Belgium

Most of our time in Belgium seemed to be spent in the bar. Belgium has so many differents beers that are way better than what you would find in Canada. Most of the bars there carried over 200 types of beer. Delirium had over 2000, unfortunately we didn't get around to trying them all. We did however get to try Westvleteren 12, which has been rated the #1 beer in the world. It has and extremely high alcohol percentage, but all I could taste was deliciousness, thats right deliciousness. Its really hard to judge what the best beer I've ever had was, especially when I tried so many in Belgium. I think it might be my favourite, but my judgement might have been swayed by its reputation.

It was quite a trek to get to the Abby which is supposed to be the only place that Westvleteren sold. We had to take a bus to get there, a bus which we had to call in advance or else it would not come. The time for our bus departure was 11:37am, and the earliest train arrival was 11:20am, in theory it should have been easy to catch the bus. Unfortunately our train was about 11 minutes late, leaving us about 6 mins to run all the way to the bus stop, I would say it was easily over a kilometer. So we had to sprint the entire way or else we would have missed our chance to taste the best beer in the world!! We just made it, I also made the mistake of eating something just before our train arrived. It was a bad idea, I did manage to keep it down which help with really enjoying the beer. We each had 3 of the beers, although it didnt taste like it was 12%, it was, and it made for a nice nap on the train ride back.

Another great thing about Belgium is the chocolate, I didnt have as much as I should have. Every bite was the best bite of chocolate I've ever had. Maybe a bit of an exageration but it was good. Too bad it was so expensive. I had to try really hard to pace myself while eating them.

Something I found interesting in Belgium was that they had 3 official languages. It was very hard to tell which one was spoken where. French was one of them, so I in general stuck to that. They also spoke German and Flemish. I could not tell the difference between the two. It seemed like in the same regions all 3 of the languages were spoken though, not like in Canada where (most of the time) French is in Quebec and English everywhere else.

Parlez-Vous Anglais?

Like in Spain where I seemed learn more about Americans than the Spanish, in France I learned more about Canadians than the French. We went to Vimy Ridge and to Juno Beach, both of which have much Canadian history. Unfortunately at Juno we didn't get to take a tour, by the time we arrived there we had missed the last one. We did however get to go around the museum and learn lots about Canadians and there imput in World War II. After going through the museum I was even more proud to be Canadian than I already was. Vimy Ridge gave me a Similar feeling except this time it was about WWI. We were able to get a Tour at Vimy, which was guided by Canadians. Our particular tour guide even knew some people we knew from Milton. Small world. It was great because the tour was free and they were very informative, they seemed to go out of there way to teach us whatever we wanted to know. At first it was hard to understand why Vimy ridge was such a strategic position, while walking up the hill it seemed to barely have an incline. Once we got to the top we realised that it wasn't actually such a strong position for the Germans to have, just very weak for them not to have. The memorial was huge and impressive, with names of 11285 people who were never found and therefor have no grave. I was really glad we went there, we learned and got to pay respects so close to Rememberance Day.

As for the rest our our France time, we did hit the usual suspects; Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. We didn't get to go to D'Orsay though, I would have liked to see a little more art. We had our French experiences as well, eating lots of crepes, which were enjoyable and addicting, and we went to a Cafe and watched the outside world continue about its business. I got to use my french a little bit, but usually they would speak english back to me, it was a little disapointing, I wanted to practice a bit.

We went to Versailles aswell, and checked out the Palace after waiting hours in the line. Atleast we got some reading done. Kings and Queens have espensive taste, if you can imagine. It was a huge waste though, spending for the sake of spending. Pretty much everything was gold, and if not then it was a priceles peice of art. I'm not sure but I dont think the Kings bed was kingsize I think I enjoyed the massive garden in the 'backyard' the most. The day wasnt great for pictures but it was still pretty impressive. It was funny, we seemed to be eating McDonalds all the time in France, we didnt have a choice unless we wanted to spend more than our budget allowed. It was not a healthy couple of days.

The Siesta and Fiesta City

There was not a whole lot to do in Barcelona, we spent a fair amount of time sleeping and going out. Since we are quite a bit ahead of our schedule, an extra day was added to Barcelona, if only to get a little much needed sleep. We did some walking around, like usual, around town and at one point to a hillside for a nice view. A view we never did find after about 2 hours of uphill walking, it was a disapointing walk back. We went to the Las Tremblas strip, which was interesting if anything. At night you could probably get any drug you wanted without any trouble, people were offering it all over the place, even Charlie, we didnt know what it was so we assumed it was crack. During the day there were these crazy street acts, that were so much acts as people dressing up rediculously and expecting money. There were some magicians and weird songs going on. Even two random dudes crowing at the top of their lungs... what? ya, I don't understand either. We almost gave them money just for how rediculous it was, almost.

The hostel Barcelona in was another small one, which meant easy friends. I think in Spain we learned more about American culture than Spanish. Two of our new friends had many stories to tell about guns in the U.S. The town that they live in has 4 gun stores for every liquor store and they aren't short on liquor stores. They were pretty shocked that me (and all the other canadians in the hostel) wouldn't even know to start looking for a handgun. I bet they wished they had had their guns when ones wallet was stolen, then a camera by the same guy later and finally getting dooped into buying a 200 euro bag of rocks(which was switched with the bag with a computer and cell phone in it). I even met a dude from Ottawa, who at somepoint, I plan to meet with after his return.

I think the part I liked the best about Spain was their siestas, from about 4-6 things shut down and everyone would have a nap. That nap made for late nights, people dont start getting ready to go to bar until atleast 11pm, and get home at 5am. I think thats why we slept in a lot.

Its has been cool meeting people everywhere, but cooler when we run into people from previous cities. We ran into these three sisters on our pubcrawl that we met in Florence a while back. That was nice because we had some instant friends there.

Thats about it for Spain, next I am off to test out my french!!

Avoid Clichés Like the Plague

From Rome we went back to Florence, because of what I mentioned earlier, we didn't get to see the David, or any other museum. I shouldn't complain about luck, we have been lucky, but the on day we came back was the day the museums went on strike! ARRGH, I was pretty mad to say the least, Jack almost bought me a gelato to make me feel better. We went up the Duomo anyways to get a nice view, which was the most stairs we've climbed to date, 463, and it was tight! By the time we got back down to the ground the strike for the museum with the statue of David was over. We got in and it was quite worth the trip back, it was huge and difficult to describe. It was easy to see why its so famous though, it makes every sculpture I've ever seen look worse. I snuck a picture in, no flash, no harm done ;). Unfortunately afterwards the other museum never reopened, so that was it for Florence.

We took the second night train of the trip that night, and some Australians that we met scared us by telling a story about their friends who were gassed in the night and had everything stolen! that didn't happen to us, it was the worst sleep ever though. The seats weren't adjustable and there was no leg room. Not to mention the beautiful timing of the ticket checker.

Nice was nice I would say, since we arrived late we hadn't showered yet, it took a French shower and realised calling it a french shower was a faux-pas. It actually was a very pretty city, and we got a perfect day for it, it was warm enough to take a dip in the Mediterranean. There weren't many others swimming, the water was cold enough to frighten a turtle (it was cold). I really like being in a non-english country where i could understand what people were saying. They still spoke to me in english even when I tried my french out. I'll get more attempts when we come back to France. Nice was just a stop spot en route to Barcelona (it would have been 24 hrs in a train!)

Spain here we come

When in Rome?

We were all pretty excited about going to Rome, especially for the Colosseum. If you can imagine, there is a lot to do in Rome, I think we did a pretty good job at getting most of it in. I wont list everything we visited, but we did go inside the Colosseum and took an audio guided tour. It was interesting and it was easy to picture what was being said because of Gladiator. We also went to the Fontana di Trevi and threw a coin in for good look. Over the right shoulder or it doesn't work, I think its the first good luck trick that we did right so far. We obviously went to Vatican City, which was quite impressive, we were even lucky enough to see the Pope. I would say he was about 10 feet away in his sweet ride. It was kinda cool, and since we didn't understand (or really care) what he was saying we were able to get in a shorter line to get into the Vatican museum, which also led us into the the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately we were allowed to take pictures (even though everybody was), but it was quite beautiful. Now we've seen works from all the ninja turtles, Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo and Leonardo. We also went into St. Peters Basilica, which is the biggest in Europe for sure, maybe the world!

We also met some pretty cool guys at our hostel. We played cards with them while drinking wine, and hung out for most of the night. They even joined us for our Vatican City tour. Although it was hard looking at art work with 6 people so we got separated, and by chance met back up in the line to the Basilica.

On one of the days, we took a day trip out to Pompei, it was pretty neat city because it was covered in ash when Vesuvius erupted, keeping it in near perfect condition. Some of it was kind of creepy because it preserved things so well, that you could make out folds in the peoples clothing from almost 2000 years ago. A weird man tried to give us a tour, and we politely told him we weren't interest, so he tried to make us feel stupid. Good try, now we really don´t want to take your tour. Our train ride to Pompei took longer than we expected so we didn't get to go up the volcano, but we really wanted to. I suppose it was a blessing in disguise, it would have cost a lot of money to do the city and the mountain.

Thats all I got for Rome.
Ciao

Wanna buy a hand bag?

The next Italian stop, Florence. Florence (or Firenze, I don't know why we Americanize the names of Foreign countries so much... I can pronounce Firenze) is a beautiful city, we were lucky because with our hostel we got a free walking tour of the South side of the river. We got to see the Duomo, a huge dome which was built without the use of scaffolding with a dome within a dome. After the tour we wandered the north side, the Tuscany area, and got lost. At least we thought we were lost because it took us a long time to find our way out, and the view we were hoping for never really came. We did however get to climb through some bushes to get a glimpse of Florence from a hill top. Good times. One the second full day of our visit, we made the trip to Pisa. Guess what? we saw the tower of Pisa. It was pretty cool, it definitely looked like it was about to fall the entire time. We wanted to go up but it was ridiculously expensive. At one point I decided that i needed to have a piece of Pisa Pizza in Pisa, I did and it was delicious. Andrew and Jack each had a piece of my piece, so I guess that's a piece of a piece of Pisa Pizza in Pisa. (say that five times fast) . We also heard that Florence was known for its big and delicious steaks... I wish we could afford that. Speaking of buying things, the markets were crazy, tons of people all over the place, and they were all selling the EXACT SAME THING!! Your options were; purses, sunglasses or watches, then five feet later, purses, sunglasseses or watches. It was quite funny, because we didn't understand how the people selling would watch us say no to one guy selling watches then ask us right afterwards. My answer was usually "I have a watch thanks" and their quick reply was "why not two?". We escaped without buying anything.

On the third day, we wanted to do a bike tour, so we could get the nice views, see all the vineyards and go up into the mountains. Problem was, at least for me, that they were at least 70 euros for the tours, little steep for me. Luckily we found one where you could do a self guided tour for only the price of the bike, and they give you all the routes you can take with good places to stop for food. We did that and it was a good choice, the total kilometres was about 67 km. Jacks bike was the only one where the computer worked. We were definitely sore after that, but we got some great views and some good exercise. Unfortunately when we got back we found out that all the art galleries and museums that we wanted to go to were closed on Monday, and we had already booked our hostel for Rome. We hadn't even seen Michelangelo's David yet. With some skillful rearranging we worked it so that on our way to Nice, we can stop in Florence, do everything we missed without adding any extra time to our trip. Swish.

We went out one night with a bunch of people from the hostel on one of the nights. It was a pretty good time, our hostel was full of english speaking people so we had no troubles communicating, and they had no troubles explaining drinking games at the bar. We played a darts drinking game, and in case anyone was wondering... the Milton boys dominated. But seriously, it was fun and since it was early in our visit to Florence we made some friends for the next couple of days there too. Some of which I don't think we ever got their name.
So there's my Florence entry, but its not the last.

Drive by shooting.

On the way to Salzburg we made an amazing discovery, the seats in the cabins could pull out almost flat, therefor, we had a bed for that trip. I used it to its fullest and slept the entire ride. Since we were coming back into German speaking territory, we went to another beer hall played a few games inspired by the movie beerfest. We were trying to bounce our coins into Litre sized drinks on a relatively soft table. It didn't make us drink a lot, but it did mark up the table... I covered them with napkins, good as new. The game did however intrigue some older people around, although it was simple, it was difficult to explain in another language. I would have to say that we didn't do a whole lot in Salzburg, but it was a very pretty City, we got another spectacular view from the top of a fortress. There were mountains in the distance, which had dangerously jagged peaks and snow caps. I think we all kinda wished we had more time there to hike up one, but that might have taken over a day. We did meet up with Jack's girls for some drinks. We played cards had some fun, but I think it will be the last time our paths cross on this trip. I guess that was about it for Salzburg.

We had and unexpected surprise (is there any other kind?), on our way to Venice, our train went right through part of the Alps. We just kinda looked out the window to see these huge mountains approaching. the mountains were so steep, even the sturdy footed bridges looked like the might stumble. We were even lucky with a cloudless day, the only thing that scratched the blue sky were the white jet streams. It was tough to take pictures when the train was flying by though. It was definitely a cool way to head to Venice.

We eventually arrived in Venice, which was neat, we just did what you expected, took a boat ride, walked through the square with all the pigeons, and wandered aimlessly through the streets. It was fun, but I am glad we didn't stay too long though. There wasn't a whole lot I wanted to do there. There were a lot of pretty views though.

Florence next!