Back Home!

We arrived to the US, New York City to be exact, on August 27th where my(Kelly's) mom and brother were at the gate awaiting our arrival. We had booked an apartment for 3 nights in East Village to do some shopping, unwinding and eating. It was so nice all of being together again. We also saw Lauren in Brooklyn, where she is planning her next move. The NYC trip was a nice transition back into the US lifestyle after 10 months abroad.


Me with my mom and brother Joe in NYC!

While bored on long train rides, we often calculated some stats about our trip.
Here are some of them:

Time gone from US total: 9 months and 20 days approx.

Countries visited: 20

Languages: 18

Currencies: 11

*Sleeping Arrangements*

Beds/Places we have slept while traveling: 53 different spots

CS Hosts/Friends in other countries we have stayed with: 23

Hostels: 12

Boat: 1 for a week(Croatia)

Campsites: 3

Budget Hotels: 8

Overnight trains taken: 3

Overnight Ferries taken: 2

Sleeping in Airport: 1

Camper Van: 1
*Locations*
Farthest South: Santorini, Greece

Farthest West: Lisbon, Portugal

Farthest North: Bergen, Norway

Farthest East: Santorini, Greece

*Bodies of Water*

Seas/Oceans we have seen: Baltic, North, Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean, Atlantic, Mediterrean

Time Zones: 3

Methods of Transportation: 9

Unesco World Heritage Sites visited: 29

*Update- We are now both back in Key West, Fl, living with Kel's mom, waitressing on Duval Street and preparing for Fantasy Fest to make some money. Ellie lived in St. Augustine for a month to spend time with her family before we made a Florida road trip together and ended up back on the island.

Ellie with Papa Chuck

Ellie enjoyed getting to be part of regular life like hanging out with her little sister and getting to go to her track meets.


Ellie with Rachel, our engaged friend who's wedding we will be in in December. It was so nice to see our friends on the road trip.

This is Sophia, Kelly's baby niece who she hasn't seen in 10 months. Sophia has really grown into a cute little toddler now.


Our daily life in Key West consists of swimming in pools, riding our bikes, working very hard, drinking beer, going to Drag Queen bingo and eyeing the map feverishly to plan our next trip.




Swimming at the Southnermost House in Key West.


With Gena and Merlin on their visit to this side of the ocean!

Back home with our drag queens where we belong for now.


Keep checking back for more details as we plan to drive across the US and fly to Hawaii and move to Melbourne, Australia next May with a one year work visa and travel Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan and take the trans-siberian train through Siberia to Moscow, flying home 15 months later from Europe.

Thanks to everyone who has kept up faithfully with this blog and to everyone who supported us while we lived out this dream adventure. Let us know what you think and remember keep checking back as we will sporadically post blurbs and some photos of our island life. We miss Europe every day and everyone we met who made this trip a living dream. Until next time on the Kelly and Ellie show....

Last Stop: Dublin!

From San Sebastian, we took a train to Biarritz, France which only took about 1/2 hour. We waited around that airport for a long time, eating our last pain au chocolate before boarding. Once, we arrived in Dublin, we got on a bus, heading to Vinnie's house who allowed us to surf his couch. It felt so weird to be in an English speaking country again after 4 months. I kept having the instinct to speak bad Spanish to everyone and said Si instead of yes more than a few times that afternoon. Once we met Vinnie, we knew we were going to have a great time in Dublin.

Vinnie is a little older, maybe in his 50's was our guess. He had such a great sense of humor and was such a typical Irish fellow that we instantly felt at ease.

We ordered in take-out and he picked up some beers and we spent the evening in, staying up until 4 in the morning, laughing with Vinnie and telling him our tales about Fantasy Fest and key West and he told us a lot about Dublin since he lived in the same neighborhood since he was a kid. The next day, Vinnie had to pull himself out of bed to get to work and we slept in, did some laundry and walked around Dublin, taking in the major sites like Dublin castle and the Temple Bar area.

Walking around Temple Bar

The colorful Dublin Castle.



We checked out the Irish film institute and had an Irish pint at a little pub.

That evening, Vinnie had said he would take us on a little excursion to Howth, a fishing village right outside of Dublin.





It was a beautiful drive and we all went out to dinner to a very fancy seafood restaurant. Vinnie was so kind to us that he offered to pay for our incredibly expensive meal and we had such a gorgeous dinner with a nice bottle of wine. We laughed throughout dinner and Vinnie told us more about himself. He runs the main internet company used in Dublin and he also owns a beer distribution company that distributes beer to all of the main music festivals throughout Europe. He is such a great guy that we felt like we had known him forever. Celebrating our last night of traveling with a fancy dinner and good company will be something we always remember. After dinner, we went out for a small pint since we were all stuffed and then came home and went to bed. Vinnie drove us to the airport the next day and we very sorry to have to say good-bye to Uncle Vinnie, but he did promise us to visit for Fantasy Fest sometime in the future.

We flew on August 23rd to London and enjoyed our last weekend there. We went to Borough Market, Edinboro castle, out for Vietnamese and did some last minute shopping and tying loose ends together. We then went to Northampton to get our stuff from Gena and Merlin and visit with them. Gena came back into London the next day with us and helped us bring our stuff on the bus. We had thai food and some beers before saying good-bye to Merlin and Gena and crying hysterically.

We were very overwhelmed and entirely unprepared to be heading back to the US the next day. After 4 months of traveling and 6 months of being official Londoners, we couldn't believe the adventure was ending. I kept thinking back to when this was all just a silly idea or plan that we never thought we could pull off and at the end of the year, we did everything we had come to Europe for and so much more. Flying out from Heathrow the next afternoon was so sad, but regardless of our anxiety about leaving the UK, we were excited to see our family on the other side of the ocean in NYC.

Lisbon and San Sebastian!

We took a night train to Lisbon from Madrid and arrived very early in the morning and were in a dangerous looking neighborhood until we finally just jumped in a cab after stubbornly looking for our guesthouse for a 1/2 hour. Once there, the guesthouse was nice and we had our own room which was great. We took a nap and then set out to see all Lisbon had to offer. We headed to Barrio Alto and had some drinks in this cute bar where the lamps were made out of bok choy and they played cheesy 60's porn on the wall.

We ate some Indian food and after a few drinks returned home.

Beautiful tile work on the front.
The next few days were filled with taking a day trip to Cascais to go to the beach, visiting the oceanarium that we had heard was first-class and one of the largest in the world, relaxing in our guest house room and going out for a few drinks with a couple we met at the guesthouse.

The metro stations were awesome and each had really cool artwork. This is the metro stop for the oceanarium.

This is a freaky sculpture of this fake kid near the oceanarium.

We were obsessed with this sun fish at the oceanarium.


I loved this volcano sculpture that erupted every five minutes.

Cascais



This man had a dog that sang along with him. It was incredible and so cute.

Oh yes, the pastries in Portugal are so amazing. Some of the best pastries ever!

Lisbon had great fashion, great night-life and a great underground music scene. Portugal was beautiful and the tiled fronts of buildings were different, giving the whole city an artsy feeling.

They also have these awesome trams that take you up the steep hills in Lisbon and really cool lifts everywhere.



One of the lifts.
We will definitely see more of it next time, including Porto and some other Southern towns.

*Sorry if our pictures seem a little lackluster or infrequent for this post and the last but this was in our last 10 days of backpacking and we were exhausted and just wanted to soak things up rather than photograph them all the time.

From Portugal, we headed to San Sebastian.

The ride between Lisbon and San Sebastian.
San Seb was going to be our last stop on the continent of Europe. We planned it this way so that way we could lay around on the beach, drinking sangria with any money we had left before flying to Ireland for a few days and then back to England. San Sebastian had the best surfing beaches ever. The waves were massive and the beaches so blue. The waves must have been about 8 ft. We met Jack, a Londoner and we hung around with him for the majority of our stay.


The view from the beach at night

The beach!

Church near our hostel

We drank a lot of tinto veranas (lemonade and red wine) and went to the beach every day.

Andalusia!

From Valencia, we headed to Granada and after a long day of train rides, ended up in Granada with elusive directions to the Rambutan hostel. We couldn't find the bus we needed and were so exhausted so we decided to just grab a cab to take us and once we were dropped off, we were still confused about where we needed to be but eventually after climbing and walking around the Albazin district, we stumbled upon our hostel. Rambutan is so much more than a hostel though. It's a lot more like a home. People who stay there sometimes get roped into staying in Granada forever because Rambutan is so awesome and the people so fun with such good parties. Rambutan even gives you the option of sleeping on their roof for only 10 euros a night and the location is amazing since the whole house overlooks the Alhambra. We knew we were going to be obsessed with this quirky place and quickly canceled our hostel stay in Sevilla to stay in Granada an extra night.


Our view from Rambutan

Our time in Granada was great because we quickly made friends with all the kids staying at Rambutan and after partying together that night at Rambutan, we all went in search of this river that someone had heard someone else saying who had heard someone else saying that it existed. We took a bus to this other small town near Granada and set off on our walk through the desert and climbed down a near death experience of a hill to get to this tiny little stream until we found the river.
We also got to try authentic churros for breakfast and an authentic tortilla espanol bocadilla.

A house in the small town.


This crazy little guy who was so excited for us to tell ask him about his donkey whose name was Chico apparently. Then I asked the man what his name was and he looked at me like he was so surprised that I wanted to know, like he's use to people only wanting to know about his donkey and he says, "Mi Nombre is Jose" like duh! everyone's name is Jose.It was so funny.

The beautiful desert

All of us, Rambutan kids next to the freezing cold stream

Jumping into the river



Can you spot the bull sculpture? In Spain, these bull sculptures are everywhere.
It was such a good day though. We also stopped and got our tapas and sangria at a little bar after swimming. The beautiful thing about Granada is the whole time we were there we never paid to eat because every time you order a drink, even a soda or juice, you get a free tapa. The tapas are pretty big and you never know what you are going to get. The more drinks you buy from one place, the better the tapas gets. So the element of surprise is excellent and so is the free factor.

After swimming, we also went to see this famous grafitti artist's house. The artist is known as El Nino and the art around his block was so good.

El Nino!




The Alhambra at night from Rambutan

The rest of our days in Rambutan were spent partying around the hostel, walking around town doing some souvenir shopping for our families and hitting a club at night and walking around the Albazin.

The other cool thing we did was go to a water park one afternoon and it was so much fun because it's basically in the desert as well so while you should be sweating, you are nice and chill on a water slide. It was a very authentic experience as well to be at a Spanish theme park with a whole bunch of families and kids from our hostel.

On our last day, we finally went to to see the Alhambra. The Alhambra is a moorish palace and one of the wonders of the world. Once the residence of the Muslim rulers of Granada and their court, the Alhambra is now one of Spain's major tourist attractions exhibiting the country's most famous Islamic architecture, together with Christian 16th century and later interventions in buildings and gardens that marked its image as it can be seen today. Within the Alhambra, the Palace of Charles V was erected by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1527. You basically have to wake up at 4 in the morning to get in line to see it though considering it was tourist season. It was really beautiful though and the Islamic architecture was so unique to any we had previously seen in Europe.

At the Alhambra








An example of the tile work throughout.


After the Alhambra and a nap, we bid Granada good-bye and it was for sure one of our favorite places. I think we are both interested in taking Spanish courses and working at the Rambutan for a summer in the future sometime because both Granada and Rambutan made such an impression on us and on our trip in general.

Our next stop in Andalusia was Sevilla.

En route to Sevilla!
We were only going to be in Sevilla for one night though because of our extension in Granada. We both knew that we wanted to walk around and then take in a Flamenco dance later in the evening because Sevilla is the birthplace of Flamenco. Apparently, my brother claims that my family is from Sevilla as well so that was exciting. Sevilla is super beautiful. We took a bus ride around town and saw such gorgeous architecture.


Mass at night!



After making dinner in the hostel, we gathered a bunch of people from the hostel and went to check out an authentic Flamenco dance. It was so unique. The dancer looks almost possessed and sad when she dances. The throaty music was really different as well.


It was something that was so moving to see and the dancer's face has stuck with me for so long. She was so sorrowful and serious.

From Sevilla, we headed to Madrid for two nights where we really enjoyed the neighborhood our hostel was in.

This incredibly cool/freaky sculpture in the Madrid train station.

Ellie in the hostel in Madrid

The mascot of Madrid is this bear.


Madrid was much cooler than the negaive reviews it had received from our fellow travelers along the way. The neighborhood we stayed in was very hipster oriented with cute boutiques and salons and really good restaurants. I wish we could have spent longer in Madrid but since it was August, most things were closed for holidays.

Catalunya y Valenciana

Spain! I had been waiting for get to Spain forever. Ellie and I pull into Barcelona after a whole day of train rides from France. We arrive at our hostel, find out how truly miserable it is(the worst hostel we have ever stayed in) and immediately made a run for tapas and sangria. We found our favorite sangria bar and ordered a pitcher and it was some of the best sangria I have ever had. We were finally in Spain!

A short-list of our complaints about our hostel:
-they wouldn't give us sheets, we got into an altercation about this
-Ellie's top bunk bed was rotting through and she fell through and a wooden plank broke on my head
-There is no A/C in Spain in summer but there was also no fan or window so we slept only an hour at a time having to take cold showers all night
-There were no refunds and no receipts given
-Breakfast sucked and was all gone by 9am.

Aside from that Barcelona was pretty awesome. We saw La Sagrada Familia, some cool houses also done by Gaudi, and my favorite Gaudi piece which is Parc Guell.



Sagrada Família
Originally designed by Antoni Gaudí (1852 – 1926), who worked on the project for over 40 years, devoting the last 15 years of his life entirely to the endeavor, the project is scheduled to be completed in 2026.


The Casa Batlló




Hospital Sant Pau
This hospital, near from the Sagrada Familia temple, was built by Domènech i Montaner between 1901 and 1930. In spite of it's an interesting touristic spot in town it still runing as an hospital today. The different pavillions are decorated with mosaics depicting mythological characters and some Catalonian history episodes.






Park Guell

A huge city park designed by Gaudi and one of our favorite spots in Barcelona.



This is the longest park bench in the world. It goes all the way around this open space and is made out of a beautiful mosaic of tiles.












The view from the highest point in Barcelona.




We went to the beach pretty much every day to beat the vicious Barcelona sun and every night we went to our favorite Sangria bar and had our pitcher of sangria.


There were a lot of cool sculptures all over.




Our last night of Barcelona was really memorable because we went to a restaurant which specializes in Spanish cheeses which is a dream of mine. The whole restaurant is based around cheese and we got a really great bottle of wine and a cheese board and some delicious pasta and seafood. It was fancy but amazing. Afterwards, we went to this great art opening in some one's house where they had free drinks and everyone kept speaking Catalan to us. It was a really great night. Barcelona is pretty cool and we walked the whole city.

It was a little weird though how the neighborhoods that were considered off the beaten path were still very much on the beaten path with tourists. I think Barcelona in the summer had more tourists than any place we had been so far. The Gaudi art work and the Catalan language gave it a really good feeling despite the hoards of big family, Southern talking, picture-snapping Americans.

====================================================

After Barcelona, we met up with Moon Sook in Valencia which is the last time we will get to see her on our travels. Valencia was really good. Hardly, any tourists and beautiful architecture and of course, it's the home of paella. Paella is traditionally from Valencia and began when farmers used to take a big skillet of rice and meat to the fields with them to eat all day. Ellie and I arrived one night earlier than Moon. Our host canceled on us at the last minute so we got a 4* hotel room through lastminute.com for cheaper than a hostel.

We were loving the AC and relaxed for a bit before we walked around the city and went for some paella in the main square. It was pretty good and interesting to try something that is world-renowned in it's place of origin.




Seafood Paella

Afterwards, we came home early to prepare to meet up with Moon in the morning. The next morning we met up with Moon and we walked around Valencia



We ended up going to the beautiful white-sand beaches during the afternoon siesta that the Spanish businesses take from about 2-5. The beaches in Valencia were even more beautiful than those in Barcelona and the waves were great.




It was a Friday night so we all went our later for tapas and made a great Valencia bar hop. Valencia had some of the best night life and it was so friendly and hip.




We really enjoyed ourselves and were sad to leave Valencia the next day.

France = Friends!

When we got to Lyon, we met Gaelle, our best London friend. Gaelle, was the girl who spoke barely any English in our Camden hostel room that first night in London. We became fast friends and her English got really good. She left London, a little bit before us, because she got a job at a PR company in Lyon, France. We were so happy to see her again after 3 months! She met us in the main square after work and we walked with her to her cute flat where we would be staying in her roommates room who was out of town.

Gaelle's place
We went for a beer at a cute little bar near Gaelle's house and then we went for dinner at this place that had amazing cheese flat breads. Probably one of the most amazing meals ever. Thus far, France had proved to be as delicious as everyone had claimed it would. Gaelle bought our meal for us which was so sweet of her and then we went for ice cream and a climb to the top of a big hill to look over the whole city, lit up. Lyon was very cute and even had a mini eiffel tower. There was a lot of cool grafitti and cute little stores. We didn't take as many photos as we should have because we were so busy catching up with Gaelle. The next day, Gaelle left for work and Ellie and I went to a gigantic public park that had a zoo as well. It was pretty cool and free which is excellent.



That night, Gaelle and her friend Fanny came over after work and we ate a quiche that Gaelle had made which was phenomenal. We drank some beer and headed to see CocoRosie in concert. Ellie and I had previously saw cocorosie at Roskilde but loved the performance so much so we told Gaelle we would see them again.

It was an amazing experience because the venue was an old amphitheatre that was ancient and just like ruins. It was stunning to be honest. It was on the highest point of the city and overlooked the whole glittering skyline. Cocorosie gave a great show again and afterwards, we attempted to go back to Gaelle's but we had locked ourselves out so we slept at Fanny's until we could figure it out. We just hung around Fanny's the next day until they got off work and we got ourselves unlocked. We decided to treat ourselves to a really fancy restaurant and it was so worth it.

Gaelle had chicken lollipops with three different chocolate style sauces.

Ellie's salmon cone

My gazpachos and bruschetta


I had three different gazpachos, almond crusted fish in white chocolate sauce and prawns in a strawberry champagne sauce. I also had a cheese plate for dessert!
It was a delicious and very innovative display of food.


After dinner walking it off!


The next day we just hung around a coffee shop, catching up on the internet and went to a house party with Gaelle and her boyfriend after work. It was really fun because after the party we just rented those free city bikes and rode the bikes home to Gaelle's since the transportation had stopped. It was awesome to just zip through the tiny French streets by bike.

We were sad to say good-bye to Gaelle but she was leaving for a work trip to Morocco so we had to go. We both really miss her and hope she will come visit us sometime in the states.

The next day, we left for Marseille. We were meeting up with Moon and staying at her couchsurfing hosts home who was leaving out of town. When we arrived, Moon told us the sad news that she had been robbed and her passport was stolen by some thugs so we wanted to cheer her up. We dropped our stuff at Sasha's amazingly good-looking warehouse conversion flat.

We then walked to the beach and found a little local spot where only a handful of French people were swimming and we jumped in and watched the sunset with a bottle of wine. It was a really gorgeous evening. Since Sasha was leaving, we decided to cook a big feast at his house and have a girls night in.

We walked all the way back from the beach, taking in Marseille's beauty at night. We then had a huge feast before falling asleep. We had to be on a train to Barcelona though at 7 so I awoke and watched the sunrise from Sasha's balcony and the quiet was really nice.

Marseille felt a lot more Middle Eastern than any place we had been and it was nice to have some diversity and a change from picture perfect Western Europe.

Paris Cheese

We arrived in Paris in the late afternoon, after being delayed and missing our initial train. Eleonore and Moon Sook, our good friends from London were waiting for us a Eleonore's apartment in the Riquet area of Paris. We were going to have a little apartment party so we could meet Eleonore's friends from Paris. If you have been following this blog, we met Eleonore on a horse back riding weekend in Wales and Moon Sook was my London co-worker at LSBU. I introduced them both and we all became great friends. Eleonore was studying in London when I met her but she lives in Paris full-time and now she is doing an internship there.


Eleonore on the left and her two best friends from Paris

Eleonore had tons of wine and snacks and we got to meet her friends before we made an attempt to go out in the rain to a bar that we were denied access to because two of Eleonore's guy friends were underdressed. So we ended up at a pub, late into the night, drinking away and then came back to Eleonore's and a bunch of us passed out to sleep. The next morning, we woke up late and went to the grocery store and Eleonore bought us all the most amazing breakfast spread. We got to try real Frnech cheese finally and it was better than I even expected.

Moon waiting for our breakfast to be done.

(This pretty much made my day. It's French sugar company called Daddy!)

We had a feast on her balcony before we headed out to see the Marais district, walking around and eating ice cream and we walked to Notre Dame which was beautiful. The Marais district is the gay district and it is so cute. It is also the trendy fashion district. While we were visiting it, we came across a designer wedding dress store. They let us in to look around and the dresses made American dresses look dowdy and square. These dresses were works of arts and if I could afford the price tag, I would never get married in anything else.


Us on the River Seine! Ellie, behind the camera as per usual.

A street performer


Ellie at Notre Dame


We came back to Eleonore's apartment and made a feast for dinner with some left-overs and guacamole and then sat next to the river, enjoying our picnic with all of the other young people. Eleonore's neighborhood is really cool and very up and coming. Every evening in the summer the whole river is just lined with beautiful groups of friends, enjoying wine and each other's company. We sat around until late evening before it started to rain and we came back to Eleonore's. The next day, we went to brunch at this amazing Parisian cafe in the Marais.



The food was honestly unbelieveable. It was such an authentic experience enjoying brunch at this great little (and expensive!) place with other Parisian people. It was something I will never forget. The baguette's and hot tea, my amazing gourmet breakfast.



Afterwards, we walked around Montemartre, enjoying the view. I ordered a coke at a bar where we stopped to rest and paid 7 euros for it, which was pretty much an $11.00 usd bottle of coke. Only in Paris! We also just spent the day walking through all sorts of places.

The view from Montemartre


Eleonore and I, in front of the Museum of Modern Art


Ellie, in front of this amazingly cute fountain near the museum


Sitting on some Parisian stairs, notice the bird! Weird photo.



Right across the street from Eleonore's apartment in the summer, they have misters and trampolines and paddle boats.

Afterwards, we headed back to Eleonore's to have another picnic by the river.



What a little French girl.


That night we went to the Eiffel tower, with a few bottles of red wine and just sat below it, like all the tourists, enjoying the ambience and the iconic tower.





The tower was blue and yellow because France was the head of the European union at the time. It's so funny how many men walk around this area and try to sell you a bottle of wine because it seems like a tragedy to be sitting under the eiffel tower without one. We had to beg Eleonore to come with us since she is all too familiar with Paris and it's tourism. It's sort of like someone having to twist my arm to go sit with them next to the Southernmost Point or something. She actually admittedly did end up enjoying herself. We almost got locked in the underground though which was a little scary and men kept hitting on Moon Sook throughout our whole Parisian adventure, trying to sing Japanese songs to her and saying "Arigato" even though she is from South Korea. It was rather annoying actually.

We hung out the following day and Moon made us Korean food and we went across the street and ate a creme brulee. Otherwise we just lay around, napping and relaxing. That night, we went back to Marais for one final time and had falafel.

Korean food

The next day, we said good-bye to both of them, as Moon Sook was staying in Paris for a while longer and we went on one of those free walking tours so we could see all of the tourist sites that we couldn't miss on our first visit to Paris.


The Louvre


The tour was good but we had to cut out early to catch our train to Lyon, France to go visit our other London friend, Gaelle! Overall, we enjoyed Paris and it was a lot different than we thought. It was romantic, expensive, dirty, tasty and slow all in one. I think the more time you spend in Paris the better because walking around the different neighborhoods and just relaxing is the most important thing when visiting.

Belgium = mussels, batman, and beer

Upon arriving in Brussels we got off at the wrong train station and dropped our stuff off at the lockers in the station and just walked into the city. We walked through a shady part of town that we were fairly unimpressed with before arriving into the center which we ended up being also unimpressed with. We saw Mannequin Pis which was unimpressive and tried Belgium chocoloate which was actually much better than any other chocolate ever.

Mannequin pis.



We were starving so attempted to get lunch at a very overpriced Ethiopian restaurant where the server was so rude and disgusted by our lack of French that she made me cry. The food was good even though the lunch was ruined. We then tried to go to the public library to kill some time and use the internet but they laughed in our faces saying that internet was only for citizens and then we didn't really know what to do aside from eating chocolate samples at all the shops along the way. We laid in the grass next to a church and then decided to walk to the main park in Brussels.



It was pretty but as we were relaxing, we got flashed by a man in the bushes. It was really creepy and disgusting.

A couchsurfing member named Nil met up with us to show us around Brussels a little bit. He took us to the center square where we got our Belgian waffles and he waited for us to be true tourists as he told us that no real citizen of Belgium has ever even had a Belgium waffle and they were a foreign conspiracy similar to the Sound of Music in Salzburg.


The main square

We then went to a cute area finally and had a belgium beer with Nil. Afterwards he cooked us some vegetarian food at his place before we grabbed the bus and bags from the train station to get to Kenny and Agne's place. We had a few beers with them and chatted for awhile. They are a really cute couple who bought an old building with their friends and are each renovating a different floor. They were really cool people to talk too. We said good-bye to Agnes because she was taking the train to France in the morning and then WALKING back to Brussels over the weekend.

The next day, Ellie woke up deadly sick and puking so we laid around enjoying the quiet house to ourselves and not very motivated to see any more of boring Brussels. After resting and Ellie feeling better, we decided we needed a day off from traveling and we needed an American day so we went to see the Batman movie at the movie theaters where you have to pay to go to the toilet during the movie! Even after you've already paid for your ticket and everything. Afterwards, we had pizza hut and then went back to Kenny's. Ellie was still pretty sick so she went to bed early and Kenny and I stayed up talking alot about life in Belgium and politics between the Flemish and French in Belgium.

Kenny, telling me a funny story about the Notting Hill Carnival where he bought these bunny ears and parents thought he was a pedophile but he really wanted them because his friends band is called something like Killer Rabbits.

We were all too happy to leave Brussels the next day, both knowing that it was the worst place we had visited so far in terms of unique sites and things to do.

We took off to Bruges and were picked up by one of the facilitators of the couchsurfing website named Martine. She is a very famous member who has been on television and everything trying to promote the objective of couchsurfing. When we arrived, there was another guy also staying with Martine from Quebec. We all went to the grocery store where we got the makings for a very typical Belgian meal. We got pommes frites, mussels, and salad. We also got avocados to make guacamole as an appetizer and some Belgian beer. I had never had mussels before but with the aioli Martine had, they were delicious. I couldn't believe I was eating them! After dinner, we were entertaining the idea of going to the Ghent festival in Ghent which is a 24 hour party with live music and plays, but Martine promised a tour of Brugge and good ice cream so we piled in her car. She gave us a really awesome walking tour of Bruges, showing us all of the sites and the Belfry tower.

At sunset. This spot is the most photographed spot in all of Bruges.

Chocolate!

boobies!

Martine, Quebec boy(whose name we can't remember) and I in front of the Belfry tower.

Who knows what this man is but he IS made out of chocolate!




Bruges by moonlight was so romantic and medieval. We all got ice cream and then went to this little cellar bar off some alley that Martine knew for a list of 100 Belgian beers. It was great.



We went home afterwards. The next day, we dropped our bags off to the train station and then walked into town, enjoying the cute architecture of the little homes and the windmills around the perimeter canal.



Bruges was beautiful and as Martine felt passionately enough to tell us, the movie In Bruges with Colin Farrell is a rip-off and a poor representation of Bruges.

Land of Windmills, Tulips, and Red Lights

Finally arriving in Amsterdam, we were pretty exhausted since we arrived after midnight but our spunky Irish ex-pat host, Clair met us at the train station. She brought along her friend, Sharon and we all threw back a few pints at their favorite pub with our huge packs in the corner of the crowded Friday night bar before Sharon left us and we headed back to Clair's.
The next morning, Clair made a huge breakfast spread before we set out to check out the Saturday market in her neighborhood. Clair lived in an excellent location in the Prinsengracht neighborhood and she lived right across the street from the Anne Frank house.

Me holding fresh mint for mint tea

The market was so cute and Ellie found a great pair of vintage sunglasses and I tried some amazing goat cheese.

Ellie showing off her new glasses!

Clair took us to a restaurant that makes the thickest best apple pie I have ever had in my whole life and we had mint tea to go along with it.

Kelly and Sharon and the apple pie!

Clair, our host and Shaun an ex-pat from D.C.

The weather was a little rainy so we hung out at the restaurant and Clair's friends Sharon and Shaun met us and we chatted for awhile before we all went walking through the 9 streets shopping district. We stopped in a restaurant and had some lunch and I found a vintage children's store and bought a gorgeous dress for Sophia, my niece.

Vintage swim hats!

Amsterdam has a sunglass museum!

After shopping we split up with Clair and her friends and walked into the center of town.






We were curious to check out the Red Light District since it's so infamous. It was pretty tame because it was in the afternoon but we got the picture. The prostitutes are actually government controlled and each rent out their little window per shift. It was not very women-friendly but the whole thing was really interesting. I thought it would have made me sadder but since it's government controlled, there are less diseases and less pimps apparently.
On our way back to Clair's we stopped by the Anne Frank house since the line was short and we got to experience it. This was one of the experiences that we both most wanted to have. It was a little disappointing though because it was so crowded and this one American woman was letting her child pound on the artifacts and scream and act crazy and the disrespect for Frank's were really driving me crazy. To see the house though, was so crazy because you read her diary as a child and you never think you will be standing in the site it actually happened. It was so different than I expected.

This is the Anne Frank house. It looks really modern.


We went home after that and ordered pizza with Clair and watched a movie and fell asleep from our busy day. the next day we woke up and paid a visit to the FOAM photography museum where we saw an excellent exhibit from a Dutch photographer where he took beautiful photos of his family in black and white. We grabbed some lunch at Maoz, our favorite London falafel place and we checked out the floating flower market where Ellie purchased some tulip bulbs for her mom. We rented bikes near Prinsengracht and checked out the Homomonument, recognizing all of the gays and lesbians that were affected by Nazi power. We were most impressed with riding our bikes and checking out the beautiful homes in Amsterdam and the beautiful canals. Peoples homes in Amsterdam are stunning because they have huge windows on the ground level like shop fronts and never feel the need to put any curtains up. You can literally peer into people's lives.

The houses are gorgeous and so is the architecture. That is something we never heard of when Amsterdam was described to us. Everyone just glorifies the red light district, the parties and the legalization of marijuana, but not the beauty of Amsterdam.

We had heard about a brewery a little outside of town and we decided to ride our bikes to it for an afternoon pint. The brewery was really cool though because it was inside a windmill. The beer was delicious and we were super excited about seeing our first windmill.




After our pint, we met up with Clair and Shaun and had a snack at a cafe before trying to catch a gig in a really cool venue but finding out the show was sold out. We just continued to ride our bikes through town, checking out the hip neighborhoods and appreciating the quiet of a Sunday night.

We also figured we might check out the happenings of the red light district at night. That area and all of Amsterdam is actually really gorgeous after dark.

Ellie at the beginning of the red light district.

Just outside the red light district.

Notice all the red lights. Those are the windows the prostitutes stand in.



Clair had to go to work the next day so we got up when she did and left with her. Our initial plan was to ride our bikes into the country but the weather was horrible so we found a little coffee shop and just drank tea, trying to map out an alternate plan. We decided to go to this famous Dutch pancake place for lunch and it was so delicious. They offer their version of pancakes from around the world and we had a Greenland one with nuts, onions and spinach. We also had a dessert crepe with sugar and lime which is traditional. It was such a nice meal to make us feel better about the weather and the fact that we had collided into each other and almost killed ourselves on our bikes moments before.

The Dutch do love their bikes though. Check out this bike parking garage!

After lunch, we decided that riding in the rain was dangerous due to our accident and returned out bikes and headed to the library which was the best library I have ever been in. It looked like Ikea had decorated it and on the top floor you had a whole view of Amsterdam and they had a whole-foods style food court.

Next door was the Nemo, the children's science museum. It was a really cool building.
We shared an ultra spicy stir-fry and tried a raspberry wheat beer before walking back to Clair's and hanging out with her and Sharon at a local tapsas restaurant in Prinsengracht. We were really sad to leave Amsterdam and I think I honestly felt similar remorse leaving as we had when we left Berlin. Amsterdam was some place I could envision living happily. We were on to Belgium though and knew we would not be disappointed because I like nothing more than BELGIUM WHEAT BEER, BELGIUM WAFFLES AND BELGIUM CHOCOLATE!

Bergen, Norway!

After a long overnight train ride to Oslo (that we illegally climbed on without a reservation), we boarded our next train to Bergen where we took one of the most scenic train routes recommended in the world through the width of Norway. It was gorgeous. We were so high up and sometimes we looked outside the train windows and white snow was right next to the tracks.




We were riding through snow covered mountains that had waterfalls that were so tall. It was such a nice ride and we enjoyed very minute.




Upon arriving in Bergen, Svein our 70-year old host picked us up from the train station and after a brusque introduction in heavy Norwegian, he informed us we were picking up his house-keeper Fatmata, from Liberia who lives with him now to help with Mary, his wife who has Alzheimer's. We first stopped by the grocery store where he informed Ellie that since we are vegetarians that we would be doing all of the cooking which was fine, but then Svein informed us that we would be making cauliflower soup that evening. Both of us looked frightened at each other since I can't cook and even though, Ellie is close to culinary genius, she has never made cauliflower stew. He then informed us our stew would need to serve 12 people! He told us to get whatever groceries we needed for our 3 night stay in Bergen and told us that we should make a different meal for everyone the next evening as well. We decided on vegetarian chili and rice and Svein was kind enough to buy all of the groceries for our stay.
Svein then drove us to his private island right outside of Bergen where he had grown up since he was teenager. His sons also live on the beautiful piece of property but he told us that he never gets to see them that often because they are so busy. His home was cozy and he had a beautiful glass dining room upstairs with a stunning view of Norway's natural beauty along with a pool inside of a bubble to retain heat. His place was pretty amazing.




We quickly looked up cauliflower stew recipes on google(thank god for wireless) and then went for a swim in the bubble pool. It was warm but not that warm considering that Norway is so far north and was about 45 degrees Fahrenheit in July.
Ellie began working on the stew, and later on that evening we were joined by our friend Leover and Bernadette, the Australian couple who we had previously surfed with in Denmark. We were so happy to see them again and it made the situation of staying in Svein's odd house a little less awkward.


Svein is a very unique individual who really likes things done his way and it was so nice to laugh a little with Leover and Bernadette. We also met a couchsurfer from Latvia who was staying with us.; It was really cool to enjoy a family style dinner with people from so many different places. We had almost every continent. Fatmata and her daughter, Josephine who was visiting from Northern Norway but who was born in Liberia also joined us. So we had Liberia, Australia, Latvia, America, Norway and the Phillipines because Leo is from there originally. And of course, Ellie's soup was amazing as per usual.


The next day, Svein awoke us with our first taste of Norwegian salmon for breakfast! Salmon in Norway is so fresh that it makes American lox look as ridiculous as American cheese. Svein was feeling a little stressed out because he was having a party the next day so he wasn't planning on going into town. The bus was a little confusing and too far a walk in the crappy rain weather so we went for a canoe ride around Svein's lake and island and checked out the other houses in Bergen.


one minute it was pouring on our heads and the next it was sunny. It continued on like this for awhile. When we got back we all ate some lunch and met Fatmata's granddaughter named Precious who was 3.

She was staying in our room so we played awhile with her and took a swim with her in the bubble pool. Ellie began her chili and we had another nice family meal but this time we had a couple from Prague staying in Svein's caravan so they joined us.


Relaxing in the living room

It was really nice taking a break from sightseeing and just relaxing on Svein's island. The next day was party day though and Svein was having 40 senior citizens come to his tea party and guess who was making the tea? Yes, Ellie made about 40 gallons of coffee while I went to the grocery with Bernadette and Svein to pick out snacks. The party was kind of boring to be honest and a little weird because none of us spoke Norwegian and Svein made the Czech couple perform a song in Czech.

he was very shy and nervous about singing




Everyone HAD to chip in. Leover cutting a traditional Norwegian cake that tasted much better than it looked...

We were getting a little stir-crazy on Svein's island by that evening and he was driving us a little nuts so we excited to pack up and have him drop us off the next morning in Bergen to go on a fjord boat trip with Bernadette and Leo.
We took our own quick tour of the town:




We walked around the historic fish market of Bergen, looking at the whale and reindeer meat for sale before getting on the fjord boat to head out to Osterfjorden.




Osterfjorden is a very narrow fjord close to Bergen.





The trip was 4 hours and was really interesting to see the fjord. The only downfall is that Osterfjorden is not one of the most dramatic fjords in the world.




After our trip, we both realized how much we wanted to explore Norway better taken advantage of the fjords and the far frozen tundra of Lapland in Northern Norway. It will probably be a very long time before that ever happens though because after the boat trip we tried to grab a quick lunch with Bern and Leo and realized that a pizza costs 56.00 us dollars. A burger at T.G.I Friday's was equivalent to 60.00 usd. We were disgusted and ended up eating a weird sub in some shopping center food court and Burger King french fries. I guess staying at Svein's was wonderful because he paid for our food the whole time and we didn't even change our money into Norwegian currency ever. Norway is so rich because it has the 2nd most oil in the world after Saudi Arabia, just a little fact.



We retraced our steps back to Oslo, where we slept in the airport overnight while waiting for our plane to Copenhagen where we would take a train to Amsterdam. Overall, a 24 hour travel day but we couldn't wait to unwind in Holland!