more than
tea and scones
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Jody's Tip for the Day:
- When spending the day at a mediterranian beach with no shade, do not forget to put sunscreen on important places, like the backs of your knees and between your shoulder blades. This makes daily functioning a little difficult.
Well, that pretty much describes my day so far. We arrived in Barcelona 11pm last night, and after 2 hours of wandering up and down the streets and through the metro trains, we finally found a hostel that would take us in for the night. We woke up late today, finally took a much-needed shower (3 days on trains with no showers males you greatly appreciate when you finally find one) and wandered up and down the famous "La Rambla" street (right outside our front door) for a while before we decided it was time to hit the beach. I'm kinda hoping to make it an early night, and spend tomorrow exploring the Barcelona night.
In other news, we've managed to find a KICK ASS concert in Belgium that we're going to go to. It's the 'Pukklepop' festival in Hasselt, Belgium. A three-day, jam packed festival held in a farmers field, complete with camping and riotus good fun. And the heart-stopping thing (and the reason I know about it) is the fact the Dresden Dolls are playing there. I can officially die content (I can't die happy till I pack a Tom Waits show or two in there) But seriously, check out pukklepop.be for the lineup. (And yes mom, I have the money. It's actually a great deal, if you consider that it's 3 night's accomodation, including train ride, and tons of wonderful entertainment. Our only problem is how to get tickets. We're on the road, so we don't have an address for them to ship it to. (What good is having them send it to Canada, when we're still over here with no way of getting the tickets ourselves) They're closed for the weekend, but we're calling them Monday to try and see what they can do. Oh, and now we have to find a cheap tent somewhere too. Start commenting with fun names for our temporary home?
Oh, and anyone who wants postcards, comment or email me your address. I'm ready to start sending, so let me know. And Joe! Email me your cell #. I forgot to bring it, and don't really want to wake your family in the middle of the night.
Augh, time running out! Gotta go! See ya!
-------------------------------Location: Barcelona, Spain
Wearing: Black capris, striped top. FINALLY CLEAN!
Day's Activities: Beach, sunburn, eat tappas, internet (this is the life!)
Thing you miss: The non-burning sensation in the back of my legs
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Jody at 8:54 PM
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Nice is nice
so we are back on track and Portugal bound...we are in Nice and my god, the french have really managed to ruin the keyboard. There are all these extra signs (!$£¤*µùçà°), its all really quite peculiar. Curse the french and their backwards ways....AIR RAID!!! gotta go....seriously not kidding-------------------------------
Location: nice Nice in France
Wearing: same same
Day's Activities: train train train
Thing you miss: people not setting fireworks off inside buildings
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jenny at 5:25 PM
Fucking French Keyboards!!
Sorry everyone, short post. French keyboards suck. We're in Nice (n-eece). It's hot, smelly, but the beach is beautiful and we made a friend on the train, which means that we get to stay in a REAL HOTEL tonight for the price of a hostel! Hooray for privacy!Next trip I take, I bring my own keyboards!!
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Location: strange smelly internet room in Nice, France
Wearing: shorts, germany skirt, tank top (goin' to the beach!)
Day's Activities: trains trains trains
Thing you miss: people. (keep emailing me!)
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Jody at 5:24 PM
Monday, July 11, 2005
More funny stories...
Since we don't have much time left, some quick little stories...- I've had something of a shoe crisis over here. Jen doesn't believe in taking a train anywhere, so I think my feet are slowly falling apart.
- While we were on the train from Rome to Bologna, there's a conductor that comes around after every stop to check your ticket. From Rome to Florence, we had the same conductor, and she would check them, then move on. In Florence, we got a new conductor, and when he checked ours, he found out that we were actually sitting in first class, instead of second (we had no clue)...We had to move from a car with 6 seats, a door and quiet, to a huge "peasant class" car with about 50 people that smelled funny. Luckily it was only for about 10 minutes.
- I hate the european keyboards. The y and z are backwards, and the ' and " are way out of the way. Takes up my precious internet time!
- I lost my camera breifly at the vatican. Of all the places in the world to lose it though, that's probably the best. I had it back in 10 minutes.
- I can't wait to show everyone my pictures! Photos don't even show how beautiful things are.
- I can't believe it's the middle of the month already. One month till Norway! Jens still not sure if she's coming there, but I can't wait to see it and everyone there.
- We hope to move to Porto on Wednesday night, so expect more news after that!
Jody at 1:28 PM
Our night in Bologna
So post-Rome Jojo and I planned on headed left (or west) and over to Portugal for some sun. Bologna sounds yummy, plus it was the Bolognians that presented the world with tortillini and ravioli. They also have some knock off on Pisas leaning tower. Anyways after chilling on a train to Bologna, we arrive just before 9pm...first goal is to find the info center. So we arrive in this glass chamber with a desk in the back and a glass room surrounding that. There were about 6 of us crammed into the tiny waiting room (backpacks and all), this lady was infront of us and she was in the glass room with the tiny italian man. All of a sudden all the lights go out, and the automatic doors trap us in. The poor lady in the glass enclosure was trapped. The tiny italian races out from behind the desk, locks the sliding automatic doors, runs back to some back office leaving everyone stranded. None of us in the waiting room spoke the same language (what are the odds of that?!). We were all asking our equivalent of "what the ßuck?!" I thought it was some sort of power outage and we were trapped in here...or there was some emergency. The poor lady trapped in the glass enclosure was looking around frantically for a way out. It was quite scary. Then the little italian resurfaces and unlocks the side door for us and shoves us out of the room screaming "closed!"...sigh, if only we could do that at work...
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Location: Müncher
Wearing: same old...but the pants now have some black sticky stain upon the ass and my shirt has a wine stain from drinking at the collusium
Day's Activities: random walking
Thing you miss: free internet
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jenny at 1:13 PM
"I don't think they speak german in Monaco..."
Wow, have I got a story to tell you!Ok...so Saturday we decide to make our grand departure from Rome. In the grande backpacking style, we arrived at the train station at 4pm, and by 4:45 we're jetting (rolling?) off to Bologna, Italy (no, we did not just pick it because it looks like the food) After our little problem in that town, we went back to the train station and decided to just hop the first train to anywhere that sounded cool. Consulting the map, we decided to board the late night train to Monaco, then take the train the next day out to Porto, Portugal (our next destination)
Since we wanted to make sure we were doing things correctly, we consulted the conductor that came around, and confirmed that we would be getting into MONACO around 6am. Secure in our information, we bedded down and managed to catch a few hours rest on the train.
Finally 6am rolls around, and we happily hop off, eager for some breakfast and a stretch before our next long train ride.
Walking about 10 feet down the platform, I'm looking around, and the signs don't seem...right. See, Monaco should speak french. We knew that. The words around us though, didn't make any sense in any french we knew.
They looked suspiciously like german.
Yes, that's right, we slept through our stop in Monaco (WELL before the 6am that the conductor told us) and ended up in Munich, Germany.
Now, seeing as how we didn't have any concrete plans, it was no big loss that we wern't in Portugal. Actually, it's turned into something pretty cool. I've officially decided I want to live here someday. The architecture is amaising, the people (though not really english speaking) are nice and there are whole stores that sell leiderhosen!!! I actually managed to pick up a pretty neat skirt for 12€, which is a pretty good deal.
Alas, time is running low. More awesome stories as I get the money to update.
Don't worry mom and dad, I'm not starving. And Joe, I hope to call you sometime soon.
I think tonight we plan on taking in "traditional 80's beer night" nearby. As to what that means, your guess is as good as mine!
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Location: A smelly internet cafe in Munich, Germany
Wearing: New skirt, green golf shirt, black zip jacket
Day's Activities: Found breakfast, found the "Museum of strange museums", went to the farmers market, took a picture of a clock
Thing you miss: My own computer!
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Jody at 1:09 PM