May 18th
Woke up at 10am and hung out with Franco and had some breakfast. Watched a couple movies and then later headed out to the Vatican. Vatican City is surrounded by a huge wall, God save the queen, but we'll make sure we build these walls to keep the millions of dollars of gold and jewels in the Vatican safe... oh wait I mean the pope...
We walked around to the front and looked into the front gates where there were these men standing wearing these ancient Italian outfits....they have probably been wearing these outfits for hundreds of years... http://www.daveliu.com/images/travel/italy/rome/vatican/Guard

The Vatican is it's own country governed by it's own rules. http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/vaticancountry.htm

We got there late so we couldn't go into the city, but we plan on going tomorrow...if we wake up and get out of the house before it gets dark...

We did however go into the main circle where the pope comes out to speak...it is an outside place where many chairs are set up. There are sculptures of people way high on top of the edges of the walls. In the center of this circle there is an Obelisk with a fountain and on the floor of this there are circles that look like some sort of astrological dates...but I couldn't really read them because they were in Italian. I tried to Google it, but without knowing what they were really all about it is a little difficult. I will ask around next time we are there and then give you the scoop when I find out. The best I can come up with is that it is a big sun dial...I also had a really weird thought that people were buried underneath these circles...it would be the perfect way to make someone disappear...but then again I think I lived in Chicago too long and the Mafia is seeping out of my consciousness because we are in Italy...but then again...

We walked across town and got some pizza, come on you have to have pizza while in Italy...it was OK. I miss Chicago pizza...or a good Zelda's...I think the pizza I like is Sicilian and we are far from Sicily. The pizza they make here is more like...crispy cracker like crust with a little sauce and they just kind of throw a few things on there. I think David had a few olives with the pits still in them and a piece of lunch meat ham thrown on there with a handful of artichokes. I just had sauce. cheese and basil.

Walking through the town has it's different smells...there is a smell of jasmine everywhere, but also the smell of not enough public restrooms so men tend to just relieve themselves wherever, which leads to a smell that is less than savory...It is also not the cleanest city, people tend to leave rubbish on the sidewalks and on the streets, but we have seen this most places, except for Holland, but I also think that in Holland they are cleaning the streets all the time, so it is hard to tell if the people are actually cleaner, or the trash is just picked up quickly enough so you don't notice.

After a long bus ride we made it home and fell asleep with hopes of waking up before 10am...

Gelato

May 17^th

This morning we woke up around 10am took some showers and started some laundry. We tried the cake and it was absolutely amazing and with the espresso mmmm mmmm. We are hoping to get out of the house today while it is still light out...it may be a big pipe dream, but we are going to try... :)

Yeah...it’s about 12am right now and no we didn’t make it out of the house...it seems we have received some sort of nasty virus on our computer. Super stinky! So David has been all day fixing it. But I think maybe he has taken care of it...these are things that are not my forte so I have no idea, but he looks happy so I think it is all good now. This evening Franco took us out for Gelato...Oh dude! You know I have been looking forward to Gelato...I got chocolate, banana and pistachio and David got coffee, pistachio and kiwi. It was good mate...real good! Then we sat outside and talked for a while then headed home because it started raining. That Franco is really a very nice person. If you are coming to Rome he is the guy to look up! His apartment rocks and this was the most inexpensive place we could find and we are so glad we did. We have been super happy here!

More 3 for 5ers

May 16^th

Today we had a lazy day in bed all day watching tv shows day. (We stayed up until 2 am the night before.) When 6pm rolled around we finally made it out the door and took the train straight to the Coliseum. Literally, when you get off the train and walk up into the street it is staring straight at you. We went at night and it was all lit up, which was beautiful. There were many lovers holding hands and enjoying each other and many venders walking around trying to sell you random crap. Some guy came up to us and tried to sell us a holographic glass image of the Coliseum and I told him 3 for 5 3 for 5 and he laughed...he must have been from Cairo... J

We walked up to a church on the top of a hill and they were having a meeting of the Franciscans. I wished I knew better Italian because I would have liked to sit in on that service. We are going to go back to this place tomorrow because the art inside of the church was amazing. I have always been a big fan of realism in painting...like a photograph from the past, only you can feel more...sometimes when I look into paintings I can feel more of the intention of the artist. But I guess really good photography does that as well. We stayed with Matt and Idoya and Matt was such an amazing photographer that I felt emotional when looking at the shoreline of a beach. Growing up I always wished to have a gift like that, to be able to explain how I see the world so people understood...I think real artists do that with a passion.

After many fountains and buildings we headed towards the bus to go home. We had taken the train home last time, but it was now late and the bus is the only thing running. The bus was packed, you see this all the time and we laughed about it...and then it happened to us... J The bus ride wasn’t bad however, looking at all the ruins along the streets and the people were all very friendly. There was even a cute Roman girl sitting next to where we were standing and she kept smiling at us. I think she like the way I was saying the street names, she thought the accent was funny ((giggles)).

We got home and Franco had made some cake for breakfast that smelled so good! We crashed out around 2am again.

Espresso and the Baths

May 15^th

Woke up this morning and had some espresso that we made in the Italian coffee maker. This thing that you put water in and coffee in and then you put it on the stove and it percolates the coffee and makes two little cups of espresso. It’s super strong, but pretty good. Franco told us that coffee is pretty cheep here and there are different prices for if you stand to if you sit, so I guess we are going to be doing some stand drinking J Later we went out to explore the city. We saw many ruins and a bath house that was surrounded in different color roses, lavender and jasmine. It smelled absolutely amazing. The sculptures were rather creepy however. I am sure back in their day they were good likenesses of the people they represented, but now they are all eroded and they looked like mummies. We walked and walked for hours and made it across most of Italy. We were surprised that we walked as far as we did and we were pretty tired by the end of the day. We came home and made an Italian dinner.

First day in Rome

May 14^th

Today we head out to Rome. We woke up early and got ready, had some breakfast and got to the train. The train went fast and the airport was very little hassle. We are ready getting used to this getting in and out of the airport stuff. We are flying Swiss air, which is super wonderful when it comes to chocolate. They give you chocolate every flight and it is the best chocolate ever! MMMM mmm.

We got on a train after we landed and then got on another train called the Metro. When we finally got to the stop where the place we are staying is we took a couple of wrong turns and asked some women for directions. These ladies were so nice, they didnt know english but they were more than wanting to help and when they couldnt they just started to ask random people waling along the road of they knew where the place was that we were going. I think we had something like 6 people helping us at one point in time. Finally we figured it out and then this old man decided to help us all the way there just to make sure that we made it.

We got to the place and Franco welcomed us, but he was working with some students, he is a teacher. So we went out to the local shops and got some food for dinner. Gnocci, salad, veggies ( we have not had a good salad in such a long time...fruit and some cheeses and some cold meats.

Dinner was super yummy! Cant wait for tomorrow!

OH yes and great conversations with Franco...

Rest and Laundry day

May 13^th

Michelle is going home today so we had breakfast, got ready and then we headed out for one last look around and some lunch. We walked her to the train station and then she was off to Scotland again. We had some trouble finding our way back to our hotel after dropping her off, mostly because the place is not set up like a grid. It is all over and meandering....and the shops tend to start looking the same after a while... So we walked around, explored again and finally made it back to the hotel room to do some laundry and catch up with emails. After laundry we went out for dinner then came back to the hotel and crashed out.

Red Light District

May 12^th

Amsterdam itself it quite a beautiful town. There are many channels of water that run through, the streets are all cobblestone and they wash them daily which is really so nice. I think the town would be super trashed if they didn’t clean it as much as they do. Especially since people who tend to do too many extra special treats will often spew chunks all over the sidewalk, you will see that every once in a while, but really it is rare, usually the streets are clean and trash is limited. The red light district is a few block radius of sex stores, sex shows and women in windows who are wearing swimsuits smiling at the people walking by. There are a wide variety of women in these windows. Young women with small bodies, older women with larger bodies and everything in between. Black, White, Asian. Only saw one with glasses though. Beyond the women in the windows is a room with a bed in it. Sometimes you can see it from the window, sometimes there is a curtain so you can’t see it right away, but mostly it seems like they are all the same kinds of beds. Small single beds. We didn’t ask how much things were, cause we were probably just big chickens, but that would have been interesting to find out...oh well, maybe next time... 

First night in Amsterdam

May 11th

We got into Amsterdam on the train and walked for a long time to find our hotel only to find that our hotel was really only 2 minutes away from the train...but that was ok because Michelle was waiting out front when we got there. Michelle is a friend of David’s from Celestine Vision and from Second Life. She used to live in Sydney but now lives in Scotland, which she is enjoying at the moment. Amsterdam is an interesting place...it feels like a college town, only there is no college. There are ‘coffee shops’ everywhere which do in fact serve coffee, but mostly pot. They give you a menu of which one side is drinks and the other side is different strains of pot, which seem to differ from one another. We went to Free Adam, which seemed to us to be good enough for us. (Actually we were looking for dinner, but didn’t quite make it that far because we got interested in going and seeing what this coffee shop thing is all about. We got 3 different varieties Bubble Gum, White Widow and Haze. Oh and we also got some cake with pot in it. Which reminded me of when I first moved to California and our roommate grew it (that is an interesting story, but I have told it so many times and I don’t want to ‘tuna fish’ sandwich myself.) ((‘Tuna fish’ sandwich comes from the movie I (heart) Huckabees. Great movie!))

We walked around and explored a little of the town and then back to the hotel room for a quick rest, which turned into the rest of the night. We are not big party animals...

Belgium

May 10th

Today Wim and Jen took us to Belgium. I think that maybe I expected it to be like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer visited the land of chocolate when the German's took over the nuclear power planet. But no, it looked like a typical European village. People speak mostly French here, which was surprising because we thought they spoke Dutch here. We stopped by a cafe to have a drink and the menus were in Dutch and French, but no English...so we had to just guess. Hamburger was the only thing we could really read so we got hamburgers. To me they were like Morning Star Veggie Burgers and it made me think of how glad I am that we will be home soon...Although....I am not sure they have Morning Star Veggie Burgers in Australia.

We did get some chocolate, but from a gas station...good enough for me, it was super yummy. I figured, you have to have some sort of chocolate when you are in Belgium.

Another day for resting

May 9th
We rested today and I updated my website.

Rest Day

Today we woke up at Ilse and Maarten's house and I remembered we forgot to take our tablet. SO I got them out and we took it....unfortunately you need to really take it with lots of water and with food so about 10 minutes later I started to feel sick and about 15 minutes later I was throwing up in the bathroom. Yuckola. After I did however I felt so much better and we had some breakfast of Muslei and yogurt and some fresh juice that Maarten made.

They dropped us off at the train station and we made our way back to Wim and Jen's house and rested a bit while watching Tin Man. David has not been feeling well. He has some sort of seasonal cold thing going on. Snuffley and stuff. But he is still in good spirits. It's good we just had a day to rest and relax.

The Beach

May 7th
We did some laundry and then headed off to see Maarten and Ilse a really lovely couchsurfing couple. They have done a fair bit of traveling and were super sweet to us. Ilse picked us up frmo the bus stop and drove us to their house where she had made a quiche and pasta salad which we took to the beach as soon as Maarten got home from work. Maarten works at a greenhouse 4 days a week. We went to the beach for a few hours and the weather was just perfect. Sunny blue skies so nice!

We had great conversations and dinner and then they took us back to their place for some coffee and chocolate cake...mmmmm.

That night we slept in their guest room which had a sky light where we could see the stars as we fell asleep. It was a wonderful restful night.

Extras....
Ilse is pregnant and super beautiful and glowing...
Maarten made an amazing scrapbook of all of their travel pictures that was just out of this world. It looks like a professional coffee table book. He did it on line and they sent it to him from Germany. Really nice!

Frittes with mayo and salted fish

May 6th

Jen had work today so Wim took us out to the Market. It was a very tame version of Cairo as we walked through the market. People selling various things. Wim got some salted fish for us to try...we haven't tried it yet...we are a little scared...
But what we did try that we liked was Fritties. Which are French fries with mayonnaise mmmm mmmm. They some them in that sh**. (For all of you Pulp Fiction fans...it's really true...and it's good.)

Rest Day

Today was a rest day. We have been going and going and were starting to get a little sick. Everyone was coughing and sneezing on the plane... so we took sometime to just veg.

Later that evening we went on a walk around the trails and petted some horses and some dogs passing by. There are many trails around here because everyone and their dog has a bike and they ride them everywhere. It is very flat here so it is easy to ride. At the train station there are thousands of bikes waiting for people to get off the train. More bikes than cars around here.

Just to let you know about the toilets here...I had heard about them a long time ago, but it didn;t really hit me until I used one. The toilets are made a little but differently. Instead of your poop going into the water it goes onto a platform until you flush the toilet and then it goes down. This freaked David out a little. He said "I am not sure about this whole Poop and View thing." That was pretty much the funniest comment ever... But really that is what they have here. Personally, I don't care as long as it's not the squatty potties...I am not looking forward to those again... (They are probably coming back when we get to India...)

Jen and Wim cooked us another great meal and we watched Travel channel until it was time for bed.

Flower Festival

May 3

Jen invited us to go to a flower festival with her and her friend so we woke up early and went to the train. We then met her friend Wilma and headed on a bus to the show. The show was pretty huge. You can see the pictures on our website www.worldtour.zenfolio.com.

There were so many flowers, but even more people. It became a little overwhelming all of the people and sometimes we just had to take a moment out. But mostly it was just nice to be around green and colorful flowers. Fresh air and cool breezes.

We got home that night and Wim and Jen took us to Michele and Sam's house. It was Michele's birthday. We watched the Matrix and had an amazing meal cooked by Sam and Jen. Asian food rocks the universe, especially when it is cooked by Asian women! :)

Went home and went to bed.

First night in Holland

May 2^nd

Woke up and packed up. David talked to the owner of the hostel about s few things that happened in Aswan and he ended up giving us a free stay here and paying for our taxi to the airport. What a sweetheart! Thanks George! We checked some emails about places to stay in Amsterdam and then headed off to the airport. It’s going to be cold in Amsterdam.... we have our jumpers (sweaters) at the ready for the airport and when we get off the plane. We land at around 9 or 10pm...It’s going to be a long day...

Got on the plane and transfered. We a good flight non-eventful. The view was pretty amazing from the plane. I think it was Budapest, but where ever it was it looked amazingly beautiful with green rolling hills and trees with a house here and there. When we finally got over Holland that was an amazing sight as well. The farms are very geometric with lines of different colors going here and there like a quilt. Later we came to find out that they were mostly tulips and a kind of wheat...although we are still not convinced about the wheat thing...we have not seen bright yellow flowers of wheat before...

We got off the plane and found our way to the train where a nice man showed us how to find the right train for us, then we had to take another train where someone else told us how to find the next train.

When we got to the station where Jen and Wim live we realized that we didn't have the address so we looked for the phone number to call, but the phones here only take special cards so we found someone with a card and he was able to call them for us. We got the address and he walked us all the way there.

Jen and Wim are very nice. They are a married couple, Jen is from Borneo and Wim is Dutch. Jen very warmly welcomed us with hugs and then showed us to our room 3 floors up where we have a water bed.

We were pretty tired and it was 2AM so we went to bed.

Super Market Day

May 1^st

Today we headed off to Hala Habibi Market, one of the oldest markets in Cairo. It’s pretty crazy there. At this point we are pretty over the constant loud beeping, loud people, crowds and the various ways you can get lost on these streets. Once at the market this was amplified by about 100%. Since it is already loud people now have bullhorns to yell things out at people. Music playing people snapping their fingers in front of your face to get your attention, touching you, trying to shake your hand (this you really have to watch for because someone tried to do this to me and some other guy came out from behind his stand and literally kicked his ass, like took his foot and kicked his ass. I wasn’t quite sure why, but it probably wasn’t good.) The clothing they have here is quite fancy and if we had the money I would so be buying shirts and shirts and dresses. Not to mention the scarves...every fancy scarf in every colour...oh yeah baby this is really the way I would dress forever if given the chance...

A few hours into this super adventure I am fading fast. Too many people, too much noise so we look for a place to get some tea, which is also interesting, so they have tea stations all over the streets, but you have to have your own cup or you can use their cups but you have to stand around and drink it there at the station because the cups are either glass or silver. So we looked for a shop with a cup I could walk around with. Finally we found a place that was mostly a place with water pipes where people smoke Sheesha, not sure what Sheesha is exactly drugs are illegal, but men seem really like it here and sit around smoking it at these places so it is probably good... After tea we went to get some ice cream and then we went to the mall, which had more men’s shops than I have ever seen. The markets have lots of women’s shops, but the malls and many stores about town have men’s shops galore. Men really like to dress to impress here. Women do too, but you really see it in men, like you will never see a man wearing shorts or anything sloppy. They are usually wearing nice shirts and dress pants or nice jeans. Most women are wearing head scarves and long dresses. Some covered head to toe some only a head scarf and regular clothing, but most women have their arms covered somehow. There are these very thin long sleeve shirts women wear everywhere with things. Clothing is not that expensive either, usually about $10-$12 for a shirt or skirt. We also had some of this local food that we have grown to love. It consists of macaroni, spaghetti, lentils, tomato sauce, vinegar and hot sauce. IT is pretty good and super cheep. A whole big bowl of it costs about 75cents.

We were out today to find empty bottles for the oils we got a while ago at this essential oil/perfume place in Aswan. (We got totally taken by this guy, they talk you up and give you tea and relax you until you believe all the things they are saying about their oils, but don’t believe them. I thought I was getting pure Sandalwood oil, but later I started to realize that it was mixed with coconut oil. Rats...but we also bought some fragrances that were made to smell like popular perfumes. I got one that smells like Angel and he got one the smells like Jean Paul Guiteier. So the reason why we needed different bottles is because the ones we got had lids that didn’t close very well.

So we searched and searched, but couldn’t find anything that worked so we found our way back to the hostel.

We got cleaned up and caught up on some blogging. Had some chats with some people staying here at the hostel and then watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Market day in Cairo

April 30^th

Today we had a catch up on computer day at the hostel. Then we went super adventuring around the town looking for some veggies for dinner. Most of the numbers are in Arabic so we made a cheat sheet so we could figure out how much everything costs. One thing I forgot to mention is crossing the street... When they say walk like an Egyptian there is really a whole different meaning here. Walking like an Egyptian when you are crossing the street is a lot like the old Frogger video game. Traffic never stops so you have to start walking...with an attitude mind you...and stop when you think a car isn’t going to stop or is going too fast and then continue walking start stop walk, walk stop pause go. We are now pretty much experts at it. Oh and there are really no traffic lights that actually do red and green, it’s mostly yellow, but even if for some reason there was a red light, no one ever really pays attention to those kinds of things...they are more like suggestions. We finally get to the part of the market where they have the fruits and veggie and we are drawn down the side alley where an old man is sitting by some onions and garlic, just what we were looking for, and we ask him how much and he says “No much” and we are thinking...ok what does ‘No Much’ really mean, because here it could mean...here is how much I will gouge you for, but actually this guy just wanted to give it to us as a gift. We were thankful and a little shocked. This kind of thing doesn’t usually happen without a catch, we have become a little jaded about things lately after David’s mugging...After getting what we needed we went back to the hostel for showers, dinner, Snow Dogs the movie and Tom and Jerry cartoons.

back in Cairo

April 29^th

We got off the train and caught a ride back to the hostel, got cleaned up and went on a tour to the Citidel....which in hindsight weren’t quite sure why other than it was on our schedule to do so. The Citidel is the highest point of Cairo and it houses a huge Mosque made of Alabaster which stays cool in the hot Egyptian sun. We took our shoes off before we went in to explore. They have amazingly large crystal chandeliers and these other 365 lights for the days of the year.

After the Mosque we were taken to a few different churches one of which Joseph and Mary stayed at for a few days while in Egypt. After churches we headed to the Cairo Egyptian Museum where they have many mummies and artifacts from tombs and the pyramids. They also store the King Tut exhibit. It was a very impressive museum, however we are pretty tired and over stimulated at this point and really just want to go have a rest with some quiet away from people at this point. So we made our way back to the hostel to chill out for a while.

Temples and More Temples

April 28^th

Went to the Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple today and were pretty much at the end of our temple cycle. You get to a point when you are done seeing temples...this was the time for us. We got back to the hotel and were told that we had to wait until 10:30pm to actually catch the train back to Cairo. So we stayed by the pool and then checked messages at the internet. Later we went for dinner and met the woman and her mom we had met the night before and they invited us for dinner. This time we exchanged information and decided to keep in touch. We got back to the hotel just in time to catch the cab to the train. We had a 3 person room this time and Joseph stayed with us. The train is really the most uncomfortable way to travel and I don’t recommend it unless you get a sleeping car. If I ever come here again I am so getting a sleeping car... David gave up trying to sleep on the chair and just spread out along the ground to sleep. I curled up on his and my space. It was very uncomfortable, but we did get some sleep.

Last day on the boat

April 27^th

Our last day on the boat we woke up super early and went to visit Karnak temple. Then we got back, had breakfast and packed up to go to our hotel. We had to change hotels because they didn’t have any double rooms available for us and the next hotel they put us in was super scary, but the last one was super deluxe. It was a 5 star hotel called Pyramisa Isis Hotel and it is the fanciest place we have stayed so far in Egypt. Big bath tub a lounge room super comfy everything. After dropping our stuff off we headed out to the tour to see the Edfu Temple, Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Kings. We had a full day of temples and by the time we got back to the hotel we were super pooped out. We cleaned up a bit and then headed out to a Chinese place for some rice. We met a woman who was there with her mom and they were really lovely. We ended up chatting with them for a while and then went back to our room for the night. Poor David was really tired and him feet were really hurting him so I ended up Giving him a full massage after he took a bath.

Nubia Botanical Gardens

April 26^th

Nubia Botanical Gardens