You Call This Spaghetti?!?!

Well, it’s been a little while since my blog entries have focused solely on the food we’ve been eating (at the beginning they did more often), but today is a day where all I have to write about is the food really – except this isn’t about how good the food was, it’s about how unbelievably bad it was!  I’m starting to see why the UK has a rep for bad food… (more…)

Our First Live Football Match!

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…

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Vietnamese Food & Snog To End Our Saturday

After our failed day of sightseeing, we took the Tube to Old Street, in the borough of Islington, to find a Vietnamese restaurant called Cay Tre, which Paul had read great reviews about on several food critiquing websites.  Although the spring rolls were among the best I’ve ever had, the rest of our dinner wasn’t as spectacular as we had read.  Calvin and I both ordered a dish called Bún bò Huế, which is vermicelli with slices of beef in a spicy broth, and it didn’t taste anything like the Bún bò Huế we’ve had at Vietnamese restaurants in Canada – the broth wasn’t spicy enough and didn’t have any lemongrass flavour, which it should, and the meat wasn’t the same kind at all.  Looking around us, we didn’t see any Vietnamese people eating there, leading us to conclude that this is a somewhat “westernized” style of Vietnamese food and those reviews we had read were written by people that are used to this type and not the truly authentic stuff… (more…)

Day 1 In London

Since leaving Spain and heading to France, the language barrier hasn’t been that big of an issue because we’ve always found someone that speaks some English, but I’m still very excited about the fact that today we’re back in a country where English is the primary language!  Not only do I not have to worry anymore about who I can ask for directions and stuff like that, I love the fact that we’re surrounded by sexy British accents!   This could be a great couple of months… (more…)

Overnight Ferry To England

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! (more…)

Half A Day In Rotterdam

This morning we headed to Rotterdam, the second largest municipality in the Netherlands and home of the largest port in Europe.  We had originally planned to overnight here and catch a ferry from the nearby town, Hoek van Holland, to England tomorrow morning, but last week we realized we miscounted the number of days we’ve been in the EU so we had to cancel our reservation and take the overnight ferry tonight or risk getting caught for overstaying our welcome and be banned from Schengen Agreement countries!

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First Day In Sin City

Yesterday night Paul and I sat at the reception desk after they closed the common rooms at 11 pm (another stupid policy of the hostel) because Wi-Fi doesn’t work in our room and there was nowhere else to sit when the common rooms closed.  Although the hostel makes it clear that reception isn’t 24 hours, people coming in and out kept asking us questions because they thought we worked there, which was amusing and led to a few random conversations.  Two of those people, Rosamond and Matt from Texas, ended up going out for beers with us when Paul finished work, and we ended up making Matt our travel buddy when we found out he was heading to Amsterdam today like us.  You know what they say – the more the merrier! (more…)

Why Not Germany?!?!

When we were planning our trip, a few of our friends discussed the possibility of meeting up with us in May, but when we told them our routing would put us in Germany in May, they all responded with the same “well, Germany was not on the top of my list of places to go to…” and they all decided not to meet up with us in May.  I can’t say I blame them, since Germany wasn’t on the top of my list of countries to visit either, but as we finish up our time in Germany, I have to say I’ve changed my mind and I think Germany should be on the top of more people’s lists!  The sights and history have been interesting, the people are serious looking but friendly, almost everyone speaks English so there’s hardly any communication barrier, and the food has been consistently good.  Germany has surprisingly become one of my favourite countries visited so far! (more…)

Düsseldorf, Why Did We Bother?

Hindsight is always 20/20, and in hindsight, we should have just skipped Düsseldorf, Germany!  Paul had added it to our itinerary after reading somewhere that it was a nice city and the “fashion capital” of Germany, but neither of us found it particularly worth seeing.  The coolest thing we saw was the door knocker in the picture above and in total we only took 15 pictures today! (more…)

Daytrip to Salzburg

After a lot of arguing/contemplation, we decided to daytrip to Salzburg, Austria today.  I initially wanted to go to the town of Füssen (in Germany) to see the famous Neuschwanstein Castle  of King Ludwig II (it’s the castle that Disney’s Sleeping Beauty castle is modeled after), but Paul was more inclined to check out Salzburg since it’s right at the border of Germany and Austria and it’s more convenient to visit it now than during our trip to Austria later this year, when we’ll be in the eastern side, nowhere near Salzburg.  (more…)