Jesse and Yumi's Travel Blog

Back home

2011-11-20T14:38:00.001+08:00

5 weeks, 15 planes and approximately 54600km later we are back home in Perth.
It was an awesome trip with lots of lovely memories.

Pearl Harbour Memorial

2011-11-20T14:11:00.001+08:00

Our last day on Oahu, and we are determined to squeeze out one more sightseeing trip. This time it is to visit Pearl Harbour.
The area has been designated a "World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument" and is steeped in history. The newly renovated museum is pretty impressive, and goes in detail about the events leading up to World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbour. What I found interesting here was that it actually has a section describing the Japanese and their situation leading up to the war too - so you can understand see why things happened as they did - or at least get an idea about their motives at the time.
The area is filled with relics of torpedoes, missiles and rockets of the time, and has lots of information.
There was also a decommissioned submarine, the USS Bowfin (nicknamed Pearl Harbour Avenger) moored there which you can visit - and there's a memorial for all the submarines lost at sea during the war, including a little information about each one.
Along the shore line there is the Walk of Remembrance, with the names of ships lost and names of servicemen who lost their lives in the war inscribed on plaques. A solemn walk considering the number of people who lost their lives.
A short 25 minute movie later we were on the ferry ride out to the USS Arizona Memorial. The USS Arizona was sunk within minutes when it sustained a direct hit to its munitions silo by a Japanese bomber at the start of World War II. Those who served and died on-board are entombed inside. The white memorial building does not sit on the Arizona, rather it cradles it protectively. It is still leaking fuel slowly, as can be seen by the thin film of oil slick on the surface and some black globules floating up. This is nicknamed Tears of the Arizona.

Next stop was a tour of the USS Missouri, nick named Mighty Mo, the last battleship to be built during World War II. It was decommission in 1955 after several tours but then was recommission again in 1986. In 1992 it was decommissioned again and now serves as a memorial for those who served. What was impressive about this ship was the massive 16 inch diameter guns it had - three big tri-barrels - able to shoot massive ordinance up to 28 miles distance. It last served in desert storm and was instrumental in destroying great numbers of tanks from the shoreline.
In the distance we could see a massive golf ball like structure set on a floating oil rig platform. Quite an eye sore really, but we found out it was a massive radar, brought in specifically from Alaska to maintain security during APEC 2011 in Hawaii. Supposedly able to spot a golf ball from a distance of about 3000 miles. I guess you can't be too careful with 21 heads of states present in the same place!

Big Island Volcano Tour and Lava Walk

2011-11-13T21:17:00.003+08:00

We had to get up really early the next morning for our Volcano Tour, but managed to squeeze in a quick breakfast at the hotel first. We were picked up by the tour bus again and this time taken to the airport where we caught a flight to Hilo - the main city on the Big Island of Hawai'i. This city has suffered at the hands of both tsunamis and lava flow in its time, so is an interesting one!
Our bus driver, Junior, born and raised on Hilo, was a bit of a character. Very "hang loose" tour guide, he almost drove off minus a couple of passengers a few times! He proceeded to tell us all about Hilo - from the amount of rainfall (138 inches/year on average) to the price of real estate (350-400k in the main town, but the closer you get to the volcano the cheaper it got, about 20-30k per acre).
All of the islands of Hawaii have been created with volcanoes and lava originally, but Big Island is the only island still with an active volcano. We drove to Rainbow falls first - with Junior telling us everything about Hilo that he knew.. he even sang his Alma Mater song for us.

Next on the route was Kalapana Beach. It used to be a really nice black sand beach, but was covered in lava back in 1983. Still has some black sand on the tips of it, and the lava has extended the land mass a bit here. It was about a 10 minute trek out to the ocean, again, well worth the effort for the view of waves crashing against the solidified lava rocks. People have rebuilt their houses on top of the lava, pretty crazy when you look out and see an expanse of lava, then houses built on it!

Next stop Thurston Lava tube, where we got to walk through an old lava tube. It is surrounded by rainforest. This was followed by another drive through lava encrusted fields, and we got to see lava trees. When lava flows and there are big trees on the land, lava goes around the tree trunk. The tree eventually burns down, leaving lumps and logs and hollow cavities behind, creating an interesting landscape. We also had a sift through the debris looking for Pele's Tears, teardrop like bits of lava that solidifies in the air when the lava is thrown into the air during an eruption. Then its on to Crater Rim Drive, where there are numerous collapsed crates along the way. We stopped by one of the vents puffing out steam for a quick "facial steam"! (hehe.. just kidding, but there was quite a bit of warm steam coming out of the vents). Lava rock is surprisingly porous, so rain water seeps through it and gets heated up, eventually coming out as steam in the vents.

After a stop for dinner at the Volcanoes Golf and Country club we headed to the Jaggar Museum and visitor centre. This is located at the top of the Kilauea Caldera, where we saw the glow of lava inside the volcano crater. It is slowly puffing out steam. Quite eerie to look at, knowing you are quite close to an active volcano. At the museum they have a seismometer to keep track of any earth tremors and inflation/deflation of the crater, which would help predict any potential eruptions. Each day there are over 100 tremors on the Big Island, which is so small it is not felt by humans.

After a long day, we head back to the airport for our flight back to Oahu.

Diamond Head and Scuba Diving

2011-11-13T21:17:00.001+08:00

Diamond Head Crater was our objective the next day, having been recommended by several people we'd met the night before.We decided to set out and do the trek. It was a short 10 minute bus ride out to Diamond Head National Park. You have to walk through a tunnel to get
to the trail head. When we got to the peak, I realised that the tunnel we initially walked through was burrowed under the crater rim. It's a 1.6 miles round trip hike, with a gain of 760 feet. Fairly easy trail, with hand rails along the way, and a total of 273 steps, another dimly lighted tunnel to get to the top. well worth the effort as the views from the peak were totally awesome! You get to see Waikiki Beach, the mountains on the other end of the island, and the famous snorkeling beach Hanauma Bay on the other side. This is all against a backdrop of blue skies and the ever present puffy white clouds in Hawaii. The cool breeze was also very welcome to cool off after the hike. Trip down was easier than going up and we rewarded ourselved with a shave ice to cool off when we got down. Shower and lunch later we enjoyed some retail therapy for the afternoon.

Diving today off the west side of Oahu, Waianeau, near Pokai Bay. We were picked up in a very fancy leather seat Mercedes bus. The ride out was long, as there were road blocks and traffic jams due to APEC 2011. However the boat ride out was only 20 minutes to the dive site which was pretty good. Despite the warm temperature of the waters, we were provided with 5mm semi-dry wetsuits to keep us toasty warm. The first dive was the Maki Wreck. It was sunk about 32 years ago at a dept of about 30m. Both of us had some trouble equalising our ears, so spent some time trying to get to the bottom. We eventually managed to clear our ears and get down to the wreck. Visibility was fantastic, up to 20m. There is so much sea life growing on it! I saw a yellow spotted eel peaking out from the rails, which it had obviously made as its home. There was another eel hiding on the side of the deck railing, we think it was probably on its way to find a new hole when we scared it into hiding from us. We saw lots of fishes, quite a few that we recognised, such as surgeon fish, tangs, angel fish, gobys etc...
The second dive was at the Makana Caverns, remnants of old lava tubes. It was a shallower dive of about 10-15m. Visibility was still pretty good at about 6-10m. There were a couple of swim throughs, and on one of it we saw a white tip reef shark just chilling on the bottom. The underside of the rocks had lots and lots of yellow sponge growing on it. As we were coming out of the swim through a young turtle was heading in, headed straight for us! Totally unconcerned or curious, not sure which. It came close to face to face with Jesse!
We also encountered a large octopus which our dive master managed to scare from its hiding place - it first tried to camouflage against the background first, then when it realised that didn't work it tried scooting under an outcrop only to be pecked at by a big tang that called it home. The poor thing then swam off looking for another place to hide from us all. Was amazing to see!
There was another larger turtle eating the seaweed and algae off the side of the lava rocks, again totally focused on its meal so we were able to swim past it and observe it clearly.
Both dives were awesome experiences and we were sad to hop out of the water at the end!

We headed back to Waikiki again that afternoon - and picked up a few things before heading out for a nice steak at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse - expensive prices really, but the filet mignon's we had were so tender and delicious that it was worth it!
We headed back to the hotel early after that as we knew we had a big day the next day.

Hawaii, Waikiki and Luau's

2011-11-13T21:15:00.001+08:00

We landed in Honolulu after a bounce through Los Angeles. We caught a taxi from the airport to our hotel and were pretty pleased with our hotel - nice location and spacious rooms with a semi-ocean view - if you don't mind looking through the palm trees to see it!
We crashed the first night, both pretty tired after the trip. We visited the tour desk the next morning and booked a few tours for the next few days, then we wandered around Waikiki, Yumi quickly taking advantage of the local Pick a Pearl shop and managed to score a nice cheap Taihitian Pearl and then had to figure out what to set it in. After much debate she decided not to have a setting for the pearl just yet - it's a bit of a scam really, they give you a cheap pearl and then a bunch of expensive but nice looking rings, earrings, pendants, etc to secure your pearl in and show it off. But the process is fun - you have to pick out an oyster from a pile first and then rap the shell three times and shout ALOHA and what colour/size pearl you get is luck of the draw.
We spent most of that day wandering around and enjoying the place - and had a nice dinner that night at Tiki's Bar and Grill - the local restaurant for our hotel, and also had a couple of cocktails there.
Monday we had breakfast by the pool listening to a husband and wife team play songs and do the Hula dancing by the pool, then we headed down to the beach for some sunbathing and swimming. Then we decided to catch one of the free shuttles to Hilo Hattie - which wasn't really that interesting, though we got to see a bit more of the city and the downtown area at least. We headed back in the early afternoon and got changed for our evening Luau at Paradise Cove which we'd organised for our anniversary.
Paradise Cove was pretty awesome - they picked us up from the hotel and our driver pointed out the highlights along the way as we made ourselves to the other side of the island. Once there we were each given a Lei and told to enjoy the activities they had on offer. We tried our hands at spear throwing, Yumi made a headband using banana leaves, there was an outrigger canoe ride and tattooing which neither of us tried, an example of fishing net casting, and a bunch of special events such as the shower of flowers - where the chief would climb the tallest coconut tree and throw flowers down on top of us all. Then we enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the beach and some dancing before theg y pulled in the nets.
Finally we had an Imu ceremony which was unearthing the roasted pig from the underground oven.
We settled back for a feast after that, with cocktails and a huge show of Hula dancing, Fire dancing, Hula dancing, Hakas, Hula dancing, Samoan rituals and dance and of course, Hula dancing. There was even a special form of sitting-down Hula dancing.
The guys wore loincloths, the girls wore coconuts and skimpy outfits and much enjoyment was had by all. Many photos and videos were taken - don't worry.

Arizona, Sedona and Red Rock Country

2011-11-13T21:14:00.001+08:00

We arrived in Phoenix Arizona on Tuesday around midday - Yumi has a lot of family here, so we spent the first day meeting everyone and chilling at Chateau Quah.
For lunch on Wednesday we had a typical Southern lunch at Lo Lo's - Southern Fried Chicken and Waffles - very artery hardening stuff, but it was delicious.

After lunch we headed to the Heard Museum where we went on a narrated tour talking about the local native american tribes, their culture, crafts, instruments and even their toys.
They actually had a huge doll collection with incredibly detailed beading going back as far as the 1800's. The Kachina dolls were particularly interesting to me - they were given to kids to teach them about the various spirits and demons so some could be beautiful while others very scary and sinister.

We had dinner with Yumi's aunt and Yumi's cousin Jessica that she hadn't seen for 15 odd years. Was good to see them all and their kids were adorable.

The following day we drove out to Sedona, red rock country about an hour or so away from were Yumi's aunt lives. Sedona was full of beautiful rock formations in all kinds of colours and is what you typically think of when you see most westerns. We took a Pink Jeep 4WD tour to Diamondback Gulch and it was awesome - we picked a tour near the end of the afternoon so we'd get some sunset photos and by luck we not only had the jeep to ourselves, but we had a driver who was a budding photographer himself! Our driver was all too happy to stop and get us into position to take some awesome photos of the area. Make sure you check them out!

Our last full day in Arizona was filled with Yumi's favourite pastime - outlet shopping! And yes, she picked up more than a few bargains - as did I!

That evening we headed back to Chateau Quah for a big dinner with all the family and friends - Yumi even got to meet another Yumi!
Yumi went on a 3 mile hike the next morning and saw a Coyote - was lovely and clear after the previous nights rain and dust storm. She saw some hohokam hieroglyphs on some rocks on the trail which was pretty cool. We packed our things after that and prepared for the last leg of our trip after that.

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-03T00:54:00.000+08:00

Today is Halloween, and from the looks of it, it is taken very seriously here in the US. we'd seen Halloween decorations everywhere for the past weeks, building up to today and I must say some of it were very elaborate and creative.

Started the day off by heading down to Greenwich Village for a wander through the area. Has a bit of a small town feel, with the older buildings tucked amongst the newer ones. Some interesting architecture, with the triangle buildings and sharp corners. Certain places had the barricade ready in place for the parade later that evening.

We found this little restaurant in Greenwich Village that served Paella, so decided to try that for lunch. This is part of our on-going quest to find the best Paella. It looked like it had all the right ingredients listed, but somehow did not quite taste as good as it could do - they used a rather mild chorizo that added little flavour and the rice was a bit too wet. The quest continues....

Next on the agenda was the World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial. We'd pre-booked tickets for that afternoon. The Memorial had only just opened a few months ago on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. There were the South and North waterfalls, built on the foot print of both the towers that collapsed. Nearly 3000 people lost their lives in the attack, and their names are inscribed around both waterfalls. A very sad and sobering sight to see some family members trying to locate the names of relatives or friends who had died on that day, some were tracing the names from the metal plaque, one had a perfect red rose placed next to his name.

There was also a Survivor Tree. This tree is from the original Twin Towers site, nurtured back to health and then planted in the park when the memorial opened. Apparently the tree got hit by lightning afterwards and still lives so really is a true survivor.

We headed back to Greenwich Village after this, this time getting off at Spring St where the Halloween Parade and began to wander up the street looking for the best spot to camp for the evening. We still had a couple of hours yet though, so before long we started thinking about food and found an italian place along 6th Ave that was doing a bustling trade for Halloween campers - we stopped for a panini each there before wandering over the road and picking a section of barricade to camp at for the night.
The 39th Annual New York Village Halloween Parade was an interesting affair - lots of colourful outfits in all shapes and sizes were represented. Lots of comic book heroes, tv characters and celebrities was represented - including several Michael Jackson's, a Clinton and even a Gaddaffi zombie was there, complete with Golden Gun.
There were huge skeletons, massive eyeballs and dragons that hovered above the crowd. We had at least two renditions of Thriller - complete with synchronised dancing. Plus numerous cars and trucks decked out. One float even had a mini ice rink, with the people skating around on top of it. The range of costumes and effort that some people put into them was astounding - I spoke to one of the Ghostbusters guys on the Subway afterwards and he had spent a good three months making his whole costume - his ghost-trapping gun was complete with blinking lights and he even sported a Ghost-detector that was fully functional with antenna that slid out and lit up.
The Parade went on for hours - and apart from a few people trying to squeeze in at the front of the barricades everyone was pretty happy and had a good time and the subways were running smoothly afterwards so we all got home safely afterwards.

We had to leave New York this morning and I can't help but be a little sad leaving this busy metropolis with quirky weather behind.

Next stop - Phoenix, Arizona!

- J -

Grand Central, Central Park & Empire State Building

2011-10-31T11:48:00.000+08:00

A peek out the window this morning showed clear skies and bright sunshine. Rather quick change after the snow of yesterday. Still pretty cold temperature of 7C as the maximum.

After a bit of a sleep-in for Jesse who has caught a cold, we headed out to Grand Central Station. Along the way we found a road side Sunday market so had a browse through it. Grand Central Terminal was not as busy as expected, but it was a Sunday and it is still a pretty impressive building.

From Grand Central we took the subway out to uptown 87th St, where the Guggenheim Museum is located. Unfortunately the spiral portion of the museum was close for repairs so we did not get to visit it. Central Park is right next to Guggenheim so we had a wander through the muddy paths in the park. Portions of it where still covered in snow that had not melted despite the mid afternoon sunshine.

Next on the agenda was to go to the top of the Empire State Building. It was completed in 1931, just one year and forty five days after breaking ground. They built one floor per day! A pretty incredible feat. In the lobby is an Art Deco Masterpiece made out of 23K gold and aluminium leaf, depicting the building set against a map of the Empire State and surrounding areas.

There was a bit of a queue and strict security screening. After an hour's delay we managed to get tickets to head up to the observation deck. The elevators only go to the 80th floor, and there was the option to wait half an hour for the other elevator or to walk up 6 floors. Time to stretch those legs! :) We paid a bit extra to go to the newly reopened 102nd floor, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The area had glassed in windows that were smudged so could not get any good photos. The 86th floor had the open-air area which was nice but really, really cold. The sun was starting to set by this time, so we got great twilight and night views of New York.

-Y-

Let it SNOW!

2011-10-30T12:17:00.002+08:00

I started to get a sore throat last night and so we decided to take it slow this morning and kick back at the hotel. I have to admit that when I heard that snow was forecast today that I didn't quite believe it, but sure enough, just before midday Yumi stuck her head to look out the window and squealed - IT'S SNOWING!

It's the first time either of us have really seen snow fall so it was pretty exciting I have to admit.
We enjoyed watching it fall and build up, but eventually got hungry and decided to head out for a wander as I was feeling better. We rugged up as good as we could and decided to head up to the Sony Wonder lab to see what it was all about.
Now snow is pretty cool when it's falling, but snow turns into slush and we discovered this hiking up the 14 blocks to the Sony Wonder Lab. We were getting hungry around this time too, and decided to stop at TGIF where we both had a lovely steak before heading off to the Sony Wonder Lab once more.
The snow/sleet hadn't slowed and the wind had picked up, so our hands were freezing before long and we decided to stop at Uni Qlo and pick up some gloves - man what a difference they made! We continued our hike to the Sony Wonder Lab and unfortunately were a little disappointed with the Sony experience - half the setups they had were either broken or under repair.
We decided to do a little shopping on the way back and discovered that Esprit had 40% off everything - I picked up a scarf here - thus completing my winter outfit and keeping my throat warm. We managed a quick visit to Tiffany's and Co before they shut their doors for the night and then hiked the 14 blocks back to the hotel, by this point we both had soaked jeans and shoes and we were glad to change into clean and dry clothes.
Apparently there was up to 6 inches of snow that fell today in some areas of New York - and it was predicted that at least 10 inches would fall before it stopped sometime after midnight. It's also the earliest snow recorded since the civil war days when they started recording it, so that's pretty amazing.
Crazily enough it's forecast for sunshine again tomorrow - though it'll still be cold, but hopefully we can do some more sightseeing tomorrow!

New York, New York

2011-10-29T23:49:00.003+08:00

We arrived in the evening on our first day in New York, so after checking in to our hotel we decided to go for a walk and try and get our bearings and find some place to eat.

Our Hotel is very conveniently located, we're 2 blocks from Times Square, 2 blocks from Grand Central Station and surrounded by all the Broadway theatres. We also have an awesome balcony view!

We wandered down to Times Square first, and as Yumi had a hankering for seafood again we went to Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company. This is a chain of stores, all with Forrest Gump as it's hero and before we were able to get our meal we were grilled with questions about the Forrest Gump movie. To attract the waitress' attention you would flip a license plate that said 'Run Forrest Run' to 'Stop Forrest Stop'. The food was pretty average though, so we skipped dessert and set off to find the TKTS booth to see if we could see a show that night. We knew so little about any of the shows so it was like lucky dip for us and we ended up picking 'Anything Goes' - which conveniently was playing only a street away from our hotel.

The show was fun, being a musical comedy about a guy who jumped on board a cruise ship trying to follow the girl of his dreams. We had a good laugh at all the antics that happened aboard.

Yumi had a meeting with the New York Poisons Info Center the next day, so while she got a tour of their facility I decided to get my bearings and wander around the NY streets, first walking up to the Rockefeller Plaza, then about 20 blocks down 6th Avenue before walking back up 5th Avenue. I found Macy's, supposedly one of their largest stores (it took up almost an entire block), and had fun wandering around it before heading back to the hotel to meet up with Yumi again. We were both hungry by then so decided to head out and grab a burger for lunch and went to Heartland Brewery (HB) Burger. They brew their own beers at this place and we got a couple of their mini-pint glasses as souvenirs.

It'd been raining most of this day and the clouds meant there was no point going sightseeing so we decided to head up to the Rockefeller Plaza and check out the Sony Wonder Lab - though after the walk up there we discovered it was closed for maintenance that day. Instead we wandered back and ended up going inside the new Global Flagship Store of Uni Qlo - which had only recently opened and had some great opening bargains available. I picked up a nice Cashmere jumper and a couple of t-shirts, while Yumi bought a couple of merino tops. The place was massive and we lost each other a few times inside. We headed back to the hotel after that, the rain had worsened and we were pretty damp when we got back to our hotel.

The next day was sunny and clear though - making up completely for the day before and we headed up to the Rockefeller building once more this time aiming to go up to the Top of the Rock which had an impressive view of the city around it.

Including the impressive Empire State building and the Chrysler Building.

We took many many photos of the city around, see them in our picasa album here.

After that we had booked a 90 minute Midtown Harbor Cruise, so we headed off to that. We arrived a bit too late for the 2pm tour we'd originally booked, so we went on the 4pm tour instead. Now despite the sunny and clear day, it was very cold after a day of raining and we were both regretting not buying gloves and earmuffs for the harbor cruise - we got to see some beautiful sights, including the whole Manhattan skyline, the new One World Trade Centre building (still being built), Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and of course Lady Liberty herself - but we froze somewhat in the process.

Tampa, Florida

2011-10-29T22:49:00.003+08:00

After the cold of Washington DC, we headed off to Tampa to enjoy a bit of sunshine and to catch up with my Uncle and his family. It was a nice treat not to have to walk everywhere after the 10 miles in DC! :)

We had a wander around International Plaza and lunch there, followed by a drive around downtown Tampa, Channelside, a glimpse of Harbour Island, then back to uncle KK's beautiful home just outside of town. We saw some eagles and a blue heron by the lake. The best of city and country living combined. We hit Hungry Harry's BBQ Restaurant for dinner that night - Jesse had Baby backed BBQ ribs for dinner, while I had the mixed platter with Ribs, Chicken, Pulled Pork and Beef. They were huge meals so we had no room for desert at the end!

We mainly just took it easy and had a bit of a pause here. We got to check out Uncle KK's Lego and awesome robots collection. Had a chance to go to the Ellenton Premium Outlet for some retail therapy. It was a bit of a drive, but I think we got a few bargain items! Thanks for driving us there Uncle KK and Aunty Maha!

Tuesday we were treated to lunch at Columbia's in Ybor city. It was a very delicious paella! Will have to go home and try to make my own paella again. Ybor city is the older part of Tampa, a bit run down, full of cigar shops and nightclubs. The main highlight of the day was definitely the segway tour of downtown Tampa. We met up with our guide at Channelside for a quick briefing on the do's and don'ts of the segway. This was followed by a half hour practice on the segway before we headed out. A bit apprehensive at first but soon got the hang of it. It is certainly a very cool human transporter, though at $5300 each I won't let Jesse buy one.

After we were all comfortable on our segways we started zipping down the sidewalks along the harbour, down by the river, through the heart of the city, going past the University of Tampa with its interesting Henry Plant Building, then back to Channelside. It was great fun, and as we all started getting more comfortable on the segway could enjoy the view more and take some photos and videos. Cold stone ice-cream and some delicious Vietnamese spring rolls topped off our last night in Tampa.

- Y -

Washington, D.C. - the city of monuments and sore feet

2011-10-23T10:49:00.000+08:00

This city has 155 monuments, plus heaps of museums, galleries, etc and we had just over one day to see it all!
We arrived last night at Ronald Reagan Airport around 6pm. It was around 7pm by the time we'd checked into our hotel and decided to wander out for some night photos of Washington, DC.

We walked to the White House first, got some photos from the front then made our way to the other side.
We then wandered up to the Washington Monument which was glowing in the distance. From there we saw the Capitol building in the distance by then and thought we'd walk closer.. not realising really how far it was - we walked.. and walked and walked, and then decided we really didn't feel like walking much further and so took our best photos and headed back. We meandered past the National Gallery, National Archives, Dept of Justice and walked back the rest of the way to our hotel - stopping only briefly to grab a quick dinner on the way.

This morning we decided to sleep in and take it easy to start with, both our batteries were low so we didn't get going on our travels until 11am or so. We caught the Metro to get closer to the Capitol Building and this time wandered right up to it and got some awesome photos of it, the Grant memorial, then we wandered up to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and had a wander around inside. This place had a huge collection of planes, rockets, and satellites. The plane that Amelia Earheart flew, the Wright Brothers planes, and NASA's spacecraft that they landed on the moon. Pretty cool stuff.
We then walked over to the Smithsonian National History Museum and rushed through, but got to see some pretty amazing exhibits, including the beautiful Hope Diamond - one of the largest flawless diamonds in the world.
We were pretty tired by this point, and decided to catch a pedi-cab to the Lincoln Memorial and give our feet a bit of a break. The pedi-cab guy was great and we felt bad for him when we realised how far it really was (prolly 2-3 miles or about 3-4km) and gave him a bit extra.
The Lincoln memorial was pretty cool - got some great photos of it and then we wandered back along past the Korean War memorial, Martin Luthor King memorial, and made our way around the tidal basin to the Jefferson Memorial.
We were both getting pretty tired by this point and I'd worked up a blister on my toe and was starting to limp so we decided to head back - we caught the Metro back to the White House and got a few more shots of it in the daytime before heading back to the hotel where we had dinner and called it a day.
By my calculation, we've traveled around 10 miles (16km) since we got here!

- J -

EMP - Experience Music Project

2011-10-20T12:06:00.003+08:00

A really cool place to spend a few hours is the EMP located in Seattle Center. They had a special Avatar, Nirvana and Battlestar Galactica exhibition on. They also have a hands-on sound lab to play in, even a left handed guitar! :)

Avatar was really good, showing the various ideas and development that went into each plant, animal, character in the movie. It showed how they filmed and edited the various scenes, and how they made use of the virtual camera. Each scene was filmed with over 100 cameras everywhere, so it is then easy to go back and pick the angle that the director wanted. They had a show clip where you could try to film your own little scene, makes for very hilarious watching as it is not so easy.

The Sound lab was cool, giving you the chance to try and play the guitar, drums and keyboard, with little tutorials on how to use each piece of instrument. They also had little recording booths that you can try and record your own music, with various mixing equipment, just like a real recording artist. Very fun!

The most impressive was the Root and Branches sculpture in the middle,named "If VI was IX" by artist and composer Trimpin. It is made up of 700 guitars all linked in, to make a computer controlled self playing guitar. These sounds are programmed on a specific formula to create music live that you can listen to via headsets. Not surprisingly the creator of that sculpture has musical training and an electrical engineering degree.

-Y-

Engines not included

2011-10-20T11:53:00.001+08:00

The Boeing factory in Seattle claims to be the world's largest building. The whole area is so large it has its own zip code! They employ approx 60,000 employees, working 24/7 in 3 shifts. The employees have to come to work over staggered times each shift just to avoid a traffic jam! There are 13 cafes on site, otherwise it would take too long for an employee to have lunch. Each door is 80 feet high by 100 yards wide (24m x 91.5m), it takes 20 minutes to open the doors to each assembly line. They have their privately owned freeway overhead pass, heavily reinforced to be able to withstand the weight of the plane, once it is completely assembled and ready to be moved to the runway for test flights. Just for an idea of how massive the whole place is.

On the tour they took us to see the Boeing 747, 777 and the latest 787 Dreamliner assembly lines. The 787 is the latest aircraft, being outfitted on a moving assembly line like the 777. When they get up to full production estimates are to be able to have one fully assembled in 3 days! All the materials are pre-fab and flown in on the 747 Dreamlifter, which has been modified to have a bigger almost bubble like look to it. I liked the fact that the engineers have their desks right on the side of the assembly hangar, so if there are problems/questions, they are not far away. The 787 is made of 51% composite, which makes it lighter and less likely to corrode, as a result they can have cabin humidity up to a comfortable 35%, LED lighting, larger windows, and 1-1.5 inches wide seats in economy. Dreamliner indeed!

Engines are not included in the price of the aircraft. You have to buy the engines separately, then have it delivered to Boeing for it to be installed.

Once assembled it is then painted with a special ionisation technique, so it does not shear off at high speeds. Now why do you think majority of aircrafts are painted white? There is a good reason for it.

-Y-

Seattle Day 2 - Underground tour

2011-10-19T13:33:00.001+08:00

While Jesse is off working hard at the Microsoft conference, I get to have a lazy relaxed day. :)

Took the Underground tour. Parts of Seattle is built upon the old buildings that were destroyed by fire in the1800s then the earthquake. You are literally walking in the spaces below the side walks, most of the skylights are still intact, and form part of the normal street. However they've covered up a lot of it, since the glass gets slippery and starts to breakdown. The glass has an interesting purplish colour, due to the manganese content of glass back in those days, which develops over years. Interesting to note as well is that it is below sea level, and used to be mud flats. So it made sense for them to build up where they could. As for how the fire started, a carpenter's apprentice was melting down blocks of glue to use, which caught fire when he wasn't watching. He then made the mistake of puring water on a mostly oily mixture, which splattered and caught the carpentry shop on fire, which was near the general goods store, that back in those days were full on munitions, and whiskey. Needless to say, it all went up in flames with those perfect sources of fuel.

Had a Creole lunch of a sampler plate of Jambalaya, Crawfish pie and gumbo. Very different cuisine to what I have experienced before. Not bad. Walked off lunch by wandering down to the Piers, looking for the bus to take me to Olympic Sculpture park. There was meant to be a free 99 bus, which I never did see. So ended up walking all the way there. Great view along the waterfront.

Visited the Glass blowing studio, which was another 9 blocks walking, followed up by a bit of retail therapy then back to the hotel. I got asked today where I'm from, and that they liked my accent. Do I answer I'm from Malaysia or Australia?

-Y-

Seattle - Pike Place Markets and Space Needles

2011-10-19T13:33:00.000+08:00

Arrived in Seattle after a short 2.5 hour flight. Such a difference in weather, nice and chilly here compared to Vegas. We managed to check into our hotel early, despite the hotel having a computer systems crash.

We are staying in Bellevue, which is on the other side of the Sound. Interesting way that they set up the public transport across from Bellevue to Seattle downtown. There's a tunnel that the SoundTransit buses and train only goes through, under a good section of downtown Seattle. This means there will be no traffic jams for those buses, making it quite efficient. They also offer free public transport in the downtown area during office hours.

It was my only free day to explore Seattle, so we decided to head out quickly, despite being somewhat tired, and see the sights. We went to Pike Place Markets first - where they have a huge collection of art, crafts, fruit and fish. The place is well known for the fish guys calling out in unison and then throwing fish across to each other. We were somewhat hungry by then so stopped there and had a nice seafood lunch while overlooking the Puget Sound bay. The day was beautiful - crisp air, but warm and apparently very unlike Seattle - we brought the Aussie weather with us! Yumi couldn't help herself with all the lovely fruit and ended up buying a huge pomegranate and a couple of punnets of raspberries and blackberries.

We next caught the Monorail out to the Seattle Space Needle, the most iconic image of Seattle really - and took the trip up and got some awesome photos from up top and down below - especially after we discovered the beautiful pinky/purple EMP building with it's wonderful metallic surface was just made for reflective shots. Yumi and I both photo-geeked out and spent a good hour taking photos at various angles. We walked up to the top of the hill afterwards (planning to get more photos) and noticed that there was an IMAX theatre nearby and so decided to catch a movie together - we saw Real Steel and enjoyed it, then took yet more photos of the Space Needle as it was dark by then.
We had dinner in a local pub in Seattle downtown before heading back to the hotel where we promptly crashed.

- J

CSI & David Copperfield

2011-10-19T13:17:00.000+08:00

Being CSI fans, we just had to go for CSI: The Experience at the MGM Grand. You are given a case to solve, and the various 'labs' to analyse your samples and data. Not quite as easy as they make it look on TV. It's a job where you have to be very observant of the smallest details. We both enjoyed the crime solving and solved our cases!

This followed with an evening show of David Copperfield at MGM Grand as well. He did some pretty amazing illusions, and though I thought I'd be able to pick out how he did it I couldn't fault him at all and he made it look so easy - he even made a huge car appear on stage while members of the audience we're all around and no-one was the wiser - incredible!
Even cooler, at the start of the show he asked those with Twitter accounts to post a tweet to him, which Jesse did and got invited to join the Meet and Greet after the show!
We did so and received a signed photo each, got to take a photo with David Copperfield, and saw him perform a card trick for the small group of about 10 people.

Awesome way to finish our last night in Vegas!

Las Vegas & Blue Man Group

2011-10-19T13:07:00.002+08:00

It certainly lives up to its reputation as "Sin City". Cool city to people watch - you've got your single girls and guys looking to party and live it up, you've got your brides/grooms to-be enjoying their pre and post wedding parties and you've got your retirement age groups out to explore the city.

We only had a couple days there so was a flying visit. We had a nice wander around in the afternoon, after a delicious lunch at Wolfgang Puck's Cafe in Caesar's Palace. There is an abundance of nice restaurants here, and every one seems to be headed by a famous chef. The fake sky inside Caesar's Palace is certainly deceiving, giving the illusion that it is still day when it might be later already. The shops are very high-end stuff, and certainly you get some quirky shops too.

We got tickets to see Blue Man group that night. Certainly worth the price of the ticket. Its a comedy fun show, completely silent but for the music. 3 guys paint themselves blue and dress in black outfits, supported by a 7 piece band and some improvised musical instruments played by the Blue men. They also play with food - throwing it across the stage into each others mouth - and paint, splattering the first 7-8 rows of the audience with it when they beat their drums ( they were given ponchos in advance ). We also got covered in toilet paper, huge streams of it spread over the theatre! Had a great time and even got a photo next to one of the Blue Men at the end!

- Y

SF - Geek Day - Googleplex & Computer History Museum

2011-10-19T11:48:00.000+08:00

Geek Day!

Can you guess what we did?

Yes we went out to Google Offices in Mountain View, San Franciso. An hour's Caltrain ride out to Mountain View and a bus to the offices. And all we got were photos of Android! :p

It was cool to see the various Android figurines outside Building 44, and Jesse got photos with all of it, most importantly Icecream Sandwich which had only been released the day before.

Later we walked to the Computer History Museum. Pretty cool collection of old computers and its development. Interesting to note that most of the computers development was mainly in a 5 square miles radius in this area.

We got a lift back to town with Jesse's friend, and the geek debate continued in the car while I had a snooze in peak hour traffic. :)

-Y-

Alcatraz & Golden Gate Bridge

2011-10-17T01:26:00.001+08:00

The next morning we had organied a trip to Alcatraz - it was a beautiful day, with no fog and visibility was great so it was a perfect opportunity for photos. It was also rather hot tho, so we cooked while waiting in line but it was all worth it. Alcatraz is a big rock out in the middle of the bay overlooking San Francisco. They used it as a maximum security prison because it was remote and yet the image of SF being so close as well (much closer than rottnest!) gave the prisoners something to strive for. It wouldn't be a hard distance to swim, but the water temp (~13'C) and dangerous currents and rips made it almost impossible. There were many escape attempts during the years it was a prison, but no known escapees. Al Capone, The Birdman and others were imprisoned there and it was a dark, cold and creepy place. The audio tour was awesome though, with many of the original guards and even prisoners talking about their time there.

After Alcatraz we decided it was time to have lunch, so we hit the Boudin Sourdough Restaurant on Fishermans Wharf for a delicious Clam Chowder in a bread bowl. You get as much of their sourdough bread you can eat, and the Clam Chowder soup was delicious - the only thing is that they don't offer any Jam to go with the bread :)

We headed up to the Golden Gate Bridge after lunch, catching a bus up to the viewing point - the day was still clear and it was a perfect time to take photos of San Francisco's iconic bridge. We walked up along the bridge too, and got a few photos of the bay and the city from there as well.

After catching a bus ride back we went back to our hotel and went off to a restaurant in the Italian district that some fellow aussies we'd met the night before had recommended - Tony's Pizza - apparently an award winning restaurant and we thought we'd compare his creations to Little Caesars back in Perth. We tried the Fear and Loathing Pizza and it was delicious. Described as "pulled pork slow cooked with tamarind, serranos, habaneros, citrus and tomato over mozzarella, topped with fresh cactus, agave nectar salsa and queso fresco." - Obviously we had to try it and we weren't disappointed!!!

- J

2011-10-13T13:29:00.002+08:00

Yosemite National Park

We took a tour up to Yosemite National Park today. It was a long drive but well worth the trip. Great big sequoia trees, sugar pine trees in the old growth forest. By old they mean more than 800 years old! Great big tree trunks that would take 5-6 people to go around it. The national park itself is pretty impressive. El Capitan and Half Dome are apparently good spots for rock climbing, though we didn't spot anyone on it today. You've gotta be an expert to climb those rocks for sure! Definitely not for the faint hearted.

We weren't so adventurous, sticking to the standard baby hiking trails, going halfway up Verdun Falls and getting some nice shots from there of the Half Dome. Lots of squirrells running around and saw a couple of deers, which were quite happy to pose for photos (Photos to follow).

Alas time there was too short. If anyone is planning a trip to Yosemite, highly recommend trying to stay a night or two. We tried to book but it was sold out quite far in advance.

Later...
-Y

Enjoying San Francisco

2011-10-12T23:55:00.001+08:00

We've been in San Francisco for a few days now and been enjoying ourselves. Unfortunately we've had pretty limited net so far as the hotel's free wifi only works on the first level and drops out constantly, so its taken me a while to get some photos and posts up.
It hasn't stopped us from having fun though!

On Monday the weather changed and we had rain forecast throughout the day so Yumi and I decided to go visit the California Academy of Sciences at Golden Gate Park. We caught a bus out there and explored the place. The CAS comprises of an aquarium, planetarium, rainforest exhibit and national history museum all in one huge venue. Its the perfect place to hide out of the rain, though we weren't the only ones thinking that and because Monday was also Columbus Day in the US it was also full of kids! We had fun though - the place is pretty amazing and we spent the entire day exploring it.

That evening we caught up with one of my high school friends, Kirk and his girlfriend Katie, for dinner - enjoyed a lovely meal at a restaurant near his house and drank much wine. We also got to try one of the popular american dishes, Pulled Pork, which we both enjoyed.

Tuesday was fine and sunny again, so after brunch we headed out and decided to go and visit Sausalito - a town on the other side of the bay that has a feel much like Fremantle. We caught a ferry there from Pier 41 and experienced why they call SF ffog city. A huge bar of fog lay just off the coast of SF bay and it was like a grey bar on the horizon, obscuring everything. We went through it on the ferry to get to Sausalito and then couldn't see Sf on the other side, just the tips of some of the buildings above it. Alcatraz was completely obscured from both sides, as was the Golden Gate bridge.

Sausalito is a lovely town with nice shops and a relaxed kind of atmosphere so we enjoyed a nice chilled wander around before catching the ferry back once more. Yumi felt like crab for dinner so we looked up on Yelp to see who was good locally and decided on Scoma's Restaurant. Yumi had a whole Dungeness crab while I had Salmon on lobster ravioli. Both meals were delicious and Yumi thoroughly enjoyed her crab which she said was very fresh!
We had dessert at Ghiradelli square after that before catching the cable car home once more - this time we got inside the cab which was a lot nicer ride!

I've uploaded more photos to picasa now so you can check out the last few days. I also posted a video of Yumi enjoying her crab on Facebook so check that out too if you can :)

Off to Yosemite now.. will post more later!

Arrived in San Francisco safely

2011-10-12T23:28:00.001+08:00

Arrived safely in SF yesterday, managed to get some sleep on the flight so after a quick shower and change of clothes we had a quick wander around Union Square and then thought we'd catch a tram to Pier 39 and have a nice lunch. Nice idea, but we soon discovered that Fleet Week was on and the place was packed full of people wanting to see the Blue Angels doing their flight stunts.
We bravely waded through the crowds though and managed to have a nice seafood lunch on Pier 39 and then wandered up along Fishermans Wharf and after an hour long wait managed to catch a cable car ride back to our hotel. The cable car ride was fun, the big black "grip man" on the cable car kept a running commentary that was worth the $6 fare alone. We also took spots hanging on the side of the cable car - Yumi perched right at the front and me right behind her hanging onto the poles on the side and keeping an eye out for traffic! Yumi got a video of the trip and I'll try and upload it when I get a chance.
We had a good sleep when we got back to our hotel that night!

2011-10-11T01:21:00.000+08:00

Finally..... San Francisco!
After travelling through 2 times zones in 2 days, and reliving 9/10/11 again, we have arrived in San Francisco. Note to self: pick better flight connections for long haul flights! :)

We got in safely to San Francisco on a nice sunny afternoon. After checking into the Hotel Beresford, we wondered down to Union Square, then decided to head down to Pier 39 for lunch. It was Fleet Week, with an airshow on today, so we joined the crowds down at Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf to watch the aerial acrobatics and fighter jets flying by. Crowds of people lined up at the jetty and wharfs for the festivities.

We followed this by an interesting cable car ride back to Union square - and I mean interesting, I was right up the front, hanging off the side rails going up and down San Franciso hills! Had my camera doing a video throughout the 15 min ride, will post the video later when we have better internet.
-Y

Made it to Auckland

2011-10-09T04:56:00.001+08:00

Made it to the rugby obsessed Auckland safely. Was a short flight but confuses your body a lot because of the time zone changes. We left at 6.20pm and arrived at 5.15am the next morning but our bodies still think it's barely midnight as it's only a 6hr flight.
The city doesn't open until 9.30am, so we spend the first few hours pretty zonked out at the airport before we decided to catch a shuttle in to wander around. We're at a cafe on the waterfront right now enjoying a nice hot chocolate and coffee (and free wifi!) tho shops should be opening up about now so we'll go wandering again soon.

There's also this Rugby World Cup on here atm and the huge P&O Pacific Dawn cruise ship is in the harbour and so the place is busy. One good thing about a quick stop in NZ is cheap Merino wool stuff - one of my favourite brands, Icebreaker, has a store right at the airport and i plan on taking advantage of the strong AUD on the way out and pick up another pair of merino socks :)

We need to get back to the airport at 2pm so a few more hours to explore yet!
- J

Departing tomorrow

2011-10-07T22:35:00.001+08:00

So we leave tomorrow - the first leg of the trip is to San Francisco, via Auckland, NZ.

We have a 12hr stopover in Auckland before we continue on though, so it's going to be a good chance to explore Auckland (for a little while anyway) - we arrive around 6am and depart at 6pm that night.

Preparing to leave

2011-10-03T15:55:00.002+08:00

So we're getting everything ready for this big trip and figured we'd re-purpose this old blog for our US 2011 trip.

Bookmark this and we'll be sure to add more info as we leave!

We're Home!

2007-09-24T15:05:00.000+08:00

Well we're both back safely in Perth - we arrived just after midnight last night after 20 or so hours of flight, and then spent an hour or so in Customs queues before we were able to go home.

Final trip counter:

Jesse - 56 days in Europe
Yumi - 45 days in Europe

Still got a lot of photos to upload from London, will do this when I get settled in.

Stonehenge

2007-09-21T15:30:00.001+08:00

Stonehenge
Originally uploaded by radix999

Only two days left in London before we head back home. We've been really busy exploring England since we got here and been getting up so early and getting back so late that we haven't had time to sit down and go through photos and upload much.

Here's a quick summary of the things we've done since we got here:
* Walked through the west end and saw 10 Downing Street, Westminster Abbey, the Horse Guards changing, Big Ben, Scotland Yard
* Went up on Tower Bridge and got an awesome view and heard the history about it
* Had a Yeoman tour of London Tower and got to hear some of the history of the Castle.
* Walking tour of the London Square Mile - where the old city of London once stood and heard about the Great Fire of London, the Black Plague and the Blitz
* Exclusive shopping in Knightsbridge - Harrods, Harvey Nichols and all the expensive shops here.
* Visited Camden Markets - HUGE markets and spent ages browsing the stalls and buying nick-nacks.
* Got half price tickets and got to see a couple of theatre shows - Boeing Boeing and Stomp! - Both were great shows!
* Spent an entire day in the National History Museum
* Saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace
* Day Tour to Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, Bath (and the ancient Roman Baths)
* Day Tour to Oxford, including Christchurch - the place where sections of Harry Potter's Hogwarts were filmed and based on, Stratford-upon-Avon - the birthplace of Shakespeare, and Warrick Castle.
* Visited Greenwich Royal Observatory, saw the Greenwich Meridian Line, and visited the Planetarium.

Today we plan to do some shopping on Oxford Street and then tomorrow we'll be spending with my cousins and family before we head back to Perth!

We're in London!

2007-09-14T06:45:00.001+08:00

Big Ben
Originally uploaded by radix999

So here's a quick catch up as we haven't had time to write up anything about our lovely trip in Bagneres-de-Biggore yet or sort out the photos (of which I got some awesome ones too).

But in order to keep you guys up to date of where we are - yes, we're in London. We arrived late Tuesday night, and we've spent the last couple of days exploring the city of London as much as we could - so much so that our feet are sore and I'm far too tired to write up much more than this for the moment.
We're here until next Saturday - so we have about 8 days left of our trip before we start heading back home!

Rest assured - we will be posting more photos soon - so stay tuned!

Cognac

2007-09-09T02:02:00.001+08:00

Hennessy Cognac
Originally uploaded by radix999

We arrived in Angouleme yesterday and wandered around the city a bit the first night. We came here with the intention of taking a day trip to Cognac and doing a visit to one of the distilleries and seeing the Angouleme comics museum (which is what Angouleme is well known for)

We couldn't find any guided tours at the hotel, or any information about Cognac - so armed with very little knowledge we simply caught the train to this town and figured we'd walk around and see what we could find.
It took about 40 minutes to get there from Angouleme - and with our Eurail pass we didn't have to worry about tickets at all.
We had fun finding the city centre initially, but once we did we were able to find the Centre de Tourism and she their was an English tour of the Hennessy Distillery due to start in about 15 minutes.

The tour started off with a very brief boat ride - as the main Hennessy buildings were on the other side of the river. Our guide then showed us through the whole grape growing, distilling, cooperage, and aging process.
Fascinating to think that some of the barrels there have been aging for over two hundred years and still haven't aged enough according to the guys in charge - you can see the barrels in a couple of shots there from 1800.
After the tour we were given a chance to taste the different types of Cognac - and Yumi and I got to try all three types on offer:

VS - Very Special - is the youngest of them all, 3-4 years old and suitable for long drinks, cocktails and mixes.
Fine de Cognac - similar to VSOP in age (5-6 years), but a little sweeter and smoother - quite popular among the ladies apparently.
XO - Extra Old - aged more than 10 years - is the oldest and richest of the lot - sweeter and stronger, but also somewhat smoother.

We enjoyed the tastings, but I think both of us decided that Cognac wasn't really our thing - still nice to try though!
After that we wandered around the city of Cognac a bit more - checked out the markets and shops and had a nice lunch before catching the train back to Angouleme.

Tomorrow we're going to spend wandering around Angouleme a bit more, and then we head further south to Patrick's place in Bagneres-de-Biggore (about 30 minutes from Lourdes).

Brussels, Belgium

2007-09-08T05:09:00.001+08:00

Mannekin Pis
Originally uploaded by radix999

Next stop Brussels!

From Berlin we took the ICE trains ( intercity express ) to Brussels. They go at speeds of up to 250km/hr, pretty fast! And comfortable too. We were fortunate enough to be in one of the front cabins, and got to see through the train driver's window of the landscape zooming past in a blur.
Brussels is famous for chocolates, beer and Belgian lace. It is also the EU headquarters and the centre of Europe. It is a multicultural city, evident as soon as you step foot in it, with a strong African influence thrown in. What was unexpected was how grimy and dirty the city looked. Lots of graffiti everywhere, streets are dirty, watch out for the very frequent dog poo, lots of chewing gum stains, in short irst impressions are not very good. Granted we were in the older part of the city, but still... Anyhow, we did the usual touristy things and visited the famous Grote Market ( Grand Place ) with its square of beautiful old 17th century buildings on all four sides, and artists peddling their wares in the centre with restaurants on the sides, perfect for sitting down and enjoying the famous Belgian beers and people-watching.

Wandered through the streets to the Royal Palace, with its well manicured gardens, and of course the Grand Sablon area which is the yuppie area with cafes and antique stores. Must not forget the chocolates too! Heaps of shops selling chocolates in all sorts of combination deals, and the handmade ones too. Tried some champagne truffles, which were delicious! Didn't really get into the beer testing, although Jesse did try the Leffe Blonde and Hooegarten. There is just simply too many beers to sample. A couple of the streets are similar to the Latin Quarter in Paris, with restaurants lining the streets, all competing for customers, and some pretty decent meal deals. We had dinner in Le Petit Brussels, which was very nice, and a glass of complementary Grappa was thrown in at the end of our meal. Grappa is a liquor made from grapes, smells like vodka but tastes much better. Apparently it aids digestion! :)

Next we're off to Angouleme, in the South-West of France.

- YM

No Stilettos in Europe!!

2007-09-07T17:47:00.001+08:00

7" Stiletto
Originally uploaded by nicole_lashes

This is for the ladies... all over Europe, lots of the places, especially the older historical sites all have cobblestones, big ones, little ones, square ones, round ones... It is all UNEVEN cobblestones, which would made it so very hard to walk around in stilettos or even really high heels! So, remember to pack that pair of flat shoes or joggers if you do not want to ruin that pair of lovely stilettos or an ankle! :P

- YM

Berlin

2007-09-07T17:39:00.001+08:00

Checkpoint Charlie
Originally uploaded by radix999

After dropping off our gear at the hotel, we grabbed a couple of maps from the foyer of the hotel and set off for a place to get dinner from. We took the advice from the lady at the desk and got directions to the local U-Bahn around the corner and got off in Stadmitte.
We wandered up the streets in search of somewhere to eat and came across Checkpoint Charlie and got a history lesson instead.
Checkpoint Charlie was the name given to the checkpoint where the American Sector and the Soviet Sector met. This was where the faceoff between American and Soviet tanks took place during the cold war and the centre of the Iron Curtain really.
They have a whole block full of placards with info on the history and you can see where the Berlin wall ran through this sector. Fascinating history simply because it happened in my lifetime! The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 - and divided the city (and family, friends, businesses) until 1989 when it finally came down.
We had a nice meal in a restaurant in the area then headed back to the hotel and got a good nights sleep.

The next day we woke up to find the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and it was rainy and quite cold for most of the day. The wind was icy, and we found we needed our jackets zipped up for most of the day.
We bought a CityTourCard each (14.90 euros) each which gave us 48 hours unlimited travel on public transport - and this would cover us fully for the rest of our stay in Berlin.
We headed to Hausvogtel Platz hoping to wander along city streets and look at shops, but instead found ourselves in the middle of a construction zone. We saw the TV tower, so headed towards that and eventually found the shopping areas as well as a few of the sights of the area, including Berliner Dom, Lustgarten, Neptune Fountain, Berlin Town Hall (big Red Building) and Alexanderplatz.
We went up to the top of the TV Tower and had a nice view from up here at the 203m high viewing platform of Berlin. The outside windows were glass (and dirty unfortunately) - but we got a few shots and gave us a good idea of where everything was situated.
I did a little shopping in Alexanderplatz and got to looking at small digital cameras in the local electronics shop as they had a number on sale. Certainly on this trip I've thought more than once that a small compact camera would be a good complement to my digital SLR and handy when you don't want to carry a big one around. Main thing here being size really. After looking at all of them I kept coming back to a tiny little Samsung L77 camera - 7 megapixel with a 7x optical zoom - very impressive considering it's incredibly small size. I had a play with it and found the menu system to be easy to follow and ended up picking one up for $299 euros (~AU$500) and also picked up a spare battery, 2GB SD memory card and a little Crumpler pocket pouch to keep it safe in. I should also get $42 euros back at the border thanks to their tax free refund system.
Next we took the S-Bahn to Unter Den Linden and got to view the Brandenburg Gate with its huge columns and 4 horse chariot on top. Brandenburg gate is a bit of a symbol for the city and where the soldiers marched triumphantly after the successful Prussian wars.
When Napoleon brought Germany to its knees he marched his army through here also and took the statue on top back to France as a trophy. It was eventually restored and Hitler paraded his troops through here before sending them off to war.
We also wandered around the Reichstag (Seat of Parliament) and got some lovely photos of the sun setting on the Reichstag building.
One interesting thing to note is that prettymuch everything in Berlin was destroyed during the war and has been repaired or reconstructed since. This means it has both a modern feel in a lot of areas, while some areas of historical note have been preserved still. It provides an interesting mix of old and new.

We headed to Potsdamer Platz after that for dinner before catching the U-bahn back to the hotel.

The next day in Berlin was very cold - I decided to give my new camera a workout today - so all the photos I've uploaded for today are from it - it's pretty nifty - not great at taking indoor shots or low light unfortunately, but outdoors it's excellent.
The wind was incredibly chilly and the weather report said a max of 15'C during the day - feels like Winter has started already. First stop was Kunferstendamm (or Ku-damm for short). This was the location of the Emperor Wilhelm Memorial Church, and was damaged by bombing in 1943 with only the west tower remaining and left as it is as an anti-war memorial. Surrounding it are new and modern buildings and a large shopping area. Ku-damm was the city centre for West Berlin.

We headed to Potsdamer Platz after that and wandered the streets in search of Hitlers Bunker. This place was destroyed during the war, and was turned into apartment blocks while under East German rule. The whole street is something of a historical walk though - with signs every couple of hundred metres containing a little history about what was there previously. We strolled along here for a while until we got to the British Embassy and then Brandenburg Gate.
We jumped on the S-bahn once more and this time we hwaded to Nordbahnhof to see the remains of the Berlin wall - a section of the wall is preserved here and known as the East Side Gallery. There is also a building here that offers a view of it from above and has an exhibition displaying the history of the Berlin wall including pictures and videos.

Next stop from here was the Seigesaulle (Victory Column) - which we got to by catching the S-Bahn to Bellevue and then walked through the park a bit. This is an impressive statue of gold and it looked beautiful in the sunlight (with some scary storm clouds behind) and made for an impressive picture. The Siegesaulle lies in a direct line from the Brandenburg gate, and it's along this stretch that the soldiers would march as the headed off to war. I climbed up to the top of the tower here (Yumi was getting pretty tired of me wanting to climb up to the top of everything by this point and stayed below) and got a few shots from up top.

We headed off back to the hotel after that as it started to rain once more and was getting dark.

Prague Museum at Night

2007-09-07T02:01:00.001+08:00

Prague Museum at Night
Originally uploaded by radix999

The train ride was nice, smooth and relatively uneventful. It was an interesting contrast leaving Austria and entering the Czech Republic - as we saw a lot of derelict houses that looked like they'd been damaged in the last world war and still hadn't been repaired or destroyed.
Our train arrived at Praha-Holsoevice - not the main station, so our plan was to get into central Prague, get a map, and figure out where our hotel was in relation to everything. Of course we had no local currency, so a visit to an ATM gave me some cash. Czech Crowns are worth 1/16th of an Aussie dollar, so I withdrew a thousand crowns (about AUD$75) from the ATM and then had to go to the local shop to buy a couple of drinks to split it up (it gave me a single 1000Kc note!) as we needed coins to pay for a metro ticket to the city.

We got a map also, but ended up asking for some help as to which station to get off - turns out that I.P. Pavlova station was the closest to the hotel, so we got off there and it was right next to the hotel which was convenient (except that there was no lift to get our luggage up, so we had to lug them up the steps.

Once settled in our hotel, we were able to dump our things, relax a bit and then - as it was already early evening by this point we wandered around looking for somewhere to eat. We found a lovely pub around the corner called Legenda Pub, with great food, cheap beer and nice atmosphere. I ordered a local Czech beer - Staropramen - which was lovely and ended up having a couple of half-litre glasses. They were dirt cheap too - a half-litre of beer was 27Kc - or about AU$1.70. And it was cheaper to get a half-litre of beer than it was to get a small 250ml bottle of orange juice here (the OJ was 28Kc)!!

After a nice relaxed meal, we headed back to the hotel to plan the next day and get some sleep.

We decided that since we only had the one day in Prague, we'd take a couple of tours and that way get to see a bit more of it all.
We booked a Konopiste Castle Tour which started first, and then a Grand City Tour for the afternoon.

First stop, Konopiste castle - home of the Crown Prince Archduke Francis Ferdinand who was assassinated in Sarajevo together with his wife. This event was what sparked off World War I!

The Castle was about 45km drive south of Prague - and is a surprisingly modern castle with one of the worlds first hydraulic lifts. It was built in the 13th century and based on the french castles of the time - but was unusual in that it had 7 defensive towers (most similar castles only had one!) - so it was very secure at the time, though most of the towers are in ruins now.
Archduke Ferdinand loved collecting and hunting, and collected an incredible number of trophies. Apparently he killed something close to 3 million animals during his lifetime, of which he had trophies on his wall for something like 450,000 of them - these included deer, goats, boars, and bears - and his walls were adorned with the things - including furs for his floors. He even had several elephant tails hanging up and a couple of rubbish bin made from a elephant feet! Animal conservationists will not enjoy this place.

In addition to his trophy collection, he also had a substantial weapons and armoury collection - including a number of rooms full of suits of armor, pistols, rifles, swords and daggers.
He had installed special viewing cabinets for all of these, and had even installed electricity throughout the castle for lighting and he'd built 12 modern bathrooms, central heating. Quite impressive for its time and the archduke was a pretty forward thinking man.
Archduke Ferdinand was a member of the Habsburg family, and was next in line to be the Holy Roman Emperor of Austria - however he fell in love with the lovely Countess Sophia - who was much beneath him in the social hierarchy of the time. In order for them to get married, he had to sign an agreement that his children would not inherit the the throne or have any social standing because of him.

After the castle tour we headed back to the city and were dropped off at Wencelas Square - the middle of the Neuvo Mesto - or New City. We wandered around for a while before heading back to the hotel to grab our rain jackets (as it was raining a bit) and then got picked up for the next tour of the city. This one took us through the old town (Stare Mesto), including National Theatre, Lesser Town Square, Jewish Quarter, Charles Bridge, and then we headed up the hills to see St Vitus Cathedral and Prague Castle.
Prague Castle had the same architect as did Schonbrunn Palace. Again, quite a modern castle, as most of it was destroyed in the war and rebuilt since.
Prague has quite a few castles really - there are apparently over 200 castles belonging to the nobility here.
We ended the tour in the evening and wandered through the streets of Stare Mesto together and had dinner in a sidewalk cafe overlooking the main square. Note for anyone considering the same in future - check the beer prices - we discovered that the beer prices in the same restaurant alone changed considerably based on where you were sitting. This place charged 24Kc for a half-litre beer in the beer garden, 28Kc for the same beer in the restaurant itself, and if you were sitting out the front with a view then they charged you a whopping 67Kc!
Still a cheap beer by Aussie standards, but you might want to do any serious drinking in the garden out back!

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Prague, and wish we'd organised to stay a bit longer - things were pretty cheap here compared to everywhere else and we had fun. Prague is a lively place, with Wencelas Square all busy and modern, with the occasional old building with beautiful facades peeking out, though there are still many buildings abandoned and run down also if you wander down a side street.
This country is still recovering from it's communist reign, so things are developing rapidly.

I had a good laugh at the local english here a bit - just over the road from our hotel was a Pizza place called 'Pizza Go Home' which gave me a good chuckle.

The next day we had to say goodbye to Prague and we caught the train from Praha-Holesovice to Berlin.
One helpful tip when travelling Europe - reserve seats ahead of time - it will cost you - perhaps 8-10 euros, but it means you get seats of your own - there were heaps of people on this train wandering past looking for unreserved seats. Because we reserved our seats we prettymuch had the whole cabin of 6 seats to ourselves for most of the trip.
The only person who joined us was a young guy called Daniel who got on in Dresden and was heading to Berlin to start a new job the next day. He had a map of Berlin and advised us to get off at Berlin-Sudkreuz and then catch an S-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz - then a short walk to the hotel from there.
We did follow his advice, but what looked like a short walk on the map turned out to be a 1km or so while hauling our luggage along on a mix of cobblestone and paved streets before we got to the hotel - good exercise at least!

Vienna

2007-09-04T05:13:00.001+08:00

Girls in National Austrian Dress
Originally uploaded by radix999

Early morning flight to Vienna! Had a little scare at the airport when they asked for a visa with my passport. As far as I was aware, I did not need a visa to enter Austria with a Malaysian passport, unless the rules and regulations had changed in the last week!! After some checking, I was allowed to fly to Austria. They had made a mistake. Whew!!

Flight in to Vienna was good. We checked in and headed into the city to wander aimlessly around. Stumbled upon the Film Festival that was going on at the time, but unfortunately it was all in a foreign language. Further along there was a country fair, with various beers and local delicacies for sale. We had fun sampling the local food. Later had a typical dinner of Weiner Schintzel ( crumbed pork fillet ) and potato salad and salad.

Jesse's off to his conference full of computer geeks, while I go and wander through the city of Vienna. Caught the Hop On, Hop Off tour, which takes me to the various sites in Vienna. Spent most of my day in Schonbrunn Palace, home to the powerful Hapsburg family of olden times Austrian Empire. It was originally a hunting lodge, renovated by Empress Maria-Theresa into a palace. she was the last Hapsburgh to rule Austria. Interesting thing was she ruled the Austraian Empire, while her husband Emperor Francis Joseph was content to devote his time to science and gardening. she implemented improvements for her people, starting mandatory education for all children, pretty forward thinking for her time (18th century). Beautiful palace, though not as lavish as Versailles Palace. But on a more practical scale, with various rooms decorated in different themes, such as one done up in Chinese lacquer, Blue china room etc. It has a beautiful garden ( see photos ) and the Imperial Zoo is also housed here. It is the oldest Zoo, started in Emperor Francis Joseph's time.

Later in the evening Jesse and I went on an evening tour, taking us to have a ride on the Giant Ferris Wheel in Prater. It is over 100 years old, with little cabins holding up to 20 people to sit in and see Vienna by night. Then its a little drive to the town of Grinzing, to a wine tavern for traditional Viennese fare accompanied by music and opera and of course a waltz in the city where the waltz was first started.

St Stephen's Cathedral is another landmark in Vienna, unfortunately it is undergoing refurbishments at the moment, so photos of it include construction works. It has 2 towers, with one tower housing a large bell that you can go up and see. Though I think it would be a good thing not to be up there when the bell rings on the hour!! :P

Vienna has heaps of other museums, such as the Natural History Museum, Impressionists art Museum in the Belvedere Palace, Musical Instruments Museum, too many to mention! I had had quite enough of museums and art and churches by this time, and decided I would just simply wander through the streets and see what I see. It was a pleasant change, wandering aimlessly through the little side streets, you see quirky little buildings, turn round a corner and there's a fountain, beautiful facedes to the buildings, nice little sidewalk cafes ( yes, I actually stopped and sat down for some Viennese coffee and did nothing for 45 minutes!! ).

Had dinner with Jesse and his conference mates, a whole restaurant full of computer geeks and undiluted computer talk, in various different languages!! Shudder!! I survived it though! :P

- YM

Paris

2007-09-04T05:12:00.001+08:00

IMG_7742
Originally uploaded by radix999

After a relaxing time in Switzerland, we head to Paris.

Took the better part of the day to get there, and headed straight into the heart of Paris, the Notre Dame de Paris. Beautiful Gothic style church set in the centre island of the Seine River, 93m high and 442 steps to the top of the church. We were fortunate enought to witness mass at the Notre Dame de Paris. There were 2 priests with an altar girl singing hymms accompanied by pipe organs. Absolutely awe inspiring to see and hear.

Later wandered down to the Latin Quarter, so called because this is where Latin was thought in the University in years gone by. Tiny little streets, which is typical of old Paris, lined with cheap restaurants and souvenier shops. Had dinner of escargots here... baked snails in garlic and butter, delicious!!

Later joined up with the tour group again for a drive to the main sights of Paris, stopping at the Eiffel Tower for photos. Later we had a relaxing cruise down the Seine River, which criss-crossed Paris. Buildings were illuminated, and we got to se the Loueve, Notre Dame de Paris from a different perspective. The highlight was at the end of the Cruise, with the Eiffel Tower lighting up with thousands of little fairy lights as we docked. A very romantic city.

Full day in Paris and last day of tour. Start ff with a drive around Paris to see more of the landmark sights, Arch D'triumph, Opera House. Place de la Concorde ( oldest obelisk at 7000 hrs old ), Champs Elysees ( street full of designer shops ) , Hotel des Invalides ( originally a hostel for war veterans, now a war museum ), Museum D'orsay ( impressionist ar museum, oiginally a train station ), St Joan of Arc statute ( in gold, I wander people don't actually try and steal it, its just by the street side?? ), Musee de Loueve.

We visited the Loueve, a large museum in Paris, holding more than 4000 art pieces in 19km of corridors. The highlights in the Loueve was the Mona Lisa, The Winged triumph, Venus de Milo and Napolean's Apartment. THis was just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much art and history in this building. You could spend a week in here and maybe, just maybe see all the art pieces here. The Loueve was originally a palace, but it was not grand enough, so King Louis built a newer, grander, bigger one in Versailles. GOt to see the spots in the Loueve made famous in The Da Vinci code. There is even a Da Vinci Code tour for die-hard fans!

The grand finale to the tour was a cabaret show, La Nouvelle Eve, meaning New Year's eve, serving a 4 course dinner and a lovely drop of Bordeoux wine. Stunning show with dancing, singing, mimes, acrobat, and trapeezee act. Busy taking photos of everyone as it was the last night. Back at the hotle for a nightcap and a chat to the lovely people we'd met on tour.

Another rainy day in Paris. It had been raining since we arrived here. THe locals say it is unusual for summer. Despite the rain we decided to visit Sacre Couer Basilica in Montmarte. Fairly easy to understand the rail system in Paris. Sacre Couer Basilican is a church set on a little hill in Montmarte. QUite a few steps to go up to it but gives a decent view of Paris. After that we wandered through the streets of MOntmarte, lots of souvenier shops and artists plying their trade. Some gorgeous paintings being sold in the market square.

With the weather clearing a bit more and the top of Eiffel Tower visible again, we went to join the massive queues to go up to the top. Spent two hours in the queue to get to middle point of the tower, and another half hour to get to the top of the tower at 1072 ft high. Brilliant view from the top, being able to pick out the famous landmark points in the city. Check out our pictures!

French McDonald's for brunch! Quite a nice treat. You get orange juice, tea/coffee, yoghurt with fruits, bacon and egg McMuffin, and 3 little French pastries. Keeps you going for a while! After filling our belly off to find a train to Versailles, to visit the Chateau, the famous palace that replaced the Loueve as the royal palace, built by King Louis 13th. Another show of the royal family's extravagance and waste of resources! Huge spread of a palace with paintings on the ceilings, elaborate carvings, marble columns, gold gilded furnishings, even a Hall of Mirrors ( mirrors were new and expensive during that time ). He had his rooms built in the centre of the palace, facing the rising sun, hence the nickname the Sun King. What was most interesting is that this palace has an extensive garden of 7800 hectres originally, but is now reduced to 780 hectres. Fully manicured gardens with mazes, a canal that holds up to 9 battle ships ( because King Louis wanted to re-enact naval battles in his backyard, just for fun! ),99 fountains, and Marie-Antoinette's personal gardens as well. Imagine the size and scope of just the gardens!

Las day in Paris, and we were more than ready to see the next country! Visited Hotel des Invalides, which is a war museum. MOst interesting was Napolean's tomb, which is housed in a chapel here. The tomb is set in the middle of the chapel, from the top you have to look down, just like bowing to him. From the crypt you have to look up at the tomb, putting him in a superior position. I bet Napolean liked that! :)

Slow stroll through the Tuilerries Gardens ( coz Jesse had developed a blister the size of Australia by now!!!), part of the LOueve which is open to the public. Beautiful statues, manicured lawns, family with kids playing in the park, lovely fountains, kids playing sailboats in the fountains and even lucky enough to catch the last few days of a fair in the Tuilerries Garden. Took a ferris wheel ride, which gave us a great view of Paris.

Good bye Paris, hello Vienna!!

Switzerland

2007-09-04T05:11:00.001+08:00

IMG_8810
Originally uploaded by radix999

After the hustle and bustle of Italy, the differences with Switzerland is even further highlighted. Switzerland, land of chocolates, cheese and Swiss army knives.

We spent most of the day on the bus, taking almost 10 hours to get from Rome to Switzerland. There was a fair bit of traffic as the Italians were all heading home after the end of summer holidays. Beautiful picture postcard perfect scenery along the way, so didn't mind the drive so much. We passed countless tunnels, roads built into the side of the mountains, a 17km long tunnel where the weather could be different from one side of the mountain to the other, hidden lakes in the valley, low hanging clouds in parts of the mountains, absolutely stunning! We stopped at Lake Lugano for a quick photo stop, then on to the town of Stans, just outside Lucern.

Quick drop off for luggage and then we were taken for a horse drawn carriage ride in the little town of Giswil. We had a pleasant ride through the country side, and later afternoon tea of Swiss delicacies prepared for us. It was so peaceful and pretty, fresh country air, nice change after the hectic pace.

Now Switzerland is interesting, if all the mountainous land was ironed out, it would be as big as France. It is well prepared for attacks. All males over 21 must undergo military training, and go for refreshed courses every year. Each one is issued with a gun and ammunition ( so don't go offending the Swiss guys!! Could be dangerous! :P ) Their airfields are camoflouged with grass growing over the, anti-aircraft guns are secreted in the mountains, some tunnels are apparently fully equipped to be bomb shelters. How's that for paranoia for a neutral country!!?? Swiss bank accounts are anonymous, no names, just account numbers, however does required a minimum of A$500,000 to open and account though!

Day two Switzerland.

It was a rather cool summer's day. We took the cable cars from the town of Klein up to the top of Mt PIlatus at 7000 ft. The first stage of cable cars seats 4 persons, going gently up the mountains. Two stops later we hit the halfway point, and switch to a larger cable car, holding up to 30 person. This one heads straight up the steep face of the mountain. Being a misty cloduy day, all I could see was cable lines disappearing into the misty nothingness. For someone who is afraid of heights... It started getting pretty cold by that time. The top of the mountain was 6C, and we were greeted by a white wall of mist. Definitely not a good day to be up here. Visibility was not more than 5m in front of you. Occasionally we could see glimpses of steep cliff faces. Had a walk through the caves supposedly housing the Mt Pilatus dragon, there were also walks along hte mountain sides, but with limited visibility and only half an hour at the top,, we stayed in the main courtyard. Trip down the mountain we could see more, going down in the world's steepest cogwheel train, built in the 1800's and still working till this day. The train chugged along at a maximum of 9km/hr, the steepest incline was 48 degress, but mainly at 33 degrees. This took us into the town of Alphanstad.

Lunch in Lucern, or Luzern as the local call it. We had a cultural show and lunch in Stadkeller, with traditional folk show of yodelling, broomstick banging, alphanhorn, accordion playing, flag throwing, cow bell ringing, and a really unique one was with a saw and woodstick, picking out the tune to Edelweiss. Jesse had a try of the alphanhorn, and managed to get out a tune.

All day it had been raining, fairly cold and gloomy. Happy hour cruise in the evening on Lake Lucern, a bit washed out but we still had fun. It would have been an even better view over the lake, but we still managed to get some photos.

In the evening we had some free time before dinner, so decided to wander around the town of Stans. Headed up the church square and up a little lane, could hear the cowbells ringing, beautiful view over the town and the mountains. green green grass wherever you looked, and fresh cool country air, laced with cow manure of course! :)

- YM

Quirky Italy

2007-09-04T05:08:00.001+08:00

IMG_8216
Originally uploaded by radix999

A few things of note in Italy which is interesting:

1. There are no toilet seats! Its true, there are normal toilets, but no seats on them. Not sure why, whether they could not afford to but the seats, or like the cold porcelein, they have a perfectly good toilet with no seats!
2. The cord - hotel bathrooms in Italy have a cord that seems to serve no particular purpose, and the inquisitive person would yank it to see what happens. DON'T!! We were thankfully warned by the tour guide that it is an emergency call if you pull the cord. So unless you would like hotel staff to come crashing in to your hotel room or bathroom wandering what the emergency is, whatever you do, do not pull that cord! Hmm.... kinda makes you wonder whats so dangerous in Italian hotels that they need an emergency cord.
3. Tiny little hotel toilets - you can literally go to the toilet, brush your teeth and shower at the same time. And if you drop your soap in the shower, you have to open the shower stall to bend down and pick it up, unless of course you can contort your body enough in that tiny little space!
4. Bathsheets - now this is a new one for me. They use bath sheets instead of towels. Now you could be mistaken that the hotel staff had had a bad day and put the sheets for the bed in the toilet instead, some of it were that large. But it is what they use instead of towels. Interesting...

- YM

Florence

2007-09-04T05:06:00.001+08:00

Michelangelo's David
Originally uploaded by radix999

A pleasant 4 hour drive from Rome to Florence, or Firenze as the Italians call it. First off up to the top of the hill for a view of the whole of Firenze. Great lookout point, with a copy of the statue of Michaelangelo's David on top. Then we headed into the city to meet up with the loca tour guide for a tour of the city.

We start out at the Accademia Museum, where Michaelangelo's work is on display. Michaelangelo had quite a few unfinished pieces of work there, marble statues that were only partially finished. They've nicknamed them "prisoners". as they will never be "released" from the marble. Even unfinsihed, you could imagine the potential those sculptures had. And then we were shown the original statue of David, as in David and GOliath of the Bible.This stand as a symbol of justice for the Florentines in the town square, Piazza del Signoria. It stands in front of the old Medici Palace, now the town hall and mayor's office. The original is in Accademia Museum to protect it from the elements. The details on the statue is amazing, muscle tone, veins on the hands, tendons showing on the legs, absolutely stunning! And its all made out of one single piece of marble. It is also well balanced, the tree trunk on the bottom serves to help stabilise the whole statue.

Then we head out to see the Bell Tower and church. The church is made out of five different types of coloured marble. It is not painted at all. The dome is accessible by over 400 steps, with air vents in the dome for archetectural reasons. Next to the church is a Baptism building. The door is made out of 24ct gold, with eight panels, each depicting a story from the Bible. The original has since been removed and placed in a museum, with a replica in the Baptism building now for tourists to admire.

Florence is famous for its leather works and gold filigree. We visited Peruzzi leather factory, large store but bad service! Also look out for Chianti wine in the Florence region. It is very nice, but watch out for the rooster symbol for the genuine stuff.

- YM

We're in Vienna...

2007-08-29T19:39:00.000+08:00

Well we're in Vienna, and I'm attending the YAPC::Europe conference here while Yumi explores Vienna by herself.
We've have both been too busy to update the blog much of late, but I have managed to upload a heap of photos while connected to the WU university connection at the conference, so if you want some photos (without commentary) - then check them out as they should be almost up-to-date now.
Last night we went to a Wine Tavern Serenade Tour - an evening tour by one of the local companies which took us to the Reisenrad (giant ferris wheel) built here in 1897, where we had a ride and then to a lovely little wine tavern where we had a meal and listened to musicians and opera singers sing for us - it was lovely.

We've booked train tickets to go to Prague on Friday, and we've organised our accommodation as well, so that's going to be our next stop on this trip - then Berlin after that (though we've yet to book anything for that part of the trip yet)

Will add more when I can.

Rome - Day 2: Vatican and the Colloseum

2007-08-25T14:40:00.001+08:00

Colloseum
Originally uploaded by radix999

A full day in Rome!!

Early start at 7.30am heading to the Vatican. We get to go in before it opens to the public at 10am. That's one of the advantages of going in a tour group. Despite that, it was still a fair queue of bus loads of people from various tour groups.

We met up with Carlo, who would be our local tour guide for the day. Cheerful Italian guy, who was an absolutely excellent tour guide. You could almost believe that he was one of the Romans, hearing him talk about the Colloseum.

Now the Vatican is a country inside Rome. It is the world's smallest country at 1118sqm, with the Pope as head of state. A fair bit of security there, with visitors having to go through metal detectors and x-ray screening of bags. The crowd was fairly thick by now, even though it was only open to tour groups, and being a hot day outside, it was really warm. Each of us had our 'FBI headsets' on, to enable us to follow what the tour guide was saying in the noisy crowds. Really cool idea as it means everyone can hear clearly and the guide does not have to shout.

We started at the Marble statues, followed by the cool tapestry room. This particular areas was air-conditioned to protect the delicate tapestries. Huge pieces of art hanging up on the walls, absolutely stunning. Following on to that was the Geographical Maps Room, a long corridor lined with painted maps of each section of the world on the walls. Interesting to see and I tried to pick out Malaysia on one of them. It had a similar shape, based on the other countries around it. The big highlight was the Sistine Chapel. No photography was allowed in this area, just time to admire and absorb the beauty of the place. Michaelangelo took 4 years to complete the big wall painting, and a further 3 years to complete his painting of the ceiling. Each had its own story to tell from the bible, which was explained quite extensively by Carlo, allowing those of us who are not 100% familiar with the Holy Bible to gain a better understanding of the paintings. In the bottom right corner of the wall painting, Michaelangelo was quite naughty, and painted the face of one important person he did not particularly like in hell. Artistic license, eh?

Next we went down to the burial chambers under the Vatican. This is where the Popes and important Catholic kings and queens are buried. Each had their own sarcophagus elaborately decorated. This is where Pope John Paul rests as well. He had a marble headstone with potted plants surrounds it, very nice.

After this we head over to St Peter's Basilica, passing the Pope's personal Swiss body guards. The Pope has Swiss body guards who serve him for 2 years only. The Swiss are renowned for their mercenary skills, and historically have been hired to protect Kings and castles. Interesting though they had on some really funny uniforms, colourful and striped and almost clown-like. They did have pretty cool gold swords though, and quite good looking! :P

St Peter's Basilica is the biggest church in the Western world. When you stand just outside the doors of the church, you are flanked by 2 of the most influential Emperors for Catholicism. Inside the church, there is a throne for St Peter straight ahead, being lifted by 4 personages from the Bible ( sorry I do not remember their names, maybe my Catholic friends can help fill this in? ) and a dove with stained glass, giving it a haloed effect above the throne. When the light from the sun hits those stained glass windows the whole church is illuminated, reflecting off the gilded paneling inside the Church. To the left is a Baptism fountain ( no water now though ) and to the right is a statue of the Virgin Mary holding on to Jesus Christ after his crucifixion. This symbolises the Holy trinity, water/baptism, blood and we see the light. I was very impressed with the whole story line for the decorations inside the church. On the top of the church there are letters 7 feet high, made out of mosaic, although it looks almost painted. This was why it does not fade, as it is not paint.

After our tour of St Peters Square we had some free time. The restaurants and cafes in the Vatican are extremely expensive - don't be surprised if you get charged 6 euros for a glass of orange juice in this neighbourhood! So we walked along...mind you it was a very hot day, in search of cheaper food.

Not far away from St Peter's Basilica, there is St Angelo's Palace, with a full moat and all. We didn't get to visit this place, just a quick drive by. However, what is interesting is that St Peter's Basilica had a secret tunnel to St Angelo's Palace, in case the Pope was attacked he cold escape via this route. Cool stuff! It'd certainly be interesting if they opened up this secret tunnel for people to visit!

Then we hop on the bus to be driven in air-conditioned comfort to the Collosseum. What an amazing structure!! It is located smack in the middle of the city, so there are roads and cars driving past it every day! Imagine that... This place was slowly being vandalised and torn apart. One of the Pope's wanted to save this structure, so he declared that Christian blood had been spilled here, during its days of glory when it was used as a fight-to-the-death ring, so it was considered scared ground. There is no documented evidence of this, but nevertheless, a cross was erected in the Colloseum and it was a crime to further tear apart this amazing place. Thus the Colloseum could be preserved till this day for us to admire. Its actual name is Amphitheatrvm Flavim.

The cobblestones surrounding it is put on an iron spike and then driven into the ground. The hot metal contracts, leaving loose space, hence allowing it vibrate if there was an earthquake, thereby preserving the structure. Pretty smart for thousands of years ago!

The Colloseum itself is made of limestone, with lead poured into the centre to strengthen it. It was then covered with marble pieces, secured by iron rods, hence the holes in it, as per the pictures. The marble has since been "recycled", i.e. torn down during the time when it was vandalised and used in other buildings built in olden times. The top floors are made of brick, layered into thick brick walls. The floor was built upon a labyrinth of little corridors. This enabled them to flood the area for water themed performances, or to let exotic animals out from cages during a fight as a surprise element. A rather bloody and cruel practice, but that was what the Colloseum was all about. It is really amazing, you have to be there to truly experience it!! Helps that we were shown the movie Gladiator before we got to Rome!

All in a very very tiring day, plus the heat had us all exhausted, but very satisfied being able to see these little glimpses of history.

Note: in Rome, it is common to see the old ruins that has been excavated, left there to be seen. Current day Rome is built upon olden day Rome, hence this city cannot have an underground subway system, as there is countless archaeological sites beneath this city that will never be excavated and explored, due to the buildings on it now.

- YM

Rome - Day 1

2007-08-23T23:24:00.000+08:00

23rd July - Update: Hi everyone - brief rundown - we're in Paris at the moment and now finished our tour - however we've had very little internet access during most of the tour and we've also been so busy the entire trip too - so not had time to go through all the photos yet, upload them or finish writing our blog entries for each of the places. I hope to get a chance to do this over the next week now that things have slowed down a bit. We said farewell to our Trafalgar friends this morning and got four more days in Paris before we're off to Vienna.

Rome!

A bit of a sleep in this morning and then we drove off to Rome. Spent most of the day in the bus really, arriving in Rome at 4.30pm. After a brief rest at our hotel (Hotel La Pergola) we headed into the city centre to do our optional tour of Rome.
We got dropped off near the Spanish Steps (all 132 of them) - the main meeting place of Rome. We were given headsets so we could wander around a bit from the guide while still hearing directions and given a history tour of the place.
Now the Spanish steps is not only a common meeting place for couples, but also where up-and-coming actors hope to get noticed by movie directors or picked up by talent scouts. Major fashion labels also get launched here, with models parading down here.

We headed down designer row after this for some window shopping - with brands like Dior, YSL, Gucci, Prada, Bvlgari, Salvatore Ferrogamo, Valentino, etc. We finally arrived at Trevi fountain, truly an incredible display - and certainly jumps out at you as soon as you round the corner and feast your eyes on the beautiful marble statues and flowing water. Absolutely amazing.
The local superstition goes that you can throw three coins into the Trevi fountain for luck.

If the first one goes in, then you will be back to Rome someday.
If the second one goes in then you will have lots of luck.
If the third one goes in you can make a wish.

Next off, we headed towards the Pantheon - it was getting close to closing time for this so we rushed there a bit and made it with 5 minutes to spare. This gave us enough time to wander around the inside of the place thoughand get a short history spiel. What an incredible building - 16 columns in front three of which are restored columns as they were destroyed in a fire, all the rest though are in their original state from 700 BC.
Each column is a single piece of marble, incredibly heavy columns (6 tonnes) and the domed roof is 42m in diameter and if it was inverted it would fit perfectly into the inside area, barely skimming it's surface. The pantheon has an open top, so there are two holes with metal plates in the centre of the floor where the rain water could drain away - amazing demonstration of both precision and mathematics and engineering ability of the time.

We headed to the Piazza Navonna after this - a lovely plaza filled with more beautiful statues, artists and craftsmen, street vendors and performers - not to mention many many restaurants offering lovely food and a chance to watch people as they strolled by. Yumi and I had Pasta and Pizza together with a glass of wine and had a great time, then finished it off with some lovely desert. Yumi had some Gelati, while I tried the local delicacy Tartufo - a thick chocolate cake with ice cream and more chocolate and a hint of rum throughout and topped off with cream - deliciously decadent and I had to share it with several others to be able to finish it.

We then had a quick stop off to see St Peters Basilica at night before heading to our hotels to sleep.

Venice!

2007-08-23T23:22:00.001+08:00

Well we had another early start today and drove from Innsbruck, Austria down through into Italy. The northern part of Italy is traditionally where the rich people live, it's not half as hot as the southern portion, with large farms and deluxe villas. As you cross the border you notice subtle changes in the way the houses are built and laid out the further we went south. We also noticed a huge change in the way the service stations/food halls work here.
Instead of picking out what you want from their cafeterias and food halls as you do everywhere else, in Italy you go to the counter to pick out the sandwich you want and remember the name of it. You then go to the counter and order the thing you want, reciting the name of it and they give you a receipt once you've paid.
Then you go back to the counter once more and hand the receipt to the person behind the counter and once more recite the name of the thing you want and they'll then give it to you. Of course you then have to show the receipt once more on the way out if you want to take it outside. Now you can do this for most things, but some things you can simply pick up (like drinks) from the shelves and pay for it directly. All in all, rather confusing to say the least and very much Italian.

After a brief stop for lunch - we arrived at the docks and parked the bus. Now Venice (called Venezia by the locals) is a collection of islands (about 70) which have been joined up and to create one massive floating city. You can only get to Venice via boat - and the only boats allowed to do this are the motorscarfi, so we had a boat organised to get us there. We strolled down to the quay where our tour guide beckoned to one of the boats out on the water and it came in to pick us all up and take us to the island of Venice. We had a lovely view from the boats, but soon we arrived on the island itself.

Now Venice was busy. Incredibly busy - though unfortunately more so today as the catholic churches were all celebrating the previous day as special holiday (Assumption Day). It was also rather hot - about 34'C or so today and we could feel it beating down on us. After being sunburnt in Rotterdam I was not keen to get burnt again so the first thing on my agenda was to buy a hat - which I did from one of the many stalls around while everyone was assembling.

We walked to St Mark's Basilica first, though because it was closed for the last two days the queues were incredibly long.
Our tour guide showed us the main locations and where a few things were, including the Doges Palace, the Rialto Bridge, the church tower and how to navigate around Venice. We then headed to a special glass blowing demonstration at the Murano glass factory. Venice is apparently well known for it's glass making skills, the art being passed down from generation to generation. In addition to seeing how he blew the glass into the right shape, we also saw how they added colour to the glass. Red glass in particular is interesting as they use 24carat gold to get the colour - this is also why red murano glass is worth more.
After the glass demonstration we had free time to wander around on our own.
It wasn't worth waiting to go into St Marks Basilica really, the lines were just too long and we simply didn't have enough time to wait, so first up we climbed the church tower and decided to get a view from above. Access to the top of the church tower was via elevator, so after a short queue we were at the top and admiring the view - and it was pretty impressive.

We headed to the Rialto bridge after that to check out the shopping area next. Finding your way around in Venice is a little different from everywhere else. There's rarely street names anywhere, and every place is interconnected via canals, bridges and lots and lots of alleyways. To find your way anywhere you follow the little signs to get to the place you want - and these are simply arrows pointing in a direction as if to say 'up there somewhere'.
In some places there additional signs written in chalk - which got you to the place still, but went through tiny little alleyways and meandered a bit in some places. We followed one of these and I think it was written by one of the shop stalls to give them some more traffic.

After the Rialto we went back to San Marco Square and found that the queue to the Basilica was still really long, so instead we decided to go to the Doges Palace. This place was incredible - the Doge was effectively the ruler of Venice back in the day, and this place was created to not only house him, but also was where the Councils and magistrates/judges of the time all worked. Furthermore, below his palace were the prisons.
These rooms were amazing - decked out with gilded ceilings, beautiful paintings and decorations on the walls. They also had a huge map room with maps all painted on the walls and huge stone globes with everything on the world mapped out on them at the time.

We then met up for our Gondola ride - where we cruised along the canals of Venice. We'd organised musicians to join us on the cruise too - so we had the sounds of music and singing following us as we drifted along the canals. Was a lovely end to the day, and we were very sad to see the end of Venice after that.

Munich

2007-08-23T23:20:00.000+08:00

Off to Munich!!

We had an early start, and it was a long drive from Frankfurt to Munich. There was road works which made the traffic worse.

All said, we only had an hour an a half in Munich. Not enough time to do justice to this very busy and interesting place.

A quick orientation of the place by our tour guide, and we were off climbing the church tower for a bird's eye view of Munich. Get those legs working after sitting on the bus for five hours. Great view from the top, as per the photos. After working off some energy we went in search of food. The Hofbraushaus had been recommended by the tour guide Kyle. It is a big beer hall capable of seating 1800 people on a busy night. If you include the upper levels which is not normally open, it can seat 3500 people in this 3 story high building. Pretty amazing. The inside was decked out in typical German style, serving the mandatory wursts and saurkraut, among other things on the menu. People were deep into their cups, even though it was only lunch time. Beer gets served in 1 litre glasses (steins), being drunk like it was water. You have to be there to truly appreciate the atmosphere. During Oktoberfest, these beer halls are packed full, with more tents being set up for people to pile into and drink more beer!

So we ordered our bratwurst and saurkraut meal, accompanied by a small glass of 0.5L of beer ( shared between Jesse and me ). I don't know how those people can down a whole litre and more of beer!! It was extremely busy and we had trouble getting the attention of the waiters. A local guy sat down and shared our table, and got chatting to him. He helped us out by flagging the waiter, and we got our orders in quick, as we were running short on time. Apparently bratwurst must be eaten with mustard, so we got some mustard to go with it, and I must stay it did taste better.

Quick lunch then it was back on the bus to Austria. Crossing the border from Germany, the landscape changes from flat to quite mountainous. We stopped at a little town named Innsbruck in Austria for a wander around. The local must trys are Sacher-torte (a decadent chocolate cake, some flavoured with a little bit of ru), schnapps (burns down the throat, purportedly useful in curing a sore throat, or any ailments for that matter! :), and apple strudel and a visit to Swarovski crystal ( largest store ).

We stayed at a quaint little hotel up in the hills, and were served local fare of Turkey Schnitzel and apple strudel for dinner.... yummmmmm.......

- YM

Amsterdam, Cologne, Boppard, St Goar, Hiedelberg...

2007-08-19T04:34:00.001+08:00

Hash Museum Hydroponics
Originally uploaded by radix999

Trafalgar Tour Catchup...

Finally got internet access, but not really enough time to do a full catch up - so this is just from the first couple of days.

So Sunday was the day we were to catch up with our tour. Our plan was to go to the hotel we were to be staying at that night and hopefully meet up with them at some point that evening. Joeri kindly drove Yumi and I to the hotel we were to be staying at - it was a nice 5 star hotel, but not an easy one to get to with all of our luggage.

We arrived there and checked in, dumped our luggage, then headed in to Amsterdam.

First stop was the tourist info center where we learnt that the Anne Frank Museum was fully booked out that day. We decided to head to the museums first, and even though I'd been to the Rijiksmuseum before, I was more than happy to go again and thought Yumi should see it. So we wandered around there for a while admiring the Rembrandts and other pieces of artwork, then had lunch in Museum Park before we visited the Van Gogh Museum.

After leaving the Van Gogh Museum we were greeted with a flood from the heavens, it absolutely poured down with rain for about 30-40 minutes at least.

We decided to head to the Hemp and Hash Museum next, and headed off in search of that - and after getting more than a little lost we finally found our destination - on the edge of the Red Light District. The inside the Hemp Museum was very warm, and we were greeted with all sorts of hash related paraphenalia - including a view of the hydroponics lab for the place next door (Sensei Seed Bank) which is shown to the side here.

We had dinner in Amsterdam after that and headed back to the hotel to try and catch up with our tour guide.

Next day we headed to Cologne (Koln) where we got to walk around the huge The Dom church - one of the largest Gothic churches in Europe. Then we headed to the boat and headed up the Rhine River on a cruise from Boppard to St Goar. Along here we saw many castles from the Germanic "Robber Barons" where they would attack the boats going past if they didn't pay their tolls.
After that we got to spend a little time wandering around Heidelberg - a beautiful city and we climbed up to the Roman Garrison on top of the hill as it gave a wonderful view of Heidelberg below.

More later!

Rotterdam

2007-08-12T15:53:00.001+08:00

IMG_6789
Originally uploaded by radix999

So today we went to Rotterdam and what an amazing city.

We decided to do a Harbour Tour with Spiro first - and got some amazing shots of the port and ships in the area - also got some photos of the dry docks and lots and lots of containers. I can now see where de_rotterdam came from! :)

After that we wandered up through the streets to Euromast - this is a 185m high mast that sits above the city and I climbed it eagerly. Yumi got up midway (about 95m) - but was too scared to try the Euroscoop which lifts you up to the very top and spins around so you get a full panorama view of the top. Awesome view and I took a couple of 360' panoramas I hope to stitch together sometime.

We then wandered up the streets and enjoyed the Dance Parade they had going on that day - with heaps of trucks, loud music and people dancing on the trucks as they made their way through the city. Was pretty cool to see.
Lastly, we made our way to the Kube houses - a set of crazy houses made from tilted cubes!

After this we just wandered around for a bit more before heading back - more than a bit sunburnt unfortunately (well, me anyway - Yumi was fine)

Off to Amsterdam to join our tour today - so no idea when I'll get a chance to post more photos or blog!

Yumi in Delft

2007-08-10T22:16:00.001+08:00

Yumi in Delft
Originally uploaded by radix999

Well Yumi arrived safe and sound in Delft - and Joeri and I picked her up from their airport this morning.
Luckily she'd managed to get a bit of sleep on the plane, as I had a big day planned and gave her the rushed tour of Delft.

After dumping her bags at the hotel and having a quick shower to freshen up, we tackled the churches first - as they're probably the focal points of Delft really. We wandered through the Old Church first, then through the New Church.
Yumi was hesitant to climb to the top of the church initially, but the lure of getting some great photos from above was too enticing (though I think she regretted it half way when her adrenaline was pumping!)
Once at the top though it was all worth it, with a beautiful view all around. I got busy with Yumi's 10-20mm Sigma lens - and took a heap of wide angle shots from above, while Yumi took lots of great shots with her very crisp 24-105mm lens. We even got photos of each other up top just to prove it.
After that we grabbed some drinks and a couple of unusual dutch style sausage rolls for lunch from the supermarket and sat beside one of the canals to eat. Yumi decided she wanted to go on one of the Canal Boat Tours through Delft, so we did that next - taking a tour that took a unique perspective of Delft - from the canals themselves.
This was very interesting and the tour guide gave us lots of history of the area - though it was pretty warm in the hot sun by the end.
After that, we headed back to the hotel where Yumi decided to have a lie down - we've meeting a bunch of the guys from Oqapi and ProcoliX for drinks and dinner tonight in Delft, so she's having a bit of a power nap to get her strength back :)

Museums

2007-08-07T23:05:00.001+08:00

Tank
Originally uploaded by radix999

Went to a few museums over the last couple of days - including Stedelijik Museum Het Prinsenhof - where there is a complete history of the house of Orange, and this is also where William the Prince of Orange was assassinated (you can still see the bullet-holes in the wall - and they're not small!)
William of Orange is largely regarded as the founder of the Republic of Netherlands and they included a lot of information about how he rose to power and his battle against Prince Phillip of Spain.
Unfortunately you weren't allowed to take photos in the Museum, so I had to be content with that.
I next went to the House of Lambert Van Meerten, who had a beautiful house he'd devoted towards his collection of artwork including tiles, paintings and furniature. Also a museum where you couldn't take photos tho unfortunately - a shame as the garden behind it was a picture of beauty.

Lastly, I went to the Army Museum - where they have an extensive collection of every kind of weapon imaginable - from swords and halberds, plate armor, helms and shields to rifles, pistols, flintlocks, matchlocks, blunderbuses, canons, machineguns, tanks and APC's.
They start with weapons from the roman ages and work their way through all of the wars, including the first and second world wars and to current times. Quite an extensive collection and cool to see.

As you were allowed to take photos (but no flash photography) I took plenty and you can see these in my flickr account.

Amsterdam

2007-08-05T15:36:00.001+08:00

Museum Park
Originally uploaded by radix999

So today I met Bart at the train station and went to visit Amsterdam. It was a lovely day - pretty hot actually. The train ride in from Delft took about an hour and before we arrived at Amsterdam Centraal station. We found out after we got there that there was a Gay and Lesbian parade on that day - so the city was pretty busy with tourists and locals alike. Bart and I decided to go to the Rijiksmuseum first - a museum famous for it's collection of the dutch masters - Rembrant, Leiden, Vermeer and others. You weren't allowed to take any photos or anything in the museum - but it was amazing wandering around and looking at these beautiful pieces of artwork.
We spent a good bit of time wandering through this building and when we came out we were quite thirsty and a bit hungry too, so we wandered through Museum Park (which is the park in the middle of all the museums obviously) - until we found a supermarket, grabbed a few things for lunch and then wandered along until we came to Vondelpark. This park is beautiful with lush green grass, plenty of trees, a beautiful lake and obviously a spot that the locals enjoy.
Lots of people were lying around the lake sunbaking and enjoying the lovely weather. While we were eating our lunch I saw two guys fishing in the lake too, and was amazed when one of them pulled in a fish that quite literally filled both of his arms - about 50-60cm long and 30cm or more wide - unfortunately I wasn't able to get my camera out in time as he simply posed for a photo by his friend and then released the fish back into the lake.
We saw a little of the Gay and Lesbian Parade - this comprised of a number of barges full of men and women dancing as they headed along the canals of Amsterdam - lots of flesh from both sexes being shown here.
The place was very crowded by this time though - and it was hot in the sun, so we decided to go to a museum of a different nature after this - The Torture Museum - a collection of torture instruments used during the middle ages - many of them during the Spanish Inquisition.
There was some pretty scary stuff here - and the descriptions indicated that they were used for almost any indiscretions you cared to name.. most of the time in the name of religion too.

After that we saw a bit of the red light district - which as it has a policy of no cameras allowed I didn't really get any photos of.
Even more flesh being shown here obviously - with girls in little window booths beckoning as you walked past - wiggling their body parts or calling to you trying to get your attention. There were a lot of empty window booths though - so I guess the place was pretty busy on that day.
Bart and I were both pretty tired by this point - having walked around all day in the hot sun, so we headed back to the train station after this and caught the train back to Delft. By the time we got back it was getting close to 8pm (though the sun was still out) - so I thanked Bart for showing me around all day and we each headed off home.
After a shower and a bit of a rest I wandered out for dinner on the markets and had some Spaghetti Bolognaise and a Wiekse beer to wash it down with - then headed back to my hotel to get some sleep.

Canal views

2007-08-04T15:09:00.001+08:00

Canal views
Originally uploaded by radix999

Didn't do a huge amount today - continued working on WebGUI and started planning how we can start syncing and exposing other parts of Filemaker.
Had lunch with Koen and Bart again and then had a chat with Martin when he arrived at the office in the afternoon.
Bart and I agreed to meet at the train-station the next day at 10.30am, and then we'd head in to Amsterdam together to wander around.

After work I really had no plans, so decided I'd wander around Delft some more and see what else I could do around here. Ended up in the little square with the colourful cow and there was a large ensemble playing some lovely music there so sat down at one of the tables nearby and thought I'd have a beer while listening to the music.
I think I must have sat there for at least 15-20 minutes and neither of the two waiters would catch my eye or acknowledge me at all, so I ended getting up and walking to the next cafe (about 10m away) and sat down there instead. Here I was served promptly and ordered half a litre of Grolsch to drink while I listened to the lovely music.
I ordered a light meal after that and sat there for a bit longer before wandering back to my hotel for the evening.
Bart called me about 8pm and asked if I wanted to join him and hit the bars a bit - so I met up with him an hour later and we started drinking. He knew I was interested in trying a few different beers, so we tried a number of different ones tonight - including Leffe (Triple) - which was the one Patrick recommended, Le Chouffe (a pretty strong beer at 8%), another Grolsch, a Heinekin and a Jupiler pils. Needless to say I was needing some more food by that point so grabbed a doner kebab (which they made with a round roll, not pita bread) from one of the few places still open. We'd been moving around from bar to bar all night to sample these beers, and it was just after midnight, so we headed to his society building (now I'll never spell this right, but it sounds like cornbers or something like that) - Bart, Joeri, Martin, Marijn, Koen and those guys are all longstanding members of the society which is somewhat akin to a drinking fraternity or something like that. They have their own building in the centre of town - a huge building with horned bull statues projecting from it and from the history of the place it used to be a meat market. Martin and Marijn had shown me the place a few nights earlier, but tonight it was set up as somewhat of a disco for young people. I felt out of place here really, most of the kids there in their late teens and early 20's - so I stuck around long enough to have a final drink, said my farewells to Bart and then headed back to my hotel - pretty tired and while not actually drunk - a bit buzzed. :)

View from Above

2007-08-03T16:32:00.001+08:00

Delft Town Hall from above
Originally uploaded by radix999

The weather was a bit cooler when I woke up this morning.. the sky was pretty overcast on the ride in and was a bit of a haze over the horizon.
The office was quiet too - Joeri was working onsite with a customer today (he does every thursday) and so it was just me in the office (Martin was supposed to come in today but didn't turn up). In the ProcoliX office it was much the same, with Bart being the only one there.
I continued to work on my plans for total WebGUI domination, and had a chat with Bart over lunch. Bart suggested a number of places we could go to visit on Saturday: Rotterdam, Den Haag, the beach - though we eventually decided we'd go spend the day in Amsterdam as he hadn't seen that much of it either so was keen to do so as well.
After work I headed to the Delft Markets - as Thursday is Market day. I also wanted to get a chance to check out the churches and climb the church tower.
I went to the Oude Kerk (Old Church) first - and this place was full of beautiful stained glass windows and is the burial place for a number of notable persons, including the famous painter Johannes Vermeer who was born and worked in Delft.

The same ticket to get into the Old Church also gets you in to see the Niewe Kerk (New Church) - so I headed there next. The New Church didn't have as many stained glass windows as the Old Church did, but it did have an elaborate burial for William The Orange and the rest of the royal family over the centuries.
After this I wandered around the markets below for a bit - they sell a lot of different stuff here - Fruit/Veg, Cheeses, Fish (including raw herring which is apparently a delicacy here tho I wasn't game enough to try), Clothes, Watches, and even Vacuum cleaner parts.
I wandered around the markets for a while, then saw people up the top of the New Church - which reminded me that you could climb it too. So I bought a ticket to go up and got directed to the base of the stairs.
It's a tiny little staircase going up - the steps are circular with a diameter of about two metres - so each step is barely a metre long and probably only 25-30cm on the outside (it tapers in the middle to about 5cm)
So there's a lot of climbing involved as you have to go up a long way. In addition the same set of steps are used to go down too so you have to squeeze by people or families going the other way too.
Once you're at the top though - what a beautiful view!
It's a shame there was a bit of a haze over the city, as I expect on a clear day you could see a long way - as it was I still had an impressive view of the city below and I went right around the whole tower taking photos for you all to enjoy.
After that I wandered back to my hotel where I had a shower and changed clothes. It was getting cooler by this stage, so a light jumper and long pants were called for. I met up with Joeri, Martin and Marijn for a beer first, then we headed to a restaurant they recommended called 'De V'.
Had a great time with them all, chatting about languages, people and everything else. The highlight of the night was when I explained that we had a Dutch guy working for us back in Perth, and when I said his name was Gooitzen they laughed and thought that an odd name even in Holland and they'd never heard it before.

Sorry Gooitzen! :)

More news from Delft

2007-08-02T14:11:00.001+08:00

TU Delft
Originally uploaded by radix999

So I rode in to work by myself today, and it was a nice ride in. Got to see a revolving bridge on the ride which is in my photo stream for anyone interested - though I think the photos got jumbled around a bit in the upload.
Once at Oqapi I threw myself into writing the code for profile synchronisation with Filemaker.
While doing so I did discover that the email addresses seem to have a few wierd characters and some with spaces on the end - I think we need to configure filemaker a bit better so this is not possible - or alternatively I can add some parsing at this end and strip all emails of special characters, spaces, and force all emails as lowercase (as I noticed a few differences that way too).

The building pictured here is TU Delft - and if you read the description this is where we have lunch every day. I had a nice ham and salad roll, an apple and a mango yoghurt drink for lunch today.
After lunch Martin joined us - he's the resident WebGUI expert at Oqapi - having developed a number of things for WebGUI over the years, including the commerce system and sql form. I asked for his help with the workflow I was writing and he helped point me in the right direction with which functions to use and I managed to get the new workflow (written as a macro so it would be easier to debug) up and running.
After work we all met up for beers at a little place in Delft that they all knew and I met Martin's girlfriend Marijn and a few of their other friends.
Bart made an offer to show me around on Saturday if I was interested and I quickly said yes.
I tried a nice German wheat beer that they recommended - and it was very nice so I ended up having two tall glasses of it. I also had a sample of a few other beers, including a Belgian sour beer - which tasted like it was off to me, but apparently is a taste that grows on you.
I've never really been much of a beer drinker, but I enjoyed these and was good to chat to everyone. Most of the people with us slowly headed off home until it was just me, Martin, and Marijn. We decided to go for food after that as the alcohol was starting to hit us a bit, so we went to a noodle place they recommended and I had Teriyaki beef noodles for dinner. After that Martin's girlfriend headed off home and Martin and I played a couple of games of pool before we did the same thing.

Views from The Ruif

2007-08-01T15:06:00.001+08:00

Views from The Ruif
Originally uploaded by radix999

So I spent the first half of the day learning a bit of the webgui api and a little perl - scanning through webgui source code trying to understand the functions they provide for doing sql calls - and then trying to learn the perl syntax so I can actually write code using it - fun stuff in anyone's book I'm sure.

After that Koen from ProcoliX asked me if I wanted to take a trip into Amsterdam with him to see their datacenter and give him a hand. I've never really been in a proper datacenter before, so said yes. Koen likes to drive, and took me in his silver BMW 540 - it's an older car, but cruised very nicely on the Amsterdam highways. I got to take a photo of a few more dutch windmills as we went past - one old one, and two new ones and it was a smooth drive in with not too much traffic (as a lot of people over here is on holiday this time of year prettymuch).
Koen explained that one of their client's servers had gone down, and they needed to find out what had happened to it - as a remote reboot hadn't helped and these were old servers so couldn't do anything else remotely.

When we got to the building he signed me in as ProcoliX employee and we got badges and then headed up to the datacentre. We had to put shoe covers on before we could enter the room too - apparently to stop dirt and some sort of anti-static measure. Koen didn't think much of it really.
The datacentre was fully temperature and voltage controlled, brightly lit with rows and rows of racks. Procolix had three racks at this datacenter - and run all of their servers from here.

When we hooked a monitor and keyboard up to the server and restarted it, it appeared one of the scsi drives on the raid had failed - and the other was corrupted. Koen tried a few things to get it to work but without much success. He'd already moved a copy of the data onto another server, so he was content simply to take the failed hard drive out and head back to the office.
Koen said he wanted to replace those servers anyway, so this was a good reason to look at getting a bunch of new blade servers.

We headed back t the office after that and I headed home not long afterwards as it was getting late.
Now I'd ridden in with Joeri that morning, but here was my chance to ride home by myself. Luckily I have TomTom (GPS navigation Software) on my phone with all of the european maps, including Netherlands.
I don't have a GPS though, so it's kinda like a portable map - with a few extra features like automatic route calculation. I'd plugged in the office address and my home address, so generated a bicycle map and checked it with Joeri - he said it was almost right, but we took a more direct route. I tried generating it again and this time selected walking method and this time he said it was the same route we'd taken this morning. Armed with a map I was prepared to head off home.
Of course I still took a couple of wrong turns and got a little off track, but I was able to retrace my steps and correct myself once I realised and soon I was home.
I dumped my laptop, changed clothes and then headed out again for dinner as it was getting close to 6pm by this time. I took a meandering route and took a few photos along the way - this time on 100 ISO (not 1600 ISO like I'd inadvertantly done the day before). Joeri had suggested a restaurant for dinner near the New Church in Delft called The Ruif, so after wandering around for a bit I headed there for a meal. I ordered a lovely meal for which I don't remember the full name (except the bit 'alles is best') - but consisted of a couple of shishkebabs with meat in a satay sauce, a salad and chips on the side. I washed this down with a big glass of Jupiler league.
The Ruif, like many restaurants around here, has a large boat platform that sits on the canal - I sat right in the corner with lovely views of the canal and a bridge over it - so I got to see lots of people strolling along over the bridge and heading off to their destinations as I sat and ate - was nice.
When I got back to the hotel I found that though I could now connect to the wireless link they had - their internet link itself was down - so I settled back in bed and watched a little tv then headed to bed.

Delft, Netherlands

2007-07-31T15:26:00.001+08:00

New Church
Originally uploaded by radix999

So, my first day in Delft was fun.
Spent most of the day at Oqapi, checking out the offices, settling in and chatting with Joeri.
He showed me a couple of websites he was working on and we discussed my plans for my two sabbatical weeks with him.
I also had a chance to meet the ProcoliX guys who work next door (Oqapi and Procolix were once the same company,
but they split up at the start of the year as they wanted to head off in different ways)
We all had lunch at the nearby TU Delft cafeteria together and Koen, Bart and Ton from ProcoliX and we all had a chat about WebGUI: both its merits and it's weaknesses.
After that it was back to Oqapi again and I made a start on the planning stages of my WebGUI solution for our database sync issue.
I discussed the problem with Joeri and he agreed with my approach to write it as a workflow activity (which can be run as scheduled tasks
inside WebGUI) and I made a start on the basic structure in pseudo-code.

After that, Joeri drove me to my hotel so I could check-in and get settled. He offered to lend me a bike for the time I'm here - which I can use to ride to the office each day and also do a bit of touring around Delft with in my own time.
He said he'd bring it tomorrow and we could ride in together as that is how he normally gets to work also. We agreed to meet at 8.30am and get an early start.

The room at the Soul Inn is small and cozy, with a little sink in the room and two single beds. The toilet and showers are shared amongst the rooms and breakfast is provided each morning. Simple, but I don't really need much more than that.

It was going on 5pm by the time I'd settled in, but the sun was still shining outside and was looking like a lovely evening - I still had some energy left, so thought I'd go wander into the heart of Delft, grab some dinner and exhaust myself so I could get a good nights sleep.
So off I went with my camera on my back and jumper around my waist in case it got cold later.
Delft is a lovely place, with cobblestone paths everywhere, lots of cyclists and a cheery atmosphere to it. The heart of Delft seems to be based around three lovely churches.
After deviating briefly to take a few photos of the nearby train (which coincidentally will take me to Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam and other places easily) and the first Windmill I came across - I headed in to the heart of Delft.
Quaint little shops everywhere, selling everything from the classic blue Delftware pottery, wooden clogs, to medicine - Apotheek is the local name for a Pharmacist.
After wandering around for a while the shops started closing and I decided to stop for some dinner. I didn't feel too hungry, so just grabbed a light meal - but decided to go for something typically Dutch.
So I ordered a large glass of Heinekin, a ham and cheese tosti (toasted sandwich) - the tosti wasn't quite filling enough in the end tho - so I ordered a plate of Poffertjes (bite sized pancakes) with icecream and chocolate sauce on top. Yum!
I headed back to my room after that, had a nice warm shower and got an early night (about 8.30pm) - it was still very light outside.

Next morning, I awoke about 5am - after determining that there was no chance of me going back to sleep I decided to watch some tv for a bit then had a shower and had a wander outside. The owner of the Soul Inn was making breakfast, so I had a chance to ask her about the wireless connection to the room. She gave me the key, but said I might not get much reception in my room as the wireless was at he other end of the house, but I can always sit in the lounge if I need to.

She had prepared a lovely breakfast, and I filled myself with cereal, yoghurt, a warm chocolate filled pastry and a warm bun with ham and cheese in it.
Joeri arrived at 8.30am with a bike for me and we rode in to work - it's a beautiful sunny day today so I enjoyed the ride in.

I'm in Delft!

2007-07-30T17:08:00.000+08:00

Well guys, I made it to Delft. Was a long flight from Singapore to London and then Amsterdam, but went pretty smoothly.
I managed to get some sleep on the flight to London, managed to sleep about 8 hours overall - uncomfortable sleeping in my seat, but I had a window seat so didn't get bothered too much. I don't feel too jet-lagged at the moment because of that :)

Joeri from Oqapi picked me up at the airport and drove me to his offices which is where I am now.

I've now been showed around the office and been given a desk to work on - I even have a window view!
The office is a bit quiet at the moment - just him and me - as his other full time staff member is on holiday and the other guys are part timers and in at various times. Procolix is right next door, so will get to meet them sometime too.

What I've seen so far of Holland on the drive here is that it's extremely flat. Joeri explained that the land we were driving through used to be a huge lake about a hundred years ago.

Got a couple of photos of the airports and things on the way - but not really had a chance to get the camera out yet, will post more pics another time.

Made it to Singapore

2007-07-29T21:30:00.000+08:00

Well I made it to Singapore - the first stop in my trip.. fairly uneventful flight really. Watched a couple of movies on their 'Movies on Demand' system (and saw one crash - Windows CE, bleh). Watched 'History Boys' which wasn't too bad, and 'Sunshine', a sci-fi thriller that was pretty bad really - but that's movies these days for you.

Off to London next, then through to Amsterdam :)

Preparations

2007-07-24T10:20:00.001+08:00

Preparations
Originally uploaded by radix999

So I leave in a week (and Yumi a couple of weeks later) and we've both been hard at work making preparations for the trip. Yumi picked up all the drugs we're ever likely to need on our trip (gastro-stop pills, multivitamins, band-aids, paracetamol, ibuprofen, acidophilus, hairy lemon and all sorts of other stuff we hopefully won't ever need)

I've got most of the planning done - the hotels organised, plane tickets booked, train tickets ordered, addresses and phone numbers of every place written down (in a small journal using a real pen!) - photocopies of passports and tickets, and colour copies of maps we might use.

My bags are packed - theoretically anyway.. I kinda know what's going in there and what I'm taking with me anyway - I have yet to see if it'll all fit tho ;)

We're going to be visiting a pretty large number of places in a short time, but I think we're as ready as we can be!

Fingers crossed!