Can't Wait to get to Melbourne

Ok it has been almost 9 days since we have arrived in India and I am glad to be leaving. I just cant take any more of the large crowds of people and the dirtiness in India. The noise, the ppl, the honking and the free cows that roam the streets. I am just glad that we are leaving soon.

I guess that I am just missing home a lot at this point of our travels. I miss our families and friends and especially the home cooked meals. The other day I was just craving for some MSG and instant noodles...man some hot "bon Yiu" soup would be just great right about now...
All I know is when I get to Melbourne I dont want to ever eat out. I only want to eat home cooked meals...hee heee =)

I really dont know how the backpackers travel for so long from home. I have only been travelling for a month and I am already missing home. I miss my own bed, my own car, and especially the "bon Yiu noodles".

I just cant wait to get to Melbourne, so that I can finally do laundry, be able to wear clean clothes and stop living out of a luggage and be able to enjoy a really nice Hot and clean bath.....Melbourne, we are coming....get ready for us.....

A Race to the Airport

We are now at the airport in Rome waiting for our departure flight to arrive at 1:20pm. What an adventure it was this morning. We MISSED our flight. Originally our flight was at 9:30am. We woke up this morning at 6:30am, got ready, had breakfast, and checked out of our hotel at around 7:45am. We had to take the Metro to the train station and then the train to the airport. First of all, the train ride to the airport was horrendous. There was no A/C and everyone on the train was sweating like mad cats and dogs. A majority of the passengers were men as well. So imagine the smell. There were three guys beside Kenny and they were all wearing sweaters and blazers (have no idea what they were thinking) but I could see that Kenny was dying from the smell. When I walked over there to get some water, the smell from the three guys was a mixture of stink and sour…Ewwwww Poor Kenny. Beside me, there was a real big Italian man sweating it up big time. He started to smell his underarms (both underarms) and then turned to his wife and said something in Italian. I am pretty sure he told his wife that he was stinking it up. I could have told him that. There were windows in the plane but it didn’t help as only a small gap could be opened. Let me just tell you that I was going to throw up if I had to stay on that train any longer.
The train finally arrived at the airport at 9:00am. Kenny and I ran like the wind dragging our suitcases behind us. I was literally dying while Kenny was in front yelling to me to take deep breaths. I tried, but I couldn’t. I was going to collapse there. We finally arrived at the terminal and went to the check in counter. Unfortunately, the lady told us that we arrived too late and couldn’t check in. We had to catch the next flight and pay any cost differences. At this point, I was really sad and ready to give up and go home. I thought to myself, I ran to my death and we still missed our flight and now we might even have to pay extra costs. Luckily, when we went to reserve our next flight, the ticket lady told us that no extra costs were needed and that we were reserved for the 12:55pm flight out of Rome to Florence. I was a lot happier when I heard this because we didn’t have to incur any extra costs and now we have extra time to write this adventure in our blog. This trip definitely has been a REAL adventure for us. We may have encountered many hurdles on our way but more importantly we encountered even more GREAT times…..Florence here we come!!!!!

Us at Rome Airport waiting for our next flight!!!

Our original Flight schedule from Rome to Florence (just to prove we are not making this up)

Our new Flight tickets for the 12:55pm departure

Lost in Rome

I am not sure if anyone had faced the same problem as us, but it seems like we are always getting lost. It never fails. Even with a map or asked the locals for directions, we still get lost. How come?? Are we that bad with direction?? I think its more of the lack of signs on the roads. One night we were looking for the Trevi Fountain and followed the direction of the sign and we ended up at the Spanish Steps. How could we have gotten lost even following the signs. Eventually we found it and realized that the arrow was pointing in the wrong direction. You guys might be thinking that we are just bad in reading maps and with our directions, but if you go to Rome, you will notice that a lot of the tourists are lost too. They are all standing in a corner under some sort of light, one hand holding a map and the other holding their bag, trying to figure out which way to go.
Another thing we were confused in Rome was their Metro and bus system. No one is there to verify your bus ticket or metro ticket. There was one time when an old lady in front of me, inserted her ticket to be read and it gave her a red light (meaning her ticket was not valid) but yet she was still able to go through the gates and into the Metro. As for the bus, no one, not even the tourists or the locals, get their tickets stamped. They have the machines on the bus, but no one uses it and no bus driver ever checks it. People just hop on and off the bus. We were beginning to think that the transportation on the bus was free. We were almost tempted not to buy anymore bus tickets but were afraid if they did do a random check, we would be fined big time. Remember there is no free lunch out there!!!!
Nevertheless, we had a great time in Rome. There is definitely a lot to see in this “Eternal City”. The basilica in the Vatican City was a lot larger than I thought and I really really enjoyed the “Pieta”, the work Michelangelo created when he was 23. As for Kenny his favorite part was the Chinese food dinners. He was telling me that if he had to eat another non-Hawaiian pizza again, he would have died. So there were two nights where we ate Chinese food. Guess what he had, yup Pineapple Fried Rice. Hee heee =)
But in terms of sightseeing, his favorite part was the “100 Fountain” in Tivoli. Tivoli is a small city outside of Rome (40 minutes away from Rome). It was a side trip we took to look at this palace that had an amazing garden in the back with over 80 fountains. It was certainly beautiful. His second favorite was the hallway in the Vatican Museum. He thought it was a really glorifying work of art.

And for you TD friends, here is the picture of Kenny at the Vatican City with his florescent pink Currency Options folder as he promised.


The "100 Fountain" in Tivoli

The Hallway in the Vatican Museum

The Pieta in the Basicila at the Vatican City

Kenny and his Options folder in Vatican City, Rome.

Bullfight in Madrid

Madrid is famous for its bullfights. So Kenny and I decided to attend a bullfight, normally held on Sundays. I knew before going to the bullfight that it would be a bit gruesome in terms of how the bull is killed. But I would never believe how bad it was until I actually saw it and how disturbing it was to see the large number of people actually enjoying the bullfights. (Maybe it's just me, but I really think that these bullfights are horrible and cruel to the animals)

The bullfight consists of four parts. It first starts off with a band playing music and the introductions of each of the bullfighters. They all come out into the centre of the stadium and do a bow. Afterwards, no time is wasted and a bull is released into the ring with a few bullfighters inticing the bull with their capote which is a pink & yellow rag. After 10 minutes of playing with the bull, a horn sounds and the second part of the bullfight begins. A team of men (two on horses and 2 on foot) come out to the ring. Each horse is placed into position on opposite sides of the ring. The men on the horse are holding what looks like a sharp lance and tries to get the bulls attention by yelling to it. Once the bull sees the horse, it runs towards the horse and rams the horse with its sharp horns, while at the same time, the man on the horse stabs the lance into the bull's body until the bull moves away from the horse. At this point the bull is bleeding enormously. Tons of blood is spilling out of the stab wound. They do this twice to the bull. The horn then sounds and the third part of the bullfight begins. (Just to let you know that the horse is wearing protective gear so no horse ever got injured when the bull rams it)

The third part beings with the bullfighters playing with the bull again with the capote. Three bullfighters, each taking a turn, then stabs a pair of banderillas (which are short sticks) into the bull's back. At this point, the bull's tongue is hanging out. You can tell the bull is tired and is hurting from its wounds. Even when it sees the capote, it doesn't run aggresively towards it as it did at the beginning of the fight.
The horn then sounds again and the fourth part begins. It starts off with the bullfighter using what is called the muleta, a small red rag. He plays and taunts with the bull. After 10 minutes of this, he ends the battle by pointing the sword towards the bull's head and calls to it. The bull runs towards the bullfighter and the bullfighter stabs his sword right into the neck of the bull. The bull then slowly falls to its knees and a final stab to the centre of its head for the instant kill. The crowd goes wild and three horses are brought out to pull the bull out of the stadium. They tie the bull's horn to the horses and the bull is dragged around the ring of the stadium once. After a 5 minute intermission, the next bullfight begins in the same manner. The whole time we were there, three bulls were killed. We are not sure how many bulls are killed in one show as we didn't stay to the end because I couldn't stomach it anymore. (In the top picture, it shows the bullfighter stabbing the sword into the bull whom already has the banderillas stuck on him from before). (The bottom picture shows them setting up the bull to be dragged by the horses)

It was a really sad and cruel thing to watch. I just don't understand how the Spanish people can actually pay to watch these things. But then again, we Chinese people have cock fights and dog fights which are proabably along the same degrees of cruelty. It's terrible.

Some thoughts from our trip so far

We find that the most difficult part of our trip is the travel from the airport to the hotel. We are each lugging one heavy luggage with a backpack strapped onto our backs and at the same time trying to figure out which direction it is from the airport to the Metro. Once we figure out how to get to the Metro, we have to figure out which line to take and how to transfer in the Metro. And in Europe, their Metro systems are very extensive. Just transfering from one line to another takes almost 5 minutes to get to. It's not like in Toronto, where you just go up or down the stairs to connect to the next train. In Europe, its more like taking 2-3 flights of escalators and stairs with a really long walk from one tunnel to another. The worst part of their Metro system is that there are very few escalators and elevators in use. This means carrying our luggages up and down the stairs most of the time. Worst of all there are always a lot of people in the subway. No one cares or bother to be considerate to move out of your way. They just walk into your direction expecting you to maneuver out of their way. There is also, always a small gap between the subway train and the platform. What does that mean for us, more heavy lifting. =(

But the difficulty doesn't end there. Once we successfully exit the station closest to the hotel, we always have difficulty finding the actual hotel location. Even with the address and having asked a few local people on where to find the hotel, we always end up getting lost or walking in circles trying to find it. It never fails for us to be sweating like pigs when we check in at each hotel.

We also found that communicating in a country where English is not their first language is really frustrating and hard. When we order food, buy things, or even just asking for directions, we can never seem to understand each other. It's like ducks and chickens talking to each other.
Kenny and I, however, have learned to use single simple English words and lots of hand movements. With this combo, it seems to work better than trying to talk to them in English slowly. But the funniest thing is that even though they know we can't understand them, they will always answer us in their own language with their own version of hand movements. Most of the time when they are explaining directions to us, we can barely understand a single word. We focus mainly on the direction they are pointing to and we just follow that hoping to find another local that can speak in English. This is when pictures become our best friend. Even at McDonalds, the menu is in Spanish. But thank goodness for pictures. We just point to the burger we want to order and no confusion is stirred. But that only works for lunch. Dinner is harder. Most of their menus are in Spanish with no English translations. So we always end up taking an hour to choose a place to eat for dinner because finding a menu with English translations is rare.
I have decided to take Spanish and French lanugage classes when I get back to Toronto. This communication barrier is hard to bear. Man, what will it be like when I get to Egypt or India????

Different in Madrid

Ok so we have been in Madrid for 4 days now and have been trying to get my passport and some visas replaced. Finally got everything sorted out today, so that is a relief!!!

Here are a few things that we noticed in Madrid:

1) Their drinks and toliet rolls are tiny here. The coke cans are three quarters the size of the ones in Toronto. I ordered an Iced Tea the other day and I ended up drinking all of my Iced Tea even before the food got to the table. The toilet rolls are another tiny thing. They are nothing close to the single rolls that we have in Toronto.

2) They seem to like to eat a lot of meat and potatoes. Their main speciality dish is the Jamon (pronounced hamon) It is part of the pig's thigh. One Jamon dish costs about 17 to 20 Euros. They also have Spanish sausage which they love in Madrid as well. We tried it the other night and it wasn't so good. It was really salty and with the tiny drinks they had, it wasn't enough to water it down. As for the potatoes, they make it in an omelette style with this spicy sauce poured all over it. Let's just say it was quite different. The spicy sauce did not mesh well with the eggs and potatoes.

Just to let you know that the local people in Madrid eat dinner at 11:00pm. You should see the restaurants and bars, people start filling them up at 10:30-11:00pm. Before 10:30pm, they eat Tappas (which are appetizers) at the bars. Most of the appetizers are small dishes of seafood, meat, and yup again potatoes. They dont seem to eat a lot of vegetables or fruits.

3) Their water here is dirt cheap. A 2 litre bottle of water costs only 0.19 Euros. It's great for us since most of the time we are more thirsty than hungry because of the hot weather. Average temperature here is about 29-32 degrees Celcius.

4) The subways are majorly HOT. You step onto the platform of the subway and you instantly begin to sweat from the head down to the feet. Most of the girls have fans and are constantly fanning themselves to cool off. I tend to try to stand near one of these girls so that I can get a share of the fanning as well. Its really hot in the subway. I am only in it for 10 minutes and my back gets all wet. (I know its gross!!)

5) Lastly, when you cross the street, you have got to look twice before crossing. Even though it says you can cross, cars are still zipping through the red light. It has happened to us a couple of times. Pretty scary here.

Other side things to note:

Here is a picture of our hotel:

For you former Allianz employees: I found an Allianz building in Madrid. Here is a picture to prove it. Thought you might enjoy it:

In most of their subways, they have a large projection TV in between the platforms. Thought that this was cool. Toronto should get one.

Pictures finally posted

I have shared our album with you guys for pictures of London. Will post pics from Paris later. Limited Internet time!!!


Enjoy!!!

Arrived in Madrid Early

We left Barcelona early from our scheduled flight plans so that I can get my passport at the Canadian Embassy in Madrid. The Canadian Embassy in Barcelona only issues emergency passports valid for a week. So to have enough time to get my passport and have my Visas reissued, we had to leave Barcelona and get to Madrid ASAP.

On a side note, the area of our hotel in Barcelona was terrible. It was definitely ghetto to me. At 4 o’clock in the morning, you still hear people yelling and running their engines on their motorbikes and scooters. Kenny and I didn’t get a wink of sleep that first night in Barcelona. It was way too noisy. People there don’t sleep.

It is quite a pain when your items do get stolen. As I was at the Embassy filling out the passport application forms, I realized how lucky I am to have a family, to live in Canada and to have such a supporting husband. If it wasn’t my family who helped get information faxed to me and other important phone numbers for me, and to have their support that they are going to help us in everyway, it just makes me realize how lucky I am. I just want to take the time now to Thank everyone for helping us get through this tough time for us. THANK YOU….

Victims of Theft

Arrived at the Barcelona airport, picked up our luggage and headed off to the train station to go to Placa Cataluyna, where from there we needed to connect to the Metro station to get to the hotel. Mind you our hotel was located on La Ramblas, which was quite ghetto but a happening place for tourists. Ok, we caught the train to Placa Cataluyna and was trying to figure out where to purchase our tickets for the Metro. We stood in a corner near the ticket booth and bought our tickets. I took off my backpack to put my wallet back in and closed it. Two men (about the age of 20-23), approached Kenny and I and asked us something in Spanish and we didn’t understand them, so we were telling them we didn’t understand them, then they ran off. I turned around and my whole backpack was missing. They STOLE our bag. I quickly ran to the direction that I saw them run to, but it was too late, I couldn’t see or find them anywhere. I ran back to the ticket booth guy and told him that someone just stole my bag and asked him if he saw anything and if he knew where the police was, he just shrugged his shoulders and said “no”. I was panicking at this moment. I had everything in that bag and it was gone in 2 seconds. The whole thing happened so fast. Kenny and I were so confused. I lost the following items:
-My wallet which contained all my credit cards and 90 Euros and some US cash.
-Our digital camera with our 512 MB memory card
-My glasses. Luckily I still have contact lenses
-All of our flight tickets for the rest of our trip
-The photocopies of the our important documents
-My passport
-My personal cheques
-My second wallet containing my debit card and some business cards
-Other miscellaneous stuff that is not so important such as lip balm and hand cream

I know what you are all thinking as you read this, why didn’t we separate the items between us. Well most of the time we normally carry our own stuff until we get to the hotel and then we re-organize the items. Because Kenny’s backpack is already stuffed with the laptop, there is no more room to put anything else and we didn’t want to put any of these items in the luggage, so we put it in my backpack. Most of the time we are more aware of our bags, but the thieves caught us at our most confusing moment when we were trying to figure out how to take the Metro. You should see this station though, it is really busy and confusing all the time. You have tourists and locals running around at this station. It is because it is the hub station for the train and the metro.

So continuing the story, Kenny stayed and watched the luggage while I ran upstairs to see if my bag was in the garbage bins hoping that the thieves just took my wallet and threw my bag, but no such luck. So I asked around if anyone saw the two boys, but no one understood me. I finally found the police station and met up with Kenny again and told him that I was going to get the police and bring them back to the crime scene and meet him back there. Got to the police station, and again there was a huge language barrier. They could barely understand me and I could barely understand their questions as every second word was in Spanish. I told them that I had to get Kenny before I can file the report, but the police wouldn’t let me go until I blocked all my credit and debit cards. This process took forever. You would think that in such a case, the customer service would be a lot faster, but no it was the worse. I only had to block 3 credit cards and it took me 2 hours to get it done. I was held on hold more than getting my cards actually cancelled.

After finally getting all that done, I was finally free to get Kenny, where I knew he was worried sick about me. I was relieved to see him still there at the Metro and he was relieved to see me alive. This was the worst moment of our life, not knowing where the other person is. So we went back to the police station, filed the report and that was that.
The whole time I was at the police station getting my cards blocked, there were 5 other incidents where people came in reporting a stolen wallet or purse. It dawned on me how often does theft occur in Barcelona. It seemed like it was the norm there. All the police do is ask you to fill out the police report and to see if you can 100% recognize the thieves. I wonder how many theft cases occur in Barcelona in a day? 10, 20 or maybe more?? It’s just terrible.

So anyone planning on going to visit Barcelona, please please be careful of your bags. Do not let anyone distract you. If they talk to you, just ignore them and walk away. Its not like you can help them anyways since they cant understand you nor can you understand them. We definitely learned a harsh lesson and I think it’s our preparation for Italy. I heard that Italy is even worse. Wish us luck!!

Tired Feet in Paris

We arrived in Paris this time with better luck. We didn’t have such a hard time as we did in London getting to the hotel. It was still tough getting from the airport to the hotel in the sense that there are a lack of elevators and escalators in use. There are a lot of steps in the Metro which meant lots of heavy lifting of the luggage. This definitely does not help the bruises on my knees. In total I think I have 4 bruises around the knee area. But I knew that this was going to happen the day I decided to use a suitcase rather than a backpack.
We did lots in Paris again. Eiffel Tower was beautiful and amazing. It is a lot more beautiful in person. It makes the CN Tower look tiny and BORING. At night, it lights up with sparkling lights coming on at interval times. It is quite a sight! We also did the Louvre Museum, the Notre Dame, the Palais-Royal and its gardens, and visited Napoleon’s Tomb. It was quite an exaggerated tomb. Kenny was not impressed. I thought it was alright. We also experienced sitting outside a café on a morning, sipping coffee with a croissant. It seems like most people just stop by one of these cafes on their way to work or to wherever they are going for a rest and a quick espresso drink. The French LOVE their espressos.

The sad think about Paris was that we didn’t get to go to the LV shop. We planned on going on the Sunday but forgot that their shops closed on Sundays. So we only got to do some window shopping. I guess its good in the sense that we saved ourselves some money.

We did a lot of walking in Paris. It felt like our feet was going to fall off. It always seemed faster to walk to the destination point rather than take the subway as in the subway you always ended up walking through long tunnels and staircases to connect to the next train. Plus, the metro stations were HOT. There were no air con in any of the subways and it reeked of pee everywhere. The first day we arrived, it smelled like pee so bad, I almost puked. So we chose to walk most of the time rather than take the metro, and it was a better way of soaking in the culture of Paris. I can guarantee you that every night we got home, our feet were aching but it was worth it.

Tours – Now I know why I hate them

We decided to join a tour from the hotel for Stonehenge, Bath, and the Windsor Castle (the second castle of Queen Elizabeth II). We figured that it would probably be easier to do a tour rather than have to figure out our way to Stonehenge and get lost again.
However, after finishing this tour, it reminded me of why I hate tours in the beginning. The whole tour was like herding cattles. We had only 30-40 minutes at each place to visit and we almost didn’t make it back to the bus when we were at Windsor Castle. We were lining up to see Queen Mary’s life size doll house, knowing that we only had 15 minutes left before we had to be back to the bus. So we figured we would be able to get into the room, do a quick run of the place and then sprint back to the bus. Nope, instead, we got in, had to leave because there was a huge lineup in the room itself and we still had to sprint back. I almost died on the way. We did make it back to the bus, but with half a breath left only. But all in all, we had a great time. Stonehenge was great. It was windy but you should see them in real life, those stones are huge. Some of them weighed over 50 tonnes (and a coach bus only weighs 13.5 tonnes).

On a different note: Dawn and Jiang you should be married by now. Congratulations. Hope the wedding was perfect and I am sure it was. We are sorry that we didn’t get to make it. But please send us the wedding pictures, dying to see them. =)