Eurotrip Part 1 -- London, Oslo and Genova

Jonathan:  So after Iceland, we flew into London for about a 21 hour stopover before heading up to Oslo.  Whirlwind European travel can be rather tiring, but Norway is such a beautiful country.  We really only had 3 days there in Oslo, but if Oslo is a representation of the rest of the country, Norway must be so incredible.  We even stumbled across the King of the Netherlands and the Queen of Norway driving by.  We figure there is some sort of Royal Scandal taking palce there :).

We had an awesome couchsurfing host, who didn't mind that we arrived at close to midnight, thanks RyanAir for your awesome travel schedule, and airports so close the major cities ... not!!  But anyway, wanrdering through Oslo seeing the sights, the parks, the architecture, very interesting.  The long nights were quite nice as well, sunrise at 3am was quite handy for our very early departure to get to our 6am flight.

So flying from Oslo to Parma, then it was time to catch a train in Italy.  Trains in Italy are an experience in themselves.  Fortunately, someone on the public bus we took knew how to get to the train station, and we found an operator who knew 5 or 6 words of English, so we managed to get the right train ticket.  Then our train sat around at the station for an extra 20 minutes while the conductors laughed, drank coffee and smoked cigarettes.  We sat there fuming because we had a connecting train to catch and only a 6 minute stopover to switch trains.  I guess they made up time by skipping a station or two.  We made our connection with 2 minutes to spare.

Getting to Genova, (or Genoa in English) we were greeted by our couchsurfing host who graciously met us at the train station, we walked back to his apartment, made us dinner while we showered, then took us on a night walking tour of Genova. Genova is a city of two faces.  It can look quite pleasant and beautiful on the seaside, as you would expect from an Italian city, but get into the little side streets and find the heart of the city to be quite different.  We were glad to have a guide who knew his way around.  We enjoyed walking through the city and seeing a ridiculously pompous Catholic procession involving the Cardinal of Genova, who is apparently next in line to be Pope.  We also found the most incredible Granite (graneetay) shop, which is like ice cream with out the cream.  We enjoyed our granite while up on a hillside overlooking Genova and the Mediterranean Sea.  What an afternoon.  After 4 great days in Genova, it was time to head off to San Remo, right on the Border with France.

Iceland -- Land of the Vikings and Midnight Sun!!

Jonathan: wow Iceland, a place we wanted to visit but thought we'd never get there.  We unfortunately only had one week, but to fully appreciate Iceland, a month and a rental car would be great.  Reykjavik is a very cool city, although we couldn't get used to it being light as day at 11:30pm!  Sorry to all you animal lovers, but we ate both whale and shark meat while we were there.  Whale meat, delicious, very tender, similar to beef.  Iceland's national delicacy: Rotten (fermented) shark meat.  Quite possible the most disgusting, horrible tasting thing on earth.  The flesh of this particular shark is toxic, so they press out some of the ammonia, smoke and ferment the meat, to make it ... cough--choke ... edible.

But the best feature of Iceland is the incredible natural scenery that graces the landscape.  Formed by volcanic eruptions, Iceland is a giant lava Island, where North America and Europe's continental plates meet.  So technically a part of both continents :).

Our whirlwind tour took us to the amazing National Park of Thingvellir (Tingvektler -- Icelandic is a very difficult language!!)  Here there is a giant rift valley formed by the separating of the European and North American continental plates, and also the site of the world's oldest parliament, so they say.  We also had the opportunity to snorke between the continental plates, incredible!  The clarity of the water was up to 100m visibility, though the 2 degree temperature was quite literally mind numbing.  But you could definitely drink it :).  Cool and refreshing!  We also jumped into the "toilet bowl" about a 20 foot drop into a little tidal pool whose swirling current could "flush" you through a little rock cave into the area where we went snorkelling.  I liked it so much, I jumped in 4 times :).

We also had a visit to the south eastern part of iceland, and visited the area where that troublesome little volcano caused a few hiccups earlier this year.  It is funny that people would refer to it as The Volcano, as though Iceland only has one.  Heh, Iceland has a lot of volcanoes, and in relative terms this one was a little baby.  Ayahfyetlayokult is about the closest I can come to phonetically spelling the word.  I was determined to know one word in Icelandic before leaving, and I decided on the name of that volcano :).  E-15 is the designation many gave to it.  But to see the damage it caused in Iceland was almost surreal.  When monster glaciers are melted by volcanic activity, and they cause a river to swell to more than 10 times its normal size, and the government was forced to destroy some sections of the highway to channel the floodwater to try and save the bridges.  Everything was an eerie sort of gray/black and white color covered in ash, and ash clouds so thick that you couldn't see in front of your face, but fortunately our driver had been driving these roads for 20 years.

So Iceland was an amazing experience, and if you get the opportunity to see it, I highly recommend visiting, you will not be disappointed!

Time to Catch Up on our Blog!! -- Cancun and New York

Jonathan: Wow, it has been way too long since we've last wrote but when things are hectic and you cover 7 countries in 6 weeks, sometimes it feels almost impossible to find time for blogging :).  So I don't know if we mentioned Cancun or not but here's the skinny :)

Michelle: Cancun, the land of powdery white sandy, azul beaches, sunshine, all inclusive resorts, american tourists, 2% mexican culture and hundredes of expensive tourist traps! Mmm paradise... almost. If it weren't for the lack of anything to do with Mexico, it would be wonderful! The beach is stunning, no arguments, but the rest is up for debate. We flew from Guadalajara to Puebla, gathered up our belongings, got off the tiny little plane, collected our luggage and turned around to load up on the exact same plane for our connection to Cancun- the hostess was rather amused. So while the budget only allowed for a basic hotel room with no view in an average hotel, it was a great reward when we were upgraded to a 1 bedroom mini suite on the 9th floor with perfect views of the ocean and overlooking the pool. We enjoyed 2 glorious days of weather (though of course those were the days we caught up on alot of missed sleep and we could barely face the humidity so we spent most of the time in our air conditioned room). So once we were reved and ready to explore, we got 1 afternoon in the sun (turns out that was more than enough for the two of us) and then the grey clouds came and rained heavily on our parade and turned "paradise" into soggy wetlands.

Sadly while in Cancun, I received the news that my Grandmother had passed away. It was not unexpected news but it was very difficult to deal with and heartbreaking as it felt like the distance between Mexico and Australia had increased x100. I felt sooo far away from my family and completely helpless, the worst part was not even being able to give my Dad a hug. I'm never very good with death but it does serve as a reminder of how fickle and fragile this life really is. So the thoughts played on my mind that I was 'lucky' I had the chance to say my goodbyes to Grandma, and she is better off now, but I'm sure glad I had Jon around to lean on and give my hug-o-meter a boost! Keep your loved ones close, tell them you love them, that you appreciate them and that you're thankful that they are in your life. Don't wait until their funeral and it's too late for them to hear your words and feel your love!! The time is now, grasp it with 2 hands and don't let go! Don't let the mundane cares of life drag you down and spoil the joy you could have, or cause you to fight with your loved ones. The worst nightmare I could have would be #1 something happening to Jonathan or my family and friends and #2 if the parting had been bitter and there was conflict in the air and all the love was left unsaid, could I forgive myself or live forever with regrets?. Forgive. Love freely.

Jonathan: I got the worst sunburn I have ever had in my entire life in Cancun.  4 months in Guadalajara ... no sunburn.  Day 3 in Cancun, I got roasted beyond belief, and I was only out for 2 hours.  My skin turned a shade of purple before my entire upper back blistered.  I have never felt so horrible and gross in my entire life, not to mention the insane pain.  Then my entire torso peeled and it was like having cornflakes under my shirt.  After that, once the skin healed and the nerve endings were recovering, the itching was so intense that I wanted to claw my skin off my back with a fork!

After Cancun was New York.  We spent a couple of days in Manhattan.  New York is an interesting city to visit I guess, loads of high rises.  If you want to look at buildings, New York is the place to be, although central park was pretty nice.  But everything in NY is pretty expensive, so after a couple of days, that was enough for me.

Michelle: New York was a slight shock to the system, after living with the Mexican Peso, it was hard to adjust back to most things costing an arm and a leg in dollars and the first day we walked around with eyebrows raised at the cost of everything. We generally don't like cities much because the pace of life is so busy. However, as far as cities go, it is beautiful and there's lots to see. We did a mad dash around Manhatten trying to see all the major features in only 2 days, I think we walked for at least 10 hours each day. We couldn't make ourselves stand in line for 3 hours just to see the Statue of Liberty, so we looked at her across the water, she was just a speck in the distance. We were staying at a hostel right near the heart of Manhatten and there was a really awesome group of travellers that we had a good time with. The Korean's took us to enjoy our first genuine Korean cuisine, which was delicious (yes even for Miss Picky-Eater-Me). Times Square was pretty cool and I got a hug from Elmo and we saw 2 stand up comedy performances, they were really funny. I even crossed the no-go barrier that keeps me from being just another dumb tourist to being a traveller, and became one of the millions to buy an I LOVE NY t.shirt. Not because I like to buy tacky tourist t.shirts but because it would make a comfy travel top, for all those hours upon hours we spend on planes, trains and buses. Of course we also rode in a yellow taxi, made so famous through movies, ate New York style pizza and we got some amusement walking around Central Park and noting the ridiculous amount of money spent on dog clothes and baby strollers

After the jostle of the city, we had a visit to the country, hosted by our friend Jess and her family. It was a welcome refuge before the craziness of the following weeks. We had a lovely time, we went to some waterfalls, enjoyed some jazz with the best local burgers you can get, gorged on chocolates and icecream (all the kind you can't get in Mexico that we had cravings for) and had a great BBQ accompaned by plenty of story telling and laughing. The bed we slept in was absolute luxury, it was like a heavenly cloud. I wanted to take it with me, but I thought it might be a little tricky getting a queen size mattress through security. Drat, it was the best sleep I'd had since vacating my very cosy, delightfully comfy memory foam topper and bed in Victoria, Canada 6 months previous.

The first major moment of forgetfulness kicked in when I left my backpack on the train in New York. The one bag with everything really important inside, the most inconvenient one to lose. So then began a flurry of calling lost and found, cancelling credit cards, and getting frustrated every time I thought of another useful thing that was in the backpack, wallet, camera charger, all our memory cards etc. Thankfully the day before Jon had taken my passport and drivers licence to use for ID and had kept them with him or else the inconvenience factor and frustration would have grown by 200%. They have since found my bag and eventually I will see the contents again, thanks to Jess. Phew!