Amsterdam!!

So far this was one of my favorite cities on this trip…even though it rained the entire time I was there. It’s been the wettest year in recent history for Amsterdam! Unfortunately I didn’t get the newsflash until just before I got there and had to run out and get a rain coat in Milan.

Even throughout the rain, I spent a lot of time walking around the city, seeing the sights, checking out museums and generally getting to know the city. It’s a beautiful city built around canals…but not like Venice, as they aren’t the primary mode of transportation for Amsterdammers. Bikes are. They are everywhere. There is a bike parking lot right near the central station that has more than 2,500 bikes in it most of the time. When the weather is good it’s a fantastic city to bike around…and when its bad they just hold an umbrella in one hand and bike with the other. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a picture of that, as I wasn’t fast enough with my camera.

On my first day, I did what I usually do, and walked around the area and got the lay of the land. The one thing that’s a problem is the language. Its really hard to pronounce and remember the names of the streets and made it easier to get lost. I had to rely more on my terrible sense of direction, and got lost and turned around a lot.

Since I took my mom’s advice and stayed in Amsterdam for 4 nights instead of the originally planned 3, I spent the next day going around the city on foot as I was going to get a 48 hour I Amsterdam card that includes transit, admission to some museums, and discounts around the city for the last few days. I did a bit of shopping, because up until then I had been in t-shirt and shorts weather…the weather was a rude awakening for me. Average 10 degrees and raining. I went over to H&M and grabbed a sweater, shirt and a wintery jacket as the weather in Paris and London were supposed to be pretty cold. I picked another area of downtown to walk around, shop a bit and just check everything out. The city has some great clothing stores, and if I wasn’t on a budget I would have bought a few things as they were pretty expensive.

The next day was when I bought the 48 hour transit and city pass. I went to the Van Gough museum, which I found really interesting to see how Van Gough lived, and all the problems he had before he killed himself. I had never realized that he had only been painting for 10 years , and wasn’t recognized until much later as an incredible artist. That day I also went to the Heineken Experience, which is a marketing ploy/museum/gift shop for beer drinkers. It was cool to see how the company has changed since it’s inception, and different ways they have marketed their product to consumers over the years.

That night, I went for a walk and found a little noodle place for dinner. They did fast food noodles that were fantastic. It also helped that I found a guy playing the guitar in a square down the street that was fantastic. It was a cold night (about 6 degrees) but the guitar and good food made it worth sitting outside freezing my butt off.

The next morning I went to Anne Frank Haus, which was one of the best museums that I went on, over the entire trip. They were really good at teaching you the story of Anne Frank, and what her family went through during the war and how the survived in that apartment for 2 years. It walked you through how Anne Franks father changed the ownership of the company to a friend, because Jews weren’t able to own property, who lived in the apartment (there were 8 of them) and who was fighting with who at different times. Anne Frank wrote a lot about the family, and how everyone was feeling at the time.

After the Anne Frank Haus, I went on a canal cruise for an hour. It was part of the 48 hour card, and was a nice way to see the city. The tour was good, but again it was raining so my pictures weren’t turning out that great through the windows, so I didn’t take many. That night was a simple night in, eating the fantastic noodles again and relaxing as I was off to Brugges, Belgium the next morning.

Milan

Oh…what a city. A boring city that is. I was only in Milan for a few days, as I was flying to Amsterdam, and I figured I should see another city in Italy before I went north and I thought that Milan would be nice. As a city it’s ok, but there just isn’t that much to do. I went to the Duomo, Davinci museum of science and Technology and witnessed my first European riot.

Really there isn’t too much to say about Milan. It’s the business and fashion capital of Italy, and acts as such. It’s a lot like the business district of Toronto with better dressed people.

The Davinci museum was pretty cool, its interesting to see all the different inventions he came up with and how much time he spent helping cities in Italy change their infrastructure. In my opinion, there wasn’t much else to do in Milan. I was using it as an airport on to my next destination which was Amsterdam. I really should have gone somewhere else, but I guess it’s a pretty good track record when only one place out of all the places I went was bad, eh?

That’s really all I have to say about Milan…but that says wonders in itself.

Firenze and Tuscany

This is my second trip to Florence, but my first as an adult. I was here on the last family euro trip back in 1998, and came back as it’s situated in the middle of Tuscany’s wine country and it’s the easiest city to take a wine tour out of. When I got there I did the same thing we did the last time we came…I didn’t have a hostel reservation. I cruised around the city near the train station, and found one fairly quickly. That hostel only had one night available, so I didn’t really unpack much of my stuff but ended up going for dinner with my two roommates and we just walked around looking for a good restaurant. After walking around for a while we found one near the Duomo, and sat down for a plate of… you guessed it Pasta! After dinner we grabbed a couple beers and just chilled outside on the patio of the hostel before getting bitten alive by mosquitos. I found a new hotel online, and booked my wine tour and just chilled out for the rest of the night.

The next day, I found my new hostel after a bit of searching and decided to relax there for a while as I was still feeling sick. Lucky for me the hostel had satellite TV, and the world series was airing, so I got to catch up on a bit of baseball for the afternoon while resting. That night was just spent relaxing and making dinner at the hostel (it’s a luxury if the hostel has a kitchen in it!)

The next day was spent on the wine tour through Tuscany. The tour I decided to go on went to two wineries and Dario Ceccini’s butcher shop/restaurant for lunch. When I read about this part, I was sold on the entire tour. I read about this famous butcher in a food book about a year ago and being able to go to the butcher shop was fantastic…and the food was GREAT! The first winery was really nice, and we spent some time with the winemaker, who gave us a tour of the winery and the grounds.

Like I said before lunch was fantastic. We walk into this tiny butcher shop and there is this towering smiling man behind the counter talking in rapid fire Italian and greeting every customer as they were long lost friends! We got handed a glass of wine, and there was fantastic salami, and bread with oil on the table to sample before we went up to the restaurant. The meal upstairs was fantastic, it was a communal table that normally doesn’t take reservations but because we are a tour the –sometimes- save a table for us. The meal was fantastic, and obviously included a lot of meat. Beef Carpaccio, their twist on a meatloaf, porchetta, potatoes, a salad we didn’t touch…and more wine! It was a great restaurant, with a great vibe. You sat beside different people and just started conversations with them. I was sitting beside a group from Vancouver so we started talking about the city and Eleni’s school and stuff like that. It was nice to speak to a group of Canadians and be able to say “eh” without everyone noticing. The rest of the meal went by well we ate talked and just relaxed before going to our second winery

The second one was smaller and a bit nicer. We spent some time with the wine maker, who let us taste the wine just as it had been pressed. The wine is supposed to ferment for 20 days and we tried it after only 5 days. The wine maker was apparently very excited about this year’s crop as the weather was perfect for wine making and should be a very good year.

That night I – again - just chilled out in the hostel with the people who were around. We chatted and chilled out as I packed. I was leaving for Milan the next day on the high speed train.

5 days in Rome isn’t enough….when you are sick 2 of them!

I am on the train right now to Florence (a high speed one!) and I’m just thinking about the past few days. Rome is such a nice city, for a major city and I really loved it. The sights were incredible, and it felt like the city was always busy. My first day there I cruised around my neighborhood, and looked for a grocery store, laundry mat and found a fantastic pizzeria. Here is a pic of my first slice of pizza in Italy!

The next day, I spent the majority of it at the Vatican, and the Basilica. The museum was fantastic and the basilica was incredible to see. I got a great tip from someone in my room at my hostel that if you buy your ticket online, you get to skip the line at the museum, which was nice not to have to stand in line for 20 minutes once I got there, all I had to do was print out the form and bring it with me.

I was really lucky in Rome, the weather was fantastic for my entire time there. It was sunny and hot the entire time! It was great to just walk around the city, and see all the sights it has to offer. Romans are very similar to New Yorkers…all business until you ask a question, and then they will help you out as much as they can.

The experience at my hostel wasn’t as nice as the people of Rome though. My first morning I woke up with one of my roommates complaining that she had been bitten by bed bugs. She goes down to the front desk where they say that they will replace her mattress in the room. Later on, she comes back to the room and asks if they had replaced her mattress, which they hadn’t. This really pisses her off (it would with me too.) She goes back downstairs, and gets a new room for all of us. We went from a 6 bed dorm, to a 9 bed private with 2 washrooms and a kitchen! It was a fantastic upgrade, and we were pretty happy with our new digs. After 2 nights in this room (pretty much luxury for us) the front desk calls up to us, and tells us we had to pack up and leave the room. Now this really pissed me off. We had already switched once, and they wanted us to switch again?!?! My roommates went down first and told me they got a 4 bed dorm with en suite…that’s not bad, but I would miss my kitchen. When I went down, I was pretty pissed off and voiced my annoyance at having to move rooms again. I ended up getting another free drink ticket, and a free night. They upgraded me to a single room with bathroom attached for my last two nights in Rome. This was good for me because it was those last two nights that I got really sick, and stayed in bed for most of the time. (unfortunately.)

My final night wasn’t actually in Rome, but in the small town of Santa Mirabella which is about an hour’s train ride outside of Rome. I went to meet Kevin, who I was introduced to through Shels. He runs the kitchen at a hotel there which his wife runs. We had a good night, watching football and eating fantastic pizza (I don’t think there is any other kind in Italy) and talking about the restaurant industry. The hotel was beautiful, and it was great being able to watch American TV, and speak English with someone from Canada even if it was for just a few hours.

The next day, I was off to Florence for a few days in the city, and going on an incredible Tuscan Wine Tour!

Santorini. Black, Gold and Red sands!

I found my hostel online at only 8 euro’s a night which is a fantastic price considering I was paying 20 to 25 euros a night at other places. It was a fantastic place to stay, a bit far from the two main cities of Oia and Fira but much closer to the beach than they were…only a 5 minute walk away. On my first night there I met 3 great people Rhys, Ashley and Steph. Over the next few days the four of us saw the entire island, even the surrounding islands!

The next day we went on a full day boat and bus tour of the islands around Santorini. There is a nearby island that was created 50 years ago by an active volcano that has been turned into a tourist attraction and many people come to visit it. We hiked all across the island for about an hour- and my 3 friends all wore flip flops. It was a difficult hike for them, while I (thankfully) wore shoes. There were many broken flop flop straps and probably a few very tired people after the hike. Once we got to the top of the island, there was a fantastic panoramic view of the area – we could see all the islands around, and most of santorini. We got back on the boat and went to another nearby island to swim in the hotsprings. I decided to stay on the boat, as it was a pretty far swim and I’m not that confident in my swimming abilities, but my partners in crime didn’t think it was that hot for a hotsprings. After a 20 minute swim, we went to Thirisa island which has a population of 250…but about 15 restaurants. You could tell once the tourist’s left at around 4 pm, the island gets very dead. On thirisa we had a fantastic meal at a seaside restaurant with a very hungry stray cat as our companion. After lunch, we jumped in the water for a quick swim and cool down before grabbing a coffee or ice cream and getting on another boat to Oia.

Now, to get from the port to the city of Oia you have 3 choices (we only had two). You could take a donkey up for 5 euros…or walk. I decided that donkey’s weren’t my cup of tea and walked up to the top. All 250 steps of it. It was a long and very, very sweaty walk up the side of the cliff. We got to the top and had a fantastic view of Oia, which is the city with all the white buildings in Santorini. The white paint industry must be supported in a large part by this city. It was beautiful to see all the buildings clean and white with the backdrop of the cliffs and ocean, and an occasional blue roof symbolizing a church.

Oia is where there is supposed to be a fantastic view of the sunset and you must get your spot early to get a good shot of the sunset…unfortunately for us, that day was a Santorini sunset FAIL. There had been threats of rain, so the clouds covered the sunset and we didn’t get to hear everyone applaud for the sunset.

The next day, we decided to do what most tourist’s do and rent ATV’s and go island hopping. We went to 5 or so beaches, saw Oia and Fira again and finished off the day with a very cold trip up the mountain to try and see the sunset again. Unfortunately there were still clouds and we didn’t get to see it properly, but I got some fantastic pictures of the sun setting in between the clouds. Since our ATV’s weren’t very powerful, it took us 45 minutes to drive up the mountain but less than half that to go down. That night we went out for dinner at the restaurant across the street – the owner of the restaurant we went to grew up at finch and the 401, which is very close to where I am from, small world! After dinner we went to the beach and sat around drinking for a bit, before a torrential rain pour killed the party and we went back to the hostel.

We all agreed that we would take it easy the next day and just chilled out at the beach and relaxed. It was nice to be sitting on the beach reading and doing nothing after a few days of running around. We spent the night doing what almost all hostel people do, which is sit around and talk about where we are from and meeting new people. It was fun hearing about people’s lives back home and their experiences while on vacation.

On the final day in Santorini, it was spent packing in the morning and sitting around the hostel chilling out waiting for our respective boats/flights off the island. I was flying out at 740 that night…but didn’t end up leaving until 11:00 because of an Air Traffic Controllers strike. They decided to control and delay flights within Greece for 6 hours that day, and delayed many of them. It was very frustrating sitting in the airport doing nothing for 3 hours, but that happens often in Greece and I had TV shows loaded up on my laptop and books on my kindle so the time went pretty fast.

Thasos

So, I have been a bit behind the ball with this blog for the past week or so, but that’s because I’ve been having such a great time! Last weekend we went to Thasos with Alex, Maria and their two boys Akis and Kostantinos. It was a great weekend away before we all left the village and went on our way to our next destinations. Ange and my parents went home (mom and dad had an eventful trip back) and I flew to Santorini for the week. The water in Thasos at the golden sands beach (my favourite beach…EVER) was green, clear and pretty much perfect. We arrived at our hotel – called golden sands hotel appropriately- Friday afternoon and Alex and co arrived a few hours later when Alex got off work. That night we went on an interesting drive to another part of the island for dinner and to check out the touristy crap that they have and get some souvenirs. The thing I really, really like about Thasos is that there are no mosquitoes on the island! We were so used to dealing with mosquitoes back in the village that it was a nice change not to have them around :)

Saturday, we spent a lot of time at the beach, with some decent waves and some great sun. We went around the island to do some more shopping and get some food, which was a great way to see the rest of the island. There are some great views along that drive that unfortunately my father and Alex couldn’t see because they had to keep us alive on those winding roads :p We ate way too much lunch that day and decided to take a nap when we got back from the drive. That night for dinner, we had a quiet dinner by the port of Thasos because we had eaten way too much at lunch time. It was a nice night and we walked through the port city and met an Irish shop owner who had lived in Greece for 20+ years…he was a bit of a character.

Sunday morning we went for a swim early as we had to check out and go back to the village and finish packing up. Ange and I were flying out on Monday morning. The waves on Sunday were the BEST of the entire weekend! There were some that were taller than I was, it was fantastic!

The boat ride back to keramoti (the port city) Gus was sitting inside the rocky boat and watching out the window. Since it was a small boat and there were pretty large waves the boat was rocking a lot and all you could hear from him for a few minutes was “there’s Keramoti, and now its gone. There it is again, and now its gone again.” You can tell he really doesn’t like boats much :p