VENICE

St. Mark's Square


HIGH TIDE ! :O



gondola!


The Rialto Bridge, Venice


view from bridge


so i had a small list in my mind... the places i wanted to go before i died. and this was like highhhhh up the list. so i especially requested that we see venice. OR ELSE
:D


anyway
here are some pics that i promised i'd put up
they are also in the slideshowy thing above.


The Sagrada Familia




dammit i dont know how to rotate this one on this thing
but this is the view outside our hotel in madrid




Santiago Bernebeu
yes i do enjoy putting my hands up



Home of the Real Madrid Football Club or 'Club Football' as they like to call it



representing mac.rob in all parts of the world



WHADDUPPPPP
famous london telephone box in the snow!
i feel like im in the world of harrypotter
bahaha




LONDON

was SO DAMN COLD
felt equally as cold as oxford, even though there wasn't AS much snow around. wind chill factor :((((
so i've actually been to london before once, when i was young, when i don't remember like anything
note to self and others: don't take your kids anywhere amazing until they are at least 11 years old. why ? because they won't remember much and your money would probably be wasted.
it was 10 years ago and all i remember is buckingham palace even though we went everywhere else.
sooo london was spent
re-visiting the places which my brother & i didn't remember. so yeah that's why.
my toes were once again freezing that day, man im such a complainer when my toes are frozen. it hurts thoughhhhhh. feel my painnn (through the pain of the heat you guys experienced?) ahah i dunno

we stayed at the same company inn thing as the one in oxford called 'premier inn' . it was conveniently located near the famous Tower Bridge.





so we saw that, and various other tourist attractions such as: buckingham palace, londonbridge (which actually isn't as exciting as towerbridge - not that i'd say the bridge itself is fair exciting), the big ben, westminister abbey and saw, but not sat on, the london eye :(


london eye


yes, the big ben is my bitch
and yes, it was very cold. hence the pink ski gloves. i am oh-so fashionable ;P


buckingham palace, second visit. remembered.


chyeahhh me>queen's guards


find the stations = MONOPOLY

after all the attractions. went to watch ARSENAL VS. EVERTON
english premier league game !
yes i am now a converted soccer fan
ARSENAL FTWWWW
too bad the match didn't turn out as we hoped. well since my brother has been a fan since foreverrr and we pretty much came all this way to watch arsenal play a freaking game...& win....
unfortunately twas a draw 2-2
we were so worried we wouldnt even watch the match coz the whole weather craziness
many matches had been cancelled due to the snow and there were only two games actually playing that day. one of them was ours!
liverpool and man united one got cancelled. LOL

anyway, the match was awesome, seats were good as. lol started snowing like halfway through the second half
like actually snowing on the pitch. snowing pretty damn hard you could see the trail where they kicked the ball coz the pitch was becoming icy. slipping and sliding players.
tim cahill & lucas neal of everton were playing actually, they are like 2 of the only 4 australians in the league.

anyway. we sat there freezing our asses off while the snow fell hard outside.



now quick recap of the past few days. since im so delayed in posting
after london, went to paris!
for like an afternoon.
coz i wanted to meet up with my friend who i'd met at an international school i went to in shanghai. long story short, i lived in china for two years and went to an international school where everyone spoke english. came back and moved a grade up coz northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere start at different times. so went up a grade. so techinically i didnt skip coz i'd already done half of grade 2 :)
there. theres that reason why im so young !
ask me when i come back though


anyway met up with her... her name is Heloise, and she is half french, half viet :)
she was like our tour guide for the afternoon. and we pretty much visited all the attractions in that one afternoon !
LOL paris is so easy to get around
saw the eiffel tower, arc de triomphe, champ elysees (which is the main shopping street), and the notre dame. didnt get to see the lourve coz it was night time and it wouldnt look pretty. apparently.



arc de triomphe


in paris got a new lovely beanie and some gloves
and yest got another jacket. freaking bargain !

okay this post is too long,
will update about switzerland and venice in next post.

hope you have enjoyed the overload of photos!
off to rome tmorr
LOVE YOU & MISS YOU ALL
i miss melbourne terribly too!
xo

interlaken, switzerland

heyheyhey
it is almost 8pm here. like almost 6 am in melbourne city.
didn't find mel on skype this time. *lucky her - i would have told her off for being so deprived of daylight from sleeping early in the morning :P

it's been a long time sine i last blogged
well it feels like a long time. actually 6 days is kinda a long time travel wise.
anyway
so last time i blogged i mentioned i was heading off to oxford via london
and we sure did. but JUST. coz it was snowing heaps in london city so flight was delayed like an hour.
apparently we entered into the WORST SNOW STORM IN 30 YEARS
what luck ! LOL
arrived at the 'London City Airport'. ahah yeah it's no heathrow
and when we exited... we could feel the cold
forgot to mention that pretty much the whole of the united kingdom was snowed over before we arrived so we got a view of a white london as we arrived. which is a pretty different view to what you can usually see from a plane to any other city

it was freaking cold.
we took the 'DLR' which is their docklands light rail aka a tram thing, to the famous london underground tube!
actually it's pretty old & our metro looks better but trains are very frequent and all.
ive noticed all the european train systems are really similar so i guess once you figure out one, you can figure out all the others?
it's defs different to melb though.
anyway
i got realllyyy excited at all the station names. ahaha im so cool.
can you guess why?

monopoly !
8)
names that i recognised i would yell out in excitement. how lame of me. actually scratch that. i know you would too.
okay and maybe i didnt yell but yeah i was excited.
dw anyway i took a picture of the train line thingo that tells you all the names :)

so back to oxford. we took a train from 'paddington station' (chyeahh paddington bear much?) to oxford. cept trains were like wildy delayed and cancelled because of the crazy snowy weather. bl
finally got on a train and got to oxford safely.
LOL coming out of the station
SNOW EVERYWHERE :O
like the road outside the railway station was like so mushhy and stuff
on our bus ride on the way to our inn... gahhh snowwww baby ! hells yeah. it was so pretty. especially coz oxford is such an old town, the buildings were really nice but the snow just made it even nicer. the snow like hung off every edge, it was so pretty !
so after we got off the bus, we had to walk about 5 mins to the 'premier inn'. mmm this would have been a lovely walk, and would have actually taken us 5 mins, if not for the fact that it started snowing like CRAZY as we began to walk.
pretty much got caught in the snow storm, while pulling our heavy luggage across the ground (which by the way is even worse because it's snow!).
but i must say that was extremelyyyyy fun.
other than that i was freezing my ass off and wishing to get warm.
snow was so bad we wanted to call a taxi. then again a taxi wouldnt do much for us either, coz it was so dangerous to drive too.

anywayy
next day we took one of those tourist buses again. took lots of pretty photos because snow makes things 100 times more prettier that it is. LOL i think that is a fact. because otherwise it would just look like a nice old building.
oxford is pretty cool actually. the whole town IS the university
so the uni is spread out everywhere
the eng building is once place, the med building on the other side of town. the whole town is based on the uni !
tis pretty coool.

that day, we satisfied our asian tendencies with a bit of asian siew nap fan = roast duck rice
twas okay actually. :D


just want to put it out there. snow is great. but the worst feeling everrr from snow.... is having the feeling like your toes are frozen :(
it's actually the worst feeling. it's like they are numb, but not. and you don't want them to be numb so you wiggle them, but even the wiggling hurts. so its a lose -lose situation. :(((( and
i put on like 3 layers of socks. no joke. and my toes still felt horrible. bleughhh
found out it's my boots that are the problem. only today we figured that out though. so since then my toes have been frozen everyyyy single day. LOL epic fail on my part



okay ill continue this post later. right now im too tireeeed
it's been a long day
we've been up to the swiss alps walking around and taking manymanymany photos. pictures certainly don't do this place justice coz its is effing amazing here. the mountains are so picturesque and beautiful.
i promise that i will upload more photos. i wont tease you this time. ill give you heaps LOL
i've taken some pretty awesome ones that im sure you will love :P
and i promise i will blog about switzerland too
gahh so much to talk about
please tell me what you've been up to toooo
coz i miss you alll
and you are probably bored of me talking about myself., dw i know i would be too. im such a lamo.


not actually sure the next time ill get internet but we'll seeeeee

lots of love,
empowpow
xo

madrid.

whaddup melbourne
it's 6pm here in madrid fyi
4am in melbourne

and mels still isn't asleep. *sighhhh

SOOOO
i am currently blogging from Hotel Europa in madrid. free wifi FTW !
this hotel is better than the barcelona one by far. that one was a 4 star hotel but we slept on like bunk beds
this one is like in the heart of the city, so we don't have to travel far like we did for that one.
it's also muchhhhh better looking. ill upload photos if i can after i blog.
perks of it being in the heart of the city ? WELL the shopping district is like downstairs :O
our room has a view of the street which is pretty cool. also the central plaza is like 20 metres away, so there is access to all different other streets..

OKAY back to barcelona.
feels like ages ago but i'll tell you what i can remember.
so i think it was 3 days ago? 2nd of jan... we didn't do much i think. i remember the soccer match between Barcelona FC & Villareal was on that day. so just my bro and my dad went to watch it. i was soooo tired that day, i just slept before dinner and slept til the next day.

the next day was much more exciting.
we took the tourist bus from the main plaza in Barcelona called 'Placa de Catalunya' which is where we were for the countdown to 2010.
definitely looks better in the daytime.
so their tourist buses are wayyy coool. cooler than melbourne. but not free like melbourne :(((( it's like this whole hop on, hop off system
they are pretty much double decker buses! so you sit upstairs and they give you free headphones. and the pre recorded thing tells you about all the sites and history and stuff. like 'To the right is the......built in......' lalala
thing about europe is... it's so much older than australia, so it has soooo much rich history. like all their building are absolutely stunning. compared to melbourne where it's just modern buildings and etc.
their buildings have so much attention to detail it is insane.

so hopped off at the 'Sagrada Familia'. which is like Barcelona's landmark. it's not complete coz it's just soooo MASSIVE and beautiful outside&inside so it will only be complete in like 20 years. someone come back with me ? :D
it's so popular that the line to go inside can be so long that you have to wait like 1 hour. and even inside, the lines to the lift is like 1 hour 30 minute wait !
it's worth it though, coz the view from the top is the wholeeee city. pretty spectacular.
after that we were hungry.
so we ate maccassssss
2 McPollos = McChickens
and the CBO = cheese bacon onion burger
had 2 meals
and it came with wedges !
and also they offered lipton ice tea as a drink !
unfortunately couldn't eat mcflurries coz the machine was broken. gahh so typical of maccas.

after that we just jumped back on the bus and it took us past all these pretty places. see pictures attached
SO COLD GAHHH
so freaking cold
have to put on like a billion layers a day
and apparently barcelona will be the 'warmest place' on our trip :O
how is the weather in melbourne?
beachhhhh ?

tomorrow we are heading off to oxford via london by plane. apparently it is 0 degrees in london. so im kinda screwed.
ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRY THOUGH OMG ! :D cannot wait. so exciteeeed
ENGLISHHHHHH <3


yesterday.
arrived in madrid in the morning after a 3 hour train ride. we took their equivalent of the vline. except their vline is like so much cooler. seats were like airplane seats man !
madrid is fair cool, but barcelona is cooler.
much more touristy in barcelona - as in more things to see. and i reckon barcelona is like an upgrade of madrid. coz madrid's metro is like old but bacelona's looks exactly the same but cleaner and just generally bettererer

went shopping yesterday and bought stuff ! woooh
2 jackets from H&M. i'll be sure to show you when i get back
& my bro bought a jacket from the men's section of h&m.
brands like mango, zara, H&M and cortefiel are really popular here
went shopping in this district called 'Gran Via' which is their New York times square equivalent. but not as cool LOL

for dindins, wanted to satisfy my parents' cravings of chinese food. LOL that's right. they couldn't last even 5 days. ahahah
so we went to a chinese restaurant near gran via. decent foood. but not as good as melbourne ofcourse !


todayyyy.
took the 'Madrid Vision' which is madrid's tourist bus. wasnt as cool as barcelona....>_>>
ahaha
buuuuuuut. we got off at the 'Santiago Bernabeu' which is Real Madrid Football Club's stadium
did a tour of the place.
TWAS AMAZING.
ill put up the pics.
i felt so cooooool.
took a pic with christiano ronaldo (but not really)



okay that's about it.
oxford tmorr, hopefully i can see my beloved shriya who's in godstoweeeee

I MISS EVERYONE :((((
i feel like i missing heaps of goings on in melbourne
gahhh
keep me updated everyone !
comment below

love you all
xo




new years eve at barcelona


one of the many plazas off la rumbla in barcelona


market on la rumbla in barcelona

barcelona

quick post
11pm on the 3rd of jan, here in barcelona
i believe it is 9 am on the 4th of jan in melb.

quick post coz im being forced to sleep - we have an early morning tmor coz we are travelling by train to madrid !
past 2 days have been busybusybusy
i've been very tired
so much walking and sight seeing and etc
pretty tired now but wanted to update y'all

i've changed my mind. barcelona is amazinggggg
if you have the chance to travel to europe. this place should be top of your list.
yesterday one of the things we did was go on the cable car which has views of the entire city. absolutely breathtaking. :O
melbourne needs a cable car from ontop of a hill !
the only place i guess they could do it... is from mount dandenong but that's just too far.
i havent got the chance to upload any photos on to the laptop yet. but even then, pictures certainly won't do it justice. you have to be there to see how amazing it is.

one of the things we did today was visit the 'Sagrada Familia'
i swear this should be one of the wonders of the world. it's is freaking gorgeous. Well it's a church. but not just any church. a church which is architecturally amazing. *i swear my vocab has shrunk after vce. (need more words for amazing - can you help me out?)

anyway that's all for now
did so much more things in these past two days that my feet hurt :(



ohhh spanish maccas have wedges with sour cream !
and this really awesome burger called 'CBO - cheese bacon onion'
and and toblerone mcflurry.


yeah LOL

okay will post laterrr.. not sure when that will be coz i dunno when ill have internet for free again.
love and miss you all
xo