Leaving Venice

Hey Everyone.
1st of all.... cara you are a goof!
Thanks to everyone who comments on our posts.... we love reading your comments!!!!
2 days ago we went to Verona and saw Juliettes balcony, tumb and also romeos house!
Yesterday we did errands, and funny story.... kinda not really.... we were doing laundry... and kirk for some reason forgot to check his pockets, and his passport when through the laundry machine and drier. :S Good thing we are heading to Rome in 4 days where there is a canadian embassy/passport office where we can go check to make sure it is okay before heading to another country.
We are off to Florence today, i will report back from there.
love dani & kirk

Things We Miss

Here is a list of things we have come up with that we miss:
-normal towels
-smoke free restaurants and bars
-our own beds
-bacon and eggs for breakfast (not continental)
-sleeping in private
-our other clothes,shoes,hats etc.
-english
-the beach
-sunny days (this was from the 1st half of the trip)
-sushi
-free internet
-our cell phones
-our computers
-our pets
-cooking/eating
-work
-clean bathrooms
-free public toilettes
-drinking tap water
-hard poop
-showers that you do not have to push every 10 seconds to keep going

That is our list of the things we miss from home. After being on the road for 2 months now, you can imagine that we miss most of these things everyday.

Venice

Hello everyone.
Well we finally made it to Venice after a 8 hour lay over because we had to catch a train to Austria to get here, and then the next train to Venice did not leave until night time. So we once again took a night train. It was interesting though because we were in a car with an Austrian man who did not speak a word of english, and 3 korean girls who also did not speak much english.
Once we got here we had to take a water bus to our hostel. we are staying on an island just across from the main city. Its a 5 minute boat ride across. Beautiful cannal. We got a 3 day boat bus ticket, and then on the 4th and 5th day we are going to take day trips to Verona and Milan.
Yesterday we got a gondola ride which was way too expensive for us, but who knows when we are going to be able to do it again right! It was fun, the man sang for us and took us around many canals.
Today we wandered around the city and found a cool outdoor touristy market selling some cool souveners. We then had to come home for lunch and a nap b.c we were so tired.
This hostel is the worst we have stayed at though. Which is a disapointment seen as it is one of the most expensive cities. There is no toilette seats, males and females are seperated and in rooms like approx 60 people. for each room there is only 2 showers and 3 toilettes.... and some of the toilettes are only 1 inch off the floor (also with no toilette seats). The hostel kicks everyone out from 9:30am-1:30pm everyday, and also has a curfue at 11:30 which is also anoying. Oh well, we are still having a great time here.
I will report back at the end of the stay.
love dani and kirk

Budapest

Hello Everyone,
we are dying of heat! It is 43* and sunny here... not a cloud in the sky. Man we are complainers, first it was too rainy and now we wish we had it back haha.
Yesterday we went to the Hungarian baths All day! We met 2 kids from australia the night before from our hostel and they joined us. It was BEAUTIFUL. Whirl Pools and 9 different bath pools to choose from, some inside and some outside.
The night before we were planning on going to a pub crawl, but when we got to the pub it was starting from it looked very sketchy with some old creepy man organizing it and not many ppl there. Soooo we started out own. We gathered up about 15 people and all headed to this richeously awesome (kirks words) outdoor disco. It was a gongshow but super super fun. Basically it was like our clubs at home, but outdoors and 10 times as big with multiple dance floors and also side lounge areas with professional dancers on podiums. It was quite the experiance. PLUS girls got in free which was nice for me ;)
Today we finally did some laundry.... it's sooo nice to be in clean clothes right now!
The city here feels a bit dirty compaired to home, but that's what we expected for being 1000 years older then vancouver.
in 2 days we head to Venice Italy, I will report back then!
Dani & Kirk

Austria

Hey everyone.
we are in austria now and loving it.
its super hot out and today we went to a salt mine where they have really cool tours which included a miniture train ride, 2 huge slides down to the mines, a boat ride inside the mine, and some really awesome lazer light shows inside the mine aswell.... sounds nuts im sure but u will see pictures when we arrive home!
Tomorrow we are off to Budapest for 4 nights.... looking forward to it.
I just finished registering for school which was crazy doing it from another country. It took me about 2 hours on the internet here our time 6:30, which was 9:30 ure time. Anoying... but its done now.
i will report again from budapest!
xoxo
ps: salzburg (where we are staying) is where the sound of music was filmed. There were tours but thez were 65 euro each for 5 hr tour so we skipped it.... but interesting seeing all the mountins etc.

prague

well prague was beautiful.
unfortunatly we had a couple problems that made us miss half our stay there trying to sort them out. but when we finally figured them out we enjoyed the city a lot.
it was very very hot when we were there. we are definately getting the weather extreems over here.
we are now in austria in salzburg. it is also very hot here. and a gorgeous city from what weve seen so far. we are staying right on the river pretty much which is lovely. the train ride her yesterday was nuts though... instead of the normal 6 hrs it was suppose to take it took us 12.
i will report again later. ive been busy trying to figure out my school schedule and so i am going to run out of time!
xoxo

Singen

Well our trip down to the south of Germany to Singen to visit my relatives was great. They were WAY too nice to us. The first full day we had Hellen and Otto (my great aunt and uncle) took us to roitlingen for the afernoon where we met some of their good friends who showed u around. We saw the smallest street in the world there, which was 1 foot wide. Then Deiter took us to a castle which was awesome!
The 2nd day Sonya had us over for breakfast where we tried weissworst for the first time. It didnt look too appitizing, but it tasted fantastic. We then went for a walk around the forest where she lives. Andy then picked us up and took us to a coupe of castles in frace, and for dinner he actually got us to try pigs stomach! Also, better then i expected!
The 3rd day sonya took us to a market, and then to an old monestary. After that we went swimming in a small super warm lake! Very Nice. That evening they had a BBQ at their house where I have never seen so much BBQ'd meat! I was crazy.... We dont think we've ever eaten as much has we had in Germany!

1st Day of Berlin

Well our first day in Berlin wasnt too bad. It did not start raining until about 9pm when we were heading out for dinner... so it was nice that it did not rain on us all day long like most other places hehe.
We went to see the Reichtag (the parlement building here) that hitler actually ran out of. The lineup to go in was about 2-3 hours long though, so we decided not to wait and we are going to go back today and hopefully it will be shorter. Probably seen as it is raining AGAIN. Of Coarse.
We also went to see Check Point Charlie yesterday as well as the remains of the Berlin Wall. This I had not seen on my last trip here, so i found it very interesting. We bought a 2 day transportation ticket which included discounts on many of the museums we are going to go into which is good. Kirk got his passport stamped with 5 oldschool stamps at check point charlie!
Today we are also going to go to the Schloss (castle) charlottenbourg which has an egyptian museum inside. As well as an old air raid shelter!
We might decide to head to Singen a day early depending on what the relatives say. After today we think we have done all we came to berlin to do. it will loose us a nights pay here, but we are not playing for beds in singen, so we wont loose out on extra money. There are a lot of little towns we can go see around singen that i think would give kirk better understanding of german culture rather then the huge city which is pretty much exactly like home but in a different language.
we have found tones of cheap food here though! Currywurst is great from the streetstands, and there is a restaurant just at the end of the bus line from here that has 1 euro schnitzel..... so of coarse i am in heaven with that. That is one good thing we have found here, is that we are not spending a lot of money on food.
I will report again in a couple of days.
Hope everyone is enjoying the nice sunny weather back at home, because we miss it!!
love dani (and kirk today because he actually made it to breakfast!) ;)

Belgium, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Switzerland, Berlin

Well.... Now i realize how long its been since ive written a proper blog. Sorry!!!
Belgium was okay. We went to a chocolate factory which was awesome... It was unfortunatly raining the whole time though which made it bad for sight seeing. We made friends with our hosetls bartender and he took us to a different bar one night after he got off which was called Happy Days.
Rotterdam turned out to be a bit better. Yes, it rained most of the time, but there was one afternoon where it cleared up and we went to a fair that was across the street from our hostel. We soon found out though that the fair was aimed at little children... oh well. Let me tell you that when you go into a coffee shop in the netherlands..... you can not get coffee... Cafes are for coffee, so you can guess what coffee shops are hehe.
Amsterdam was another world. It was crazy going to the red light district. We ran into it during the day one day and didnt think much of it... the ladies wernt that good looking and there wernt very many. We went again one night though and i couldnt believe my eyes. There was not a single bad looking girl there. They all could have been models. It was werid to think they had chosen that as a career. We went to Tones of museums in Amsterdam. The wax museum was my favourite though! I got my picture with brad pitt! ;) The torture museum was cool, and we went into a sex museum which had to be done seen as we were in amsterdam which was funny.
Switzerland was Beautiful! Sooo much green and we were staying a blog away from the lake! It FINALLY cleared up for one of the days we were there which was nice, so we went to the beach. We tried to go see the united nations, but for some reason it was closed so our guided tour did not happen. As we were walking home from the beach was ran into a massive parade! All the streets were blocked off from cars and they were FULL of people. I cant even describe how many people were in the streets dancing etc. Youll see pics when i get them up in 4 days when we are in singen with a proper computer to hook up our camras.
Yesterday we survived the 10 hour train ride up to Berlin. We wanted to change our dates and make singen first so we dont have to go back to the bottom of germany again in 4 days, but unfortunatly the berlin hostel was full, so we are going to stick out the long train rides.
itäs 9:17am right now and kirk is still sleeping, lazy boy hehe. This hostel has a girls wing and a boys wing so we are seperated. We just find it anoying because we cant tell when the other person wakes up etc... so im stuck waiting here in the lobby until he comes down which could be hours for all i know hehe ;)
Here in berlin, we are in a hostel outside of the main city. I think we choose it because it was cheaper and so we have to take the U-Bahn (metro), and Bus into the city. Hopefully it does not cost us too much for transportation... I remember when I was here before we could buy a book of tickets for everything, so i am going to look into that today.
Anyways, I willl report again soon!
love you all, thanks for all our comments i enjoy reading them!
love Dani ( and kirk too probably if he was awake ;) )

switzerland

hey, im sorry i have not updates this in awhile.
we are in switzerland and having a lovely time.
i will update again soon i promise.
running out of time.
bye