Tag Archives: travel

Visiting Elly!

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Today I took an early train out to Wolfsburg where Elly lives and we are hanging out for the day. I’ve seen the town, the VW factory, the lake with wakeboarders… and, even better, seen Elly! So hi to Victoria and all of our mutual friends there.

Berlin

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Right, so I just had a lovely post done up and something happened and this crappy internet decided it didn’t like it. So the abbreviated version is: we’re in Berlin, Berlin is cool. We’ve done some neat stuff. I’m hanging out with Elly tomorrow. Leave for Prague on Monday. The other version was much nicer but I’m much too lazy to type it out again.

Köln

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We arrived here in Köln (Cologne), Germany yesterday afternoon after taking a train from Amsterdam in the morning. It was one of those high speed trains so we were going over 200 km/hr at some points. We couldn’t get much faster than that because there were a number of stops along the way.
The first thing you see when you walk out of the train station in Köln is the stinking huge French Gothic Cathedral. Today we explored around it and in it, climbed the tower and stuff like that. There is lots of really neat stuff inside it including amazing stained glass windows, mosaic floors in the area with the chapels (east end), carving around the entry portals (once I get my photos loaded, hopefully tomorrow in Kassel, there will be a quiz…!), and, the best ever (because I studied it in Art History) is the Three Magi Reliquary shrine made by Nicholas of Verdun (that mention is for you, Katie!).
We did do some other stuff here in Köln, but that has mostly consisted of walking around and vegging in the hostel. Tomorrow it is off to Kassel for the night to stay with Natalie’s host family from when she was here before, then it is off to Berlin! Still having fun and enjoying seeing everything. I’m off to read about how everyone else is before I run out of net time here. 🙂

Amsterdam

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Well, its our last night in Amsterdam… we’ve had a great time here. I love having the canals everywhere, although sometimes I wonder how people can park so close without driving into the canal…
We’ve done lots of cool things so far – Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank Huis (finally! 14 years in the waiting…), Van Gogh museum, Delft for the day, the beach in Den Haag in the evening, Leiden and Oegstgeest to see Tante Anneke and Dad’s old house, hanging out with Natalie’s friend Frank and my friend Lyndel and her husband Timon.
This morning we went to Christian City Church Amsterdam (offshoot of CCC Oxford Falls in Sydney) which was also lots of fun.
I’ve enjoyed eating the Dutch food I love… herring, kroket, stroopwafels, drops… ahhh.
Tomorrow, we’re off to Cologne. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload some pics soon, but I think Natalie was able too today, so see the link I posted earlier to find some!

Brussels

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Greetings from Belguim!
This is going to be short, and no photos because I haven’t had a chance to upload any here and I only have 10 min left of internet… so once again I only get to post and not read any of your lovely blogs and find out about life.
Brussels is a pretty cool city. There are some spectacular buildings from 1600s era – many of the fantastic ones around the main Market Square were all guildhalls and so are decorated with lots of statues and gold etc. We’ve mostly wandered around town, took the bus town to Waterloo today…
Tomorrow… AMSTERDAM!! Yay!

København Pictures!

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We’ve been here about 3 days now, and I was able to upload some pictures using Nina’s parents computer! It was quite grey on Wednesday when we went in to town, and it rained off and on. Yesterday it cleared up around lunch, so it was nice then – we got to go up King Christian’s Round Tower from which you get a great view of town (one of the King Christians, not sure which one. Pretty much every Danish king has either been Christian or Frederik) and we saw the Little Mermaid Statue. Much cooler than the girl in the wetsuit at Stanley Park.
Today, we took the train up to Helsingør where we checked out the town and Kronenborg – the castle which Shakespear used for the setting of Hamlet! That was pretty sweet. The only thing that would have made it sweeter is if there had been one of the live, on-site productions of Hamlet on when we were there. After wandering around, we decided to take the ferry over to Helsingborg, so, 20 min later, we were in Sweden! They didn’t even ask to see passports. So we wandered around there looking at some cool Medieval buildings – a tower and a Danish Gothic Church – then took the ferry back to Helsingør and trained back to Copenhagen.
Anyway, so here are those pictures. Enjoy!

The Little Mermaid

A Canal in Copenhagen

Rosenborg Castle, where the Crown Jewels are kept

View of Copenhagen from the Round Tower – the bridge to Malmo (I think) is in the background

UPDATE: for some bizzare reason, the computer doesn’t want to upload any pictures of Hamlet’s castle, so you’ll have to wait to see them.

Copenhagen

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We’ve made it to Copenhagen! We arrived sometime yesterday afternoon and spent all day walking around town and saw the Crown Jewels (hokey dinah!!!) and some castles, churches and really cool buildings and boats and stuff. Its been lost of fun hanging out with Nina (from Hillsong College days!) and staying at her parent’s house (thanks parents!). Tomorrow, Natalie and I are planning to head up to Helsingør and check out Hamlet’s castle (yes, that is Hamlet from Shakespear) and take the ferry over to Sweden so we can say we’ve been there.
It rained a bunch off and on today, but its supposed to be nice tomorrow…