Rome

I really wish I knew more Italian, I know bits and pieces but no where near as much as I'd like to.

It's meant that all conversations in Rome resulted in us speaking broken English with an Italian accent in the hope that they understand us better than regular English, when really the end result is sounding like the count from sesame street and know one knows what you are on about.

After we got to Rome from the airport we were chatting to figure out which direction to head in to get the hotel, when a guy (who we thought was American) shouted "you guys are Aussie right? Can I buy you guys a drink?"
Turns out he was from Adelaide and he had that weird accent that all South Australians have.. And he was smashed.
After we finished our first drink we went to leave he begged us to stay, He was waiting for his train and didn't want to drink alone. We stayed for one more drink but that was about it, his South Australian accent was getting thicker and thicker with every sip and we could hardly understand him.

Our hotel had a rooftop area overlooking the city. We were that excited to be in Rome, so after dinner we bought a bottle of red and headed to the roof to plan our next day.

I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel so we headed to the Vatican to get a look, and then we saw the line.

Technically we had seen the Vatican so we decided to skip waiting in line for hours and go to the colosseum.

There was another line at the colosseum but it was no where near as long, which was good news given it had cracked 35 degrees.

We were fortunate enough to be standing next to a group of Americans who were loudly being loud and we spent almost an hour listening to their waffle.

The colosseum was, well colossal. It was huge and all the stories about what went on we're fairly intense.. Russell Crowe will give you the gist.

But my god was it hot! All the stone and loud American banter meant that we quickly saw everything and went to get some shade and some lunch.

Grandma told me I had to get some leather boots in Italy. Challenge accepted.
We wandered around the main shopping strips near the Spanish Steps and I didn't find anything I liked.

Disappointed And bootless, we had dinner near the Trevi Fountain. Well what we thought was the Trevi Fountain until we realised that it's a bit bigger and more popular.

That's not a fountain..

THIS is a fountain



After finding the right fountain (these people have fountains everywhere!) I did the typical tourist thing and threw a coin in so I return to Rome, I'm hoping when I come back it's not so hot. Hopefully the fountain will hook me up.

The next day we headed to Trastevere to hunt boots because it's meant to be THE happening place, and well let's face it.. We're happening kind of people.

We took the train and then started walking, in the wrong direction. For an hour.
We were no longer on the map we had and google couldn't even save us.
I won't lie, walking in the heat with no idea where we were and taxis not pulling over wasn't the best time.

We finally got a taxi to pull over and got dropped off in the right spot.

Trastevere was magical, after a tense journey there it was clear that wine, pizza and pasta were the key to happiness.

And then we explored the back streets, it was the cutest place.

I found a shop called Carlo Cecchini, I knew I was I the right place to find my boots, it smelt of leather. Not in a weird way, in a exciting boot challenge kind of way.

I picked out a pair and declared the challenge a success.

They wrapped the boots and gave me a ridiculously large bag to carry. I loved it!

We then had to head out to a new hotel just outside of Rome where the bus was picking us up the next day.

Getting public transport with a suitcase and the massive bag o boots was not fun. Repacking was happening, as a matter of priority.

The place we stayed was a camping ground that had a lot of youthful types drinking cocktails from buckets.. When in Rome..

Let's just say that getting up the next day and the bus ride to follow wasn't a great experience.

Munich

So, if you ever go to Munich don't get a taxi from the airport, unless you are loaded. We learnt that the hard way, their train system is very efficient (much like the Germans) and a quarter of the price.

The view from our hotel

To recover from the taxi fare we grabbed our first German meal. We learnt quickly that its not just the quality of the beer its also about the size..

Sam hasn't been surfing for two weeks, so when he found out about the standing wave we had to go there. There is a wave under a bridge called eisbach. I'm not sure how or why it just is. And people surf it. That's probably not a great explanation.. try this

Our friend from Germany told us we had to go to Hofbrauhaus for some of their famous beer.. And that we did.

Pretty sure I drank about 5 liters of beer, that's not ok.

Everyone else was just as drunk so it was amazing people watching.

At the beginning of the night we met a guy from Chicago who was with a very very very drunk girl from Sydney, when the girl wandered off he told us all about how he loved Australians and that he used to party with Wayne Carey (sorry was that meant to be impressive?)

In other news the Germans are all about the meat so I basically had Mac and cheese for dinner ( they call it spatzel)

We met a group of Austrian guys on a work trip who wanted to practice their English, they said they were carpenters. We all laughed over the fact that Austria and Australia are basically the same word (.. It was funny after all that beer)

It's almost the same word!

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur, probably something to do with the amount of steins that we drank.. We walked back to the hotel in the rain (it made sense at the time).

So we woke up kind of fuzzy - some more than others. Sam left his phone in the communal bathroom at our hotel and when he realised and went back, it was gone!
We knocked on the doors of those in the rooms around.. I was talking to a Spanish girl who didn't know a word of English.. Lucky I know how to say toilet in Spanish (and vigorously mime phone) and we got the phone back.. She was on her way to hand it in to reception but I still maintain that knowing the word toilet in Spanish saved the day (and the phone)

After a quick breakfast and the worst coffee in the world (i thought europe was meant to be all over coffee?!) we went to the Dachau Concentration Camp.

We caught two trains and a bus there rather than going on a tour which would have cost three times as much - we ended up following behind some groups to get the info any way, for free. Man was it disappointing when the guide wasn't speaking English!




This piece includes all of the different badges the prisoners were made to wear. They all wore the circles on their backs, like targets for the SS soldiers if they were trying to escape  - Info courtesy of the guide who's group we tagged along in.

Walking into the camp was eerie, It's devastating to think that it all happened not so long ago. We hardly spoke as we wandered through the camp and museum Sam said 'Brutal hey?' a few times but other than that we were silent.

Me, standing in the "showers" where they would gas prisoners before cremating them

When we got back in to Munich it was raining again. (I swear it's meant to be summer here) So we found a beer hall and waited for it to stop raining.

Sam was working his way through the meat dishes of Germany (whilst I was working my way through the potatoes of Germany) and ordered a wiener schnitzel - they bought him two and then another one because according to the waiter "Ve vere sinking zat it vasn't enough"

Because two just wouldn't have been enough

How Germany isn't full of enormous people I don't know, all that beer and meat is intense..

I told Sam we had to see the glockenspiel before we left because its a thing that you have to do.
The glockenspiel is like a cuckoo clock and instead of the people in German dress/children/knights riding horses popping out of the clock they spin around.

The most exciting part was when one of the knights nearly fell off out of the clock into the full square of people below.

We didn't stay for the whole thing a few rotations was all we needed.
The square was packed with people gazing at the glockenspiel, maybe we just didn't get it?

Adventures in Dubai continued..

With Kristy working, we were on our own and planned to go skiing in the morning and the to a desert safari in the evening.
We thought we were so clever getting a taxi the way she had told us, everything was going really well until the windscreen on the taxi we were in started cracking right down the middle.
The driver's solution was to drop us on the side of the highway in peak hour with no shade (at that point I think it was about 40 degrees)..

After about half an hour of walking along the side of the road we found another taxi. And man, did the driver love coconuts, lovely guy but seriously twenty minutes of coconut talk is not right.
N.B (if you are coconut mad and want to truly enjoy the magic of delicious coconuts, best you head to Bangladesh according to our new friend) 

After we learnt all the delicious facts about coconuts we went to the Mall of the Emarites... To go skiing. In Dubai. In a Mall.
 It was so much fun.
I hadn’t been skiing in a long time so on the advice of one of the instructors I had a bit of a practice in the area where children are taught to ski.
That was embarrassing.
I finally decided that I should ski with the adults and that was much more fun.

The ticket price included all of the gear, but for some reason gloves are optional and we didn’t get them.
Which meant that when we had finished skiing our hands were bright red and frozen, even as we headed towards the desert.

Our safari driver was an hour late picking us up. And he was a bit weird, en route to th desert he actually said  "if it happens in the desert, nobody knows" we thought we were going to die..
Then he said we had to get other guests and drove us to a supermarket which is supposedly a meeting point. When the “guests” didn’t show up we decided to go in for some water and came out with traditional male head dresses – both of us.

The safari itself was great, although I did start feeling a little queasy half way through, but Sam was loving it so much I didn’t have the heart to tell him didn’t have the stomach for it.

We got some great photos out in the desert and then we returned to the desert camp for dinner which was an amazing set up, there were all sorts of traditional activities to do before dinner began.

Sam and I parked ourselves with the Sheesha and had a great time.

Not only did we have our safari car to ourselves we also had a table at dinner to ourselves.. Right near the stage. There were three entertainment acts, man with dress (it doesn’t sound impressive but it was, I just don’t know why he was wearing a dress), man with bird (who was significantly less popular than man with dress) and belly dancing woman (who was exactly that).

When we were back at Kristy’s I even had a go at the traditional dress.

Our last full day in Dubai was spent in an Irish pub watching the AFL, watching the mighty tiges who had a win.

we went to a beach party later that night and went swimming, until a security guard told me to put my clothes back on.. hoping that was something to do with me being a woman in the middle east rather than his reaction to what I've got going on.

So much love to Kristy for putting us up (and putting up with us)