Karl and Scott's Excellent Adventure

SYDNEY

2007-12-16T19:38:00.001Z

Spring Break!!! The kids are back together.

Catching up with Cat in Canberra.

Boozing with Jules and Kev

Mum's Visit

Lunch with Mary

Chinatown

Fish Markets

BIRTHDAY!!! Had an amazing birthday party with the fabulous Julie-Anne at Elvis Pizza. Thanks to everyone who came along it was the best party ever!!!

Susie

Bryan And Tiff's Engagement Party

Cassis, South Of France

2007-09-12T09:42:00.000+01:00

Cassis is in the south of France, about 40 minutes from Marseille, or 2 hours when I'm in charge of the map. It's an old fishing port which is now home to more yachts than fishing boats. The town is surrounded by Calanques which hide some of the most impressive beached I've ever seen. We went down for a few nights with Sam and Dang to meet up with George and Maude. Most days we would hike through the Calanques to the beaches with a picnic have a swim and sun bake until dinner time.

Barcelona

2007-06-28T19:13:00.000+01:00

We went to Barcelona with Rachelle for the Sonar music festival. We headed down a few days before the festival and spent a week there. We stayed in an apartment in Del Born which is perfectly situated between the main hub and the beaches. The music festival was over three days and the city was overflowing with fellow travelers. We had a great time partying, sun baking, and eating plenty of tapas, paella and gelato.

Karl and Rachelle at the Arc De Triomphe

Gaudi's Sagrada Familia

Gaudi's Casa Batllo

Sitges

Graffiti

Salvador Dali Museum

Barcelona zoo was fantastic. It's a fairly small compound so it doesn't take long to get from one enclosure to another. Only a couple of the animals were behind glass or wire so it was great for taking pictures.

Barcelona Aquarium

Italy

2007-05-12T14:34:00.000+01:00

Ostuni - In March Dang turned 30 so we headed to Italy to celebrate. We stayed in a small town called Ostuni. It's set over several hills with little cobblestone streets and an impressive 15th century cathedral in the central Piazza. On our first day we attracted the attention of a crazy dog we named Bingo. He followed us everywhere and tried to attack every passing car by diving for their wheels. The town felt almost deserted during the day but came to life in the evening when all the locals would head out for dinner.

The converted Trulli we stayed in just outside of Ostuni. There was an old lady who lived around the back and spent the day in the fields behind us dressed from head to toe in black, collecting wheelbarrows full of sticks and singing mournfull songs

Alberobello in just north of Ostuni and is famous for it's bee hive looking Trulli houses

Roman amphitheatre in Lecce

Piazza Sant'Oronzo

A beach we found on the way to the airport

Paris

2006-10-31T11:12:00.000Z

Paris really is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the food, people and wall to wall landmarks made it the perfect last stop of our adventure. After warm sunny Barcelona the freezing weather was a shock to the system but gave us a chance to try out our new winter coats. We stayed in an apartment just of the Champs Elysees, it was perfectly situated but there was a problem with the buildings boiler so we had no hot water or heating for 11 days.

Most days we would get up and buy a baguette for breakfast then go exploring. There was so much to see, the Eiffel Tower was truly amazing. After seeing so many pictures of it we weren't overly excited to be going to see it but once your standing in front of it it really takes your breath away. The Louvre was a labyrinth of masterpieces, we got hooked up with audio headsets (we opted for the regular ones not the special Da Vinci Code ones) and spent the entire day gobsmacked by the amount of beautiful pieces of art in one place.

We spent one day at the Cimetiere Du Pere Lachaise were Jim Morrison was buried, also residing there was Oscar Wilde whose tombstone was completely covered with lipstick kisses from tourists. On our last day we caught a boat along the Seine which was the perfect way to see Paris. We were amazed at the amount of people camping on the cement walkways along the river since it was heading into winter and the temperature didn't get above 8 degrees while we were there.

Barcelona

2006-10-24T16:35:00.000+01:00

As per my good mate Lauren Dunphy would say: Barcelona is just devine! We were so lucky that the weather was so warm that we were able to enjoy the beaches surrounding Barcelona. Some of our trips highlights were:
1) Gaudi's Park Guell - I cant believe that I finally saw that freak'n mosaic lizard. I took about 50 shots of the lizard.
2) Las Rambla - Walking through Las Rambla felt like walking through Newtown Festival (yes there were plenty of hippies!). There were so many people pretending to be statues and expecting you to pay them money for being still (this is an ideal job for CAS's finished artist Ian). Like Portugal people kept offering us "hashish". Scott and I also saw lots of thieves snatching bags.
3) The internet cafe - While we were checking our emails someone crawled under our table and tried to snatch Scott's bag. Luckily he spotted the thief and yelled "Are you ok there" and the crim backed away and mumbled something in Spanish.
4) The pastries - We gained a few kilos trying out all the wonderful cakes and pastries during our morning, afternoon and late evening snack breaks. (see Scott's pic below when he decided to be a good boy and not have any pastry for a day).
5) Siesta time - There were people asleep everywhere you look (see pics).

Madrid

2006-10-17T16:09:00.000+01:00

As one of the songs in My Fair Lady did say "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain". This we came to experience. We were in Madrid for a week and it poured non stop, we were so wet most of time but still managed to have a jolly ol' time.
We just missed the fashion week but you can definitely notice the influence. Everyone was dressed like they just stepped out of a fashion shoot....... Mary you were right all along, faux fur is definitely in and henceforth I succumbed and bought myself a jacket trimmed with faux fur.
When we first arrived in Madrid we didn't have a phrase book or a Lonely Planet guide which became a bit of a problem...
Case 1: Karl and Scott went to a tapas bar. We ordered blindly and the result was 4 ham dishes. Ham on toast, ham with olive oil, 4 different types of ham and potatoes with ham.
Case 2: Karl and Scott were going around in circles. We thought we were exploring when in actual fact we were walking the same block in circles over and over again.

Faro

2006-10-05T15:57:00.000+01:00

After Porto we headed to the south of Portugal to the Algarve. It's one on the most beautiful regions of Portugal with long sandy beaches and a really laid back relaxed atmosphere. We were lucky enough that my great uncle Bob and Auntie Moo have a casa there called Quinta Lara. The property is in the town of Santa Barbara De Nexe which is about 20 minutes from the city of Faro and the beaches. Although summer was officially over the weather was still quite warm so most of our time was spent lazing by the pool reading. They have a fantastic garden at the house with heaps of veggies and fruit, come mid afternoon you can walk around and gather things for dinner and pick quinces figs and limes. There is a house keeper Betty who lives there year round with her husband Carlos, they both like a drink so most evenings were spent drinking outside trying to communicate with one another. Betty doesn't speak any English and Carlos would get stuck translating our atrocious Portuguese all night.

Karl's birthday was the day after we left the Algarve so on the last weekend our friends Sam and Dang from London came to stay. We rented a car and drove up the coast to Lagos which is a tranquil beach community. Betty cooked us a traditions Portuguese meal and we had a party for Karl.

There is a lot of nature down that way. most days we would walk the dirt road in to town, one day we nearly trod on a baby snake that was sunning itself. The best thing is that the Portuguese word for snake is Cobra, so we got to tell everyone that we came face to face with a Cobra. Carlos also caught us a hedgehog that was rummaging around in the garden one night.

Porto

2006-10-02T11:24:00.000+01:00

Porto is about a 6 hour bus trip up the north coat from Lisbon. The city is split by the river Rio Douro with the Ribeira with its medieval architecture on one side and the port lodges on the other. There are so many catholic churches in Porto (which came in handy coz Scott kept getting frustrated when we were getting lost so I had to send him to penance). We only had three days in Porto but it was long enough to discover it charm. It's Portugal's second largest city and seems to attract a younger tourist crowd than Lisbon. We had all good intentions of visiting the port lodges for the free sampling but spent so much time getting lost and trying to organise our bus tickets to the Algarve that in the end we settled from buying all our port from the corner store.

Lisbon

2006-09-27T10:03:00.000+01:00

Lisbon is a spiderweb of little cobbled streets lined with tiled buildings and gothic architecture. We stayed in an apartment at Marques De Pombal which is not far from the main tourist district of Baixa. The city is set on a series of hills so exploring by foot is a mission, especially when all the great castles and churches seem to be set on top of them, but there always seems to be a cafe halfway up where you can stop for a cafe and a pastel de nata (Portuguese tarts). In the centre of town there is the old elevador de santa Justa, a vertical elevator that takes you up to a viewing platform where you can look down across the city. It's over a hundred years old and used to be powered by steam. The Trams are also a great way to see the city though sometimes it feels more like a roller coaster. One thing we'll never forget is the amount of times we we're offered drugs, it seems every five minutes some dodgy man was whispering to us "you want hashish marijuana".

.

Moscow

2006-09-26T09:59:00.000+01:00

Ahhhh the beauty of the Cold War decay..... Construction everywhere, mullets gallore (not the styled David Beckham mullet either), scary customer service people (where buying a bottle of water feels like you are committing a crime). With only 24 hours in Russia we headed for the tourist district of Red Square. We saw Lenin's Body, the Kremlin and lots of cathedrals. We got completely ripped off paying $200 on a taxi from the airport to the hotel..... hey that's Russia for ya.

Tokyo

2006-09-21T11:51:00.000+01:00

Scott says: Konnichiwa,
Day one we arrived at Narita airport at 6.30 am, we headed for the subway and made our way to our hostel in Minowa but couldn't check in till 3pm so we dropped of our backpacks and took off to see some sights. We caught the train to Asakusa which should have been a 20 minute trip but since the only word we spoke in Japanese was arigato the train trip ended up taking over an hour. The streets are lined with vending machines for drinks and cigarettes and much more in the red light district. We grabbed a coffee in a can to help balance out our lack of sleep. Later that day we met up with some friends in Shinjuku for drinks and dinner.
Day two we headed to Harajuku where on a Sunday all the crazily dressed teenagers gather at the entrance to Yoyogi park to show off their costumes and be photographed. The Japanese pop culture was my main reason for wanting to go to tokyo so being their on a sunday to see the teens in cos play was a real highlight. Along the walls of the park a lot of rock and punk bands set up and play most the day.
With 30 million people living in the city, Tokyo was electric, and the people were so happy and helpful. Tokyo Rocks!
Sayonara

Karl says: Tokyo......such a crazy and wonderful place. Vending machines everywhere, a million and one flavoured soft drinks, bloody complicated train lines, people everywhere, bright lights and advertising, automatic toilets, guys wearing snakeskin cowboy boots (while wearing shorts) and fruit girls dressed up like dolls....... these are a few of my favourite things.

Rachelle's 30th and Karl & Scott's Farewell at Soho Bar

2006-09-12T07:30:00.000+01:00

We had awesome farewell and Rachelle's 30th at Soho Bar on Friday 9th September. Thank you to everyone who came and partied the night away with us. A special thanks to Mescha and Lisa for taking the pic. We will miss every one of you. Stay tuned for more pics and blogs of our adventure.