stockholm.

as most of you know, or are about to know; i was in sweden for a couple of days at the end of last week. at the peak of our trip organisation there were 6 people coming but due to unforseen circumstances our party was whittled away to a faithful 3. so it was myself, my cousin from london and a mate form the hotel. our flight out was at 8:30 from stansted, the cheapest(but not necessarily easiest or most convienent) way to get there was to drive up to cambridge park my car in a mates street and catch the train back to the airport, had to leave the hotel at 4:10am, bit of a mission. and we passed a crazy guy running on the side of the road at 4:15am! he was a keen health enthusiast. Flew into sweden about an hour from stockholm and caught the bus up to the city centre, found our hostel which was slightly dodgey as there was no reception, and you just got given a door code, which meant any random off the street could get in if they knew the code. i left booking the accom. a bit late, so i take full responibility for the low quality accomodation. sorry team. despite feeling a tad tired, we headed down to the tourist info station, where we stayed for about an hour asking every question imaginable, yes it seemed we were quite underprepared and really didnt know where to start in our exploration of stockholm, we ended up jumping on one of the regular busses and kinda toured around a bit of the city. we saw a sign advertising something like road safety, couldnt read the sign just the date and the street name, so we went to check it out- im still not totally sure what it was all about but, we got to ride a mini bike, penny farthing and play with some other little gadgets, and do a bit of rock climbing, so that was a bit of a laugh (pics coming soonish) had a look around some little markets, where they tried to rip my cous off with some dodgey strawberries. ha. got back to the hostel and met johan, this dude who was going up to work in a ski resort up north, he was pretty cool, so we talked and chilled for the night and nothing much else. friday we kinda just walked around the city, went to a place called old town, which had heaps of touristy shops and stuff. some of may have heard of the icehotel, if you havent its a hotel, carved out of blocks of ice which is way up north in sweden, everything is ice, the bar, the beds, even the cups you drink out of. and there was a mini replica set up in a room size freezer, pretty funny, you put these cape things on for warmth, then just look around inside the freezer. photos will explain it better, but it was a bit of fun. also went to a few museums and that, a highlight was the dance muesum. you have to check it our if you go. got back to the hostel and there was a random sleeping in my bed; and my cousin had someone using his sleeping bacg and everything. i told you randoms could just walk into our hosetl. not cool. woke up the next morning and had our regular brekkie form the supermarket, and headed off to skansen, which is like a zoo/wilderness place on one of the islands in the harbour. we also checked out the vasa, which is a oldschool battleship which sunk in the harbour on its maiden voyage. so there a big museum about it, reasonably interesting, off to skansen, where there was an olden day festival on, people playing their accordians and other random instruments, old markets selling jam and bread and stuff, was cool, then we walked around the zoo part and checked out the animals, there were a couple of brown bears fighting and some elks just sitting there,also fed a wolverine some apple and a whole banana skin, he was loving it. was cool, just walking around on the island, nice scenery, relaxed atmosphere. for dinner we decided to had some tradtional swedish food, i still dont actually know what that is, but we rocked up to this restuarant and asked for a table, and they told us we couldnt go in. the reason being that, at night the restuarant was transformed into a gay night club. ok. but they told us it was their 2 year anniversary, and there was a free buffet, free drinks, free everything. and being low budget backpackers, we thought, we'll give it a go. so we went back at 9pm, and had some of the best food, it was real quality(especially after eating hotel canteen food, and supermarket food) and the people were nice, in a non funny way. we just chilled and chatted to them and that, was cool; so that was a great free night out and a great day overall. our final day in stockholm was just a chill out as we were pretty tired, we went out to the tv tower, the tallest structure in stockholm, and a great view of the city. and there was a nice park at the base of the tower, which we relaxed in, also had a go on the kids flying fox(zip line) and eventually got bullied off it by real kids. caught another bus around the city, and ended up at night just chilling at this cool little bar thing, which had the best music, really cool beats. got home to the hostel and slept for an hour and had to get up at 3am to catch the bus back to the airport for our 6am flight. flew back into stansted and went up to cambridge and had a bit of a look around, then back to the hotel where i am now. so in all sweden was totally wicked, even though i only really got to see the city(would have loved to get out to the wilderness and gone fishing or kayaking or rafting or something) i had heaps of fun just chilling out and meeting a few locals, they all speak perfect english, like better then me; and they are all really nice and willing to have a chat with foreigners; especially australians. woohoo. so thats about it, back to the normal grind back at the hotel now, ill be off to denmark on october 21st, to catch up with a mate from america. can't wait. anyways hope all is well where you are. keep smiling :) andyb

photos from sheffield

the kop: where all the true fans sit- like me the australian.

hillsborough: home of the mighty sheffield wednesday owls

chalk cliffs

Scarborough: north-east coast

getting old

hey guys, i havnt been on here for a while, been pretty busy lately... a lot of stuff going on, i have about 9 minutes of internet time left so this will be quick, but last week i drove up to sheffield, about 3 hours north, near manchester- a good test run for the old car, didnt overheat which is a bonus and actually drove pretty well, started shaking pretty bad at about the 100 mile mark, but for £300 i wasnt expecting a v8 supercar. so happy with that, went up to see a mate up there who i met in san deigo last summer, it was actually a year to the day when we caught up...funny, so it was cool seeing his place up there, and having a bit of a tour around the surrounding areas, went up to scarborough a nice little town/holiday getaway on the coast, and it had a cool little wall/castle on top of the hill, which we climbed. great fun. and we also went to the the mighty sheffield wednesday owls football team play the once mighty leeds united. a decent crowd came out to see the owls notch up their first win of the season. great stuff. im gonna get cut off. im going to sweden tomorrow, and i turned 20 on monday. getting on a bit. ill post in more detail when i get back to the uk, and hopefully some more pics as well.
have a good one :) andy

finally.

pidgens in san marcos square. venice

Venice at night from the rialto bridge.

florence at night.

'get off the grass' at pisa. the tower doesnt actually look on much of a lean from this angle but it is.

'no photos allowed'- sneaky shot in the sistine chapel.

Colosseum : sorry bout your sore neck.

Travelling crew to italy: first day in roma.

Cool artistic shot at oxford. unfortunately my computer skills dont match the quailty of the photo, so youll have to look at it on the side.

South african mate went to stonehenge with.

Stonehenge: Hippies Galore.

Stonehenge: the morning after.

well its taken a while, but ive finally got some pics on the net. i have about a thousand more, but i havnt figured out how to make them into a full gallery yet, but that will come. the photos actually went in the wrong order, so scroll up from here and it will be in cronological order. cool cool, hopefully these dont take to long to load either, but if your reading this now i guess youve already found out how long it takes. sorry if it was ages. hope you enjoyed actually seeing some of my adventures as opposed to being bored senseless reading about them. have a good one.

andyb

leaning tower and the rest

well in my last blog i believe i finished somewhere halfway thru Rome on my whirlwind tour of italy. the last blog was way to long, so ill summerise my remaining adventures a bit. - our last day in rome finished with a visit to st. peters church, its the biggest catherdral in the world, and really was cool, lined up with about 500 other people for half an hour to get in, but it was worth it. we climbed up 326 stairs to get to the top of the dome and look down inside the church, the detail and decoration blew me away. was awesome. all the walls are like mosaics and they are about 40-50m high, thats one huge work of art, i cant imagine sitting there for 30 years just decorating one wall. unreal. the pope also gives his weekly blessing on wednesday, the day we went, if we were organised and prepared to wait in a queue all night for about 18 hours, (we were neither) we actually would have got to see him. but we saw it on the big screen outside the church, the square they hold it in was massive and filled to capacity with people; and when he actually came out, everyone went nuts, it was more like a rock concert, everyone was screaming and taking thousands of photos, didnt seem like a very religious occasion. we also went into the vatican museum, where the sistine chapel is housed. that was also very cool as it took michelangelo 23 years to paint the roof, he built scaffolding up to the roof and lay on his back painting everyday for the best part of 23 years. great dedication.

We left rome about 6pm and anticipated that our ride up to pisa would be reasonably short. 4 hours and 15 mins later we pulled into pisa, found our campsite pretty easily. it was a cool place to stay we were staying in this little cabin thing, kinda looked like a caravan inside. the place had a nice pool, resturant, bar etc. a quality little place, but as we got there after midnight everything was shut. rose bright and early then next morning to check out the tower; it was 800m away from our hut, but it took us 2 hours to actually see it, due to the market lined streets and the fact i was travelling with 2 girls. and thats all there is in pisa- a small town which is famous for dodgey construction of tall buildings. it really does lean a long way, i think its 4.6m off perpendicular, doesnt sound like much; but its heaps when you see it leaning out from behind other straight buildings.

caught the train to florence from pisa, was a short ride only about an hour or something, got there about 3pm, but we didnt find our hostel until about 8pm, as we did not know how to read street signs properly. the word 'via' does not have the same meaning as in english, im still not really sure what it means, but it made our job hard. ended up being a place we had walked past like 5 times, quality, went to explore the city at night; and one of my thongs broke, was devastated. bought by a mate from walmart in the states last year for 99cents, they were the best, so i had to wear shoes for the rest of the trip, im not a huge fan of shoes. we found a cool little bridge that was pretty crowded with people, listening to these guys play really cool accoustic covers, just chilled there for a few hours and soaked it all in. bought the biggest gelati(?)(ice cream) the cone was probably about 30cm tall and had 6 giant scoops in it; seriously tok me a good half an hour to polish off. we also saw the statue of david in one of the museums and heaps of other old and supposedly significant builings, i cant remember them all.

we headed off to the island of venice and have a wicked time, was heaps of fun, venice is kinda hard to describe, its pretty much 117 small islands all separated by canels or rivers (that really wasnt too hard) take a normal city and replace the road with a canal, swap the busses for waterbusses, police cars for police boats, ambulances, taxis etc, its cool as, like another world. at night we chilled at the rialto bridge and san marcos square, just taking it all in. you'll recognise the bridge if you see it, pretty famous. and san marcos square is where everyone feeds the pidgeons, there are millions everywhere, you can buy bags of feed for €1, the pidgeons see you walking for the stand and just attack you immediately, one of the girls bought a bag and was kinda scared just holding some on her hand, so i threw the whole bag over her and the pidgeons- lets say they moved in quickly/swarmed/frenzy attacked her... lets also say i wasnt too popular with her for a few minutes, but it was heaps funny and we got some cool snaps of it. also went up to murano. another little island where they make the best stuff out of glass, pretty much the whole island is glass, thats all they do. the coolest stuff ive ever seen; if i even make a fortune ill go to venice and furnish my house with their glass. totally awesome.

Milan was the last place on the list and we got there rather late from venice another midnight check in. get free brekkie in the morning, and as we had pretty much starved the whole week, that was welcomed, i think we ate for then we paid for the room. bargain. as it was sunday most of the shops were closed, but all the catherdrals were open, so we checked out one of those, which wasnt overly exciting after looking at virtually the same thing every day all week, before i left the uk i checked to see if there were any football matches in milan, there was at 2pm, and i said i am going to watch this match even if im by myself. they wanted to see another church or museum or something, so i headed off solo style. i didnt have a clue how to get there, some guy pointed which way i should catch the tube, i was hoping i would see some supporters i could follow, but the station was dead. then i head them singing from about 500m away, 2 dudes came down the stairs totally decked out in their inter milan gear singing their team songs at the top of their lungs, great timing. so i tried to talk to them(no english) i indicated i was going to the san siro to watch the football( andrew does football kicking motion-they instantly understood) and i also told them i was from australia, all they said was 'kewell, viduka, good'. so even though we spoke different language we could still laugh and point at stuff and thats about it, but they were cool and showed me where i could get tickets and the best place to sit. i sat in the hardcore fans section, where you walk thru the gates accompanied by riot police and thru 2 metal detectors, more security than the airport in milan. the section was the 2nd tier right behind the goal and it was buzzing. the game started at 3pm, at 2:30 the whole section was up and chanting, noone sat down or stopped yelling until 10mins after the final whistle-including half time, there are 6 guys with megaphones at the front railing/riot police and they coordindate all the chants/songs, i cannot describe the atmosphere, unbelievable- it was slightly better than the brisbane strikers home supporters. inter milan won 3-0 over treviso(?) the crowd went nuts, was the perfect way to round off a wicked trip through italy, i had the best fun, but now im back at the hotel grinding out long days in the gym. fun. off to sweden in 2 weeks, should be a bit of fun, as long as i keep travelling ill be happy. until next time keep smilin :) andyb

camera case for sale.

'Rome is a fairly safe city- you are most unlikely to be assaulted. However, theives are very active around Stazione termini, at the major sights such as the colosseum and the city's more expensive shopping streets, especially in the summer and during holiday and festival times. Pickpockets like to work on crowded buses.'*

It was the ending of a busy day of sightseeing and walking around in the hot muggy air of roma, it was about 10pm, and we jumped on a crowded bus, heading back towards our hostel, which was situated about 100m away from the main transport terminal in Roma. the bus was crowded, about 20 people past the reccommended safety limit. myself and my 3 other travelling mates jumped on just before the colosseum, 2 of them jumped off at the colosseum to take some night shots, while we continued back to the hostel, i had jumped on with my little olympus mju mini, and had got off the bus with and unzipped, empty camera case. spewing, and i think i knew who it was who stole it, but by the time i had got off at my stop and had looked for an decently english speaking policeman to back me up, the bus was far off into the distance. on one hand, im dissapointed that i didnt just jump on there and confront them myself, but then; they also looked pretty rough, and were probably armed, so in hindsight im glad i just let it go. i have good travel insurance so hopefully thayll take care of it. luckily it was at the start of the trip, and i had previously dumped all my photos so i didnt lose any valuable shots. when we all met up back at the hostel, i told the other 2 the story, and it turns out, that the same guys had also tried to knock off their camera as well, when they jumped off at the colosseum, the case was fully unzipped and camera half hanging out. very lucky, cause her camera had all the wicked photos on it, and was worth about 3 times the value of mine.

Roma.

welcome to Rome, i know that wasnt a very positive way to kick off this post. now ill get back to the start and tell you the best stuff of the trip, which was everything bar what i just wrote before. we flew into campiano at about 4pm local time, and had to get a bus from the tarmac of the airport to the terminal, funny thing was, the bus only took us 70m, im pretty sure we all could have walked that, as opposed to waiting 10mins on a bus for everyone to get in. walked out of the terminal, past a guard carrying a huge machine gun, and jumped on a bus heading towards the city centre. it really dawned on me than, that i really was in another country- sometimes when you travel to places such as the uk or usa. there are many similar things which make you feel not to far from home. but when immediately out of the airport, you struggle to communicate with the bus driver, you struggle to read the road signs and determine whether you really have got on the right bus, and when the 3 people your travelling with are the only people speaking english out of crammed 92 seater bus. you immediately felt like you're in a new country; and it felt great.

well found our hostel very easily, and dumped our gear. the 4 of us where sharing a room with 6 other people, all were really friendly and turned out to be great fun over the next few days. the great thing about roma is that pretty much all the main attractions are within walking distance, so off we went. even just walking around the streets you can see so much history and culture, totally amazing. saw a guy cutting people's hair in a deck chair in the street, people cooking pizzas in a woodfired oven on the street, it was all happening. we crusied down to the collesum to have a look, it seems weird to say that, after seeing so many pictures of it, seeing it in movies, travel books and as one of the most recognisable features of roma, we had the luxury of just walking there whenever we felt like it. it flew me away, its sheer size, it held 80,000 people, even today rarely do they make stadiums with that capacity; we spent quite a while there just taking it all in, we continued down the street and were just drinking it in, all the ancient architecture. we saw heaps of other buildings and and palaces that night, too many to mention, to many to remember all the names.

No matter where you go in the world there are always Indian people setting little gadgets and trinkets on the side of the road, a classic in roma, was little tripods and paintings, they would sit there with an old painting kit and pretend to be painting the pictures themselves, but then the guy 15m away was selling exactly the same paintings, to be that similar they must have gone to the same art school and learnt the same techniques. and the guys selling roses were funny as, they would walk up to a couple and give the lady 3 roses and walk away saying they were free, but then 2 mins later they would walk up to the man and ask for 5 euros, we got targeted alot. i never bought any roses. being hounded by indian dudes selling stuff that we didnt want made us tired, so we went back to the hostel and crashed.

we woke early on the morning of the 23rd as we had a lot to do,we decided to jump on a tour bus and see absoltuely everything in roma then head back and see the stuff in more detail that we thought was worthy of out limited time. we again headed back to the coleseum, and checked it out in full daylight i was keen to do a tour inside but time didnt permit, we flew through, the palentine, the pantheon, the spanish steps, spagna, and the font di trivea all in a matter of hours, all was absolutely amazing, had lunch in a nice little cafe down a random back alley with some guys playing music on the accordian accompanied by his mate playing spanish guitar. the pizza was awesome, very expensive, but you had to do it for the atmosphere. i would liek to go into more detail about what we saw, but time is running low, and its best explained with pictures-so ill try to get them up here soon.

my internet time is about to clock off, so i have to run, still so much more to write, in my next blog we'll be going on a journey from st. Peters basilica through the vatcan city and the sistine chapel and ending up in pisa with the worst constructed tower in the history of time. stay tuned.

*Lonely planet guide, Italy