Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Sim's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, February 16th, 2008
9:30 pm	Cairo Day 5 Dokki -> Giza -> Hilton -> Dokki Went to Giza today! E£1 to take the Metro out to the end of the line E£20 to take a cab from the end of the metro to the entrance gate at Giza E£50 to get into the compound ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Friday, February 15th, 2008
10:44 pm	Cairo - Day 4 Dokki -> Ataba -> Citadel -> City of the Dead -> Downtown -> Dokki -> Nile River -> Dokki No internet cafe today... I had to call my bank anyway over lack of ATM workage, so absolute necessity of getting online to pay my mastercard is not forcing me to jump online. To tell you the truth, I'm sorta liking the being offline thing... I'm having a really good holiday getting away from it all. The ATM thing is still an unfolding story, and recent developments have turned it over into a story well worth a sit and spill... Grab me at one point, buy me a drink, and I will tell you all about it! Adventures today include the visiting of the Citadel (which looked a whole lot less like Warhammer scenery than I was expecting), a brief tour of the city of the dead, followed by Shisha and Shwaarma Downtown before a short walk and a metro ride back to the Hotel in time to wash my face, apply make-up and dash down the river for a dinner cruise. Camera problem sorted, I have taken alot of photos, and I even have a video post for you! ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
10:37 pm	Cairo - Day 3 Dokki Having a quiet day today. Knees haven't quite gotten over all the walking we did yesterday and the lumpy bumpy pavement and high gutters are not helping. And when I say high gutters, I mean they are almost a foot high... I can completly understand this... it is the only thing stopping the huge amount of double and triple-parked cars from driving up onto the pavement. This means that you can more or less walk along without having to wander into the traffic, mostly. Building sites, skips, cardboard bales, stalls, piles of dug-up pavement, police cars and throngs of people will make you walk around though. I figured out why my camera's picture capacity has gone from seemingly bottomless to 10... it wasn't the ubermegapixel setting, it was the fact that my memory card was still sitting in my memory card reader! the only problem that I have is that I can't figure out how to transfer the pictures from the camera's memory to the card so that I can post them... I need the docking station, which I left in Sydney somewhere, because it crashes my camera, and I have a seperate battery charger and card reader, which combined takes up less space and weight than the docking station, and with the added bonus of being able to dll info off most of the cards in existance. (including my phone, sister's camera, possible T's camera (will try that tonight), but not my PSP.) That isn't my only problem here... It appears that my atm card doesn't work in egypt... even in maestro atms... even in HSBC atms! I am so very pissed off right not about this, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I'll be trying to find an internet cafe tonight and try to contact them to see what the story is... I'll keep you posted. Still not sick yet, though eating alot of stuff that I shouldn't. The language barrier is proving far too difficult to cross. Also, it would appear that Coke lost the ocla war here... it's really really strange to be seeing pepsi everywhere! - T won't drink it, and I prefer DC or Pepsi Max to Diet Pepsi, so am drinking alot of tea. T is off traipsing around Old Cairo today, and is due back any moment, so I'd better start getting ready to do dinner. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
10:22 pm	Cairo - Day 2 Dokki -> Zohiriyya Garden -> Sadat -> Ataba -> ??? -> ???² -> Dokki (via taxi) Love this city! Cairo keeps my kind of hours! It is a 24hour city, but most stuff is open until about 11pm... that's supermarkets, bookstores cafes and all that. It's currently 3am, and there is still traffic outside our hotel! This morning, we walked from Dokki to the museum via the 6 October brige, got swarmed a couple of times by various locals... most who just welcomed us to egypt, some who tried to drag us into various brother's, uncle's, cousin's and father's shops, and one bunch of schoolkids who were mearly stoked by the fact that we talked back to them when they said hello. We ended up getting a photo of the lot of us, (which is not on my camera, so will have to be posted later) tried to scab cigarettes off T, before wandering on their way again laughing. I had a problem with my camera, somehow it was set to ubermegapixel, so I only got a few pics and a short vid in today...but that's all fixed now, so we are all good for tomorrow! This afternoon, we caught the Metro from the Museum over to Ataba and tried to walk to Khan El Khalili. I say tried, because I'm not sure if we actually made it there or not... We definatly need a better Map. This has to be the first time that Lonely planet has let me down. So instead of the tourist Bazaar, we ended up in the Egyptian Bazaar... which was, IMHO much better! It's a pity that my bank card isn't working (grrr) but more of that saga once I get closer to a resolution. I bought a few things, (postcards and a few presents *grins*) and then we tried to walk back to the Metro station... Got lost. Got so totally lost that by the time we gave up on figuring out where the hell we were, (which was after dinner) it took a 20 min cab ride to get back to a place that we recognised! oops. Still at EP10... a solution that we should have taken advantage of a hell of alot earlier! The currency maths here is doing my head in! - I'm having to convert everything from Egyptian Pounds into Pounds Sterling (bit under 10%), then convert pounds into AU$ to figure out if stuff is worth it! Another thing that is completly throwing us is the Egyptian Hospitality... Everyone wants us to come, sit and talk while being plied by tea, juice and Shisha... We met an English woman tonight that moved here 3 years ago... so good to have a chat with someone who understands both the local culture, and where we are coming from. We have been told that if we are invited to drink or dine with egyptians, to offer to pay our share once, then politely accept once that is turned down. We expressed just how uncomfortable that made us... and she said that it is acceptable to shout the next round, but the rounds are counted by sessions, not drinks. Ahhh! says the two Aussies... yeh, we can so totally do that! We had a good time sitting and chatting, but ended up having to bail at about 10, because the day was catching up to us... Came back to the hotel and had a 3 hour soak in the bath. With lavendar oil and a good book. Did wonders on my poor tired, sore muscles... plane yesterday wasn't good for them, and all the walking about today definatly didn't help things at all. And you should have seen the dust that I was washing off my face! The dust is the same colour as Chromacryl Umber, and gets over everything! Took me several repeats to get it all out of my pores... I"m going to come home with either really really good skin from all this TLC, or completly broken out from all the pollution. I'm also a bit shocked to find that I am not sick yet. (yay) We are being pretty careful... anti-bac rub before eating anything, bottled water even for cleaning teeth, etc. Though, it's only a matter of time! I'll keep you posted... (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
10:30 pm	Cairo - Day 1 London -> Dokki, Cairo Well we have definately landed... We had delays getting out of Heathrow becasue of the fog this morning. It turned 4 hours of me going crazy sitting in a plane into 5½ hours of me going crazy sitting on a plane... I got a whole lot of lemmings finished, got a little over an hour sleep, and was well fed. We were given cheesecake! (I ate two!) My first impression of Cairo was that it was alot like home. Stepped off the plane as the sun was going down... the light as strong, the air was dry, and the heat of the day was being slowly eroded by a slight cool breeze. We got a taxi from the airport, because we couldn't find where the busses went from... we got totally ripped off, but that was always going to happen... we also learnt a nice lesson on carbon neutrality... Were packed in the back of a shared cab, luggage all around us, (even on the roof!), and taken on a magical mystery tour via 2 other tourist's hotel. We were also assured by the cab driver's brother (yeh, right) that if our rooms weren't sufficient, then they could get me a nice discount at their friend's hotel. We said that we were sorted, but this kept up until we told them that we'd already pre-paid our bill. This proved a nice distraction to the utter utter chaos that is driving in Cairo... You know, I sorta did wonder why my insurance agency didn't try to pimp me a fly-drive option when I informed them that I'd be going to Egypt... I now know why... OMG! The traffic! I thought that it was just streets and streets of insanity.. but after watching for awhile, I started seeing the system. There is definatly unwritten rules in play... and the cars here are nowhere near as banged-up as they should be! We arrived at our hotel in one piece, dumped stuff, got into lift-o-doom!(tm) and then wandered out into the street to try scout bottled water and dinner. Oh! that reminds me... I have macaroons! Back in a minute! Umm... OK, so we got the absolutely best Kebab I have ever tasted for dinner! And the best thing about it! - it cost the equivilent of 60p! We also made a new friend, who's brother has a tourist shop, who can organise a whole bunch of tours for us! But who doesn't want anything off us, but won't rip us off in any way, here see these testimonials! I don't have any photos, because it was too dark by the time I retrieved my camera from the bottom of my bag... and camera doesn't work so well in the dark... So yeh. I sitting here listening to the constant sounds of aggrevated traffic outside wondering what time peak hour ends in Cairo. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 13th, 2007
11:24 pm	*brushes away cobwebs* umm... I got a basket and a half of busy? I has posts and piccies and a whole heap of round-tuits. ..sorry. Stay Tuned: Morris Dancing! Duck Herding! Whiskey Factory! Rope Bridge! Glasgow Shennanigins! Stonehenge Solstice! And an eyefull of London! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
1:33 pm	Day 2: Paris Hello. So after last night we pretty much have this whole thing sussed. ( Read more... ) Heya. Sister is asleep & I’m watching some French guy try to be Rove on channel 6. We watched South Park in German in Austria, and Friends in French yesterday but Rove wanna be guy is the strangest thing so far. He even does short jokes! I’ll let you know if there is a “what the…” ( Read more... ) OMG the French keyboard sucks even worse than the Italian ones! At least the Italians put the brackets on the keys that are next to each other. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, March 19th, 2007
12:00 pm	Day 1: London to Paris So... bus tour… hmm. We decided not to do a piss-pot root-rat tour with the 18-30 year olds, so instead we are at the other end of the spectrum with mostly oldies and mostly aussies. Tour guide is Dutch and instant impression?… Spend the last week avoiding Dutch and now stuck on a bus with one for 28 days. Think tonight I will go and find ear plugs. If we were playing a drinking game where we took a shot each time the guide said “yeah?” or “ok” we would be falling off the seats drunk! ( Read more... ) Heya! I’ve kidnapped back my book… We just got given Paris map and so Dutch dude is intent on insulting our intelligence by explaining how to read it. OMG!! “Along the top you have letters… A to G, Yeah? Then down the sides is numbers 1 to 12.. ok? You see right?” *Headdesk* I’m gonna enjoy taunting this guy for the next 28 days.. ( Read more... ) Ahh, well yeah now yeah I yeah know how to read a map. Not bad considering I can plot a fire, organise water bombing drops to a grid reference by map or GPS but its assumed I can’t work out where in M7 our street is. Oh and it starts with Rue, no shit shirlock, rue means road dick head! All streets start with that! ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
11:09 am	The Book Welcome people! The next few day's entries will be from The Book. A written journal that sister and I kept while on the bus trip around europe. Disclaimers: Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the poor people on the bus tour who probably act like sane and rational beings when not crammed onto a bus for 4 weeks, and probably would like what happens on bus tour to stay on bus tour. I'm not going to be editing this much... having said that, the opinions expressed within are held by two travel-weary, claustrophobic, cranky night-owls who were really not appreciating the 6am starts. Our misery becomes your misery: Be warned! (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 4th, 2007
3:31 pm	Sorry! Apologies to anyone who experienced the post flood that I just created on your friends pages. I have no idea how to stop it. The post out of order option doesn't seem to be effecting things. I have now posted my travel journal up till my arrival in London. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
3:10 pm	Holland Park, London Made it. The last week has been an aboslute whirlwind! Trying to get stuff organised in London is a slow, and painful process. But I have accoumplished much. I now have a bank card so I can chip and pin. When I get another pin, I'll even be able to use it. The initial PIN that was issued by the bank didn't print properly. It appears that the only way to reset your PIN here is to request that head office change it, and send you another one. Really really frustrating! I have opened a credit card account, and that should be ready to pick up next week. I have obtained me an Oyster Card. Which is like an e-tag for the tube and busses here. You charge it up, and it automatically deducts a discounted fare from your card. It will even figure out that you are bus or tube-hopping and automatically switch you over to a daily ticket if that's cheaper. Bus trips cost 1 pound on the oyster, or 2 if you buy a ticket from the driver or the machine. It will stop charging your Oyster Card once you have taken 3 trips. So cheap! I had a bad night on Wednesday when my digestive system flipped out in protest at all the crap I've been throwing at it over the last two weeks. So I've now stopped eating off the streets, and have scoped out local supermarkets looking for dairy and wheat-free food. I now have a Tesco card, which is like a frequent flier card for the entire chain of supermarkets. They have a small range of 'free from' foods, quite similar to Woolworth's range of the same name. The biscuits are identical, in fact. Morrison's have a bigger and cheaper range of everyday stuff that I can eat. 80p for a 250g bag of rice that cooks in 2 mins in a microwave, for example. Also! So Good! Not made by sanitarium, but by a company called ACA ltd. I bought 2x1L boxes of chocolate for 1.50, and they aren't the silly tetra packs, either, they have a water-tight screw cap in the top! Actually, while we are on the subject of shopping, I have to go off on a tangent for a moment to have a bit of a rantie about the sugar here. In a word... confusing! White sugar is called white sugar. No problems there. If you want Raw sugar as we know it, you will be dissapointed. Raw sugar here is like coffee crystals in Australia. They do have something close, called Golden Granulated, but that's more a halfway stop between raw and white. The pisser is, that it's packaged into sachets in cafes and labeled Brown Sugar. But in the supermarket, brown sugar is called dark brown sugar, and light brown sugar is halfway between brown and raw back home. The answer to this for me (for the moment) was to just stop putting sugar in my tea. Coffee, well... After my third espresso that I couldn't even finished, I've resolved myself to the fact that I'll be drinking Tea here. Eventually I'll get me a plunger and order the Beans from Oz, but most of my day today has been me dealing with the mother of all caffeing withdrawral headaches. Hopefully I'll be right again by Sunday. Hostel life has been fun. No complete dicks so far, just two mildly annoying people. One was in the bunk below mine, and kept putting her toiletries on the step up onto my bunk. Also didn't understand that if she left her bag at the floor below that it would get stepped on several times during the night when I got up to go to the loo. She left today, after only 2 nights. And the other long-term girl here, in the bed across from mine was happy too. Aparently she annoyed the piss outta everyone in the evenings while I was out. I don't think that they realise that you only are sposed to like, sleep in your room... There is alot of common rooms and areas here... Oh! And they have Chickens! Like Size 15 chickens! Really well fed chickens. There is a laundry here onsite, and it's really cheap. 20p to use the drier for 20 mins. Which is really handy... Cos I left my towel in Dublin, and have to throw the t-shirt that I've been using in there everyday. I'm currently in the dining room, which is the designated loud common room outside meal times. There's a TV here, which has been taken over by an annoying American lady, who is currently engaged in a volume-war with a group of soccer fans that are watching a game halfway down the room on a computer. It has escalated to the point where she is standing right next to me, filing her nails in my ear, because she can reach the volume controls from here. Frequently tossing scowls at the guys over there hasn't had any effect on their behaviour, so she just ups the volume more... It started at 16, she's now up to 43. I'll be leaving soon I think. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 15th, 2007
4:30 pm	Roma Airport We are here stupid early so we can check in and clear security... Well, we are second in line for our our tickets, and have been for 20 mins since we got here. Sister just went for a wander to see if she could find the lounge. She comes back grinning like madde. So I asks her what is so amusing. "Some guy with a machine gun just winked at me!" OK, so checked in, through security faster than I thought would be possible.. there was NO queue! NO one. Whoo! Tried to go to the Qantas lounge, but the stuck-up bitch at reception works for BA, and told us that we weren't flying on a one-world flight, so we can't come in. And that we'd needed to be in buisness class anyway. Never bloody mind that there is no such thing as business class on the flight between Dublin and Rome... We tried to explain to her for 15 mins, but she wouldn't listen, and didn't care. So we cut our losses and wandered over to the c terminal for shopping, and ended up sitting in a cafe with the worst waiters for 2 hours. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
1:20 pm	Piazza Di Trevi OK. I have arrived at the Pinnacle of Pretty! I have never been anywhere so pretty like ever. So pretty it knocks dozens of points off your IQ! Again. Trevi Fountain is way prettier in real life than in any picture I've ever seen. It's not too crowded today, and would be nice to just sit here and exist, if we weren't being bugged every 5 mins by street vendors selling stupid crap. We went to see the Pope give mass this morning. It was very cultish. I lasted about 20 mins before the sheer mass of people began to get to me. I ended up wandering out the front and just sitting in the courtyard enjoying being in Rome. I found out that the Vatacin has it's own Ambulances. They pulled 8 people out of the Mass while I was watching. We are about to wander over to the Spanish steps, then catch the Metro back to the Termini. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
5:30 pm	Happy Hour Cafe It's been a whirlwind day! I'm only just having my first coffee of the day now. It's so totally not fair to be in Rome with a caffeine withdrawal headache! I was relayed a message from Sister that she was a whole lot worse, and she wanted me to come back to the Hostel room. I managed to get myself to a bus stop, and onto a bus, trying to ask the driver if his bus went to the termini. (I hadn't learnt how to read the bus station signage yet) I was rescued by a nice priest that told me in very broken english that he was going home for lunch, and he'd show me the quick way back to the Termini. We got on buses, and off buses, and dashed up and down streets! He set me straight on the Sensi Unico thing too. Half an hour later I am standing in a Farmica trying to figure out if the cough mixture I'm about to buy will be OK. Got back to the room to find that the cough mixture was the same stuff as what she takes at home, except that it's lemon flavoured. It stopped her being blue, and she went back to sleep muttering about Panadine forte. So out I went again... It turns out that you can't get codeine over the counter in Italy. You need a prescription. But they will sell you 500mg Paracetamolo. It also seems that Phlegm is Phlegm in Italian too... And now sister is going to hurt me for talking about her Phlegm in public... nevermind telling the internet all about it. (Comment on this)
9:30 am	Vatacin City Starting this entry in th queue for the Vatacin Museum. It doesn't open till 10am, but we were told to not get here much after 9am, or else we won't make it to the front of the queue before the museum closes. I thought that Malbri was being a bit of an artist, but we are in a bloody queue 3 blocks form the entrance of the museum, and the end of the queue has snaked back around the corner and out of sight of the Piazza. Considering that The Vacican is a seperate, indpendant country, we are talking about a queue that goes 3/4 the way around a country! Whoo! Sister isn't with us today, she got worse after feeling a little unwell last night, and is back at the hostel trying to sleep it off. Probably a good thing she isn't standing out there in the freezing cold for an hour. Geez! Entry was 13Euros. But the ticket is valid for 4 days. Not like that's excessive... This place is huge! We've made a plan to head straight(ish) for the Sistine Chapel so as to spend the most amount of time watching the pretty as possible before we are kicked out at 12.30pm. I was expecting the great bolt through the crowds of tourists and school groups to be fairly unplesant... I was expecting to wander hurridly through everything till I got into the Sistine Chapel, not really intrested in much. In fact I'd been told by more than one person to do the bolt straight through... Couldn't do it. No one told me about the Corridor of MAPS! Map after map after map for hundreds of metres with pretty landscapes on the roof, mixed with protraits, pretty mosaics... lots and lots of pretty! So like, told the others that I was so not going to be ablt to not get lost, and that we'd all meet up at the end at 12.30. I spent I don't know how long wandering through, trying to look at everything carefully, yet trying to be as quick as I could lest I lose time I need in the chapel. I managed to get in front of a chunk of school groups by taking a short-cut and missing the Raphael Gallery. So now I'm sitting in the back of the Sistine Chappel with a cramped neck. It's wierd here. There are no artificial lighting. Just what is let in through the windows. It's overcast today, so the light is really soft, some of the people jump off the wall. I suspect that he mixed gold in with the paint. I wonder if they had guilded fabric like that, and if the people wearing the sparkily clothes stood out as much. I've seen pictures, but you really can't see it properly in a book. I'd love to see it on a sunny day too. I can imagine that the figures would almost jump off the walls! The restoration efforts have been really sucessful. It's looking really really great! There are still chunks missing from the roof towards the back of the chapel, so sad. I can't wait to see it once they have finished everything. The guards here are trying to enforce the no pictures, no filming, no talking policy of the chapel. It's rather like a bunch of teachers trying to keep a school assembly quiet. The level of noise rises, and so the head guard guy claps his hand and exclaims "No Talking!" and everyone quietens down again. flashes from cameras are met by mad dashes through the crowd by guards that are quick to tell you again that there is "No Camera!" Just like school! Well, except for the fact that none of the teachers at my school were carrying firearms. Way cuter too. In fact, upon reading the Frommer's guide to Rome, we discovered that the guards in the Vaticin are specially selected from a certain region of Italy, and are screened for their height, build and astheticaly pleasing features. Spot on they are with that too, if I do say so myself. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 12th, 2007
3:07 pm	Rome Coffee! I mean seriously, in a nutshell, all summed up... The one single thing that I'm loving about being here... Coffee. My sum and total, entire Italian speaking ability revolves around me being about to order coffee. This is because the best coffee bar near the Hostel is staffed during the day by a guy who doesn't speak any english. But does he ever make the bestest coffee that I've ever drunk! I took sister there this morning for nutella crepes for brekkie. Ordering that was a lesson in how to gesture like a looney in order to be understood. We were also a bit stunned by the sudden appearance of a street market in the street at the end of the block. I have never seen so many boots in the one place before ever! The only problem seems to be my enormous feet. They don't do boots in a 42 on the street stalls, or so it seems. I was offered a loverly pair of sparkley silver knee-high platforms for 15 euros, but they only had them in a 36. At brekkie, sister found a cothing outlet in The Book and dragged up halfway across Rome to go check it out. It was well worth the walk. MAS is a 5 story clothing outlet. Everything form leather coats and pants, underwear and shoes. the 4th floor had a back wall that was covered in suits in every colour imaginable! I counted 7 shades of Purple and 12 shades of green, before I was dragged away. I managed to nab a 10 Euro coat that will stand up to winter weather. And a verra noice hat too. Sister got herself an almost matching one. It's brown and fuzzy, and stylish... Saldi is quickly becoming my new favourite Italian word. After shopping we went for a wander with no real destination in mind, just supposidly a meander back towards the Termini. Our low-key wander came to an abrupt hault when simultaniously in the middle of an intersection both me and my sister started wigging out! Now normally, when we are freaked, I'm the bunny in the headlights type, and freeze up, and she's the scardey cat who scurries away from danger. Not so much this time... I freaked it becasue the nice and Green Walkie-Man on the piedestrian crossing turned red, and the traffic light turned green. I don't know how familliar everyone is with the utter chaos that is Roman Traffic, but I feel that my little wiggy was well justified. Sister, however had stopped in the middle of the intersection, and was exclaiming the same string of words over and over. In my blind panic, it took me a few moments to realise that the wild gestures and exclaimating were actually a giant squee over the fact that we'd ended up 200m from the Collesseum. Yaha! She be going gibber gibber in the middle of traffic cos of a crumbling stadium. I had to acknowlege the awesomness of the Collesseum before she would move back to the foot path. So the next hour or so saw us hanging around the collesseum, chilling in the sunshine and soaking in the atmosphere... We bought some post cards, and fought off street vendors selling useless junk, took some photos, then wandered with purpose back to the Termini. On the way, we noticed that there were rather a lot of signs all pointing north-west with "sensi unico" written on them. We tried to find out what the Sensi Unico was on our tourist map, but we couldn't find it. We made a plan to go check out what it is tomorrow... umm. turns out that "Sensi Unico" means "One Way". *face palm* By the time we got back to the Hostel, the others were back form Pompeii. There were these cute guys in the dorm who were totaly ignoring us, and we were a bit pissed at that till Sister pointed out that cute guys ignoring us was soooo much better than ugly, stupid boys that won't leave us alone. And you know, she had a point. Went for another wander down the road to get stuffs for dinner, because sister was feeling ill. The phrases in the Lonely planet book are really handy for shopping, buying tickets and ordering food. But I"m going to write to them and ask them to include appropriate phrases for the telling street vendors to piss off! It starts to rain, and there are hundreds of them selling umbrellas, then when the sun comes out the are flogging off sunglasses! Overcast, yet fine weather? - No problem. Let's sell the tourists useless toys whose sole purpose is to make the most irritating noise possible. Although one thing I'm noticing about my 10Euro coat is that combined with my flared jeans, pashmina scarf (from India - Thanks Dad!) and brown fuzzy hat, I am able to cross the street without attracting the symphony of hornage conveying the distress I be causing the poor Roman Driver who I've held up for 30s by daring to cross the road at a pedestrian crossing! I'm starting to pay less for foods and coffees around here. The street vendors aren't bugging me so much. Oh, and all the boys are talking to me. Instead of Ciao! as a greeting, I'm getting Ciao, Grande Bella! *rolls eyes* Sister asked me to look up what 'Player' was in the phrasebook. I told her that it was probably 'Italian'. But for all the cringie moments that come of this, it's nice to be anonymous, yet admired. Even if it is groups of old men that are doing the admiring. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
12:30 pm	Roma On the train to the Termini in Rome from the Airport. Arrived at Dublin Airport at stupid am. Needed to book in early to avoid the buisness rush. But all was not lost... Sister has a gold card, and got us into the Aer Lingus lounge! So much cool in one little room! I had a couple of cups of coffee, and then we had some cheese and biscuits for breakfast. and cake, and then more coffee. And then it was time to go get onto the plane. Flight over was long and uneventful. I read the Lonely Planet ROME book from cover to cover, and then the in-flight magazine. I'd started in on the LP Dublin book when I was saved from my puddle of boredom by the announcement that we were coming into land. Rome airport was utter utter chaos. But we managed to get through it. Had a moment of confusion when we were directed to the train by a nice man who was standing under the Treni --> sign. We was a tad confounded until we heard him pimping his shuttle bus to the tourists behind us up for 15 EUros. Ahhhh! - says we. Everyone has an agenda! So we managed to get ourselves pizza slices for lunch, and tickets for the Leonardo Express train into the city. Even managed to get onto the train without too much trouble. Watcing the landscape slip by, I was stunned at the sheer amount of high-density highrise apartment buildings. They are crammed into the view from the train, and are all painted different shades of Orange. From terracotta to peach. Our apartment is a 5 min walk from the Termini. Not quite in tourist central, but not too far away, either. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 10th, 2007
3:06 pm	Dublin This morning I went shopping at Tallaght Square. Called that because they don't know how to spell pyramid, or so I'm told. I found myself taking home a new spring jacket, leather gloves, and a pair of suede boots. The pants here come in both waist and leg legnth sizes! I now own a pair of 36 34 pants that fit me perfectly! This afternoon was shopping at Dundrum Town Centre. The biggest shopping centre in Dublin. I need to take a moment here and describe the awesomeness of the carpark. Sitting above every parking space is a little sensor that detects if a car is parked there or not. If there is a car, it illuiminates a red light above the space, and tells a computer comewhere that it is taken. If there is no car, then a green light is lit above the spot, and a green arrow appears at the end of the row, telling you that there is a spot down there! How handy! How unbelievably innovative! And at the ramps up and down to the levels above and below, it tells you how many are free on the level you are on, as well as the levels above, and the levels below! Takes sooo much stress out of finding a park! So yeah, used cool carpark parking system, hit a tall-girl store for jeans and ended up with a really nice pair of jeans. Well, I'll have to fess... They are actually flares. BUtlike, no one knows me here, and it's all the fashion like, and my legs realy actually look realy great in flares... (Comment on this)
Friday, February 9th, 2007
9:00 pm	Temple Bar, Dublin. OKay, So Dublin is cold. Like snow on the mountains type cold. Like, Sydney winter-weight clothes hopelessly inadequite type cold. Like, totally should have defied my sister and worn my ski jacket type cold! Coming into land in Dublin was surreal. I was thrown straight back to my city-building technique in Black and White 2. It's so very green, and all the little houses lined up in wiggy little lines... And did I mention the green? So many diffrent types of green! There are no water restrictions here. Water just falls from the sky every second day almost!! My very Irish welcome to Ireland was performed by the pilot of my plane, or mebbe it was the dude with the lightsabres on the tarmac. We couldn't get off the plane through the front doors because the plane was parked too close to a pole, and they couldn't drive the steps up properly. So everyone had to pile out of the back. Next in the Irish experience is the running of the flight hostess after us small, tired group of passengers what were headed for the nearest shuttle bus. Seems that we get no bus! So was directed to a door in Temporary Terminal D. Which happens to be a 15 min walk from the rest of the bloody air-port through a covered non-heated demountable walkway! And, I remind you again, with shoes that are held together by a few legnths of string! Now I approach immigration, head down the non-EU line, which has 2 people and a family waiting. This would have meant a less than 5 min wait, had there been an employee actually in the booth at the end of the queue working through processing us poor non-EU citizens into the country. 20 mins later we got our booth guy. Who was not very talkative, and took less than a minute to stamp me though. I suppose the best thing about all the being stuffed about was that I just walked up to the baggage carosel, and picked up my bag. Sister was waiting for me outside, and we braved the Dublin traffic and went home via the local centra store. Mmmm, hot shower then pizza for lunch! After lunch it was back into Dublin on the Luas. Luas is the light rail system here. And besides from being painted purple on the outside, and having Irish stickers on the inside, the trains are identical to Sydney's light Rail trains. I was quickly introduced to shopping at Pennys and stopped by Temple Bar for a few drinks. Temple Bar is Great! It's sort of a cross between Newtown and The Rocks. We ended up at the Bad Ass Cafe for Dinner, and I had an enormous hamburger and a coffee. The order was delivered to the kitchen via a mechnaical device that looks to be a clock-work pre-cursor to the vaccume sucker-tubes that are in Target. Very cool. Fell asleep on the Luas on the way home. I believe people attempted to converse with me after that time, but I really have no idea what was said. I was dead on my feet. (Comment on this)
7:00 am	Frankfurt Airport I am so definatly in a foreign country compared to how I felt walking around Singapore. NO little blue i signs in sight, announcements in German only. You are just expected to figure things out without being spoon-fed instructions. You are just expected to cope. I love it! The first Mirror-world experience I stumbled across was the smoking area just outside the arrival gate. Smallish area inside with extractor fans mounted in boxes on the floor where poor deprived smokers gather like pigeons to have a smoke after their flights. I couldn't bring myself to actually smoke inside, felt too strange, and I wanted to have a little walk under the sky, so I headed outside. First thing to note, or should I say, the first thing I should have noted was that they drive on the right side of the road in Germany. The Busses do that too. One near-death experience later and I was out of the airport. OH! The taxis! Apart from the drivers being unusually polite and not pushy about the fact that I kept on wandering throught he rank without wanting to catch a cab, the taxis themselves are just... like, Mercs! Mercedes and BMWs, but mostly Mercs. I found myself a little Kebab shop, proving that they do defy the lawas of space-time, and will turn up wherever it's 5.30am and someone is hungry. I couldn't quite bring myself to go a lamb sandwich... way too sober, so I headed to to food court where the only ting open was Maccas! But what a Maccas! Their playground is way space-age. Literally. And to my relief the staff all speak English. I was able to order a egg and bacon McMuffin, which was... a cullinary experience. Was also amused by the various signage while waiting for my E&B Muffin without cheese. McDonalds Germany is Pro Kids! So all their resteraunts are no smoking. However, their happy meals come with a bag of lollies. My muffin, when it eventualy came, was very mirror-world. The stingy amount of bacon was really thinly sliced, and smoked, not fried. The eggs were either battery or had been coolroomed for a few months. The yolk was almost white, and it didn't taste very eggy. Oh! and they have a dessert called apple strudel. It appears to be the apple pie in a card-board boat with gravy poured over the top! OH! OH! And they have 1c and 2c pieces here! Imagine my surprise at being handed 27c change! Totally hasn't happened in AGES! Copper nostalgia! I also have discovered the european fascination with aniseed flavoured confectionary. I have aquired some black mints. Which seem to be aniseed and menthol jellies. I think that there are realy nice, but probably not everyone's thing. Ahh recycling! OMG! It's both obsessive and confusing. The categories we have to choose from: Waste, Paper, Packaging or Glass. I attempted to figure it out by looking into the bins at what stuff other people had put where, but it appears that they have no idea either. Like my coffee cup, Is that paper, or packaging? I gave up and just bussed my tray into the rack next to the bins. I should also mention that here is where my 13 year old sneakers finally gave up and died. The inside half of my right heel fell off completly on the way out of the plane, and by the time I'd had breakfast the sole of my left shoe was hanging on by a thread. I gave up on my right shoe as a lost cause, and used my shoelace to tie the sole of my left shoe back on. I have photos. (Comment on this)