Family – Page 2 – theplaceswe

July 10, 2016July 10, 2016

Hello & Goodbye

After a rather wet and windy time in Ireland we were looking forward to getting back to London because the weather forecast had said it would be sunny for most of our time there. We got to our guesthouse at about 10.40pm and met a guy from the holiday company who gave us the keys and showed us around, not that there was much to show in our room. The room was a futon, folded out as a bed which we could normally handle but the one thing that was a bit frustrating was the lack of space. By the time we put our bags in the room and closed the door there was only enough room for us to stand next to each other in the corner or to sit on the edge of the bed (sorry futon). Had we not been meeting up with friends during our stay I think we would have been very unhappy campers.

2 and half years ago while on a train in Russia we met Tom & Kirsty who we would travel across the Trans Siberian Railway with. We instantly had a connection back then and when we saw them for the first time since saying goodbye in Beijing years ago it was as if we had never said goodbye. We simply picked up from where we left off. The 2 days we spent with Tom & Kirsty were so nice. They took us on a tour of London, showing us all of the sites and catching us up on everything they had been up to in the past couple of years and when it was our turn we did the same, updating them on our travels and everything that lead us to be where we were. I’ve learnt that in life you meet so many people and those that are meant to be in your life will be, no matter how far away they are or how long it is between seeing them. Tom & Kirsty are those types of friends. They understood us when we spoke about issues we had while travelling (they had travelled extensively themselves) and we understood them when they spoke about their jobs and home lives. On our 2nd and last day with them they treated us to the London Bridge Experience which is a horror attraction that takes you through the history of the famous London Bridge and then scares the s**t out of you. At one point in the attraction the whole group is sitting in a room made into a chapel. We were in the second row of pews and the actor was telling us about the witches and drownings that took place there years ago. If you were thought to be a witch you were tied up and thrown in the river Thames, if you floated to the top it meant you were a witch and you would then be burned at the stake, if you drowned it meant that you were innocent but dead. Out of the entire group the man suddenly points to me and asks my name to which I reply “Bianca”. He then got the entire group chanting “Burn the witch” while pointing at me. I sat there stunned and slightly freaked out that they were going to make me get up and actually do something. Mark, Tom & Kirsty all thought it was hilarious. I believe everyone else there thought it was quite funny too. After the factual part of the experience they make you watch a video warning you of the horror that lies ahead. The main part of it is actually quite terrifying and at one point Tom had run off while Kirsty, Mark & I were left running after him and then being completely scared when an actor jumped out at us from around the corner. After the experience ended we were all laughing at each other and how we all reacted. After this we had to say goodbye and there were tears from Kirsty and I but we all spoke about when we will see each other next, not if.

DCIM102GOPRO — Rain couldn’t stop us from enjoying our time with friends.

After saying goodbye we headed out to see a friend of Mark’s that he hadn’t seen since she left Melbourne for London years ago and who is a musician. We caught up over coffee (I had tea) and drinks afterwards and I know Mark really enjoyed being able to properly talk to someone about music but also about how much their lives had changed since high school. As we did with Tom and Kirsty we spoke about the next time we will see her and promised to stay in touch between now and then. The day after we were on our own again but only for a few hours before we caught up with Mark’s cousin who is now living in London. He showed us around different parts of London and it was nice speaking to him and hearing about how much his life had changed since leaving Italy for Australia and then leaving Australia to go back to Italy and onto London. It was a bit sad saying goodbye to Giuseppe as well. It’s always so hard knowing when we will see people again and no matter how many promises and plans are made sometimes life simply gets in the way and it becomes years before you are able to see someone again. It’s one of the reasons why being online has helped us so much during this trip. Even though we are away we still feel so connected to everyone all around the world.

We had an amazing time in London despite all of the rain and will definitely be back there in our lifetime, maybe even on this trip!

July 10, 2016July 17, 2016

You had plans? That’s cute

We arrived in Paris via the Eurostar from London and by the time we got to our hotel it was already getting dark so we walked to Sacre Coeur which wasn’t far from where we were staying. We stood on the steps and looked out over Paris where we could see the Eiffel Tower. It was pretty amazing to be standing there looking out over Paris but the feeling didn’t last long when it stated to pour. It was a rather wet walk back to our hotel.

The next day we got up early so we could be at the Louvre by 9am. Luckily we bought tickets online because it can be crazy sometimes when you realise how much time is wasted waiting in lines. By the time we got inside it would have been 9:20am and we went straight to check out the Mona Lisa and the whole time I was just thinking about the Mr Bean movie. We spent a lot of time looking at the Italian artists and the sculptures (they were my favourite) and then we started to get hungry so left to get ourselves a drink before heading to the Champs Elysees. We walked along up towards the Arc de Triomphe and then sat down for a hot chocolate (me of course) and a coffee with some macaroons. At this stage we had felt like we had accomplished a lot so we got back on the metro and went to the Eiffel Tower. When I think of Paris I think of the Eiffel Tower so I was stoked to be there looking at it. My dream was so sit on the grass eating lunch while admiring it but due to the EuroChampionship and the high terror alert in France at the moment the surrounding gardens were closed off so we bought our lunch and sat on the grass behind the Eiffel Tower where we could admire part of it.

We were in bed early because we had a 7:00am flight to Milan. At 4:00am our alarms went off to wake us up. I have a habit of checking our emails when I wake up each day just to make sure we haven’t received any emails from hotels/airlines etc. I was slightly hopeful when I saw one from our airline because I thought “ok, our flight is delayed we can sleep a bit longer”. I was right, our flight was delayed and we could sleep a bit longer if we wanted, a whole day in fact because they cancelled our flight and put us on one the following day. So at 4:30am we were both up trying to figure out what we were going to do – should we stay in Paris another night? Get on a different flight with another airline? Get a train to Milan? All options were so expensive especially because Italy had just played France in the Euro the night before so the cheapest options for us was to stay another night in Paris but to make things a bit easier for ourselves the next day we moved to a hotel right next to the airport.

Thankfully our flight wasn’t delayed a second time so we were up early and at the airport. We had emailed our hotel in Milan twice to let them know we were delayed but still wanted the booking, and we would pay for the night we missed if we had to, and because we hadn’t heard from them we assumed it was ok. To be honest why wouldn’t it be? We were paying them for a night when we weren’t even there. Anyway so we got to Milan and I jumped on the airport wifi to check our emails, still nothing from the hotel so we quickly bought tickets and jumped on the airport train to the city. While getting on the train I saw an email come through: “Your booking has been cancelled due to no show”. Argh! We couldn’t even reply or call them because the train was moving away from the station and I had lost the wifi connection. Staying positive we just thought we would just go to the city and find a hotel.

Nope, no hotels within our budget. We just stood around for a while not knowing what to do and then I turned to Mark and was like “wanna go to Genoa a day earlier?” – why not, was his answer, so we got on a metro train to take us to Milan central station and there we stood in line to try to change our tickets. After a little bit Mark waited on his own and I went to check the automated ticket machines. There was a train leaving in 10 minutes and it was cheap, so I went back and asked Mark if he wanted to get that one. Yep, he did so I went back and tried one of the machines and it wasn’t working so I went to the next and bought the tickets. While paying it said “you are purchasing tickets for a service that departs within 5 minutes” I clicked ok because I didn’t think we had to walk far. Have you ever been in a situation where you think to yourself “this is movie worthy”? I did when we were running to the very last platform that just happens to be smaller than all the rest and therefore further away from the others and while running watching the train and the clock and then thinking “I’m either running slower or the train is moving” and then realizing that we missed the train by mere meters. We sat on the ground for 10 minutes just not sure what to do with ourselves. Eventually though we got up to make new plans. After a couple of hours we booked a return flight to Sardinia and 3 nights accommodation – We would find more when we got there.

Even with all of the messed up plans we still had time to see the Duomo.

And that brings us to where we are now – the A’Italia Lounge at Milan airport waiting for our flight so we can have a few relaxing days to recover from our pile of messed up plans.

Love, a tired B xxx

July 3, 2016

On the move

We’ve spent the last 12 days travelling through 4 towns in 3 different countries. It’s been pretty laid back and we’ve taken most days as they come.

Our first stop was Warsaw in Poland and there wasn’t a whole lot for us to do there which was okay because we only had one full day there. We had booked train tickets online and the Polish Railway Company sent our tickets to our hotel. I felt really organised as all the tickets matched what we bought and the train stations were all close to our hotels so we could easily catch buses or trams to our hotels and save money. After our day in Warsaw we packed our bags and I worked out how to get to the train station – everything was fitting in well; check out was at 11am and our train was at 12.06pm so if we left straight after check out we would have plenty of time. We did that and were so relaxed once we got to Warsaw train station, why wouldn’t we be? we had half an hour before our train was due to depart. We put all of our bags down and I took our tickets over to the departures board to work out what platform we were on. I was staring at the board and found our train but the time was showing as 12.15pm so I figured that it was delayed slightly. Just to check it was ours I looked at our tickets… Turns out it wasn’t our train. Our train didn’t depart at 12.06pm like I thought, it departed at 10.30am ON the 12th June (12.06). Yep, we missed our train. Turns out I wasn’t as organised as I thought. Mark just laughed the entire time so while he stood with our bags laughing I was lining up to buy new tickets which cost close to 3x the original ones and we had to wait over an hour. We had no real option though, we needed to get to Krakow so we waited at the train station and had a sneaky cheeseburger from McDonalds.

The train to Krakow was really straight forward and as soon as we arrived in Krakow we immediately liked it so much better than Warsaw. It was a lot prettier and everything seemed to have so much more character to it. Our main reason for being in Krakow was to travel out to Auschwitz I & Auschwitz II Birkenau Concentration Camps which we did on our third day there (we lost a whole day after our train error in Warsaw). We didn’t book a guided tour out there and just booked entry tickets for the afternoon. Before we left we caught up with some friends from back home and it was so nice to talk to friends about what was news with them back in Melbourne and also to have honest conversations about our travels and theirs. There was no need for small talk and we could just hang out. After catching up with them for lunch we caught a bus out to Auschwitz I. The camp has been turned into a museum using the old buildings and structures and contains exhibits displaying the daily struggles and atrocities that took place there. Because we weren’t part of a guided tour we did a bit of research before we went so that we knew what we would encounter. I think for this reason we weren’t as shocked as a lot of people say they are when they visit but of course there were a few things that shook me. There were rooms filled with possessions that were taken from people when they arrived at the camp, there were barracks set up with the beds that the prisoners were forced to sleep in (often 3 to a bed), there were photos of the starvation that occurred but the one display that got me was the window full of human hair that was cut and shaved off bodies after being murdered in the gas chambers. The amount of hair that still remains is just unbelievable and to make things even more unbelievable there are mats in the same room that are created from human hair. Often, the hair that was cut off was later sold for a small price and was made into fabrics. After seeing this nothing shocked me and we left soon after to go to the Auschwitz II – Birkenau camp which is about 2km away and was built after the first and held and murdered more people. Not many of the buildings and structures still remain here but because we arrived at Auschwitz I later in the day it meant that by the time we got to Auschwitz II – Birkenau, the last of the daily guided tours were finishing up and there were only a hand full of people at the camp. We waited until the last shuttle bus back and it wasn’t until we were walking out of the camp that we realised we were the only people there besides the security guards. It was eerily quiet and we just stood for a moment looking down the train tracks and thought of the terrible things that happened there.

DSC07018_Fotor

After visiting Auschwitz we were ready to leave Krakow and did so on a train to Prague. I celebrated my 24^th birthday in Prague and did so by nearly getting a fine at the metro station, walking 10kms because we didn’t know if we should attempt to use the metro again and then avoiding all train stations because of an ‘incident’ at the main terminal. By late afternoon I wanted the day to be over so that I could try to ignore all the signs that showed just how terrible turning 24 was. I will admit it wasn’t all that terrible though. My beautiful younger brother created a slide show for me with messages from my whole family and some family and friends sent me video messages saying Happy Birthday. My family did also sing Happy Birthday to me over FaceTime, we had a cake and all – I just had to pretend to blow out the candles while someone else did it for me and they all got to eat cake while Mark and I watched. Months ago Mark and I had talked about how it looked like we wouldn’t be able to afford to go to New York for New Years Eve and I was pretty devastated but did look at the bigger picture, for my birthday though Mark decided that it was possible after all and bought us tickets to New York. And because Mark felt bad that my birthday wasn’t as spectacular as his birthday he bought me banana cake in bed for breakfast the next day and downloaded a birthday cake app so I could blow out candles after he sang Happy Birthday to me, he also let me spend the day booking accommodation for New Years and looking at all the things we could do there without complaining once. I then spent the afternoon at the hairdressers cutting off half of my hair. Okay, not half but a lot of it! We left Prague the next day for Budapest.

IMG_6119[1] — 24 years old means short hair.

When we arrived in Budapest the city was a complete mess. Hungary had just drawn the night before in the Euro against Iceland so we could definitely tell the whole city had been celebrating. There were bottles, broken and whole, everywhere, along with piles of rubbish so we spent most of our first day in Budapest inside avoiding the remaining dirt and drunks. This probably wasn’t a good idea because we starting watching Orange is the New Black S4. By the end of our time in Budapest we had watched the complete 4^th season which had me heart broken at the end but also hoping that the inmates at Litchfield would rally together. It is prison though so I guess they can’t all trust each other, they are criminals after all. It is also a TV show so I can’t go around pretending it’s real…

Getting to the airport in Budapest was just a normal occasion until we went to check in and apparently our reservation number didn’t match our e-ticket number. Now because all of this information was in the airline’s system you could just assume that it was their problem and fault and not ours, but unfortunately the staff at the airport kept saying we had changed it. The whole problem just seemed crazy to us because the website would let us check in online when we tried but their system wouldn’t allow us to print baggage tags nor register that we should have been on the flight. Of course all of this could be fixed if we just paid the airport staff to change it in their system. Mark did not like this answer but because we had no other choice we paid up just so we could get to London and I am writing this as we sit at the airport waiting for our slightly delayed flight. Ahhh the joys of budget travel.

June 11, 2016

White Nights of St Petersburg

There are some things you should know about me.

1. My favourite book is The Bronze Horseman.
2. Subsequently my favourite author is Paullina Simons.
3. I automatically love anyone who loves The Bronze Horseman as much as me.
4. Our first trip to St Petersburg a couple of years ago was because I wanted to see the city she writes about.
5. Our trip to St Petersburg this time was because we loved it the first time.
6. St Petersburg is now one of our favourite cities in the World. I may be slightly blinded by my love for the book but I don’t care.

Arriving in St Petersburg in the afternoon was a bit exciting for us. It was the first time we had ever re-visited a city in Europe. We got to our room which was really bright and clean and because it was a part of a huge apartment it felt like it could easily be home for a while. For this reason we decided to go grocery shopping so that we could cook for a change, instead of eating out constantly. We bought enough food for breakfast everyday and some dinners. By the end of the day we felt like we had accomplished a lot – checked into our room, went grocery shopping, put on a load of washing and went out for a walk.

The first time we visited Russia was during winter so it was very cold and dark, this time however it is summer which means White Nights in St Petersburg. Because of St Petersburg’s geographical location, during summer the sun never really drops below the horizon which means that although the sun has ‘set’ it’s still light outside. There are always people out on the streets during summer and at 2am, although it’s quiet it’s not deserted by any means. It was nice knowing we had been to St Petersburg before because it meant we could spend more of our time outside, instead of inside museums and cathedrals. We checked out some of our favourites of course, but only from the outside. The Hermitage & the Winter Palace which never disappoint as well as The Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood and St Isaac’s Cathedral. We spent most of our time though walking around the Summer Garden, checking out the Bronze Horseman and pushing through crowds on Nevsky Prospect.

IMG_9377_Fotor — Forcing Mark to take a tourist photo with The Bronze Horseman

During this visit we did 2 things we didn’t do on our previous trip. The first was going to the Ballet. I’d always wanted to go to see the Russian Ballet in Russia but last time we just didn’t have the time, this time around, thinking we could book last minute tickets to the famous Bolshoi in Moscow we were told that everything was sold out! So we thought “not to worry we will just go here in St Petersburg”. “Sorry, everything is also sold out for the time you’re here” WHAT?! Turns out that wasn’t the case, it was just that new shows were opening a couple of days after we left and these were sold out. After being sent on a mission around St Petersburg we finally found one of the authorised sellers we were after and it was meant to be! There were 2 tickets left on the day we wanted, but for a different, smaller theatre. We bought them because there was no way I was going to Russia twice and not seeing the Ballet. The ballet culture in Russia is huge! Everyone gets dressed up, arrives early for drinks and canapés and then heads out for dinner after the show.

We got to the theatre super early and had some drinks and food while we waited, just before going into the show our waiter asked if we would like to pre-order some drinks for the intermission “Of course we would – 2 of the same please”. We walked into the theatre to look for our seats and were told we were at the end, so we walk all the way to the end until we can’t go any further and there is no entrance which is when we were given our our swipe card to a private room. Crazy I know. So we go through one door, into a small waiting room with private bathrooms, through another door into a private sitting room and then finally through another door onto a private balcony. We were shocked. And then, to top it all off, it looked like we had gate-crashed a small party, because the other 6 people all knew each other and had booked the entire balcony, or so they thought. We then discussed that they probably assumed no-one would buy 2 tickets, one in front of the other, but they didn’t count on us doing just that! They were lovely people who made us feel really welcome and I get the impression they were regulars at the ballet. So there we are in our fancy seats watching the ballet and then at intermission we walk out and think “Hmmm how do we get our drinks we ordered, we didn’t get a ticket or receipt” we didn’t even have to worry because as soon as we walked out, our waiter found us and took us over to our old table which was now reserved for us. Our entire experience of the ballet was a positive one, maybe because of our seats, maybe because of our reserved table, but mainly it was because of the formality and tradition behind the way everyone acted and the respect everyone had towards the art of ballet. We can’t wait to go again, although next time we will book well in advance so that we can go to the Bolshoi in Moscow!

The other thing we did this time was visit Peterhof which is the Summer Palace of Peter the Great. This place was ridiculous. It is called by some as the Fountain Capital of the World and once you’re there you can understand why. Everywhere you turn there is a fountain, either big or small, real or trick. The real fountains are quite obvious but the trick ones can get you, however you can usually spot them from a far by the crowds of kids running and squealing. The trick fountains just mean that the can shoot out water at anytime, and some that are hidden in the ground can catch you off guard completely. It was nice watching families running around these areas just enjoying the time outside. Sometimes we forget how much joy can arise from a water fountain or sprinkler. Besides the thousands of fountains at Peterhof, the gardens are simply breathtaking. My brother is a landscape gardener so pretty much the entire time we were walking around we kept saying “Chris would love this place” “Imagine what Chris would say if he was here” “We should take a photo and send it to Chris” “We should tell Chris to come here”.
We had been told to pack a lunch so we sat by the waters edge, looked out towards Kotlin Island, St Petersburg, ate chicken salad rolls and watched a newly married couple celebrate with what we imagine were 8 of their closest friends. It really was a nice way to end our time in St Petersburg.

DSC06297_Fotor — Peterhof Palace / Summer Palace. Amazing weather and sites for our last day!