Well it’s been about 4 months since I posted anything on here, but today I’ve finally decided to get my butt in gear and start writing again!  If you’re wondering why I haven’t written in so long (a few of you have asked), there’s a few reasons.  The primary problem is that I’ve fallen so far behind I don’t even know where to begin writing and it feels like I’ll never catch up.  Story of my life – start something, get picky about every little detail so it takes forever to complete each task, get confused halfway through about what I’ve done and what I have left to do, get frustrated with my confusion, and then give up altogether.  I start a lot of things I don’t finish.  This blog is on the verge of turning into one of those things. 

I have about 30 entries half-written, but I tend to get some kind of writers block or get distracted by something more fun to do as I’m writing and then it takes me a while to go back and finish.  If you follow this blog regularly or have been paying attention, you’ll notice there’s a 3 month gap from July-Oct when I fell very far behind and decided to jump to the present instead of working on the past.  For a brief period (mid-October to mid-November) I did a decent job of staying current, but didn’t manage to make up for much of what was missing.  Then we went home for Christmas and I stopped writing at all since we were so busy visiting family & friends, and I haven’t finished an entry since! 

So, what now?  Well, the primary reason for this blog was to keep in touch with family and friends and keep a record of our trip for our memories.  But with the stories being so outdated, it almost feels pointless to try to catch up and I’m not sure anyone cares to read about something we did last July!  And for my own memories I’ve jotted down over 100 pages of notes about each day, but it takes a bit of effort to turn those notes into blog posts worth reading.  At this point, it feels like my energy would be better spent making nice scrap book when I come home instead of writing blog posts!

Overall, I started to feel like there’s no point to continue the blog so I let my laziness take over and stopped writing for quite a while.  But today I got a comment from new reader who found my blog while searching the internet for information, and it reminded me that another big reason I started this blog was to share what we’ve learned from our travels.  We’ve learned all kinds of useful stuff like which airlines are picky about carry-on luggage, what hotels are good or bad, what attractions are worth seeing, etc. and it would be a shame to not try to share any of that with people.  So I’ve decided to start writing again, starting with finishing some of those half written entries and see where I get.  I doubt I’ll ever catch up, but it’s worth a try!

As before, I’ll keep back-dating new posts to the date they actually relate to in order to keep things in chronological order, so you won’t necessarily see new posts on the home page here.  If you’re checking the blog regularly and want to just read new posts, please refer to the “Recent Posts” bar on the right hand side of the page.  Thanks again for reading!

I think the idea of suing someone for posting a bad review about your business is as preposterous as that lawsuit oh so long ago against McDonald’s for the coffee being too hot.  Actually, that lawsuit probably had more merit than any of these will.  Why would anyone use review sites if only good things were posted???  What’s the point of having the Internet and the ability to share our thoughts and opinions if we can’t share the good and the bad?

As I mentioned in my last blog, I no longer trust the reviews on hostels.com and hostelbookers.com because they allow the proprietor to delete certain reviews.  My firsthand experience with these websites is that, after spending a good chunk of time to write a review, most of the bad reviews I’ve written got deleted after a few weeks.  So now I’ve switched to Tripadvisor where comments and reviews are moderated and once they are put up, they stay up! 

Some people argue that businesses should have the right to sue because false reviews gets posted, but out of all the reviews I’ve read, I’ve only seen one that looked like it could be fake (and it was a positive review).  In our 9 months of travel so far, anywhere we’ve stayed that’s been mind-blowingly awesome has had mostly all good reviews (you can never please everyone!).  Likewise, anywhere we’ve had a bad experience, there were a number of bad reviews, and those reviews were accurate or similar to our experience to some degree. 

Besides, on a site like Tripadvisor, the management can always write a response to the bad review, and it gets posted right under the bad review.  Personally, I always read the management response and I’ve booked at several places that had multiple bad reviews but there was management responses.  I think it shows you care enough to address the issues!  I think instead of wasting time and money on frivolous law suits about deflamation, the management at these businesses that have bad reviews should concentrate their energy on making improvements and then respond to the bad reviews to say they’ve fixed the problem!  Even if you sue me, what kind of money do you think you’re going to get out of an ordinary civilian???

After a short one hour flight from Istanbul, we arrived in Athens, Greece this evening.   At the moment, there are no budget airlines flying to Athens, so we took a flight with Aegean, a regular carrier.  Although it was a bit more expensive (€180 for two one-way tickets to Athens), I have to say it was nice not to fly with a budget airline for a change!

Unlike when we arrived in Istanbul, today we flew from Atatürk International Airport, Istanbul’s primary airport.  We had initially planned to take the tram there, but every time we rode the tram this week it’s been completely full and getting on with luggage would be difficult.  We decided it would be worth it to pay for a shuttle, but our hotel wanted a ridiculous €30 to hire a ride to the airport!  Luckily, the travel agency (Mysia) across the street had a shuttle at 12:35 pm for just 11 lira per person.  Our flight was not till 5 pm, but the extra time turned out to be necessary because the shuttle driver was late picking us up and there was heavy traffic.  I’m not sure what was scarier, the bus rides yesterday or our shuttle driver’s erratic impatient driving today… If you’re considering using a shuttle in Istanbul to get to the airport, give yourself plenty of time and prepare for a rough ride!

When we got to Atatürk Airport, we were surprised to find we had to go through security to enter the airport.  Since you have to go through another security check before you board (there’s a scanner and metal detector thingy at every gate!), they don’t worry about things like liquids at the first security check, but you still have to take out your laptop, empty your pockets, take off your coat, etc.  I understand why you’d want to check people as they go into the airport, but it’s quite a hassle to have to go through security twice! 

Unlike budget airlines, regular carriers like Aegean, Air Canada, Delta, etc. allow up to two pieces of carry-on luggage (one small and one regular size).  From our experience, as long as your carry-on looks like standard carry-on size, the check-in staff don’t hassle you to weigh or size-check it (they also allow you to check one piece of luggage weighing up to 30kg without an extra charge).  When you’re living off the contents of two 35-litre backpacks, everything is necessary and important so we never check our bags.  But, fully packed, our bags weigh about 12kg each so when we fly budget airlines we have to wear extra layers and put heavy things like laptop chargers and liquid toiletries into our pockets to be within the 10kg carry-on weight limit.  Not having to do this today was such a relief!

After a painfully slow (but hassle free) check in, we went through a customs and immigration checkpoint to exit Turkey.  There was a separate line for Turkish citizens and we noticed that all the men in that line were wrapped in towels the way we were when we finished at the Turkish baths!  They were coming from a room next to the bathroom and the signs were all in Turkish, but I’m guessing there’s a bath in there!  There were women as well, but they were wearing pale yellow long-sleeve dress-type garments, not towels.  I asked Ilyas about it when I got online later and he thinks they were going to somewhere called “Umre (Kudüs)” which is a holy place for Muslims…

When we landed in Greece we had no problems getting through customs and we found our way by metro to our hotel, the Best Western Hotel Pythagorion.  We were originally planning to stay at a hostel that was rated pretty high on hostels.com, but when I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor I found a bunch of bad stuff.  I’ve learned my lesson from our past stays – always double check reviews against Tripadvisor because the hostel can delete bad reviews off hostels.com or hostelbookers.com.  And right now, during the low season, most hotels have cut prices but many hostels haven’t so it only cost us 7 euro more per night to have a hotel room instead of sleep in a 4 bed mixed dorm.  The Best Western isn’t in a great location (20 min walk from the Acropolis & archaeology sites) but our room is big, we have a mini fridge to use, the Wi-Fi works great, and there’s a full breakfast included.  I’ll take that over a mediocre hostel any day!

I’m taking a break from writing about what we’ve been doing/seeing/eating today to write about a topic which has been bugging me as of late – the question of “where are you from?”  We are asked this all the time – when we go eat, when we buy something at a store, when we meet other people at the hotel/hostel/B&B – and when we reply Canada, we frequently get the response “No, originally where are you from?”  This has been bugging me because I’m really truly originally from Canada – just because I’m Chinese doesn’t mean I can’t be from Canada!!!

When we talk to people from Canada or the U.S. and we say we’re from Canada, they never say “really???” For those of us who live in North America, different ethnicities of people who identify themselves as American or Canadian is normal – both of these countries are multicultural nations with large-scale immigration from all over the world.  My experience is that when you immigrate, you identify yourself with that nationality, and most North Americans don’t question that.  My parents immigrated to Canada 30 years ago and consider themselves Canadian, and I was born in Canada so I see no reason to identify myself as anything but Canadian! 

Most European countries, however, are not that multi-cultural (England being an exception) and I find that most Europeans don’t believe I’m from Canada because I’m not Caucasian.  Some countries have been worse than others (i.e. Italy where they were like “no, no, no… You’re not from Canada… Japan? China?” but, that’s a whole other blog article when I get around to writing about Italy…)  Even when people do believe I’m from Canada, they ask where I or my parents are originally from.  This irks me because technically, unless you are of Native American descent, anyone from Canada or the U.S. originally came from somewhere else, so if you’re going to ask this type of question, don’t just ask non-Caucasian people!  Sure, some ethnicities (e.g. British and Irish) have been in North America for more generations than others, but nowadays it’s common to see first, second, or third generation Canadian/American born Asians, Indians, South Americans, etc. 

My point is, in today’s globalized world, migration is a common thing and you shouldn’t question the fact that someone is from somewhere because of their ethnicity.  If you’re trying to figure out what ethnicity someone is, you shouldn’t ask “where are you from” and expect that answer to tell you what race they are.  I get the fact that you can’t tell if I’m Chinese or  Japanese or whatever, but asking where I’m from isn’t the way to figure it out.  And if you’re ignorant enough to insist I can’t be from Canada because I’m not white, you need to hop on a plane and get out of your little bubble world…

(please note that, for obvious reasons, we couldn’t take pics inside the bath so the above image is from the Internet)

When I started this blog, my main goal was to keep a diary of our travels for our own memories while providing some potentially helpful information for other travellers (God knows I’ve extracted a lot of info from reading other people’s blogs).  As such, I’ve been backtracking and writing articles in chronological order, using notes I’ve made during our travels so far (i.e. the last entry dated June 13 was just posted yesterday, but pertains to June 13 and what happened that day).   Starting today, I am going to work on catching up by writing some more current stuff, as well as some older stuff.   In order to prevent confusion, the blogs will still be dated whatever date they relate to, and will appear in chronological order on the site.  If you check the site regularly, please scroll down for past updates as they will appear below this note, and current entries will appear above! 

Thanks to those of you who continue reading – I really appreciate all your comments and feedback and it’s nice to know you care!

~Scarlett (a.k.a. Rooster)

Today was the best possible Saturday I could ask for – we managed to get front row tickets to Wicked, a musical about “the untold story of the wicked witch of the west,” and then we stumbled upon the Queen’s birthday celebration and saw the whole Royal Family at Buckingham Palace!  I am so thankful we happened to be at the right place at the right time…

Our day began at 8:30 am at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre, where we lined up for tickets for this evening’s production of Wicked.  For almost all theatre shows in London, tickets for seats at the very front row are held for sale on the day of the show for super cheap, at the theatre’s box office (depending on the show, tickets range from £15-25).  In the case of Wicked, two performances take place on Saturdays (a matinee and an evening) and there are 20 front row tickets per show.  We were a bit nervous about whether we would get tickets because there were already 22 people in line when we got there and each person is allowed to buy two tickets.  When the box office finally opened at 10 am, we were relieved to find that not every individual in front of us was buying two tickets and we got the second last pair of tickets for the evening show.  There was still a huge queue of people behind us, but I’m not sure what they were lining up for since almost all the front row tickets were gone!

With our Wicked tickets secured, we headed off to Buckingham Palace, thinking we would catch the changing of the guards which happens daily at 11 am.  As we got to the side of Buckingham palace, we noticed a number police officers keeping a small crowd from stepping off the sidewalk as what looked like the royal carriages were being taken out of the side gates.  I decided to ask a police officer what was happening and he replied “it’s the Queens birthday,” in a way that made me feel totally stupid for not knowing, but we honestly had no clue!  We headed over to the ultra-crowded, barricaded, and tightly patrolled area in front of Buckingham Palace and found a place to stand and watch (from a distance) as the carriages brought the Queen and her husband out to a nearby ceremony which is apparently performed around this time every year for her birthday, even though her actual birthday is in April! 

No one could say when she would come back, but we decided to stay with the crowd and wait it out in hopes that when she returned, her carriage would come around on our side, opposite of the way she had left.  After half an hour of waiting in the sun, we considered giving up and leaving, but then we figured we might as wait it out since we had been standing around for so long.  Thankfully the police officer in front of us was quite nice and kept Paul amused by answering his questions about the difference between the Queen’s guards and the police officers and the weapons they were carrying, etc. 

The Queen (and the rest of the Royal Family) finally returned after over an hour, but sadly the carriages went back the same way they had come out so we didn’t get to see the Queen up close.  It was worth it to wait though, because the nice police officer we had been chatting with gave us a tip to go wait by the crosswalk as soon as the Queen returned for the barricades to be taken down so everyone could go right up to the gates of Buckingham palace to see the Royal Family on the balcony.  Thanks to this tip, we ended up among the first people to get to the gates and got a decent view!  After the Queen and her husband came out on the balcony and waved, the rest of the Royal Family joined them and they stayed there as several RAF jets did a flypast to conclude the ceremony, which was quite neat to see.

When the excitement of the Queens birthday was over, we caught the tube to Camden Town, a district in the northern part of London which is famous for its seven street markets.  Although it’s an interesting place to buy clothes, books, antiques and other junk, we didn’t spend much time shopping because it was so crowded and the people running the stalls were so aggressive that I avoided asking how much stuff was unless I really wanted to know. 

Tired of walking, we decided to hop on a bus instead of walking back to the Camden Tube station.  Since the bus would not get us back to the Apollo theatre, we got off at the next major Tube station, but then found out the Tube line for this area was not running for the weekend because of system upgrades!  I don’t know of any other major city where they close an entire section of the public transportation system on a Saturday during the busy tourist season.  First the strike, now the inconvenient system upgrades! Seriously, who designed this stupid Tube system?!?!

With help from the people at the Tube station, we figured out how to catch 2 buses to get to the theatre, in time for our show.  The London production of Wicked was, in our opinion, not as good as the version we saw in New York, but front row seats were a totally different experience from the upper balcony seats we bought last time for a lot more money. It was neat to be so close to the stage and see the costumes and cast up close!  Although 3rd row seats would have provided a better view, I can’t justify paying 10x as much for a ticket!  If only they had cheap seats like these for Broadway shows, I would spend a lot more time in New York!

Since we accomplished so much of our sightseeing while Calvin was here, we took a day to rest yesterday and hung around the hotel, sleeping in and doing a bit of shopping in the area.  Unfortunately, this morning we found out on the BBC news that a two day Tube strike starts today, meaning we’re stuck in Wembley until Friday, unless we want to brave the masses of crowds who will be relying on the buses!  Thankfully we scheduled extra time in London so we’ll just wait until the strike is over to resume our sightseeing…

The silver lining to the Tube strike is the fact that there’s a huge football game scheduled at Wembley stadium tonight (England vs. Andorra), and a large number of fans won’t be able to make it here without the Tube, making tickets easy to obtain.  When we planned this trip, attending a football game in either Spain or the UK was something we wanted to do, but we thought our schedule hadn’t timed out to be anywhere while a major game was happening, so we scrapped the idea.  Since we hadn’t looked up the schedule for national teams (we only looked up Premier League clubs), we didn’t know about this game until we saw today’s news, which was reporting on how many fans wouldn’t be able to make it, but some die hards were going to extreme measures (such as paying £200 for a cab ride or walking 9 miles) to get to Wembley stadium without the Tube.  Luckily for us, Wembley stadium is only a 5 minute walk away and since so many fans couldn’t come, there were plenty of tickets to be had when we wandered over to see what was available this afternoon, just a couple hours before the game.

Since this is our first time attending a football game and I don’t know a thing about football, we decided not to splurge on really good seats and got tickets in the front row of the nosebleeds for £39 each.  We were able to see everything reasonably well from here and it would have cost more than double that to go down one section lower.  Now that I’ve been to my first football match and discovered that it doesn’t put me to sleep the way a hockey game does (I just can’t watch hockey live, I’m sorry!), maybe next time we’ll go for better seats 

Although the game wasn’t really suspenseful because Andorra sucks so badly they really had no chance of winning (they actually printed in the program that the “opponent is less than formidable”), tonight’s game was important because it was a 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Qualifier.  Everyone was sure England would win, but it was the points they obtained in the game that mattered, and they achieved what was needed of them –beating Andorra 6-0!  I actually felt bad for Andorra’s goal keeper because he was kept busy the whole game while England’s goal keeper could have sat down and had a picnic – I think Andorra only got one shot on goal!

The bonus for us this evening was getting to see David Beckham play for England for the first time in two years!  We still remember the fuss he created when he came to Vancouver a couple years ago to play an exhibition game.  I don’t really get the guy’s appeal because I’m not a football follower (I mean, yeah, he looks good in Armani underwear, but so do a lot of celebrities!), but tonight, seeing him in action and hearing the fans shout “shoot!” every time he got passed the ball (even if he was nowhere near the net), turned me into a bit of a fan.  The way he can curve a ball with a corner kick is honestly quite impressive…

So, now I can say I’ve been to a live football match and I enjoyed it!  I got lost at times, but thankfully my brother is a die hard football fan and clarified everything for me after, having followed the game on television back home.  Hopefully some day I’ll get a chance to experience a game that is packed full of fans and more exciting and competitive than this one!

Today for Calvin’s last day in London, we decided to spend some time shopping at Westfield London, which isn’t anything exciting to write about, but I wanted to include a small blurb here about the mall because it’s probably the nicest mall I’ve ever been to, in terms of interior design and appearance.  I was born and raised in Edmonton, home of West Edmonton Mall, the largest in the world until 2004, so big malls are nothing special to me, but Westfield London, the largest urban mall in Europe, did make me go “Wow!” just a little bit…

Westfield London cost £1.6bn to build and opened in October, 2008 – not exactly great timing because of the world economic financial crises.  Considering how much I keep hearing in the news about the current recession, I’m not sure how this mall will stay in business!  Paul and I call it a “Julie mall” – affectionately referring to one of my best girlfriends who’s willing to splurge on luxury goods such as Gucci and Jimmy Choo.  The mall is full of designer and high street labels, especially in an area called The Village, where all the stores are premium brands (e.g. Burberry, Dior, Furla, etc.).  There must be a lot of Julies in London to keep this place afloat!

While the whole mall is aesthetically pleasing, the food court was the thing that blew me away the most – it looks more like a giant Earls restaurant than a food court!  We took a break from shopping and ate lunch here, and Paul and I tried out a fast food chain called Square Pie, which is on About.com’s top 10 cheap eats in London.  The bangers and mash was decent, as was the steak and ale pie, and the price wasn’t bad – £4.99 for the bangers and mash and £6.99 for the pie.  It’s nice that even though the food court is nicer than the ones at most malls, they still have reasonably priced food (although there were a few more expensive places such as the sushi restaurant). 

After an entire afternoon of shopping, I managed to leave empty handed and we headed back to our hotel for some rest, parting ways with Calvin for this trip as his flight leaves early tomorrow.  Now it’s back to just the two of us for another week in London…

Tonight we are on our first ferry ride of this trip, taking the Stena Line from Hoek van Holland to Harwich, England.  Stena operates two ferries from Hoek van Holland to Harwich each day, one during the day and one overnight.  We were originally going to take the daytime one, but when we realized our mistake about miscounting the number of days we had been in Schengen Agreement countries (as mentioned before, Canadian citizens are allowed in for 90 days out of every 180 without a visa), we changed our reservation to the overnight ferry.  Once we got onboard and saw that the ferry is more like a mini cruise ship and we have a decent room equipped with bunk beds and a washroom and shower, I was glad we took the overnight ferry instead.  At about the same price as plane tickets to London (€ 45 each including the train ticket from Harwich to London), I think the ferry is a much more relaxing way to travel and you save on one night of accommodations by taking the overnight ferry!

Our ferry didn’t leave until 10 this evening, but we got there at 8 in order to give ourselves plenty of time to pick up the tickets we reserved online.  The ticket pick-up was quick and easy as everything was ready in an envelope for the lady at the ticket counter to hand us, and we got onboard after getting stamped out of the EU by a couple of customs agents who were checking passports as you got to the boarding area – they do check the stamps in your passport to determine number of days you have been there! 

Since we were so early, I thought we would be among the first people on board, but there was already a large crowd of people drinking at the bar!  In addition to having cabins for you to sleep in (and there are several different classes of cabin you can pay for like on a cruise), there was also a lounge/bar area, a huge cafeteria-style dining area, a small casino, a small theatre, and a large outdoor deck area.  You can also get wi-fi internet access for a small cost, so Paul really does have everything he needs!  Personally, I’d take this ferry over flying any day…