Saturday, October 27, 2007

Friday 26th October

The week after we got back - I (sarah) spent the week at home in bed with a chest cold and we both spent the weekend in bed for the entire 2 days - Josh had a chest cold then to and ended up having Monday off work. I still have my chest cold although returned to work last week. We have had Teresa - Louises sister staying with us this week and on Friday night us girls went to see Disney on Ice at the O2 center and had dinner there. We saw - micky, minie, goofy, daffy, pluto and the incredables (modern day disney) all ice skating. The stage was set as Disneyland! It was definatly for children but we had a good laugh.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Monday 15th October - Back to London

We left camp at 7am and embarked on a long drive through Belgium to Calais wehre we caught the 2pm ferry to Dover then drove back to London. We arrived home about 7.30pm totally eshausted and hating the bus!! No more bus tours for us! Camping of otherwise - it's exhausting! Our favourite souveniers are the chest infection i am taking home and the cold Josh is taking home - thanks to sitting in a bus full of sick people with the a/c on!!! I have spent the last 2 days at home - not able to work - recuperating!!! When we arrrived home I spent the next 48hours sleeping with about 2hrs of awake time total! Oh and did I mention the fever!! Favourite sovenier!!!

Sunday 14th October Amsterdam

This morning we headed out to the Heineken factory - really excellent! We saw how they they made the beer, we went on a simulator ride as if we were the bottle! We mixed music at the DJ stations, watched advertisements from 1965 to 2003 and had a free sample. After 2.5 hours at the museum we went to the Anne Frank Museum. We walked through the museum which takes you through the house where she stayed with her family. We then went on a cannal ride where we saw the more pretty parts of Amsterdam - including a floating chinnese restaurant and a boat hotel where you paid by the minute! We had chinese for dinner as a group as it was our last meal together. Whilst we were there, a carnival was on in the main square and i went on one of the rides witha couple of others - only to suffer from extreme motion sickness afterwards, all the way home on the tram and wish i had never gone on it! The ride was like a big arm with seats at either end that went round - really high and got up to 4.5 g-force! We walked around the the red light district tonight with the group - what can you say - i have never seen such a disgustingly dirty city! Everywhere you went peopel where wasted, learing at you, offering you illicit drugs, vomitting or naked in a window! Amsterdam is not a city either of us think we will re-visit, however i am told that out of the city it is very beautiful, so maybe we will give another part of Holland a visit in the furture.

Saturdaty 13th October, Berlin to Amsterdam, Netherlands

Clog Making
Another long bus ride, leaving at 8am and arriving in Amsterdam at 6pm. Before arriving at the hostel we went to see how they made cheese and clogs and had a tasting of the cheeses! In the evening we all did a walking tour of the city.

Friday 12th October - Berlin, Germany

Brandenburg gate - the back of - didn't take a picture of the front - oops! Marx and Engels Platz monuments still standing of communim's founders in the former East Berlin. Inside the State Opera House
Checkpoint Charlie by night - check out my hat! The wall side on - it's quite narrow and notice the piping! Topography of terror exhibit.
The Marienkirche - one of Berlin's oldest churches, built from 1270 and reconstructed after a fire in 1380. The tower was not completed until the 16th century. Berlin Cathedral built from 1893 - 1905, restored in 75-80. The Reichstag - restored parliament house, the site of one of Berlins final WWII battles. Victory Column Riding through the Tiergarten in the afternoon, the rain had stopped by then! War memorial built days after WWII and where 2500 soviet troops are buried.
An old guard tower, it has been moved off from it's original site - though it is the only one still standing! An old Nazi building, typical archetitecure, that Hitler thought looked good - square and bland! From this building window some people actually attempted and completed their escapse of East Berlin, the top window had a winch and pully system where an entire family escaped! The death strip! - the large pavers are where the second wall would be. Looking serious at the Berlin Wall - we were smiling for the photo and told we had to look serious! The wall is fenced off now because people keeping taking souvieners and as you can imagine if everyone takes a little - eventually none left to sightsee! Sign at Checkpoint Charlie. The guard at checkpoint charlie - he would hide behind his flag if you tried to take a photo with him without paying him! What a cheeck!
Gendarmenmarket and the French Cathedral, the German Cathedral on the otherside is identical Gendarmenmarket. This is the theatre
Bebelplatz - This is the monument of the book burnings of 1933.This is the site of the book burnings of 1933, the monument is just an empty bookshelf, very simple and effective.
The old royal library in Bebelplatz square
Bike tour
Soviet Union hats we brought at the market - they were nice and warm - mine was fake but Josh's is animal fur - yuck! Neptunes Fountain TV Tower
The town hall Today we all went on a bike tour around the sights of Berlin - heaps of fun! Berlin has lots of interesting history and the guide was excellent. The tour was called 'fat tire bike tours'. We saw the Berlin wall, the brandenbury gate, the red town hall - the city hall of unified Berlin and saw where Hitlers bunker was (now a carpark). We saw the victory colum, Bebelplatz (site of the Nazi book burning), the memorieal to the murdered Jews of europe, the Reichstag (restored parliament house). Then we went to a beer garden the rolde our bikes back through the gardens (Tier Gardens), they used to be hunting grounds. The victory monument was built in 1873 as a memorial to the Prussian war. The godess on top of the Brandenbury gate is the godess of victory, built originally in 1789 but damaged during the war, so the one ontop of the gate now is a plaster caste of the original. We also saw the Berlin cathedral and the marienkriche (built in 1270's), however it has been rebuilt over the years. The square with the 3 buildings is the Gendarmenmarkt, it has a theatre, french and german church - the 2 churches are mirror images at each end of the courtyard. Josh sits infront of Neptunes fountain. The bike tour went from 11-4pm. Before the tour Josh and I brought oursleves some 'lovely' soviet union hats! It was raining on the bike tour, notice the lovely ponchos! After the tour we went to check-point charlie, which was one of the checkpoints to get through from the east to the west and we went to the museum there and learn't about all the different stories of how people tried to escape - in suitcases, curled up in amplifiers etc! Then we went to the topography of terror musum which was an exhibit on the wall of the old gestapo building about the gestapo and SAS proceedings during the war. The most amazing part of all the information was seeing the actual photos, seeing the real flags people waved and the suitcases they hid in and even the clothes worn on their nights of excape. It brought the history alive to say the least! We took a photo of the 'death strip', the area between the inner and outer wall where guards manned towers and were told to shoot anybody they saw in this area. We took a photo of the only still standing watch tower. We learn't that after WWII the country was divided into sections and given to different countires, the west was given to america, UK and France and the east was given to the soviet union, who originally had all of Berlin but the others wanted some of Berlin as it was a resourced city, so it was divided down the middle. The division happened in the middle of the night and one minute families were a drive apart and the following morning soilders seperated them. it was then they began building the wall, not nearly as big as we expected! The concrete tubing along the top of the wall is piping the west gave to the east for their sewage system - only they never used it for that but cut it in half and put it ontop of the wall! One of the first bombs dropped on Berlin in WWII only killed one living thing - the only elephant in the Berlin zoo! After all this learning and sightseeing, we had a nice german meal for dinner - trout for me and beef with bacon wrapped in it and fried for Josh, then back to bed!

Thursday 11th Prague - Berlin, Germany

Above: The tower had the height of all the tallest buildings in the world and Josh is standing next to the Sky Tower! Below:Picture of the TV tower in the background.
Today we drove from Prague to Berlin. we arrived about 4.30pm. We did a brief driving tour of the city, then went up the TV tower and ate dinner at the revolving restaurant. The TV tower is 386m high and we ate at 206m up. The restaurant rotated every 30min - so it was quite fast! The lift takes only a few seconds to get up. It has a great view of the city but due to the fog we couldn't take any good photos. Once again we stayed in hostels with sheets and breakfast provided - yeah!

Wednesday 10th October - Prague

Mulled wine at the end of the day.
Bones from the church Golden Lane
Old Hall
Cathedral of St Vitus The Castle gates
Changing of the guard The Charles bridge and the statues on it
Outside the old-new syngagogue - Josh had to wear the hat to go in!
Jewish cementary
Building on the Jewish cementary - now a museum
Astronomical clock
Today we started our sightseeing of Prague at 9am and stopped for dinner at 7pm. In between times we saw heaps of sights. We walked around the castle - it was formed in the 9th Century and we saw the changing of the guard. Inside the castle we looked at St Vitus Cathedral with it's gothic archetecture. Inside we climbed up the tower and had great views of the city. Inside the cathedral was heaps of amazing alters and one was the tomb of St John Nepomuk. When we walked through the palace we saw the old hall where the horses used to be ridden in for jousting contests. The hall is famous for it's late gothic vaulting. We visited St Georges Basilica a romonesque building with 17th century baroque facade. You weren't allowed to take phtos but Josh snuk a sneaky one of the cabnit with the bones in!!! We walked down the golden lane where the king housed alchemists as he waned them to turn stone into Gold - obviously they weren't albe to do so! The lane originally housed the kings guards and the houses were built at the end of the 16th century. We visited the church of St Nicholas in Mala Strana - another bohemian baroque church. We walked across Charles Bridge. It was originally wiped out during a flood and was rebuilt in 1890. There are 30 statures along the bridge. In the middle of the old town square is the astonomical clock. It was built at the beginning of the 15th century and perfected in the second half of the 16th century. Every hour the procession of the apostles appears. The upper face has the signs of the zodiac and 2 different types of time and the lower face is a calendar. The figures beside the upper face represent vanity, greed, death and lust. The king was so impressed with the clock and didn't want anyone else to have one like it, he gouged out he eyes of it's creator!
There is also a Jewish quarter to the city, in the war the Jews were heavily persecuted and restricted to ghettos and wore yellow circles on their foreheads. Only 10% of the Jewish population survived here! We visted the old-new synagogue - named this as it was originally built int eh 13th century, then additons were made made in the 15th and 18th centuries. Rennovations were also done in the 19th and 20th centuries. The synagogue was a central point of refuge. the Jewish cemetry holds 20 000 graves, going down 12 layers! The thomb stones not only contain the persons name, sex and marital status but also their trade and social class. The cemetary was used from the 15th-18th centuries.
There were so many other great sights and prague is really beautiful! We enjoyed some czech traditions at both lunch and dinner - Josh had dumplings and beef with gravey and cream! - a really traditional dish. We had mulled wine - so nice in the afternoon as it was quite cold! I had a grog - hot water and brandy and we both had shots of plum brandy and some other authentic alcohol which actually tasted and burnt like petrol! Czech is also famous for it's pilsner beer so Josh enjoyed large ones with both luch and dinner! The evening meal had live music, 2 violins, a chello and a double bass, they played both classical and jazz. It was beautiful. Prague was a little cold be we were well prepared with thermals and jackets. Josh even had his leggings on! It wasn't that cold - he was just sick with a cold! Prague is a really beautiful city, Josh and I both agree that it's one of the most beautiful cities we have visited so far - alongside Dubrovnik!

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