The Story Begins... Yep.. I'm going all out (very Rough Draft)

This will be put together piece by piece... sometimes ending in unfinished sentences.

I have committed myself to putting together a story that tries to sum up Jo's and my trip. :)

Sorry this is taking so long... I've been really busy and distracted with work, finals, and holidays.

It’s five am on Tuesday, July 5th and we’re back on the ground again. Jo and I arrived in the airport terminal on Air Pacific Flight 811 out of Los Angeles. We’re scheduled to be picked up by a driver for the place we were staying, Club Fiji. After experiencing a solid half hour long wait in the dark humidity of five am winter time (Southern hemisphere) Fiji, we were led to a short Fijian man who apparently was the driver of a white van leading us to our destination of the evening.
He didn’t have our names on his list of people to pick up, and me being the overly responsible person that I am… I didn’t have our confirmation of reservation printed out (more about my increasing preparedness later). He let us slide and ride along with him and another couple though. Our dirt road covered journey out towards the beaches of Nadi bay left us soon at the front entrance to Club Fiji, a small beachside resort (that is quite affordable for the location… I strongly recommend a few days there). After about ten minutes of confusion, we were taken to our ocean front bure. Jo and I were ready to crash, and that we did, but not before going outside and attempting our photographic talent of the Fijian sunrise over the nearby volcanoes, and also not without positioning our gigantic, white, has not been cleaned since it was hung, mosquito net that was hanging from our ceiling.
The next morning we awoke with a start. A man was yelling into our room that we had a phone call. Figuring it was Mrs. Price (Jo’s mother) calling (I was very confused as to how she would have received the phone number), we both got dressed and walked over to the front desk. Club Fiji by day is a beautiful place. Anyway, we reached the front desk to find that there was not a phone call for us, but instead some issues with us not actually checking in. I signed on the dotted line and we went for breakfast.
Our daily breakfast often included: juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, and other delicious morsels of American inspired cuisine. We then normally went back to shower. The shower was temperamental to say the least. One could step in and touch it in a very minor way and the temperature would skyrocket. It, combined with the gigantic cockroaches meandering throughout our resort, made our mornings fun in so many different ways.
Our days typically consisted of taking naps in the sun and reading immense amounts after that. I was swept up in the Harry Potter phenomenon and was through the first five books before we even made it out of there. That, 10 hours of daily, beautiful, and tropical sunlight, along with bottles of Fiji gold (that I just so happened to have made a habit of breaking off the cap with the nearby trees and rocks) made our slow days even more luxurious than we counted on before.
More than one morning, we decided to make our daily trip down to Nadi Town (a cab ride that cost us about five bucks). At this point, is when I figure out just how poor Fiji is. We traveled by extremely sub-par living conditions in our taxis. Sugar fields filled with Fijian men sitting and chewing on sugar cane were surrounding the sometimes paved roads. Cattle that you couldn’t get beef jerky off of were alongside the overly dirty river that moved alongside the town. We pulled into town and were pulled up alongside a tourist shop that had all sorts of things inside to purchase (that were typically overly priced, but very cool).
Jo and I enjoyed an extremely peaceful time in Fiji. Our first week of relaxation after months drenched with school, work, etc. was needed excessively. Reading, walking along the beach with the stray dog that followed us, picking up hermit crabs from the sand and letting them walk all over us, lying out in the sun for hours on end, taking burrs out of our clothes, drinking beer, and eating coffee cups full of the Fijian version of Rice Krispies (we also got to watch a rugby match while we were there on the large projection screen tv, GO ALL BLACKS!)
After a week, we had both started to catch the island fever and were happy to be packing up our bags and starting our way on the rest of the trip. A flight to Sydney was in order and we were excited by the change in scenery. On July 18th, Flight number __ (will be added when I have the itinerary in front of me) was a quick jaunt over to the largest island in the world. Jo and I landed and immediately made our way into finding out a thing or ten about public transportation. We learned quickly that we would be engaging in many cab rides around Sydney, especially since I had booked a hotel in Randwick. Randwick is here . Sydney airport is there in that fantastic Northern Sydney area. All of the places we would be visiting were somewhere in between. To say that I was feeling disappointment towards Priceline.com would be a gross understatement. However, the place was tidy and we could see the Sydney tower from our miniature balcony. It was the very early afternoon and we decided that we would eat and look for a place to sign online in order to send emails to family members (mainly my mother and Mrs. Price) saying we made it safely. We walked about 200 meters away from our hotel and crossed the "pedestrian" (otherwise known to us Americans as a crosswalk) to get to the small neighborhood cafe. This place became a frequent destination for us before our several jaunts into the city of Sydney. In Sydney we visited the Sydney Aquarium, ate a wonderful dinner consisting of Emu, Kangaroo, Camel, and others at the Sydney Tower (which is the place we truly continued on the path Jo's grandfather, Mr. Petersen turned me towards, the enjoyment of Pinot Noir). Jo and I also experienced the wonder of the Sydney Taronga Zoo. We showed up slighly later in the day (around 2:30), rode the gondola to the slipped our way quickly through the stuff to see. We were too late to hold the Koalas for pictures (which I secretly pretended to bum me out...) and certain monkey areas were closed off, much to Jo's dismay. We walked around and eventually it started raining at about 4:30. Jo and I are troopers though, so we stayed out and kept going despite everyone leaving around us. Soon, the rain cleared and the zoo was EMPTY. We saw a ton of animals come out, including some seals and a pygmy hippo. 5:30 rolled around and we were having a great time, but something didn't seem quite right. We hadn't seen any people for quite some time and all of the animals were out and putting on quite the show for us. Then we noticed that the food stands were closed. Our answer came along some time soon after when a jeep pulled up to us and told us that the park closed at 5. It was currently 6. We just naturally assumed for some reason that zoo was open that late. We walked slowly out of the Zoo and to the bus in order to take our gorgeous, but cold, night ferry ride home.



Next stop:

Bangkok..

Landing in Bangkok airport, we immediately felt the sweltering humidity penetrating the airplane. Sweat was permeating through our clothing and my claustrophobia was intensified several times over as the passengers of the plane all stood up to exit out the front. To boot, I was still feeling sick from the water I had used to brush my teeth with in Fiji. These things put me into a mood that was less than satisfactory. Still though, we were now in THAILAND!!! This place was one of my major suggestions for the trip and I was so excited to finally be there. Cheap food, inexpensive hotels, cheap and wild cab rides, etcetera were all prevalent. We got off of the plane and made our way to the ATMs so we would be able to pull out enough Bhat to get us through a few days. We then went to a stand where “Hotel taxi” was displayed and were talked into a tour that was sponsored by the cab company for “only” 400 bhat total (come to find out later, while it was only ten dollars, this is A LOT of money in Thailand). We then got our ride, fully equipped with swerving through traffic at 120 kilometers/hour, to the Hotel Asia, an upscale 4 ½ star rated hotel in the shopping district (aka the Silom-Siam area) of Bangkok. The hotel was gorgeous inside and out and very conveniently attached via skybridge to the city’s monorail system. There were restaurants abundant inside as well, including a spectacular Chinese restaurant, a Vietnamese place, a Brazilian place, and the main hotel restaurant (which was a hodge-podge of food including some American and, of course, Thai food). There were suit shops, cobblers, massage therapists, and jewelry stores as well. I was extremely blown away (especially after considering our 240 bhat or 30 dollar/ night price tag). Jo and I were exhausted; we checked in and headed up to our room. We plugged in the cameras and her iPod and decided to explore the hotel.



After that: Frankfurt

Pulling out of the Bangkok airport, we had an immense flight towards the german city of Frankfurt. Jo and I had a layover day there and were taking a flight out after spending one solid day there. Our hotel was overpriced, but right next to the train station (which, I must say, directly correlates with the reason it was so overpriced). We killed a few hours getting from the airport to the train station (not by choice mind you, we didn't speak any German, luckily... many Germans speak English). We ate pizza that first night and passed out after taking showers and watching "Pimp my Fahr-rad." The next day we awoke and decided that we needed to send some packages (namely, our suit and dress) back to the U.S. We made our way over to the amazingly effecient post office, then decided to take in a lunch at the Beer Garden. After Sausages and beer, we made our way back to the hotel (I bought Jo a multi-colored rose by surprise ;)) and we decided on attending an English language movie. After navigating our way through the immense transit system once again, Jo and I embarked on the path towards the OV (original version) movie theater. We saw Wedding Crashers, which, as far as the rated 'R' comedy goes, is one of the best to come out in years... It is lewd, it is crude, and it is unwaveringly funny. When we were finished there, we headed back to our hotel, caught some shut eye and prepared ourselves for the long train ride to Prague the next day.


Then: Prague

On our way to Prague, Jo and I discovered on the train that we had not had our eurail passes validated. This, could lead to us being kicked off of a train later on, but the man who checked the tickets was sympathetic to our absent-mindedness and let us go anyway; however, we would have to validate at the train station at the border where we changed trains to head towards Prague. One problem...

There was about 10 minutes in between when we arrived and when we were supposed to depart. Jo and I got off of the train from Frankfurt in an Eastern Germany city by the name of Dresden. While I waited to get our Eurail passes validated, Jo went about getting us some food. The line was atrocious. The English was lacking. I was stressed out. Jo went to grab more food while I waited in line. I stared off at clock on the wall... 7 minutes until I train leaves, 6 minutes, 5 minutes (Why is this couple in front of me having so many problems?), 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes.... Finally I got to the front of the line and got both of our eurail passes stamped. Jo had the food in hand and we RAN to the train.

We stepped onto the train and threw our bags up above us and rode the trashy little train into the country of the Czech Republic.

The beautiful city of Prague, Czech Republic was desolate looking and hot when we pulled into the main train station. We walked around lost for a bit before I found out how to get tram passes for us. We bought a week's worth of tram passes for the two of us, found out where we were staying and headed that direction... to Prague 4.

The place we were staying was a small Botel that we'd reserved back at the Travel Agency in Seattle. The rooms were small, the food was horrific, and the people didn't speak much english, but it was home for the week. We separated the city of Prague into areas we would like to visit and tackled them slowly. We visited the Prague castle, Old Town, Lesser Town, and the Jewish Quarter. We saw the Jewish cemetery from behind the gates. Tombstones stacked upon eachother left a shiver up my spine at the remnants of World War II deaths.



Then: Venice

Jo and I trained our way into Venice late at night. On my recommendation, we got off at Venezia Mestre (being as I didn't know the smallest bit about the area and also didn't speak a word of italian.

Then: Naples

Good pizza first night,
pompei

Then: Rome
little apartment

Then: Pisa
nice dinner, picky guy running the hotel
Then: Florence

Then: San Gimingano

Then: Florence

Then: Pisa

Then: Monterrosso

Then: Milan

Then: Munich

Then: Paris

Then: Barcelona

Then: Las Palmas, Gran Canaria

Then: Madrid

Then: Atlanta....