London

It's a shame I don't have many photos of London because I did have a great time there. Although that is partly due to visiting museums and galleries where it's kind of inappropriate to take photos.


This is the National Gallery taken from Trafalgar Square.

Not sure who this is supposed to be but I like that he has crap on his head. As well as a seagull.

Tower Bridge

Big Ben

Mel is a goose whisperer of sorts. (Her secret is biscuits from Amsterdam)

Arguably the highlight of my trip - SQUIRRELS! Ms Red Jeans is a stranger from France but look how close the squirrel is to her!

Mel tricking a squirrel. She didn't actually have anything in her fingers.

A happy squirrel eating a nut.

A hungry squirrel digging for food.

These are the gates to Buckingham Palace.

Some guards.

An almost Where's Wally? except in this photo you find Jane and Mel. It's not hard.

We visited London Zoo. What a disappointment. All the animals looked sad and hungry.

Saw more squirrels.

Guess who lives here.

Outside St Paul's Cathedral.

St Paul's featuring the Millennium Bridge (which was featured in Harry Potter).
Shopping was, as expected, marvellous. We stayed at Ridgemount Hotel which is just a short walk from Oxford St and let me tell you, we did a lot of shopping. Mostly window, not a lot of buying. We pretty much went shopping every day, that's how good it was. I was mainly sucked in by the chains we don't have (COS and Uniqlo in particular) and Liberty. If I were given the opportunity to live inside Liberty, I'd take it up in a heartbeat. I kid you not.

Staying on the topic of clothes and shopping, one of the most profound things I noticed in Europe was how well everyone dressed. It's quite different city to city - London was very on trend and people were very conscious of how they looked. Parisians were very effortless and chic whereas the Italians were very glamourous. Now that I am back in Sydney all I want to do is rip my eyes out when I walk down the street. How is it possibly that almost an entire city can dress so poorly? Also! Londoners wear a lot of jumpers which you don't really see around here. We hardly saw any hoodies that we actually turned it into a game. Not really, I exaggerate - every time we saw a hoodie someone would exclaim something along the lines of 'That person was wearing a hoodie!'. Yep, my friends and I are cool.

Uni's starting tomorrow and I don't know how I'm going to focus as London is still clearly on my mind.

Salzburg/Heidelberg/Amsterdam.

Jetlag has certainly taken it's toll because here I am, 06:20h, wide awake since 04:30h blogging. Cool life. After Italy the tour took us to Salzburg - arguably the coldest place ever (I swear it was colder than the Swiss Alps). We only spent a night here but that was long enough for me to acknowledge that Sydney sucks (as if the entire trip didn't reinforce this enough) and that I would much rather be living elsewhere (apparently you can buy an apartment for $30,000 in Berlin - w h a t ?). Also in Salzburg we went into a Manner store and I bought the best hazelnut and chocolate wafers in the world (at a very reasonable €2.18 for 400g!) and a hot chocolate with rum. Their wafers are so good that it's reported the Arnold Schwarzenegger receives a shipment every six months. If it's good enough for Arnie, it's definitely good enough for me.

We were told by our tour guide that Heidelberg is a university town. My university has much to live up to. You know when your heart aches when something/someone it's so impossibly beautiful that you question reality? Yep. My heart ached.

Our final stop for the tour was Amsterdam where my friends got Amsterdamaged. What happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam but you could probably guess what happened there. Here are a couple of hints: red light district, coffee shop, McDonald's and public transport.



I don't remember what the castle is called but this was taken by the river. Clearly.


How this dog had so much energy I do not understand.

By night.

Jane and Mel walking.

This is Heidelberg Castle. If you go up, it literally looks like an abandoned castle from a fairy tale. No joke. There I go with my fairy tale talk again. My apologies.

Heidelberg from the castle at dusk.

By night, on the Old Bridge.

Our 'botel' in Amsterdam. I would not recommend staying there.

It's always so peculiar seeing ducks in the wild. Same goes for the swans in Lucerne.

Amsterdam probably ties with Salzburg and Heidelberg as the second most beautiful place we visited (after Switzerland).


On our tour we were meant to go on a canal cruise, much like a gondola ride in Venice but the canals were frozen over.

A sneaky pic of Mel and Jane on a frozen canal. Given my predisposition to falling I didn't dare go down in fear of the Dutch judging me.

Italy

I had very high hopes for Italy. Rome... what can I say about Rome? I can't blame you for being snowed under during the cold snap but I can still blame you for having shitty people. The three of us went into this restaurant Dal Tuscano - by far the worst customer service I have ever come across. Pretty much everything that person said - waiter was awful, the food took forever to arrive and when it did come, it was cold. Obviously if you've got French, German and English on the menu you should have waiters who speak those languages. We couldn't even get out of there quick enough because our waiter took at least fifteen minutes to get the bill. Aside from Rome, Florence and Venice were lovely.


Pont Vecchio.

Inside the Duomo

Outside the Vatican Museum


The Vatican's arms or something which has lapis lazuli which loses its colour once it's not in its crystalline form so it's barred off.

Trompe l'oeil! The ceiling's actually painted.

Saint Peter's Basilica

The Colosseum

Snow falling off some trees near the Roman Forum.

The Victor Hugo monument. This was my favourite because it looks like a giant marble wedding cake.

Juliet's (of Romeo and Juliet fame) balcony in Verona. I don't understand how a fictional character has a balcony in real life.

The Grand Canal in Venice.


The Rialto Bridge.

On a gondola.

It looks sunny here...


but Venice was actually freezing.