliding), White and bright party (where Steve won a pole dancing competition), a crazy local pub and trout fishing. OK so i lied there actually was loads to report, but words can not describe the fun we had, austria is amazing and paragliding through the austrian alps is something that nothing on this trip will be able to top.

Munich = Beerhall =Yodeling = Beer = Yum For AL = Lame for kristie

Not much to be said about Munich besides the fact it kind of felt like home, had a very Melbounre Vibe to it.

Switzerland - Contiki Once again has a villiage in a stunning location. 11,000ft up from us in the Swiss Alps was Jungfraujoch mountain, it is a 2 hour train ride up (which i had to do four times due to my own stupidity, though thats another story for when im less embarassed about it) Views Views Views is all i can say, all were spectacular, ill let the photos do the talking.

Ok so back to germany to the Rhine Valley, stayed at grandma´s house, Learned all about Riesling and beer steins, though it was only a small stop over.

Holland - Amsterdam - This was are last stop on Contiki so it was a bit emotional for all. Though for Kris and i we were happy becuase it was the only hotel we got to stay in on contiki, so when we found our suite un cleaned and trashed we were a bit sad, but when made it worse was they stuck us in another room (which was an old office converted into a room) about a 10min walk from all of our group, then the hotel staff and i got into a bit of a scruff and such, grumpy.

Well as for the rest of Amsterdam you know what they say What happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam (except for these few photos)

(our sexy faces)

Long blog eh?. Anyway. On the way back to london from holland, we got stuck in a Major traffic jam, like major major, there were no cars on the other side of the highway and we got told it would be abotu 5 hours before we could move, so we did the only reasonable thing, we cracked out some champange and played frisbee on the opposite side of the road. We made it home eventually after our bus then hit a taxi and we were forced to catch a taxi to the hotel, only to find that when we hopped in our taxi the bus pulled in behind us. GAH: LAME. One long day, not to mention we had to leave at 5am in the morning to catch a flight to Biaritz in fracne to then catch two trains and a bus to get to San Sebastion, Spain.

So now were In spain, away from Contiki, and my boys. San Sebastion was great, we stayed in a tiny hostel which was a house that had been converted, very fun and friendly, the downside was i think it was built in the middle ages becuase there were a butt load of stairs to climb to get to it. Anyway Im off for now.

Over and out

Miss you All.

Love Al and Kris